Personal notice, danger's my stock and trade. If the job's too tough for you to handle, you've got a job for me, George Valentine. Write full details. The oil company of California invites you to let George do it. Before we begin tonight's adventure, here's a word about gasoline. If habit has you buying a gas that stresses one feature at the expense of others, shift to Chevron Supreme, the gasoline that's a correct balance of all eight high-performance qualities. Quick starting, fast warm-up, smooth acceleration, economy mileage, full power, vapor-lock prevention, anti-knock, and area blending.  Fill up with Chevron Supreme gasoline at any standard station or independent Chevron gas station where they say and mean we take better care of your car. Plan described. And now tonight's story, The Forgotten Murder, a transcribed adventure of George Valentine. George Valentine, Esquire. My dear sir, I would deem it a great favor if you came for tea this afternoon at 3.30. I've been led to believe that you're the kind of man who would interest himself first by a stipend, of course, in a problem such as mine. A murder which is not even considered as such. A murder which has long since been forgotten by everyone except yours very truly mistful, the city Graham. That's quite a letter. Equal parts of gentility and murder. Well, I had a maiden aunt once she used to write letters that sounded like this, even if she was only asking the milkman to leave an extra bottle of cream. Let me see. Forty-five Barrington Terrace, I know that neighborhood. Ancestral brown stones with every room like a set out of arsenic and all that. In every closet with a family scout and I know what you mean. Well, Brixie, I don't know about you, but I find myself rather impatient to have tea with anyone named Felicity. Any more tea for anyone? No, no, no. Please excuse us, Paul. I'd like to speak to Miss Brooks and Mr. Valentine in private. How about you trusted me completely, Felicity, with everything?  Bear with me a little longer. Well, I don't think I... Oh, whatever you say, whatever you wish. My best friend, my only faithful suitor. Uh, your letter referred to a murder, Miss Graham? Yes. A murder which took place some fifteen years ago. Until it's solved, I'm afraid I can't find any peace and happiness in my own life. Miss Graham, I think you'd better give Mr. Valentine all the facts from the beginning. Well, there was only one person who was close to me in the whole world. My cousin, Laura. We became orphans about the same time and for years we were inseparable. And then she got married and the scoundrel murdered her and is off somewhere grinning about it right now. Well, Miss Graham, if what you say is true, this sounds like a case for the police. Oh, the police! They consider me their personal cross to bear. They've been listening to my story for the past fifteen years. The kind of ones simply say I'm touched in the head. But if they feel there's nothing can be done, I... I don't know how much help I can give you. But I tell you, Laura was murdered. I refuse to believe that she and her husband entered into a suicide pact. It's... it's ridiculous. It's a suicide pact, but I thought her husband was the murderer. If he's dead too... Well, according to the police files, Laura and her husband, James Cartwright, committed suicide together, drove their car off a lonely pier into the ocean. How awful. Their bodies were never found on account of the tides. The only things that were found along the shore were one of Laura's shoes and her handbag. Was there a suicide note? Yes, it was found on Laura's night table. It said that she and Cartwright ran through all the money her parents had left her. They couldn't stand the prospect of just grubbing along. Well, frankly, Miss Graham, I don't see how I fit into all this. Yeah, look. There, on the financial page, is yesterday's journal. Oh. See, please. Juan Palos, South American millionaire. Now, this is supposed to be Juan Palos, executive vice president of the Los Altos Goldmine. He's here in the state for a directors meeting. Well, what about it, Miss Graham? I believe this man to be James Cartwright. You do? I met Laura's husband only once in my life. And that was quite enough. But I still say this could be Cartwright. Oh, no, isn't that taking a lot for granted, Miss Graham? It's been 15 years. So many men look alike. It was the name Los Altos that caught my attention. See, Mr. Valentine, all during those few months they were married. Cartwright somehow arranged to send most of Laura's money out of the country to a town named Los Altos in South America. Some legal hocus-pocus with a shyster lawyer. How do you know all this? Well, I checked with the private detective. That's where the trail ended 15 years ago. As I get it, you feel James Cartwright married your cousin for her money, then somehow, very skillfully, he stripped her of it. Oh, it was all very neat. Laura's signature was on every withdrawal. No doubt about that.   He was too handsome, too arrogant. And he knew they didn't run out of money. He just had it planted where he could pick it up. Well, I just can't go up to this, Mr. Palos, and ask him to bear his life to me. I know. And that's why I'm willing to pay you. I don't even have a picture of Cartwright. And there isn't a set of his fingerprints anywhere. He saw out of that. Well, then I don't see... I just want you to meet this Mr. Palos. See if he doesn't make the one little slip that'll prove I'm right about it. What do you mean? If this man is James Cartwright, he won't be able to resist anything that has to do with cards. Cards? Not only was he a gambler, but he pride himself on the tricks he could do with cards. All sorts of sliced hands. Charming fellow to play cards with. Oh, I know if you go about it right, Mr. Valentine. You'll be able to make him give himself away. Appeal to the cards, Sharpenham. Well, we could give it a try. I must be sure. This is one last time. I can't find any peace in my heart. I can't pick up my own life unless I'm sure I... I haven't failed Laura. I loved her very much. Of course, James Cartwright was a beast. He made life a nightmare for Laura. Deliberately. Cruely. How do you mean? She had a provoked pleasure out of hurting her. She was a high-strung, sensitive girl. She was afraid of the dark, for instance. When we were little girls, if we were left in the dark, she'd run out of the room screaming. Cartwright would pull cute little tricks like putting all the lights out. All sorts of things like that. Well, Miss Graham, it's a long shot. But if it'll make you feel any better, I'll see what I can do. I don't put much stock in all this, angel. If it'll put her mind at rest, it's surely worth a try. Yeah, I guess so. Mr. Valentine, wait. Oh, Paul Henridge, isn't it? Yes. I want you to stop checking into this business with Mr. Paulos. Well, now I was under the impression Miss Graham wanted that to be a private matter. I was eavesdropping. Not a shame to admit it. Well, you certainly should be. Here. Here, Valentine, take this check. Oh, that's a pretty check. What am I supposed to do to earn it? Tell Felicity that Paulos isn't Cartwright. Well, look, he probably isn't friend, but at least I'm going to try and make sure. Valentine, I want to marry Felicity. If she's convinced Laura and her husband did commit suicide, I think she'll finally say yes to me. I don't want to take even the smallest chance of Paulos being Cartwright. I understand how you feel, Henridge, but I do have an obligation to my client. You'll be a sorry man, Valentine, if you don't listen to me. I guess it's just a chance I'll have to take. Yeah, yeah, I hear you, Johnson. I've been bothering you before, year after year. And the answer's still suicide, huh? No doubt about the handwriting on the suicide note. Okay, thanks a lot. George, the cablegram from that detective agency in Buenos Aires is here. Oh, good, read it. The Pauloses are respectable members of South American society. Senor Paulos struck it rich at the Los Altos Gold Mine about 15 years ago. Married a lady from the States. Struck it rich about 15 years ago.  We are friends of Senor and Senor of Paulos. And now we miss them, eh? That's right, sir. They checked out this morning. Darling, giving us young men $10 for being so helpful and telling us where the Pauloses went. But madam, I didn't I? Women, eh, my young friend? Yes, women. They went up to the mountain top ski lodge to rest up from doing nothing. Take a card, Brooks. Stop with that accent! All right, all right. Take a card. No. Not again. Again. It's bad enough I have to do all the driving. But I have to do a little practicing on card tricks. Yeah, I know.  Go, go, go. Take a card. Okay. Three of diamonds. Close. Queen of spades. Ah. Well, it's still a few miles to the ski lodge. I'll probably learn. Mr. and Mrs. Paulos are at the table by the window. Thanks, waiter. Here you are. Buy yourself an annuity. Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Paulos. George, people are looking. Well, I've got to get into the role of Georgie Valentine. Boy, life of the party. Come on. Okay, Georgie. Well, well, honey, look at these two people sitting here by themselves. I bet they're as lonely as we are. I beg your pardon. I bet they'd like company, too. Really? Just a minute, my dear. Let's see what the gentleman wants.   That's just what my husband said. How interesting.  Sit down, Claire. Oh, yeah, I want you to meet my wife, Mr. Paulos. Juan Paulos and Mrs. Paulos. Hello. Oh, yeah. Valentine is the name. I travel in women's dresses. You... Always gets a salesman. I sell women's dresses. Yeah. What's your line? Gold. Just gold? Gold. How nice for you. Juan, it's really getting quite late. Oh, Mr. Paulos, I'm glad to meet another businessman and knows how to take things easy, how to relax. I bet anything you have a hobby, too. Oh, yes. Skiing, of course. Mon and climbing. Oh, yeah. Oh, fine. But I have a hobby I carry around with me. Makes me the life of the party wherever I go. I'm sure you don't need a hobby like to do that, Mr. Valentine. You're right, Mary. Yeah, but a hobby sure helps. Here. You see these cards?  Pick a card.   All right. All right. Don't show me now. No. Five of hearts. I'm afraid not. King of clubs. Oh. But lookie here, I take the whole deck of cards and by flipping them up in the air like that, I shuffle the whole deck of cards. Oh, Georgie, they all fell. Here, let me. Oh, sure.  If you want to show me how it should be done. I? Show you? When it comes to things like this, I am, I say, all thumbs. I would be no help at all. Oh. I merely wanted to help you pick up the cards. Poor Georgie. And his card tricks. I don't know about you one, but I've had enough of this. I'm going upstairs. Very well, Doris. It's been very nice meeting you, Mr. Valentine. It's too bad about your trick. So sorry I couldn't have helped you to make it come out right. Oh, that's okay.  That's a common failing with so many amateurs. Good night. Not even a little nibble, senor. Yeah, and I was certainly bad enough. Well, he's either the wrong man or he's very clever. Oh, it isn't a question of brains, Bruxy. I counted on instinct. If he were James Cardright, demon card trickster, I was sure he couldn't resist showing me how the trick should have been done. Well, what now? I don't know. Hey, wait, Bruxy. Suppose I tell Pallas who I am and what I'm here for. Oh, fine. He'll fess up just like that. No, it isn't as silly as it sounds. It may turn into a very neat little trap. But if he is Cardright, that'll give him all the warning he needs. You know, Bruxy, they haven't invented a trap yet that'll work without bait. And I'm sure of one thing. I'll make a better piece of cheese than I am a card sharp. Turn to tonight's adventure of George Valentine in just a moment. Maybe you've noticed when you drive into a standard station or independent chevron gas station that your car saver had a brand new tire set up in front of the station or in the window. It's the safer, longer mileage Atlas tire. Atlas tires have wide, flat treads, treads that put more rubber on the road and give you better traction. They're thick treads with good, deep grooves and hundreds of tough, anti-skid edges. And mighty important is the written warranty that you get when you buy an Atlas tire. 12 months protection against tire damage from any road hazard. A warranty that's honored by more than 38,000 Atlas dealers from coast to coast and in Canada. 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Yes, the same James Cartwright who presumably died in a suicide pact with Felicity's cousin Laura. Up to now, you've gotten nowhere. So if your name is George Valentine, you decide on the most direct approach possible. You're going to walk right up and tell Senor Palos your suspicions. Before we go in to see the palace of George, you've got to tell me what you want with my compound. I just wanted to make a nice, noticeable bulge in the pocket of my jacket. You could tell me why. Uh-uh, I'm good to him. Yeah? Oh, so you're Valentine the, the Cartwright's man. Yeah, well, that's what I came over to explain, Mr. Palos. That is, if we may come in. Well, of course, of course. Has your husband been practicing, Mr. Valentine? Well, he's been cooking up something. One, who's at the door? I... Oh. One, darling, we must be dressing for dinner, and I'm sure that... Oh, please, Mrs. Palos, this won't take long. The truth is, I'm not a traveling salesman. This is my secretary, Miss Brooks.  What? One. Call the manager at once. This man is a, a raving lunatic.  Well, the suspected murderer, Mr. Palos, was supposed to have practically had an obsession about card tricks. So, if he had been you, he would have given himself away when I did that card trick so badly. Must we listen to any more of this fantastic story? No, no, no. But I find this rather intriguing, my dear. Just why did you suspect me, Mr. Valentine? The trail of the murderer led to South America. To Los Altos, to be exact. It was lost there. Oh, my dear fellow, there are more than a thousand people in Los Altos. Fully more than half of them work for my company, as a matter of fact. Well, I came to apologize. It was a bad hunch, poorly played. You should apologize. Forcing yourself on this in the dining room, lying to us? Yeah, I know. Especially when it was also unnecessary. I'm glad to see I've been exonerated. Well, that's not exactly what I meant. What is that? I mean, I now have a concrete way to solve this case. In my pocket, I have the lovely heart-shaped compact that was found in the dead lady's handbag. Really? Yeah, strange how everybody overlooks such a glaring piece of evidence at the time. But sometimes it happens. What in the world are you talking about? Well, as soon as I get back to town, I'm going to have an expert check on this compact. And I think I can prove it was murder. Well, good luck, Valentine. And be sure to let me know about this solution when you find it. I shall be most interested. Yeah. Yeah, I'll do that. Good night. Good night. Good night. George, I haven't the slightest idea of what you're trying to... Hey, hey, you! That man! That's Bob Henry! Yeah, you! Henry, twig! Don't you know it's impolite not to answer when somebody's talking to you? Let go of me, Valentine. Not until you answer a couple of questions. I warned you not to interfere. Well, Mr. Henry, welcome to Mountaintop Lodge. So you've been eavesdropping again, eh, friend? Yes, and again, I don't apologize for it. George, get out!  It's not fair, Buster. You didn't say put him up and fight like a man. I'm not going to let Felicity find out.  Okay, if you must play rough.   But if Palos is Cartwright, he'll move having an earth to get the silly count, eh? Well, it's just a long shot, but at least I'll feel we did what we could for Miss Graham. Now, go on, scoot, scoot it. Okay, darling, I'll see you later. Be careful. Yeah, I'll keep my back to the wall and the lights on. Is there any fireworks I want to see who sets them off? Da, da, da, da, da, da. Ah, I might as well get a chance to put the light on. And the wall... you must have fallen right on my head. Please, darling, sit still. And I don't have an enemy in the world, ah? Maybe it was a dear friend who did this. All I know is it was a he. I heard his footsteps. And the way he hit me, I know it was. Oh, sure, I see the compact is gone. And we found out what we wanted. He is Cartwright. Yeah, a long lost Cartwright. Aren't you going to tell the police they can really dig into senior palaces past? Yeah, yeah. But first, we're going down to the dining room and intrude on the palaces' privacy once more. But why? The more we're going to make believe this little accident up here never happened. I'm certainly not going to break bread for the man who nearly broke your head. I know it doesn't make much sense, Angel, but that's what we have to do. Party appetite, folks. Ah, for head, Mr. Valentine, I miss Brooke. I thought you said you were leaving. Well, Mrs. Palace, I was out for a little while, but I'm back again, biggest life. Mr. Handridge, you get at that table. Hi, everybody's here. May we join you, folks? Really, don't you think so? Thank you, Mrs. Palace. We will sit down. Please do. And since this is our last meeting, I insist on trying one more card trick. Oh, wait a minute. You'll be ready to help out, won't you? Good, good. Thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for your kind applause. And thank you very much, gentlemen of the orchestra. Your timing was superb. One. One people are staring at us. Well, no, Mr. Valentine, I really must agree with my wife. Thank you, Juan. It's about time. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to show you a very spectacular card trick, which will have special meaning to one particular person in here. Since it depends entirely on the element of surprise, I will now ask that the room be plunged into total darkness. OK, wait here. That's fine. Hey, is everything all right? What made her do it? George, that was horrible. Come on, Bruxy. Let's get up to the palace of sweet. Me and Darly, there is nothing to be frightened about. Well, perhaps she'd let me come in and help her. What are you two doing here? Haven't you done enough? I know how you feel, but if you want. Why did you have to do that? Well, that's what I must explain. I don't care about your explanation. I don't want to hear them. Just please, please help me. We must get in there. Help me, Valentine. OK. Doris. Doris. Naki. Doris, where are you? No, she's gone. The back door is open, and she's gone. All I can find is this note. Read it, then. Lie I have been living is over. And in a way, I am glad. I don't know how you guessed my secret, Valentine. But this to you, Valentine, what does this mean? You'd better finish it. I am Laura Cartwright, and I killed my husband 15 years ago. What is that? He drove me to it, and I planted so carefully, sending the money out of the country, planting the evidence, and then going to Los Altos to live. I found real happiness there with you, Juan. But this would have been the end for us anyway. So goodbye. Doris killed a man? The man you were looking for? No, this is all so mixed up. I know. Mr. Valentine, Mr. Valentine, may I see you a minute, please? Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Excuse me. Mrs. Palazzo, it's terrible. I saw her. In the dining room, I know. No, no, outside. She was trying to drive away in her husband's car in such a hurry. Yeah, yeah. She lost control and went over the side of the mountain. It's horrible. Yeah, it is horrible. Well, the manager wanted to know if you would break the news to Mr. Palazzo. Yeah, I guess so. And then there's still something to be done to help the living. To ensure the best performance of modern automobile engines, our scientists subjected hundreds of motor oils to grueling laboratory and road tests. Even atomic energy was used. Atomically treated piston rings in test cars showed engine wear as it occurred. The result was heavy duty RPM, a motor oil that compared to premium type oils, as designated by the American Petroleum Institute, doubles engine life between major overhauls due to lubrication. So if you're not already using this oil, switch over now to heavy duty RPM and get top protection for your car. Ask for heavy duty RPM motor oil at independent Chevron gas stations and standard stations where they say and mean, we take better care of your car. Well, darling, what did Lieutenant Johnson say? It always a nice guy, Brooksie. If there's a way of keeping the truth about Laura from Felicity Graham, he'll find it. Oh, yes, it's much better that way. She can now find some happiness with Paul Henry. I should be sore at Paul for slugging me and taking away that worthless compact. But I guess people in love deserve some consideration. George, how did you ever suspect Mrs. Pallas at all? We were so definitely looking for a man. Well, because it was a man who knocked me out. Yeah, not a woman. And only the murderer knew for sure that the compact didn't mean anything. So why do anything about getting it from me? That's only a small thing. But I started to think, looking at it objectively, it was much easier for Doris than her husband to send that money out of the country. And it was her shoe and handbag that were found. And the note about the suicide pack that was in her handwriting, remember? And she was an American who came to Los Altos and married Pallas some 15 years ago. Uh-huh. Still, I had to make sure. And I remembered what Felicity said about Doris' fear of the dark. Like I always said, George, you don't miss anything. Uh-huh. Say, what time is it anyway? Um, I wonder. Of course, that great big round object over our head might help. No police headquarters is complete without it. Well, at least you can't say the clock was right under my nose. No, darling. At least it fell over your head. Tonight's transcribed adventure of George Valentine has been brought to you by Standard Oil Company of California on behalf of independent Chevron gas stations and standard stations throughout the West. Robert Bailey is starred as George with Virginia Gregg as Bruxy. Let George Do It was written by David Victor and Jackson Gillis and directed by Kenneth Webb. Lorraine Tuttle was heard as Felicity. Larry Dobkin as Pallas. Lee Patrick as Mrs. Pallas. Bill Boucher as Paul. And Victor Rodman as the waiter. The music was composed and presented by Eddie Dunstetter, your announcer, John Heaston. Listen again next week, same time, same station, to Let George Do It. You can do something about cancer. Strike back at this Gregg disease by joining the cancer crusade of the American Cancer Society. Help support its vital scientific research program, education program, and service to the cancer patient. Cancer strikes one in five. Give generously to the American Cancer Society. May your contribution today to cancer care a postmaster. Let George Do It is heard overseas through the worldwide facilities of the Armed Forces Radio Service. This is the mutual Don Lee Broadcasting System.


Thank you for the introduction. My name is Ramana Andhreli. I'm a VP at Tinder who runs growth and revenue teams. Today I'm going to talk about how do you think about building a robust product roadmap to both achieve short and long term goals? In this section, we're actually going to go through, what are these goals? How do we define short and long term goals? How do they fit on your roadmap? How do we think about building a product roadmap around achieving these short and long term goals? How do we know that our roadmap is working? And how do we create a balance where we are able to create a product roadmap that has a good balance between short and long term goals? So let's address the biggest question in the biggest elephant at all. Why have these goals? We are all, at every given interval of time, have goals that we need to achieve for either a business growth or how we think about consumer problems. And some of these goals are meant to be achieved in the next three months. And some of these are achieved in the next five months. And we've all been in situations as such. Sometimes we visualize and think about that nobody at the company is really thinking about how to achieve long term ambitions for the consumer and for the business. And sometimes we're also looking at why are we thinking so long term? What can we do in the next three months? What can we do actually in the next six months? And how do we show progress in any of our KPIs that we define? So when we think about it and if we take a step back, what does the short term goal really look like? And in most businesses, consumers as enterprise, whether you're a pre-IPO, post-IPO, these are really relatively problems that we can relate to. Some of the short term goals would look like, are we really focused on improving retention? Are we really focused on improving our conversion to our products? Is there a way to increase our LTV? When you think about e-commerce, are we thinking about increasing the orders and sometimes the average order value? They may also look like, can you solve problems, consumer problems specifically? When you think about, is there an onboarding step that you want to reduce the drop-off for? Are there better ways to expose premium experiences in your product? Are customers struggling with some of the UX and UI decisions in your product, which eventually will result in an outcome? And in no matter how we think through these, these are short term problems that are able to show sequential impact to our business, to our consumers and how we can get measured relatively. When you think about long-term, there is a definite change in how we should think about what are the road, how does the road map come across for long-term? In the long-term aspect, we are thinking very broadly, we're thinking about how do you expand our category, whether you're in social, whether you're in consumer, whether you're enterprise, how do we think about creating more loyalty with our customers? How do we create access to experiences that are very exclusive to a certain set of our customers? All in all, these are created because you want to generate step-function changes to your user growth or revenue or to even your consumer or to your LPS. When we think about short and long-term road map, there is a certain scale to understand how do they fit in your entire product roadmap, especially when you look at short-term road map. These are something that you have to achieve in three months. You should have high confidence on achieving these goals. You should think about a very well-defined spec. The outcomes are expected, very scientifically driven on what these short-term goals should be, and you have a very clear KPI of glossary of metrics that you can solve for. And the most important thing is to be able to A-B test and iterate on all of these features. On the same side, when you think about long-term road map, this is obviously something that's going to span over six to 12 months. You are going to take a bet on something that is defined strategy, not a defined spec. You're expected to analyze the outcomes. You definitely do not know how the outcomes would look like. You have an intuition and a market opportunity, which is not as scientific-driven as the short-term road map is. And you're not looking for one specific KPI to be able to impact. You're looking at a selection of KPIs. And the way you eventually test these are based on GOs and based on markets. And unlike a short-term A-B testing framework, these are much more granular, much more broader in terms of how you think about the test. Now let's address what should, how should you think about the short-term GOs and what should the product road map look like? There's a very definite process in achieving short-term GOs and your product road map should consist of, one, the identification of the short-term GOs. So you should have clear KPIs and hypothesis and which are meant to be trying to understand what the signal is for each of your short-term GOs. Sometimes it could be as broad as retention, but it could also be what is the underlying thing that would improve retention? Is it an experience within the product? Is it reducing the friction in onboarding? Is it better registration process? Once you identify these short-term levels that you're able to fit within the product road map, you're going to test and basically iterate, rinse and repeat and eventually come back to a point where you're able to measure and analyze. The step of measure and analyze is very important because one, it helps you if your problem has been stated correctly and you've identified the right levels to grow. And second, you're also building confidence on how do you think about the right set of KPIs and how do you think about the performance improvement that you could show about these KPIs? And in the short-term, it's very, very important that you have a very clear confidence on what kind of goals you can pick up and being able to impact on it. If you're thinking about building a robust road map around short-term goals, it is not just about a set of product features. If you look at the confidence level and when you start iterating on really the short-term aspect of your goals, we start out at the first step of the process, which is identification. We think about problems, we think about opportunities, we think about different themes and features. At this point of time, we do have very low confidence. So your product road map might really look like I'm really trying to find out how to improve my retention, how to improve my registrations by solving certain problems A, B, and C. As you move towards achieving more of the short-term goals and trying to best understand how they fit into your product road map, you actually increase the frequency of your testing. You actually increase the frequency of releases and then you're recalibrating on whether these are the right sort of goals that you've identified and whether you're able to put the right product road map into it. As you move towards from frequency of testing and if you're getting more confident on your own product strategy and road map, you're actually going to build tools, tools that are meant for platforms, to scale on platforms, tools that are meant to give access to people and for them to be able to run and iterate on it faster, and also tools that can basically take the first two steps and put them at scale. You don't want to be doing the same kind of iterations for 170 countries in the world. You want to be able to build out one experience that solves for a problem and being able to replicate that at scale and being able to localize at that point. And eventually you get to a very high confident position when you think you can identify the problems. You can be able to increase your cadence and frequency and iterate on them. And then eventually you're able to build tools. At this point, it's repeatable. It's coachable to people and then you have high confidence on achieving such short-term goals in your road map. When we think about building the long-term aspect of our product strategy, what is very important is to understand for a long-term goal, you really, really don't have an underlying clear KPI. The first thing is to how does this road map help validate the space and the space that you're in. If you're in consumer, if you're in social, if you're in enterprise, you really want to understand how do we build what is the next evolution for the space in order to be able to answer that is what your products road map should reflect. And that should be your first sort of test or that should be your first sort of experience or a theme or a feature that you're going to build. Once you understand that there is some validation in the space, either through signals that you have tested internally in the product, you're now thinking about building the MVP that finds the answers. And during the MVP, your product road map really reflects on, okay, what is the requirements that I have? What do I know about this customer? What is that I want to learn about this customer when I put this experience out? And they have to be as broad as does the customer feel satisfied with the product? Does the customer understand the experience? Does the customer have willingness to pay versus short-term goals like, hey, did we see any particular drop off? Should we optimize for drop off at this point in this experience? Once you are shipped an MVP, then you have to be able to understand how to acknowledge these signals at scale. One of the key things about understanding the long-term aspect of the product is you should be able to receive the similar signals that you receive in the short-term aspect, which is like retention, improvement, conversion. But these signals at scale help you understand whether there will be a complimentary experience that can live within the product without taking away from your core product, without taking away from your core services of the product. So it's very, very important to understand how these signals work at scale. And then can your road map reflect questions as such or experiences or features as such for the scale? As you know more about your signals, how are you building and modifying your milestones so that you can react to the market better? You're now really thinking about, I've understood what is the long-term aspect of a product and experience that I can build that achieves the milestones that I've set up for? How do I now take it to market to fundamentally question the more real aspects of this? Which is like, how does it add consumer value? How does it add business value? And if you take a critical view of the product, road map, and then you think about short and long-term, this is not an ideal view, but over the period of time, I've seen this change multiple ways from each quarter, but you do want to be able to assess whether your road map has a clear breakdown of what you're doing in the short-term, what you're doing in the long-term and what you're doing obviously, which falls in between or which falls in improving the tech or which falls in improving the customer experience, which I call the MESC. For an example here, if you look at it, I start out on the quarter A in one particular year that a lot of my road map is actually consists of features that are very focused towards the short-term. And as I progress through the year, I'm able to invest more into my long-term aspect of the road map. This is about the way I explained. You get better at your short-term goals because you're able to invest, identify the right metrics, and eventually you can put less resources there and start focusing on the long-term. And after years or after quarters, it can change back to, okay, now I'm going back and focusing on more of my short-term goals because of where the businesses or because of where the consumer problems are and how important it is in the product life cycle for you to address them versus long-term goals. But it's very important to be able to have this very broad view to always assess how we as product managers are actually putting all of our road map goals and buckets in addressing a product roadmap. So how do we achieve the balance and why is it so important? It is not just important to be able to launch a great product experience as most of us think about product life cycles on quarters and multiple years. It's very important to be able to build for both the short and long-term at the same time and be able to build the process, the people and the predictability around both of these at the right intervals of time. So if you really, really want to be good at your short-term goals and want to spend less time and want to spend more time over the course of your product journey, you have to get very good at A-B testing. You have to be good at putting the right tests in your product strategy roadmap. You should be able to have the right insights. You should be able to understand your levers. You should be able to repeat and optimize this over years. So your product roadmap reflects some of these goals. It also should reflect the investment that you spend on tools. It should also reflect the investment that you want to use on segmentation, cohorting, which is one of the best ways to achieve short-term goals and show more impact. And while you're thinking about long-term goals, you're really working backwards from your vision. You're really working backwards from a business goal. And if you have something as strong as, say, 12 to 18 months, we want to create a market differentiator, then you have to build backwards from it, use the roadmap capabilities that you have today to be able to answer the questions. One is to be able to answer the space. One is to be able to answer the signals that you get from the space and being able to find if those signals in that space can give you the confidence of building what is the next differentiator in the market or being able to iterate multiple times to build on the next differentiator in the market. While doing so, it's very important to have the view that you don't overachieve on the short-term and underachieve on the long-term goals because as product people, we want to be very sustainable and efficient in building a roadmap that can do both of them and achieve a very timely growth for our business. Thank you.


Happy New Year viewers. Welcome to this show, the state of the state of Hawaii. This is a my weekly show on Mondays. Today, the topic of the show is about Hawaii schools post COVID after closures and interruptions and other dilemmas that we've experienced over the last period of that awful COVID pandemic. And our question as posted is now that schools are open are they restoring learning? So we'll have some interesting talk about how that's going and how much that costs and how it is supported. So Sherry, welcome to you for coming on the first day of this new year. Well, thank you, Stephanie. I'm so glad to be back again on the state of the state. Well, I'm really pleased because this is an ongoing topic. It's not anything that is just presentable in one little session or statement. And I know people can follow the Department of Education's website, which is, as you know, up there under HawaiiPublicSchools.org. It's a lot of information, a tremendous amount of information. And of course, it has to change all the time, too, as everything becomes clear. But Sherry, I thought maybe you could start us out about how you go about knowing what's going on with this situation in terms of, first of all, what is the status of the learning challenge out there? Where, what is it that the Department has to cope with? The Department of Education and all of the schools have to cope with now as a result of the pandemic? So can you just describe the task as you see it? And then we can go on and talk about how to meet the needs. Sure. So just a bit about my group. It is a coalition of nonprofits and parent groups. And we all came together about 12 years ago to engage and understand what's going on at the Department of Education. So the way we do that is by attending all Board of Education meetings, all education legislative sessions, or as many as possible, or where we feel there is priority amongst our members. And we just consistently keep in touch with the Department's reports to the Board, and also legislation that affects our public school system. So we've been doing this for the past 12 years, and really that's how we keep up with the status. So moving on to what has happened in the past, really three years since the pandemic started in 2020, you can imagine it was a shock to the whole system, having to close schools for a while, having to do hybrid learning or distance learning at one point. And then that turned into hybrid learning and to finally, last year, the Department returned to in-person learning 100%. So we've gone through a lot. And I really want to thank and appreciate all of the educators and, of course, the families and the students for persevering and doing their best amidst this really complicated and difficult time. But what ended up happening, or what is what is happening as we speak is because of the instability and inconsistency of instruction, and just the social emotional well-being of students being affected, we've had some learning loss, especially amongst our high-need students, the economically disadvantaged, the English learners, and the students receiving special education. Because their instruction was disjointed a bit, you can imagine they struggled, I would say all students struggled, but the high-need students struggled even more. And that's really what we need to address going forward. This has been a priority of the Board of Education. It is certainly a priority of the coalition. And of course, we want to get all students back to where we were pre-pandemic. But in particular, we want to pay attention to the students who have the greatest needs. And so that's where we're focused. And it seems the Board and the Department are also focused in that area as well. So you would say you were aligned with the mission of the Department of Education. So the way they lay out their activity going forward, you're looking at it in the same manner. So they see the demand that's out there for these special groups of young students, all of them actually, but to make sure that all of the students, the English language students and those that you mentioned on high-need, are seen to so that they can make as much progress as they need to as well.  Or do you superimpose? Do you have other goals beyond that? I'm not asking you to give us any big secrets, but I was just wondering about what is your strategy? Well, it all... Yes, we focus in on the data. And we hope that the Department is data-driven as well. They say they are. And recently, they did present a large amount of data regarding the past three years, how students did in the Smarter Balance Assessment, which is the state assessment that's given to students in certain grade levels. And we've followed what the data says. And according to that data, so just in sum, pre-pandemic, we had certain levels of performance academically. And even pre-pandemic, there were differences between the non-high-need students and the high-need students. We call that the achievement gap. And in Hawaii in particular, we've had a persistently wide gap where there is a difference in the performance of the non-high needs and the high-need students. During the pandemic, all students declined in academic performance. You can imagine because of these exogenous shock of the pandemic and this inconsistency and the type of instruction, all students went down, but our high-need students fell further. Last year, it was the first year of all in-person instruction. So, fortunately, there was a rise with all students. Of course, the rise was greater for the non-high-need students compared to the high-need students, but we haven't recovered back to pre-pandemic levels. So, our priorities really stem from what we see in the data. And we think that because the high-need students really had a disproportionately negative impacts from the pandemic, we feel that there needs to be particular supports for them, appropriate supports, so that they can get back on track as well as, of course, the non-high-need students. Well, do you think that the department is looking as closely at the data as, can you discern that they are using the data to guide their thinking about priorities and assistance? Yes. I do believe that the department is looking at the data and their intention and their objective is to try to get all students back on track, and they're certainly aware that there's these disparities. What is not so clear to us is how. And this is where we keep asking the department to articulate more clearly so that we can all understand how the schools or the system as a whole is trying to address this systemic problem. Yeah. So, I was going to say, when you say data, that they look at the data, we're talking about the Strive Hawaii set of assessments, correct? So, that is the data that would be driving their decision. So, there are four data on the website. Anybody, I can go up to those websites and take a look at that Strive Hawaii data. Okay. So, when they use that, okay. And then you're just saying that the way they look at it, the how part of it, is where you are interested to know more. Well, the department has a number of websites portraying what you refer to, which is the Strive Hawaii data system. So, just so that people are aware, the Strive Hawaii system is a set of indicators that was established by the superintendent, two superintendents ago, which was a way for stakeholders or the public to see how the department was doing with these indicators. So, examples include the proficiency results from the smarter balance assessment. There's also a look at chronic absenteeism. There's a look at college going rates. There's a look at third grade literacy. There's a look at teacher retention, teacher retention rates. So, it's 14 indicators where we can, with these indicators, see the status of how the system is doing. So, when I say data, when I was referring to data before, yes, it is the Strive Hawaii data, but it also is focusing in on the state assessments for example, English language arts, mathematics and science, which are shown by the results of the smarter balance assessment, which is the state assessment that evaluates whether or not a student is proficient in common core standards for that particular grade. So, every state has a state assessment, Hawaii has chosen the smarter balance assessment, and every state also has standards that they adopt, which defines in each grade level what a student is supposed to master. So, when we look at the smarter balance assessment or academic performance in English language arts, math and science, we see that there has been a decline since the pandemic in all subjects actually, and a rise in all subjects, except the, I should, let me take that back. There has been improvements, but not a rise back to pre-pandemic levels. So, where we are actually doing well in is in English language arts. Again, we are making greater improvements in English language arts than we are in mathematics and science. So, getting back to your original question, the Strive Hawaii system is a series of indicators. Amongst those, the smarter balance assessment results are looking at proficiency in certain subjects like English language arts, math and science. And by those results, we can see how our high needs and our non-high needs students have performed, and we can see the trends of where they are. So, that's kind of what we look at. Of course, we look at the other indicators too, but the proficiency is one of the indicators. It's just one indicator that is quantitative and measurable, and we can see the movement of how our students have fared during the pandemic. So, when you say proficiency, that is the criterion or the marker for something like maybe grade level of performance. What does proficiency mean if parents get this data, which I hope, do they get the data? That's another question, is do they get the smarter balance information about their students and are they presented to PTA or what have you? And then what does proficiency mean? Proficiency means whether or not a student is proficient in the common core standards for that grade level. So, the evaluation, it goes one, two, three and four for a student, whether they have not met proficiency, whether they're nearing proficiency, whether they've met proficiency, or whether they've exceeded. So, that's the way a student is evaluated, and then they aggregate all of this, and you can see the percentage of proficient or nearing or not meeting for a particular school. So, it's whether they, depending on the score that a student receives on the assessment, they can indicate whether or not a student is nearing, meeting, not meeting, or exceeding proficiency. Our interest, of course, as your organization is interested, is in the stakeholders, of course, the communities and the parents who want to know what's happening in the schools with their children. And are people, are you finding that people are getting information about these data that you're suggesting are driving the DOE's decision making, like it drives your work, but a little different level? Okay, so yes. So, there is a lot of information on the Department of Education website. A lot. Navigating it is another issue. It's very difficult to find information about your student, if I'm a parent. I don't think individual student information is on the website. So, a school delivers information about their student to parents. I actually don't know if the smarter balance assessment results is provided to parents. I think there's evaluation, there are report cards, and there are grades given to students, but the state assessment is usually reported in an aggregate way. So, either a school will show the proficiency, percentage proficient students of that particular school, or we can look at it as a state, how we're doing, the number of, the percent of proficient students in our state for particular subject matter. So, going back to your question, the information may be there, but it's difficult to find. Now, the reason I'm able to, or our coalition is able to navigate is because we pay attention and make it a point to find it and understand it. It is not that easy for somebody who just doesn't know anything and goes on the website to find the information that they need. It is a challenge to try to find the information. I've spent many hours on the website trying to find the right information. I think that that's a good caution, but the fact of the matter is you can go up there, and I know I just recently, yesterday, looked up there to make sure that I knew what I could see and easily understand, and I did find that all of the school's performances on those indicators are listed by school from grades 4 through 7, 6, I think, 3 through 6, 3 through 6, because, of course, 3 is important for the English language learning, for the English language arts, certainly the reading. But anyway, I'm just mentioning that, so viewers know that they can go up there and take a look at their school for sure, and then maybe there's other information they can glean too. But yeah. Now, I do want to mention that the proficiency data isn't the only data, and there are many stakeholders who don't want to focus just on this smarter balance assessment. After all, a child is a whole child, and this is just one component. Now, that said, the school system doesn't have really great measures for assessing other things. Recently, the department launched a assessment for social-emotional learning. It's trying to look at the emotional state of students. There's also satisfaction surveys. So it's not the proficiency data isn't the only thing. And of course, in the stripe-high system, you're looking at other factors like absenteeism or looking at the new teachers and how long they stay or teacher retention rates. You're looking at facilities. You're also looking, you're looking more at the total system. So it's just that for proficiency, that seems to be what stakeholders do want to know whether or not a student is doing well in their academics. And so it tends to be a focal point, but I want to mention that it's not the only element that we should be concerned with. Very, very important point. Yes. Well, I wanted to switch over now to the other helper in this effort to bring our students back to their best performances. And that's the federal government and the funding that has come to all states, including Hawaii. And we have very little time, but I just wanted to not get too bogged down in nomenclature here or acronyms. But we are now at the beginning of 2023. And as I understand it, and the answer, which stands for the secondary school emergency relief fund, which is the federal government's funding for states, for schools to to mitigate learning loss and get schools back in order again. Now, the first that this year, the funding is at the level of the funding level out. I think it's 400 and some odd million was the last tranche, but there's been almost 700 million issued during the pandemic of supplemental federal funds. And I know we don't have much time, but I'll just mention, I'll try to summarize. So let me just say that those funds, as you say, the first one is, as you said, and I think the second one is like 400. And that one lapses at the end of 2024. So there's a big tranche that's going to lapse this year, which is that many tens of millions of dollars. And then into next year, we have that. So with that funding coming in, do you see that we're getting enough information or the stakeholders, the community, the parents are getting to understand how much support we have in Hawaii as well as in the other states to make a difference and to get us out of this predicament? How did you see that going now? No, we do not have the information to know how those funds are being used. And that has been a very frustrating point for myself and the coalition. We keep asking. One of the issues is our system is one of empowerment. So a lot of discretion is left up to the individual schools. And because individual schools do different things, it's hard for the department to articulate as a system what we're doing as a system to address, in particular, our high needs students, because if all the schools are doing things differently, it's hard to consolidate that information and communicate it back to stakeholders in a way that's really systematic and understandable. So we really don't know how the funds are being used. And that is something that once again, I keep asking the department, and it's difficult to get a coherent explanation. So what are you, this would mean that the accountability plan is not clearly presented or stated for how they're going to assess what's going on in every school and across the counties and in the state, right? So are they lacking an accountability plan? Or is there, is it? Yes. So it's difficult to ensure accountability. The leadership never established clear goals or targets or objectives for the use of these federal funds. So we almost have to just trust the fact that the department is using the monies well. We don't know how they're tracking improvement besides these annual state assessments. And once again, it's difficult to know whether or not we are really getting a good return on investment on these funds. And they're precious funds. It's a one-time, unprecedented situation where we have these supplemental funds. So you would hope that we could use it in the most strategic way. But it's not clear to us. Okay. And it is an enormous amount of funds. And you're so right. This isn't going to happen again. And I do have my numbers here. And I just wanted to say them again for S or two, which is money for this year 2023. And that figure is $183.6 million. And this is up on the Department of Education's website. And the S or three monies that are going to lapse in 24. So that'll be the end of it there. So that's $412.5 million. So it would be interesting to see how that is getting parsed out and what future plans they may have to do, the kinds of things you're talking about, they might need to do, Sherry. So do you all make recommendations to the department or the state or what's the feedback loop from the state side of it? We do. We do. What we have suggested very shortly is there are schools that are exemplary. Like I said, schools have a lot of discretion and they can do, they have a lot of discretion to do what they feel is best. And what we try to look at are Title I schools, Title I meaning having more than half of economically disadvantaged students, Title I schools that are doing extremely well in terms of their academic proficiency on these indicators that we were talking about. This shows that despite having student demographics that aren't necessarily favorable for all families because they're economically disadvantaged, for example, they're still able to have quality instruction, consistent instruction, and it shows up in their performance. So we would suggest that the department highlight, not only highlight, but see how they might be able to scale some of these practices because it's true we are in an empowered system and we do want to give flexibility to our principals and our schools. However, I think the schools also would like some guidance. And I think it's the state's responsibility to try to share some of these best practices in a way that all schools can benefit. So that's really what we try to encourage the department to do and we hope that these schools that are exemplary schools get recognized and really analyze to see how and why they're able to outperform. Well, I know that of course we're getting a short on time, but maybe we can come back and talk about what some of these practices that are needed and are expensive and would be the ways to expand funds. I mean, you look at other states how they're accomplishing these needs and doing things like big tutoring programs or other ways of many other programs that can come in and assist these students, especially these high need students and students that you're describing. And I think it would be interesting to maybe go over what some of the other states are doing that are interesting communities that might have a similarity to Hawaii's circumstances and to know what would make sense. And if we have something like that or maybe just talking about it and recommending it is a way to keep stakeholders informed. I think the community and parents would like to know more about what's happening with all of this funding. And I wasn't here for much of the campaign. So I don't know what our executive leadership, the governor and lieutenant governor, I don't know enough yet about what they're saying, but that would be another place to go to talk about what's happening with these enormous resources. Right. So other states, just to give an example during the pandemic have focused on things like literacy, because if a student is having trouble reading, they're going to struggle throughout their academic careers. And in addition to that, some of these other states also have a very good process of accountability, where they will look at some of these initiatives that were investments from the federal monies to see exactly how effective they were, whether it's an investment in a literacy platform or something like that. It is evaluated and continually evaluated to see if it's working, if there are tweaks, if it can be improved. And so we would really be thrilled if the department had a process like that and was able to be transparent about it and communicated. Now, I know that Hawaii has been awarded a very large literacy grant and we would hope that those funds would be used strategically, particularly because the pandemic has happened and undoubtedly there are struggling elementary school students who would need some supports, really research-based proven supports in literacy. However, once again, the department, while it has a website that describes the grant and describes that the funds were allocated or awarded to I think six complex areas, and it has a brief description, we're not sure of what the progress is and exactly how these funds and what exactly are the initiatives and activities that are being done and we would hope that we would know that progress was being made or not. So again- And you're talking about the department of education? The department of education, yes. So the information that's provided is very general and not specific enough for us to know what it is and how the funds are being used and whether or not it's a good investment. Was it a strategic investment? And here you're addressing of course the accountability issue too and not putting into place an accountability plan that will give them that information and will incorporate the things you're talking about like setting goals and understanding what outcomes they're going for and what that's going to take. And then I know we have to finish, but that is a five-year federal grant and it's really rather paltry compared to what's already in at 50 million for five years. So I think there are many, there's such large gaps here in terms of funds in Hawaii that I think we need to talk a lot about what can be done with those if the U.S., if the Department of Education is needing some feedback. I hope we can help them with that and also to increase viewers and parents and community members understanding of what's happening and maybe thinking about it from their own point of views and experience. So really appreciate all the information today. It's been very informative and we are out of time. So I think Cherie Nakamura who leads the A Coalition for participating today as our guest. And we will be back in two weeks for the state of the state of Hawaii and Mahalo to all our viewers and Aloha and happy New Year to everyone. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.


Okay, good afternoon, folks. Larry Pesavento for TFNN. We're going to do a quick update of what's happening with the markets. We've got stocks lower, bonds lower. The grains are higher. Gold and silver are a little bit higher. Copper is up a little bit, so it's a mixed variation of everything. As Basil would say, it's a bifurcated market. Stocks have been weak from the very beginning. They had a little bit of a rally and then started to sell off a bit. Most of the news, of course, has been focused on Apple. I happened to spend about 15 minutes this morning. Look at this Apple video of this video game that comes out for $3,400. I don't know when it's coming out, but, folks, you got to see where we are in this world of videos and virtual reality. This thing actually blew me away. I think it's probably a cheap price at $3,400. I bought the back in 1990. We had all of... Remember if we had these little tiny computers with these 14, 15 inch screens? I bought a 26 inch color TV color monitor at the Comdex store show in Las Vegas. I believe it was $90 or $91. I really liked it, so I bought two. I paid $3,300 for those each. One of them is still working. My neighbor has it. Unbelievable it still is, but this is the kind of stuff that when you see it, you just can't believe it when you see this big screen. This thing, it just makes your little tiny computer. It's basically a computer with all the apps on it. I'm not a tech person, but I did it flat out, blew me away. If you get a chance, go to the Apple place or some place where you can see this promo that they have for this thing. They've got a special name for it, which I've already forgotten, but it's really an amazing thing. You have to wear these glasses, a headset. Looks very comfortable, but, boy, you talk about an experience of watching movies and sports. Holy moly guacamole. Someone that is absolutely augmented reality. Thank you very much. Yep, I think it's called augmented reality. Thank you very much, Allen. But it's really blowing. I'm not easy. Well, I am easy to impress because 2 plus 3 is 5, and that's the extent of my virtual reality. Hey, we're going to talk about the markets when we get back, especially Apple folks. Stay tuned.<PHONE_NUMBER>.


So we're going to get right into it. My name is Emma Cameron. Apparently I'm on one of the programs about six times. This is the actual presentation that I'm giving. I'm not doing the other ones. So we're going to be not using the clicker. All right, so we're going to be talking about governance and in big projects, what we've learned from our prototypes during our time and what we did after go live, which is often where websites tend to die. So I work for the single digital presence project, which is a Victorian government project. Now the project was actually funded for one department, the Department of Premier and Cabinet, and to consolidate 38 websites. And what happened was everyone got really excited, and other departments started sort of jumping on at the same time, and our Executive Director is not a no man. So we had to juggle all of that with not really a sort of significantly expanded sort of budget or team. So this is what it used to look like before. You can see it's all over the place. It's a very special sort of old Victoria Police site down the bottom, which is pretty special. And we're changing because it's just, it's hard for Victorians if everything's different. And it's hard for public servants as well. It means we're not secure, we're not accessible, things aren't getting updated. It's hard to learn how to use them. So this is what it's looking like now. You can see there's much more consistency. You can start to see sort of, yeah, those consistent design elements. This is a photo of me in grade one. Now I've been told I probably didn't have to circulate. I'm still the tall girl with the big fringe, nothing much has changed. Still read a lot. I was the kid that got signed up for the piano lessons when everyone else was playing, you know, netball and football and basketball. So not much has changed. Now this down the corner, that's my friend Barb. We've known each other since we were three. We're very different people. She's a tiny kid in the bottom row. She was playing sport all the time. She left school when she was 16. She wasn't super academic. And just by chance, she ended up retraining as a family violence support officer at the same time that I was doing this project. And one of the areas that we have content in is actually for family violence support officers and for the family violence reform that the Victorian government's doing. And that for me was a really important touch point. She's doing this really hard job where she's, you know, supporting people through this really traumatic time of their life. And, you know, our content was complicated. It used words like tranche. It, you know, it wasn't sort of being used by the people it needed to be used for. So that was, you know, having an actual person when things got hard was really, I think, is what got a lot of the project team through the project. So this is our high level website classification tool. You can see from the big yellow dot that our strategy was really around feeding as much as we could into our main Victorian government website, Vic.gov.au. There are some sites where we needed an extra level of independence, things like commissioners where they're supposed to be a bit separate from government. We have the same content repository for these what we call semi-independent sites, but they have a still a kind of look and feel of a different website. And then we have fully independent websites, things like Victoria Police, the governor's website, where it's separate. We actually, what we're finding is we've got too many independent sites at the moment and too many separate content repositories because we had sort of a lot of departments opting in, so we're actually looking to consolidate even more over time. So our first website was the governor's website. Now, what worked well when we ran that was we used hotjar to get some surveys, to get some insights into who was coming to the site and why they were coming. We used a technique called pair writing. Can I just show of hands? People have heard of that. Yeah, great. So it's similar to pair coding. You sit people down together and you make sure they're collaborating. And just anything you wear you can collaborate is going to, it's going to, you're going to get better outcomes. And it was really important for us that we transition skills over. A lot of the people we were dealing with who were content owners, they looked after a website as part of like six other things that they were doing. So we really wanted to pass on skills. The next time we did it, we made sure we had content approver sessions because often where things go down, go wrong is that people say, oh yeah, it'll be fine. And then the person who has to sign everything off says, why have you changed this? I don't understand. Make it go back to the way it was before. So we really wish we were careful to brief the right people. And that made the process much, much smoother in future. Photos, we learned a lot about photos as well. It's photos are a big deal and they're actually hard to get. I think a good photos across the board. So if you're not making sure that your areas you have for photos are really kind of flexible and will work for, you know, for most types of photos, then, you know, the website's going to be hard to use. So the next big phase was our prototype, our alpha.vic.gov.au. It was the first time I had a prototype of an alpha and a beta running live. We had a sample of content in our sort of equality area, like women's equality, veterans, LGBTIQ, and what we call our journeys across government to help people navigate across government. And then our beta we brought in our grants information. I thought we were going to get lots of user insights from running an alpha. You can see from the graph, unsurprisingly, there's a lot of public servants and digital professionals giving us information to use for. We want to hear from them, but what we found was when we flicked live, we got just this whole set of different data. So, but what it was really good for was for managing stakeholders to have something to go, this is what you're going to get, this is what it looks like. You can click around on it and see it. That helps so much. And we were running this project with a core content team of three people. So, we wouldn't have been able to like have that many websites sort of migrating across if we hadn't been sort of moving things across, you know, like piece by piece. So, having the prototype was great for that. Navigation, we've changed significantly. When we first sent live, we had that kind of blocky look and feel. Now, we've got sort of two different sets of navigation. We've got one where we've got a sort of card scenario where we feature just sort of really important items. And we've got a navigation on the right hand side. You can see from the heat map that people interact really well with that. And our second form is again what we call a journey, which really steps people out in terms of actually what they have to do step by step in the real world. So, and that we're getting really good feedback on both of those approaches. Our taxonomy, how we're kind of connecting information together has been really important in terms of making sure our content types like news and events and grants can be dynamically displayed on a page to move away from sort of having to sort of manually go through and add like an event on different pages. What we find if things are too separate, people don't find them. But if it's manual, then it takes us too much time to keep adding them to pages. So, having that kind of dynamic feature is really useful through tagging. We also have these little, they look like buttons. You can click through and you can sort of see all the information that's tagged to the one topic. No one's really using those. So, that's an experiment that sort of didn't work so well. Around this time, Department of Treasury and Finance opted into the platform. And one of their sort of major websites is their procurement website. And that's, as you can imagine, very complex, very detailed. It hadn't been touched for a really long time. They were really adamant that it needed to be done by the end of financial year, which gave us less than two months to work on the project. We brought in a vendor to help us to do that. But what we found was we didn't have that kind of with our department. We had our governance model signed off by our secretary, which is like the highest level of the department. And we did a big road show with executives. And we sort of briefed everyone really thoroughly. We still had problems, but it just meant we had less problems. What happened with a new department was we started talking about how we wanted to change things and make things more user-centric. And people got really worried about things like plain English and just making changes in general. And the timelines were really tight. And it caused a lot of tension. And you can see from the graph when we went live, we've got a Was This Page Helpful feature on every page. And we weren't getting great feedback. But we didn't give up. We sort of collaborated with DTF and we were like, what do we need to do to kind of keep moving? And we did do some really intensive training. And that really one of our more vocal stakeholders actually emailed the trainer afterwards and said, I'm really sorry I gave you a hard time. I understand now what you were trying to do. And things like focusing on accessibility and migrating over some of the extra content with an extra resource to just keep chipping away at making the content better. And that department's content owners are really attending our community of practice now and are much more engaged and happy. So our kind of final things that we did with our key features in our main site, we moved our corporate website fully into our Vic.gov.au. That actually gave us an increase of 85% extra traffic by bringing it in. No one really wants to go to a corporate website. They can be quite dry, but we actually had some useful interesting information on there that was buried. So by bringing it into our main site, we really bubbled that up. We created a publications template. There's a lot of publications in government. They're usually PDFs. It means you can't look at them properly on your mobile. It's not good for accessibility. It's not good for, I'm sure you all know the reasons. So having an actual template to help people has been great. We had our annual report H2ML first for the first time this year. We've got about 20 publications in that template. It's still a changed journey, but we're starting to see real progress. We did some specific features for Aboriginal Victorians as well because we have that responsible for that content. We've got an alert to notify people if there's an image of someone who's passed away. And we've also made the acknowledgement of country more prominent at the request of Aboriginal Victorians. So workflow. Obviously a lot of authors, this is my one and only meme because my product manager said you've got to have a meme in there. So it actually is a lot like that and we really took that into account with workflow. The reality is that you've got one person who's logged into the system. They have to send it to their manager. Their manager says it to their manager. There's about 20 stakeholders. They need to have a look at it. Sometimes the minister's office gets involved. They need to see it. So the preview was really important to us. We set that up to be sort of to be easy to access. You don't have to be logged in and trained for five days to use the preview. It's got a little alert. So you know it's a draft because before we had that, people freaked out a lot that they were looking at something that was live that wasn't supposed to be. And outside of that we've got alerts that come through for our team so that we know when jobs are coming through because we're a publishing gateway for people. And that's integrated with JIRA. So we're all here because we think community is important and that's been really important to us as well. And I think one of the key things that some helped our project to be successful is that we're connecting people up with each other. We're sharing the research that we do and also how other people are using the site. And that's really kind of helping people to feel like they're supported, which is everyone wants that, don't they, at the end of the day. So we've also, since we've gone live, we've been responding to needs. There's been a lot of different authorities and agencies that have gone live since the project. Normally those would be separate sites. They're now housed on our main Vic.gov.au site. And you can see they're slightly different but they've all got that same look and feel. And again, they're much more discoverable on the main platform. And again, they're small teams, they're panicking because they're about to go live with a new authority really quickly. And they've got our team there to help them through a journey of digital. Campaigns are another really common thing in government. Sometimes they have advertising attached, sometimes they don't. They're the most popular content that we have currently. Again, these are within the Vic.gov.au website now. The ones that are working really well. Unsurprisingly, they have a really strong call to action and they have a communication strategy attached to them. Even some of the graduates programs are less flash looking one but that resulted in, it was about a 185% increase in applications by putting this kind of campaign together. So it really got results for the people who did it. How we've been keeping quality, there was this page helpful. I just, I can't understate enough how useful that is. It's a really simple example of how we use that feedback to make improvements. We look after the information about Victorian flowers and all the weird Victorian things that we have. And apparently there's also a tartan, which we didn't even know until this piece of feedback came through. So that's now information that we host on the site. We've got Google Analytics dashboard set up now so that people can access their information about how they're tracking. And we have our, actually people like our analytics experts and our service design experts come to our community practice. So people have specific questions they can connect with the experts and get support and help. And again, having that model where people can talk a little bit more one-on-one and it's less kind of presenting at people, that's been working really well for the community. And we do things like accessibility audits and SEO audits to really highlight to people what's working and what's not working. So that's, yeah, it's, people are juggling a lot of things in government. I think, and Victorian government at the moment is been very active. So, yeah, it's a case of understanding that people are juggling multiple jobs and supporting them. So where, what are we looking at next? We just launched some online training on our content management system because we would take a lot of our time was being taken up with doing basic training on the CMS. And then often people would just show up and they'd watch us do things and then they'd go away and they would forget because they weren't doing it themselves. So this is forcing them to actually log in, create a page and watch the videos. That's very, it's, we've only just put that page up. So it's very new. So it's very experimental. But we hope, but the plan is that that gives a, frees us up more to do more sort of training and mentoring in the kind of higher level digital stiggles, like how do you write a content strategy and how do you become a good product manager, those sorts of things. We're really focusing on those journeys that I talked about earlier of how do you step people through like real life, they're, you know, help them through their real life and connect them with the government services that are available. Because that's generally the feedback we get is, ah, that's really useful. I didn't really know about that. So how do, how can we bubble up the support that's available for people in a way that makes sense for them? A big focus for our next 12 months is going to be our back end.  And we, didn't give quite as much love to our content authors as we always wanted to. But with the time constraints, there's definitely some improvements that we want to make to our back end admin. We're also looking at collaborative governance or one of our developers was like, ah, you're open sourcing your governance. But what we want to do is we're moving from like our department being the department that looks after Vic.gov.au to really saying this is the website for everyone. How can we work together and make sure that the website is useful for everyone? And we're using everyone's expertise as well because there's, you know, there's strong web teams in every department and we know that there's things that we can learn from them as well as things that they can learn from us. So, yeah, to sum up, the good old sum up, the governance and the rules are important, but also like talking to people and being really human is important as well. The comms and the training is like, again, it's just, it's just really, really important. The more lean you can be, the better. I mean, it's obvious, but that we overcooked it with the navigation and now we're sort of looking at how we can simplify. And the more you can consolidate, the better your better results you're going to get. And keep sharing what works and what doesn't. And the more evidence you have, the better people do like evidence and listen to evidence. Not always, but it gets you wins much more than kind of not having anything to talk about. This is just a little list of some detailed resources where we're pretty open source with a lot of our stuff. So it's a lot of the detail of how we did things as publicly available. So this all gets shared around no doubts. And yeah, corrupt for questions. I'd love to know what the team makeup was for with a project this big was. Yeah. At the moment, we have 20 people, I'm looking at my project manager, team makeup, as in the number of people or the actual roles. Yeah. So there's, yeah. So we've got one UX designer, one visual designer. How many developers are we at now? Six. And three people in the content team, communications manager, scrum master, project manager, tech lead. We've got, yeah, we've got one person on support. Yeah. It's very, it's very lean. And yeah, and a QA, yeah, two people on QA one part time. Yeah. Thanks very much for that. It's an excellent presentation and well done. I've got so many questions, but I'll just ask one. I think correct me if I'm wrong, but you said that your main site and your semi-independence sites share a common content database. Is that right? How do you manage that? And do people have sort of access to certain areas of it? And yeah, how does that work? At the moment, it's open. We're looking at making it less open because it does make things more difficult if we've got sensitive content. So we're in the middle of a piece of work to make sure that people only see the content that's relevant to them. Yeah. So, yeah, more on the development side of things, but we have worked with various government sites at Queensland particularly. And I just kind of always wondered, because it's kind of interesting to see the other side of it. We kind of do a lot of development in UX and UI and interface and everything, but then from what actually happens from the government point of view, and there's probably like a plethora of questions I could ask. But just one in particular, I kind of always wondered like, was this page helpful kind of feature? Just like kind of what some of the experiences or kind of the process of workflow of what happens when someone submits what actually happens. I've actually never, from being a developer, heard anything. I assume that's all internal, but I'm just always curious about kind of what goes on when the feature is used. Yeah. Our process, obviously everyone's got different processes. Someone will check it on a semi-regular basis, but we have a formal process of a full review every month. We go through, we look at what's actionable, and we connect with the content authors if we need to around what changes we can make. We also track it every month, so we look at how sites are performing against each other. And yeah, and use it as a bit of a benchmark. I mean, it's obviously, it's a really rough tool because you're getting feedback about the policy, like the content itself. People love a public holiday. If you're giving them money, they love it, but it does give you a bit of a framework for easier website, you know, hitting the mark or not. Yeah. Thank you.


Item number SCP-212 Object Class Safe Special Containment Procedures Use of SCP-212 must be cleared by the current containment site's Chief Medical Officer. Any subjects undergoing operation by SCP-212 must submit the full physical and psychological testing both before and after exposure. Resistance to testing will result in termination of subject. All personnel are to keep at least 1.5 meters or 5 feet from SCP-212 when not in operation. Armed personnel are authorized to use whatever force deemed necessary to prevent unauthorized exposure. Should any personnel accidentally become exposed to SCP-212, full quarantine, testing, and judicial review will be initiated as soon as the subject is released by SCP-212. Description SCP-212 is a large medical device with three large robotic arms. The arms have an extremely diverse array of attachments, but no storage area or power source have yet been found. Attachments slide into and out of the arms as needed, with over 500 different attachments documented. SCP-212 has made of plastic, steel, and other common materials. In-depth analysis of pending, as any attempt by mechanical means caused violent reaction from SCP-212, an attempt by any biological means normally results with subjects improvement. When exposed to living tissue, the arms of SCP-212 will rapidly move to grab and restrain it. SCP-212 will then begin to improve said tissue. This process is extremely fast, but SCP-212 does not inject any anesthetic or replace any blood lost. The process has been described as excruciatingly painful and can result in the death of the subject at a rate of 47%. Wounds made by SCP-212 are clothed with standard surgical sutures and a chemical sealant that is not yet fully understood. Improvements that have been observed include lining of joints with graphite, replacement of biological organs with artificial ones, addition of metal plates to bones, addition of new or duplicate organs, and replacement of teeth with small serrated steel bands among many others. SCP-212 has been shown to be able to totally reconfigure an organism. The improvements appear to be random and can sometimes be detrimental or fatal, as illustrated by one subject's complete loss of bone marrow and its replacement by a gel that is still in the study. Subjects wishing to undergo exposure from SCP-212 are to be advised that the process is extremely invasive and that no predictions on improvements can be made. See also SCP-212 Upgrade Log Record of exposure to SCP-212 Attention, any and all exposure to SCP-212 is to be recorded and logged. Unreported exposure to SCP-212 will be met with termination. All subjects willing to expose to SCP-212 must have O5 command approvals, as well as that of psych-medical staff. Subject Agent ██████ 28 years old, 64 kilograms, 183 centimeters tall, African-American descent, submitted request on ████, approval granted and exposed on ████. Description of upgrades. Lower jaw bone replaced by super-dense ceramic jaw. Teeth replaced with blades made of the same material. Skin removed and replaced with synthetic polymer. Replacement spine grafted the base of skull. Rib cage and pelvis coated with thin layer of ceramic. Lungs, eyes, and liver removed and replaced after cleaning. Subject status, active duty. Notes SCP-212 will appear to clean some organs or tissues. It will run several attachments over the tissue, each of which will spray, scan, cut, or otherwise interact with the tissue before replacing it. When tested, these cleaned tissues appear totally free of genetic defects and appear younger than in surrounding tissues. Subject Agent ██████ 42 years old, 62 kilograms, 170 centimeters, Caucasian-British descent, submitted request on ████, approval granted and exposed on ████. Description of upgrades. Teeth replaced with super-dense ceramic. Amputated at the ankle, replaced by thin plastic latticework, with several pads on the bottom. These pads are capable of sticking to any solid surface and can carry up to 225 kilograms. Bone marrow removed and replaced with a blue gel, heart, eyes, liver, and kidneys removed and cleaned. Several metal devices inserted into the brain for unknown purpose. Subject status, subject died during the removal of bone marrow. Good pads removed and are currently under study. Subject Agent ████, personal data redacted, suffered severe injuries on ████, resulting in traumatic amputation of all four limbs and removal of spleen, left kidney, right lung, and left eye. Craneal trauma caused by shard of circuitry piercing skull and entering left frontal lobe of brain. Submitted request on ████, approval granted and exposed on ████. Description of upgrades Contrary to expectations, SCP-212 did not remove the shard of metal from subject's brain, instead spending approximately seven minutes analyzing the circuitry with a variety of lenses, probes, and sensors before apparently determining that the foreign body could be left in place. SCP-212 then proceeded to integrate said circuitry into subject's frontal lobe more fully, utilizing tracery made from room-temperature superconductors. SCP-212 ended by administering an unknown chemical that immediately placed the subject into a coma, then shut itself down. No attempts were made to replace severed limbs or repair damage to bodily organs aside from normal cleaning. Subject status, as of ████, subject remains in a chemically induced coma in stable condition. Submitted circuitry in brain appears to be spreading at a geometric rate. Estimate complete replacement of biological brain tissue in ████, subject, agent ████, 34 years old, 112 kilograms, 176 centimeters, Caucasian, German descent submitted request on ████, approval granted and exposed on ████. Description of upgrades, removal of stomach, intestines, large and small, liver and kidneys. Organs replaced with two sacs of synthetic tissues, attached to the esophagus. Esophagus lying with the same tissue. Sacs produce an acid capable of breaking down steel and transfer all nutrition directly to the bloodstream. This process produces no waste and any indigestible matter is expelled up the esophagus and out the mouth. Eyes replaced with optic sensor pads capable of seeing visible, infrared and ultraviolet light spectrum. Hands removed at the wrist and each replaced with eight metallic tentacles, each measuring 3.8 cm long. Subject status, medical leave until ████ to allow adjustment to new internal structures. Subject, ████, 23 years old, 62 kilograms, 178 centimeters, Caucasian, American descent, previously exposed to SCP-217 and decontaminated once the virus had run its course. Full mechanical conversion achieved, approval for testing granted on ████. Description of upgrades. Subject status, subject escape containment, overpowering two-armed personnel and effortlessly bypassing several security measures. Subject recaptured after two hours having caused ████ casualties and ██ injuries as well as deactivating ████. Once recaptured, subject requested SCP classification, presumably in an attempt to avoid termination. Request was denied and subject was dismantled. Components were incinerated following examination and documentation. Subject, agent ████, 25 years old, 93 kilograms, 188 centimeters, African American descent, submitted request on ████. Approval granted and exposed on ████. Description of upgrades. Skin replaced with nanomaterial mesh of thick tubes coated in microscopic barbs, tips of fingers and toes replaced with carbon claws about 8 centimeters long, limb bones restructured for quadrupedal stance. Heart and lungs replaced by single organ, with a second similar organ as backup, digestive system cleaned and shortened significantly, left eye replaced with ultrasound sensor. Subject status, stable but behaving erratically, contained pending psychological analysis. Subject, Dr. ████. 26 years old, 142 kilograms, 200 centimeters, multi-racial descent. Subject was rendered fully blind on ████ due to accidental exposure to SCP. Submitted request on ████. Approval granted and exposed on ████. Description of upgrades. Removal of both eyes orbits widened to meet and form a single oval cavity. Subjects lined with metallic structures resembling large cilia. Amputation of both hands, stumps fused together, and several small limbs resembling crab pincers crafted to the forearms in no apparent pattern. Teeth removed for cleaning. Teeth with fillings discarded, remained or replaced. Subject status, deceased. Subject had begun undergoing medical imaging when he began to suffer extreme pain, describing the sensation as, it tastes all wrong. The cilia-like structures then reshaped into sharp points and extended rapidly in length, many piercing the subject's brain. The gripper limbs continued independent movement for several hours, until subject was incinerated. Subject, D-5354, 22 years old, multi-racial descent. Subject was scheduled for disciplinary termination and had consumed a last meal consisting of seafood. Description of upgrades. After spending four minutes analyzing and probing subject, SCP-212 dissected subject, carefully removing the stomach and intestinal tract. Stomach was then opened and a bioluminesic lobster-like organism was constructed from its contents. Subject status, after removing and altering subject's stomach contents described above, most of subject's remains were discarded.


Hi, and welcome to Learn WordPress. In this session, we will differentiate between synced and non-synced patterns, locate and create our own custom synced and non-synced patterns, and also discuss how you can add a synced or non-synced pattern to a page or post. When you have created a special design you want to keep and reuse, you can save it as a pattern and specify whether to sync it or not. A synced pattern was previously referred to as a reusable block, and changes to a synced pattern will apply to all parts of your site where the pattern has been added. Non-synced patterns are just regular patterns that can be edited independently. A non-synced pattern can be used and changed over and over without changing or affecting the original pattern. So let's say for example you created a design and now I want to save it as a pattern. Select the container block, click on the three vertical dots, and then select create pattern slash reusable block. And at the top you will notice it says reusable blocks are now synced patterns. A synced pattern will be having exactly the same way as a reusable block. So after naming it appropriately, you will now have the option to select between synced and non-synced. And as we said, if we select synced, if you edit the pattern, it will update anywhere it is used. And of course we can toggle this off and then it is non-synced, meaning they are regular patterns that can be edited independently of each other. So I'm going to go ahead and select synced and then click create. Now one thing you will notice is that the pattern appears more narrow on the back end, but it will appear correctly on the front end. To view or insert your custom patterns, click on the insert to top left, and then go to patterns next to blocks. Here you can view your custom non-synced patterns as well as all the patterns provided by your theme. If we click on my patterns, we will be able to preview all our non-synced patterns. And if you click on it, it will merely insert into your page or post. Next, we can click on the synced patterns icon next to media to preview or insert our synced patterns. When you hover over the name, you will be able to see a preview on the right. And when you click on manage my patterns, you will be able to manage all your patterns from here.  You can also add, edit and manage your custom synced and non-synced patterns in the site editor. So let's make our way to appearance and click on editor. And this will of course take us into our site editor. And if we go to patterns, we will be able to manage our custom patterns, the patterns provided by our theme, as well as header, footer and general template pod patterns. If we go to my patterns, we will see all our custom patterns that we have created. Synced patterns have a purple icon. And if you hover over it, it says editing this pattern will also update anywhere it is used. And only the name for non-synced patterns will appear. To create a custom pattern, click on the plus icon next to patterns and then select create pattern. After naming it, you also have the option to decide if you want it to be synced or non-synced. And in this case, we are going to keep it non-synced and then select create. Then you will be able to create your pattern in editing mode without any distractions. And when you are done, you can click on save. When I return to my custom patterns area, we will notice that my new non-synced pattern has been added. To end off, let's add our custom patterns to a page. And we can actually do that in the site editor, since WordPress 6.3 launched. So let's make our way to pages, select the relevant page in this case, block patterns. And then I will open up my list view and ensure that I add my content to the post content block. And to add a non-synced pattern, I will click on the insert atop left, go to patterns, click on my patterns and select the non-synced pattern of choice. To add a synced pattern, we can actually use the slash command. So let's type in forward slash and in this case, I want to add my contact info synced pattern. And then we can really select. And now we can start editing. All the best as you create your own custom patterns and visit Learn WordPress for more tutorials and training material.