All right. Hello everybody. This is Andrew Connell with Voitanos. I hope everyone is Having a fantastic day today If you wouldn't mind if someone would mind just raising your hand in the zoom client Just let me know that you can that you can hear me Fantastic, all right, great.  Oh, there we go now put them back down and You've done your SharePoint development exercises for the day All right. So first of all, thank you very much for joining me for my first self-hosted webinar here Voitanos this is gonna be a nice brief webinar 30 minutes long. I am going to Start doing these. This is the debut one, but I'm gonna start doing these throughout the entire year I'm gonna do at least once a month. Maybe some more frequently than that Everything is always gonna be recorded. I will also post the entire recording To the Voitanos blog So you can if you miss a recording, you can always get it there and see What you may have missed But we'll cover different topics. We'll do a couple different state of the unions Like this where I'm just really covering the latest news. I may have I'm gonna get some people on to join me to have a couple different interviews and and talk about some of the hot topics of SharePoint development and specifically around the SharePoint framework and maybe even do some more of these like live ones when we do a With video and stuff with a panel when we're happened to be at a conference and have a few people With me, so we'll see how that goes, but I guarantee it's gonna stick to 30 minutes So here's how the logistics are gonna work. I've got a the chat open, which I will keep I'll monitor During the webinar, but we're going at 30 minutes. I'm gonna try and keep it nice and streamlined Also have a Q&A that will be going on as well So if you want to ask a question feel free to post it to the Q&A panel I can't guarantee I'm gonna get to all of them in the time that we have allotted I only have a few slides, but there is a lot of stuff that I do want to cover There'll be no demos. I really just want to share the news with you, but I will be If I don't get to your question during the webinar I will most certainly copy it and put it as part of the blog post that we put out later today So with that, let's go ahead and get started with this real quick introduction. Who am I? My name is Andrew Connell I'm an MVP for office servers and services and office development I really wish they would drop that second one or they could drop that second one I'd actually like them to replace it with Azure Because I really don't do a whole lot with office server much more of a just a developer guy and only for the cloud I Am the the guy behind? Voitanos so I am the the single and we have other help as well But I'm really the one that works on the content. I'm the one that publishes everything and all the materials and stuff that you May have seen before Voitanos is my business that I have for doing SharePoint training or really any kind of training right now It's SharePoint training and the SharePoint framework I have a course on that around mastering the SharePoint framework, which you can take a look at if you go to Voitanos.io But I do plan on having additional courses as well on a bunch of different developer related topics and then I also co-host a Weekly podcast called the Microsoft cloud show that you can check out as well Just finished recording next week's interview or episode with my co-host just a few minutes ago Just a little bit more information. Well, sorry, let me let's go ahead and cover what we're gonna cover today Or we talk about what we're gonna cover today I'm gonna talk about some of the recent additions to the SharePoint framework the latest news on the SharePoint Framework and then we're gonna run through a roadmap Related to the SharePoint framework on what's coming what's coming soon. I'm not gonna break any news for you I mean, this is gonna be a lot of a lot of this information is published I'm just gonna give you a little bit of thoughts and some stuff we've learned since then From Microsoft announcing certain things Clearly can't announce anything if I do that then I would be breaking some of my Non-disclosure agreements that I have with Microsoft, but also they are pretty open So there's not a whole lot to share that hasn't already been shared So let's first tackle what I'm the latest additions or recent additions to the SharePoint framework have been and I'm really going back to around late last year October ish or so and the last three months of 2017 and we haven't gotten much this year so far We're gonna get more in the next few weeks or few months and you'll see where that is too and I talk about some of the changes they've done recently because Microsoft generally goes into a pretty good freeze over the course of December and and going into the first part of January because Well, it's holiday season for many people and it is also when a lot of people take time off from work So you have a lot of people that disappeared from Disappeared from Microsoft going out of office You saw the same thing happen With people are just different country companies around the world where everyone was doing the same thing or it was just taking time off from work so With that they just you they use you just see these kind of these dependencies kind of change or you see these People are out of the office and so they don't do a lot of rollouts to office 360 Viber to products because number one people don't see them number two They don't really have the people on on staff that are there in case something doesn't go right and three That's really gonna be on deaf ears if nobody's around at the different companies where you're shipping it So they go into pretty good freeze for most of December and we're starting to see some updates coming out now in January So what kinds of things that we've seen released? Well, one of them is the asset packaging. So with this Before we had asset packaging when we built something with the SharePoint framework we built our solutions We had two different classifications of things. We had to deploy we deployed a package to SharePoint which registered our application and which also was used to Install the application into our SharePoint sites like a web part or an extension and We also had another classification of thing Which is the all of the assets that were required for that to run like JavaScript files or CSS or Manifest files and all of those had to be deployed to some other location and Microsoft's always would tell us you want to use a CDN for that wasn't required, but I mean, that's really where they kept pushing us So what Microsoft is what they did here is that with asset packaging they now give us the ability with a little flag inside of the Of the Package-solution.json file that you'll find in your projects in the config folder And what that does is that when you build your project? The build process the build toolchain and packaging toolchain what that will do is that will take those web assets And instead of just expecting you to deploy them to an Azure CDN or an Office 365 CDN or Some other CDN or some other public location They will now pull those together and they will include those In the package that's deployed to SharePoint then provided your SharePoint Environment your SharePoint online environment is configured For a CDN for a public CDN You'll have an additional folder in every single one of your site collections Called client assets and when you're when you install that package to your SharePoint site collection All those web assets will be pulled out of the package and deployed to that client assets folder or library Client assets it works similar or it's it kind of sits parallel to where the master page gallery is or where the style library is It's just a new library and then if you have the CDN enabled then what's nice about that is that all your files Will be served up from the office 365 CDN. So it makes our deployment process a lot cleaner And speaking of making our deployment process cleaner We also have new ALM REST APIs now The documentation on these is a little Weak in my opinion, but what these are going to allow us to do is that it's easier to understand what we what we did in The before what we couldn't do and what these solve What we did before is that whenever we had something we wanted to install and deploy into our SharePoint environment We had to Manually use the browser to upload the SharePoint package to manually Approve it or deploy the package and trust it and then to manually go install the package in our SharePoint Sites what this is allowing us to do and then do the inverse of all those operations What these ALM REST APIs are going to allow us to do is now programmatically we can control this Upload and install and upgrade and all the inverse actions as well For all of our all of our packages that we deploy to SharePoint What's nice about this then is that we can create real very true and clean ALM based and ALM or continuous integration and integration and continuous deployment Processes in our applications now. So these are really cool. We're gonna. We'll do this makes life a heck of a lot easier In addition to this we also have Two community projects both are under the PNP Label one is the SharePoint PNP PowerShell Command Lits and the other one is the Office 365 CLI commands forgot a little bit there So I'll just gonna add that what that does or what those see what that's those two sets of Projects is that they allow us to not have to use or they enable us to use the command line to deploy our Applications to install them and all of that stuff Makes our Management of our applications in our environments a lot easier The PowerShell Command Lits are available on a Windows platform and the Office 365 CLI commands are available across platform on when Because they're all based on no they all run in nodes. So you install them using NPM whether you're on Mac Windows or Linux you can you can take advantage of these I'm a big fan of the Office 365 CLI Another thing that Microsoft did which we are you know familiar with this already I would assume that went live back in Let's see went live back in September is the JavaScript embedding support we got the support for extensions. These are application customizers field customizers and Command sets application customizers is very similar to the script link control we had in previous development models as well as the Delegate controls if you want to loosely make the analogy And then the other thing with that that we got is with the field customizers Those are like the JS link controls that we got Just the field customizers are only available to us though for read experiences. They're not there for for write experiences yet We'll see though because it Microsoft has said that that they are working on that and that's coming Just don't see on the road map. So we'll see when it's coming And then the other big news that we got late last year was that SharePoint server 2016 now supports the SharePoint framework If you install feature pack 2 just keep in mind developers that this is going to be the SharePoint framework version 1.1 not so much a Not so much a The latest version of the SharePoint framework. They have not talked about Future releases or updates to the SharePoint framework on-prem So things like extensions and these ALM REST APIs and the asset packaging those aren't available in 1.1 Those are all came to be available at at least 1.3 or higher. So when are they coming? We don't know Raymond's got a question here, but the documentation is a little confusing around the ALM APIs mainly focusing on non-tenant scoped Apps what's my experience of using tenant scoped solutions with these for example in my experience? I take it you don't need to publish a tenant scoped solution Raymond to be honest I haven't I have not tried it with a tenant scoped solution where I deploy something to my tenant app catalog and then install it and say it's available everywhere In fact, that's what I'm doing this week because I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of updates to the deployment chapter of my course To an ALM APIs is one of those things that I'm actually going to be covering So I don't have an answer for you right now I will hopefully have an answer for you and well hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow because I plan on recording on Thursday So so I don't have a an answer for you Okay, so that's some of the stuff that we had the recent additions to the SharePoint framework Let's talk a little bit. I can get my slides to move. Let's talk about some of the latest news or what's what's It's kind of what's coming, but it's also I want to talk about like, you know, what's going on right now Microsoft has talked about in some of these the PNP bi-weekly call for the JavaScript and SharePoint framework special interest group that they host they've talked about support for calling secured web services and We are this they tease this at the ignite conference last year And they have they did a demo of it two of two meetings ago at the special interest group the my fellow MVP Paolo Paolo is presented up and presented on it as well. It's still very early. It's not even in a dev preview yet but basically what you're going to be able to do is to Think of it as like white listing a API arrest API that you want to talk to But that rest API is secured Trying to authenticate and call it from the client side is not a great experience You're going to require your users to log in have another pop-up box that shows up using something like a Dow Which is not not all that ideal There are other ways you can do it, but What we're going to see is a way to effectively give The graph permissions to call your application the Microsoft graph to call your your secured web service that you control and It you would then have your SharePoint framework project would then be able to call the graph and say go call that on my behalf If you're familiar with doing add-ins, this is similar to those like white listed remote method calls that we could do So we're still waiting to see exactly how this works. My understanding is that it was supposed to ship in January But they've kind of run into some things I need to address A lot of people get disappointed by that stuff, but I mean hey at least they're they're sharing this stuff in the open So you can't really complain too too much Another thing that you'll find that's but anyway, that's gonna be a really big deal In fact, I'm holding off on building a chapter on calling third-party web services until that's done Because I definitely want that to be in it Multiple bugs fixed in the January updates. So I've got a couple References to some github issues, but Microsoft has been They have a couple things that they're actually they're fixing with the SharePoint framework and Of some known things like one that I reported was the site collection app catalogs If you go make a change to something that is Provisioning assets The the features are not being updated And there you're not being you're not only not being updated, but you're not even notified that there's a new version available So that's supposed to get fixed this month the ALM API is When you would install an app and deploy it which basically the deployment process essentially you blessing it and saying yes This can be used It wasn't trusting them. I wasn't trusting the apps. So this is gonna fix that And then finally there was another issue where we had these new tenant scope properties Which I could have mentioned on the last slide These you get to these tent scope properties via a REST API They were not available to guest users or external users within your SharePoint online environment So these issues have all been reported. They've all been tracked as real issues or accepted bugs and GitHub on the github issues list the sp dev docs repository on it's was it github.com SharePoint slash sp dev docs There's hyphens between the sp dev docs it's sp dash dev dash docs These are all of these have been said that they are going to get fixed and the fixes were finished They just weren't rolled out into production. They were holding on them until January So we should see these updates either be applied now or they're being applied And then the other big thing is I mentioned earlier is the office 365 CLI this You know just from in my two cents It's a little disappointing that this the way that this was announced because it came out on the office dev blog And it looked like it was a product from Microsoft even but under the PMP group and it really isn't I mean this is this is a thing that I Was involved in at the beginning as well But I honestly I bit off more than I could chew and I was like, you know, I got a step back I got to work on a course so Waldet Mastercars has really taken the the bull by the horns on this one and he is he's the the single biggest contributor Pushing this out. I've contributed a couple commands around the site app site collection app catalogs For enabling and disabling it but he's he's really the man on this. He's done a really good job with this What's really nice about this the goal with this is that it is we want it to be Feature equivalent not only to what the PNP PowerShell SharePoint PowerShell is But also the SharePoint online PowerShell from Microsoft We want to be able to do everything that those guys can do so that we have a true CLI that you can use cross-platform Got a really good numbers from this I think Waldeck said something recently where they've got About 48% of the people who have downloaded this are on Mac and 48% of people who've downloaded this are on Windows I'm just a big fan because it was because it's a the CLI approach is very friendly to scripting the other day there was some I Listen to this JavaScript special interest group from last week and they said that it's not as friendly for scripting I I don't buy that. I think the CLI is just as friendly for scripting as PowerShell is in fact, I think it's more friendly because you can with the The 365 CLI you can tell it you want to get JSON back and you can parse that in your own results So I'm a big fan of it and it also follows arrest the model like what we see over in the Azure world where Azure has a CLI And you can even use this office 365 CLI in the Azure Cloud Shell All right next thing. Let's talk roadmap in the last 10 or so minutes. We've got here So in the roadmap, these are the published items I will give you a little bit of commentary on each one Because I've got a little bit of background in some of these Some of them we still are kind of waiting to see some details It looks like just some bullet points that were thrown on a screen and we've yet to get much detail around it The graph HTTP client is currently in preview, but it should be shipping in GA Relatively soon. My understanding is that we may see it this month. We may see it next month But what this is is that just like we have a SP HTTP client for calling SharePoint restful services The graph HTTP client is intended to make our life easier to call the Microsoft graph We are also supposed to be getting site level web hooks and I'll be honest I think that all of these are are events that happen at the site level like list creation or Site creation maybe site creation I'm not sure but really I think that these are all of the remote event receivers That we don't have right now from the previous SharePoint development models Microsoft has also said for a while now They've said for quite a while that the they're going to be bringing SharePoint framework to the share to the Office 365 store and to make it easier for us to acquire solutions from the store They have this on their roadmap, but I've yet to see anything in any of the the bi-weekly meetings where this is discussed So I don't know really how soon this really is This next one though part-to-part communication web this is really going to give us the ability to do web part connections and The interesting thing about this is the code is already in the SharePoint framework to do this But it hasn't been really pushed too hard or disclosed I was able to play with this back in March of last year at a dev kitchen and There wasn't a whole lot extra work that it seemed like they had to do with this But they included it as part of like a preview release and then I didn't really see them go forward with it much So I'm not entirely sure how far away these are or why they're still sitting on it But they do plan on shipping this relatively soon Or I think relatively soon. I shouldn't say that I have not they've not committed to a time on that Another thing that they want to do is they want to bring the add-ins the SharePoint add-ins They want to bring that to the SharePoint framework in modern pages and what I mean by that Is that they want to make that right now with add-ins when you include an add-in on a SharePoint framework on a SharePoint page It's included as an iframe and what they want to do is they want to change that model to where it's more Diff-based the way that we do things in the SharePoint framework, which makes it more responsive and makes it a little more friendly Just work just generally is supposed to it just works in a better a better way And they want to make it easier for us to Communicate with these things from our SharePoint framework-based solutions The last thing I want to cover here is the is the developer experience They are working on an updated workbench and this is supposed to give us local development and testing capabilities for extensions. This includes app customizers and includes Command sets and field customizers When I first saw extensions, this is the first thing I asked for I was like The work you can't use the workbench for this and they're like, that's okay. Yeah, we're thinking about it It's like thinking about it. This has got to be a like a minimum requirement And of course then they came out and it wasn't there and so in the GA So now we're you know that we kind of pushed on them and thankfully we got a user voice things got a lot of a votes and We are now expected to get an updated workbench that'll cover these things The Yeoman templates we're supposed to be getting additional or new Yeoman templates now, what are these going to be for? Don't know yet. I'm not entirely sure. Maybe they're gonna do additional web frameworks. Maybe we're gonna see view View JS. Maybe we're gonna see one for angular elements when that when that finally ships Over the next few months. I don't know. I don't know what they're doing with the Yeoman templates I really wish that the SharePoint team would Publish the Yeoman generator code so in a public way so that we can submit poll requests because there's a lot of stuff I'm dying to get that read me updated with all those, you know stupid to-do messages on it Really needs to be cleaned up and then This last one. I I'm mentioning it because it's on their roadmap Toolchain components. I don't have a clue what this is. They haven't talked about this at all. They just say toolchain components around developer experience. So This is me just being the messenger. I can't give you too much additional detail on this So hey, I if you got any questions now's a great time to ask them about five minutes left in our webinar here I do want to throw kind of what you get what you would expect over the next few months and Then just share a little bit of additional detail here, too So again, this is this webinar is brought to you by Voitanos if you are Interested in the SharePoint framework. I've got a couple free resources for you first staying on top of the latest SharePoint development news That's out there. It's hard for me to do it But I am able I I spend a little bit of time every two days Looking at all the news that came from Microsoft looking at all the news that came from other places And I create a curate the news and I send it out as a newsletter If you're interested you go to Voitanos.io scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll see where you can sign up for that I also have a 10-day free email course on Understanding the SharePoint development toolchain got some changes actually to that course that I'm working on and that I'm going to add in the next month or so and Then I also have a developer course video-based course that you can sign up for as well if you're interested Last week we did the first live delivery. I see one or two people Here in the the attendance here that were actually with me last week We sat down the day took a little we figured out some stuff that we want to make some changes to it I'm gonna send out a survey to all my attendees from last week and get their feedback and make some adjustments as well But they're all I'm gonna let them know or we'll go through and publish another date here where people can jump in and See what else is new with the SharePoint framework In that course I've also got a couple links here if you can find me Please feel free to send me a tweet or go check out my blog at andrewconnell.com Voitanos if you got any questions follow us on on twitter you can see as our link to our site is there as well and then The podcast that I have as well as is listed here the microsoft cloud show Is also available here If you're interested in like a hands-on kind of learning of the SharePoint framework. I am teaching my Mastering the SharePoint framework course. I'm teaching it live in person And I think it's marked the first in Branson, Missouri at the north american collaboration conference If you're interested check that out And I'm also going to be doing it. I I'm going to be doing it at the sp fest conference in washington dc In march as well I believe i'm doing it too at the north at the SharePoint conference north america in las vegas in may So as a pre-conference workshop as well if you're interested So with that that's everything I wanted to cover for the day If anybody has any questions, please feel free to go ahead and post them in the qa panel here I don't have any unanswered questions, but more we got another two minutes here. I mean respectful of your time and Yeah, thank you very much for Taking 30 minutes out of your day to join me I am curious if you go ahead and feel free to post it in the qa panel feel free to Post it in the chat. How do you like a 30 minute webinar? Nice, but I like it because it's nice bite size. It's easy for me to do this for you But it's I find it also easy to consume it And your day-to-day jobs and so it's easier to kind of do more of these more frequently and to push stuff out cool little demos cool cool little topics maybe previews on upcoming conferences reviews on recent conferences and events etc So really curious to hear your thoughts on how you like it or if you have any um Ideas on topics you'd like to see covered and and things like these or any kind of a theme or something Feel free to shoot in my way So i'm gonna let this just stay open for another minute or so because i'm waiting to see if anybody else Has a question they would like to post Doesn't look like it. Okay So if anybody has any questions you didn't get answered. Oh Um, matias, um, matias is asking about um, well first you really like this format. So that's awesome Please tweet that Any thoughts on using redux with the share point frameworks using react and redux to the share point framework React or redux is a good like state management kind of thing with uh with with um that you would use with react or actually you can use it with angular as well um If you have a a complicated client side solution Like if you're building a single page app Then I think that it does makes I think it works really well the the thing about it though that i'm a little That I hedge on a little bit with it Is that today we don't really have a good model for doing single page apps in the share point framework um They're really just web parts and if you're doing a really complicated web part That's kind of where I would take a step back and go does it make sense to build it like this um to be honest I am a little bit more of a fan of using something like a share point hosted add-in Um to build a single page app because I can control the entire experience And in that case yeah redux makes a lot of sense with uh because then you're using different web frameworks or Like react or angular or something like that. So it makes a lot more sense there, but um It's a little I I think it's more not so much um Not so much of doing react Not so much using redux. It's more or less. Am I using you know, am I building a single page app or so? um I did get a question here for from uh darlene asking for recommendations for learning react j s for share point um This is tough because there's a ton of resources that are out there Uh, I will tell you I do have a chapter that I am um, uh, I am planning It's not in the current sprint that I'm working on but it'll be in the next sprint that I'm working on So my sprint's usually last about two or three weeks um But uh react is going to be Probably the first web framework that I tackle Of all the web frameworks that it's going to be included in the course. So my course of the master in the share point framework will have a a react kind of Primer um enough to start being productive and Using react in the share point framework if you really want to get into react I'm not going to be able to cover it, you know and in a ton of depth So what I'm going to end up doing is um, I would recommend at least in the for the time being To either to go to one of the other online resources and learning react I'm a fan of a couple courses over on udemy But they're like 36 hours or 30 plus hours or something. They're really good But they're really long so Yeah, I do but it's it's if you if you're if you can wait just a little bit I mean, I'm going to have it in the class if you're a subscriber to my course So one is I will have some stuff that's coming. I'm going to at least I'm going to try and cover I'm going to cover React I'm going to cover view. I'm going to cover jQuery I'm going to cover And I'll cover the angular as well when angular elements comes out The other web frameworks I recently did a survey and I was really surprised to see Um, a lot of people just don't care about knockout and angular j s anymore Um, so I'm still trying to decide exactly what I'm going to do there. I found that would be interesting but Definitely just if you take a look at some of the more popular react classes I'm trying to remember what the guy's name is. I don't want to say it's Andrew mead mead but all right So with that that's everything I wanted to cover today and we're going a couple minutes over I'm going to be respectful of your time So I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up if you have any other questions I didn't get answered here When you see this get posted to the voytanos blog fee, please feel free to drop a comment I'll be more than happy to follow up to those comments On the voytanos blog. So with that, I hope everyone has a great day until the next webinar


American reality TV star Portia Williams is most well known for her turn in the popular Bravo series The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Having joined the series about halfway through its fifth season, she'd spend the next eight years turning herself into one of the most popular stars in the show before recently departing to launch her own spin-off, Portia's Family Matters in 2021. Also, Michael and I have dropped our own house tour of our new home that we moved into this year so go ahead and subscribe to our personal channel if you want to see where we're living and more of what we're up to. In these videos, we don't reveal any addresses and even though I've done a house tour of my own place, please do not show up at any private residences because it's not safe for anyone. After beginning her run on Housewives while married to former NFL player Cordell Stewart, the two of them were divorced in 2013 and Portia walked away and de-handed from the split, meaning no money, no property, nothing. Of course, since she was still a part of the television series with the phrase Housewives in the title, she needed to find herself a new home to live in fast. So in 2016, she took to Instagram to announce that she had bought herself her very first home. Located about 30 miles outside of Atlanta in Duluth, Georgia, Portia dropped 1.1 million dollars on a gorgeous 5,920 square foot mansion that situated in the midst of a golf community and boasts five bedrooms as well as five bathrooms and two powder rooms. When it comes to the interior of this home, one of the first things you'll notice is its front foyer with black and white checkerboard marble floors, a sweeping central staircase and an elegant chandelier hanging from above. Situated just behind that central entry is the home's living room, which is flooded with light from floor-to-ceiling windows and anchored by one of the home's five extravagant fireplaces. Over in Portia's kitchen, you'll discover cabinets made of intricate millwork, as well as a large central island with a bar seating for four and a short walk from there is her vintage-looking dining room. If you thought Portia's kitchen featured a lot of wood, just wait till you lay eyes on her home office. You ask me, this one-of-a-kind room is about as cozy and charming as it gets. Upstairs, it won't take long for you to stumble upon Portia's primary suite, which not only includes one of the highest vaulted ceilings I've ever seen in a bed chamber, but also an incredible ensuite-fashioned out of marble and mosaic tile with a soaking tub and separate glass shower. Elsewhere on the top floor are a series of rooms for children as well as two further guest suites. Wrapping things up out back is a seating area sheltered by a stone awning, as well as a playground and a surprisingly small patch of grass for a yard, considering how gigantic everything else is in this home appears to be. While living here over the course of five years, Portia would get engaged and have a child with Dennis McKinley before that relationship would also ultimately come to an end. Lucky for her, shortly thereafter, she met entrepreneur Simon Gubadia, a businessman worth an estimated $40 million. After secretly dating for only one month, Portia would shock the world by announcing her engagement to Simon in May of 2021, and part of their plans for the future involved finding a new home that they could share together. That being said, it's not like leaving behind this home was easy for Portia. She told the cameras during Portia's family matters, My home for me has been a manifestation of my independence. Me working hard being able to afford a home like this, in a gated community, raising my daughter on my own, it has been very fulfilling to me. It does feel like I'm leaving a piece of Portia. But now that she was ready to settle down with Simon, Portia decided to hand over the keys of her famous Dilith mansion to her mother Diane. If gifting your mom a multi-million dollar mansion doesn't win you daughter of the year, I don't know what will. Anyway, now that we know a bit about Portia's former home, let's check out where she's living now. With her family growing a little bit bigger, Portia and Simon bought themselves a gigantic new home situated on two acres of land for $6.5 million. Originally constructed in 2018, this new mansion boasts a ridiculous 50,284 square feet of space, including five bedrooms as well as five bathrooms, and it's sculpted in a traditional Mediterranean style. A paved white walkway situated smack dab in the middle of the front yard leads to the home's grand looking doorway that's made almost totally out of glass. Since moving in last year, Portia has shared a few glimpses of this home's stunning interiors over on social media. For instance, last summer she posted this clip of her decorating several rooms in the house with flowers and plants, including a dining area that's been furnished with a long black table, white chairs, gray seats with an interesting geometric design, and a chandelier. Not far from there is a trim doorway that connects Portia's dining room to her kitchen, which boasts a spacious island surrounded by blue chairs, brightway cabinets that occupy the better part of two walls, and some charming alternating backsplash patterns. Then over in the living room, there's a mirrored sideboard beneath a wall mounted TV, as well as two curved white couches, round brown coffee tables, and plenty of windows. Since Portia and Simon are both such busy people, it only makes sense that their home offices fit to serve any purpose. Unlike most other home offices, this one boasts a ton of space alongside neutral colored walls with gold accents scattered throughout. There's even an attention grabbing piece of art hanging on the far wall and pattern drapes as well as a soaring ceiling.  The furnishings have also been handpicked in a white hue to provide a striking contrast against the emerald like green of the foliage. And while that bedroom might look a little wild, her gargantuan walk-in closets are totally and systematically organized for herself, her daughter, and Simon as well. Of course, with this property being located on nearly two acres of land, you'd expect the outside of the home to be just as spectacular as the inside and you wouldn't be wrong. Out here, the mansion is reminiscent of a five-star beachside resort with its white brick walls, arched windows, and a muted red-colored roof. There's even a swimming pool alongside an outdoor lounge area where the family can relax and unwind while taking in a movie on their massive outdoor screen. Now that Porsche is showing off this remarkable estate on a regular basis as part of her new reality series, it's only a matter of time before this new property integrates itself with her millions of fans. Just like Porsche herself, it will probably take everyone a little time to adjust to their new surroundings, but with a home this epic, it's really only a matter of time before Porsche's former house is a distant memory for her. Alright, that'll bring this latest edition of House Tour to a close. Thanks for watching and before you head out, please take a moment to answer the following question. If you viewed your former home as a symbol of your independence, would you hold onto it like Porsche by passing it along to a direct family member or sell it anyway to collect the big payday? If it were me, I might keep it because you never know what could happen. And it's nice to give a host to your mom, who wouldn't want to do that? But let me know what you would do in the comments down below. Otherwise, like, subscribe, and turn on your notifications to make sure you never miss an episode. My name is Cara the Vampire Slayer, follow me on Instagram to chat and I'll see you all in another video. Bye!


It's day two of the ITM and design window's jet boat marathon race. Absolutely superb day on the Wayman River. What a great day yesterday. The short course really pushed that twin turbo charge boat. It just showed you how much grunt that guy had. Great acceleration. The turbine boats just lacked that little bit of grunt coming out of corners but today we'll really show with 65km up-stream and down-stream there's a good trace of these rivers and the turbine boats will really stretch to the end. What they'll have to watch for today when they're boating is the braided rivers. The braided rivers are really hard. If you take the wrong stream and it goes into nothing, you're a long time pushing. You're probably here to helicopter to get yourself there. These boats wave with the people and they're probably a tonne and a half but they're doing over 120mph. Down-stream record probably will be broken today. It's held by Regan Williamson which is 22 minutes and a little bit more but more. John Berry records his boats the fastest. It didn't show that I'd say one but certainly today I think that long one will show whether they can beat that time.


The study aimed to assess the prevalence and frequency of respiratory and ear symptoms in an unselected population of Swiss people with primary ciliary dyskinesia, PCD. It was found that 70% of participants reported chronic nasal symptoms, such as runny nose, blocked nose, and anosmia. Additionally, 58% of participants reported ear pain and hearing problems, while almost all participants reported cough and sputum production. Furthermore, 99% of participants reported chronic cough complications, such as gastroesophageal reflux, vomiting, and urinary incontinence. Only 12% of participants reported frequent weas, which occurred mainly during infections or exercise. Additionally, 49% of participants reported shortness of breath, and 9% even at rest or during daily activities. Older patients reported more frequent nasal symptoms and shortness of breath. No significant differences between males and females were observed regarding any of these symptoms. This article was authored by Miroffa Gutaki, Leone Hussler, Yinting Lam, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


back to my channel so it has been a really really long time since I've done a day in the lifestyle video like a vlog style video but I decided this week that I just felt like doing that um just taking a day and vlogging what we're doing in a day I feel like every day is so different um we don't have like a major routine or anything so today this morning we got up um and the girls had like some granola for breakfast and I mixed up a batch of English muffins that I'm going to be making later the dough is rising right now and we're actually sitting in front of Habitat for Humanity if you don't know what that is it's kind of like a place where you can get light fixtures and flooring and furniture things for your home um that would be like a second hand or maybe something that a store didn't want anymore things like that so we're gonna go in and check this out I've never been to a Habitat for Humanity but um I've seen other people on Instagram and stuff that have found some really neat stuff at them so I'm really excited about that the girls are with me and um I think we're gonna have to get some lunch here after a while and I don't know what else we'll do today but you can come along with us and find out I need for some upcoming projects at Habitat I got like a paint roller and some paint brushes it was like a couple dollars which is awesome so if you have a Habitat near you I highly recommend it because they had like rugs and stuff like that but we are going to stop in a little restaurant really quickly and have a bite to eat and we may go into a couple of the small business owned shops here that are near this restaurant um I love being able to support them particularly right now with where you know our country is and everything like that so yeah I guess this is what we're doing I didn't really plan on this but I just decided you know what let's go eat small somewhere let's support somebody's small restaurant please it was so delicious really good I haven't had like sit in Mexican food in a long time there's so many taco trucks and stuff like that here but I haven't sat in a restaurant and actually eaten in a long time it was so good and now we're actually getting ready to go into Lowe's I am working on my next project which is our laundry room and I'm going to be doing some fun stuff in there I don't want to give it away too much but I do need to go in here and look at some supplies and just get a few things that we need and I'll probably of course check out the garden center while I'm here so we are home the girls are laying down for their naps right now if I look a little pink it's because my in-laws were here over the weekend and we did a beach run we're there for the day if you're new around here we live about two hours from the ocean from the beach so I got really burnt over the weekend with them being here and that's fine I'm gonna start my summer tan so unfortunately I did not find anything I was looking for I was looking for a new rug for here in the kitchen we stopped at TJ maxx I didn't find anything like that but I did find some books for the girls and then at Lowe's I was looking into the supplies that we would need to do what I want to do in the laundry room and it was actually a little bit higher priced than I initially thought so I might have to hold off on that project just a little while longer until it's more in the budget um and yeah that happens to me too there's times where I get these great ideas and I do have to kind of go with what works the best financially and so anyways but now I know how much it actually costs and I know how much I need to budget out for doing that so right now since the girls are taking their naps I am going to be starting dinner here after a while we were out and about a lot longer than I expected today um so before I do that I'm gonna go ahead and clean up my dishes back here just kind of get the house reddit up a little bit and then I'm gonna start in on dinner life is a winding road no telling where it goes driving through days and I won't stop for traffic lights from falling down I will keep on searching for my highs you can say I lost my mind I will keep on holding my head high even if the sky is falling down jumping from cliffs so high I trust in our wings to fly sometimes we're crashing down but we get up and stop from the ground keep on searching for my highs and say I lost my mind I will keep on holding my head high even if the sky is falling even if the sky is falling okay I've got supper rolling I put my burgers on over there and then I just got this out um I had been letting this rise I have a closet that's kind of warm I know it sounds funny but whenever um sourdough is warm is whenever it rises best so I'm gonna go ahead and cut out my English muffins so that they can rise again and then I will be making these a little bit later I'm probably gonna let them rise about an hour or so I'm making the English muffins and I did not know this until I went to make these um but they're actually made in a frying pan you'd never bake them which is really interesting it's made in a dry frying pan with cornmeal and so after they've risen and this time I'm a little disappointed in how they look um this was my first time making them with whole wheat flour instead of white flour and they definitely rose up and got a lot thicker with the white flour this time around they're like a little more thin looking they'll work fine I use them for breakfast sandwiches um but I don't know if I'm going to make them again with the whole wheat flour or for my next batch I'll go back to using the white flour um but either way they're delicious we love having them with like apple butter and butter or just jelly that kind of thing and they make really great little vehicles for your breakfast sandwiches and the recipe explains it good but basically you cook them on either side on kind of like a low heat on your stove top for four minutes on each side and then they get this like very distinct English muffin look to them and yeah they're that easy to make this is the next day and as you can see I've got some cleaning motivation for you I have been out of my groove you guys normally I like to do one load a day of laundry but ever since we went away for a couple weeks to Pennsylvania which is where we grew up and where our families are we live in North Carolina right now but um we went away for a few weeks and we're there I just have been so out of my groove and really want to get back on top of doing a load a day so one of my biggest goals this day was definitely to get all of the laundry done put away and caught up another project I have coming up and I have so many right now I have so many ideas and so many things that I'm going to be doing and sometimes it's really hard for me to pick one thing and hone in on it but I want to do a refresh on this bedroom I've been collecting things here and there and it is coming soon but let me know in the comments whenever you feel overwhelmed or have too many projects going on how you decide which one to do first I had so much fun with my in-laws at the beach this past weekend I know I posted a little bit about it on my Instagram stories and if you guys want to keep up with me a little bit more on a day-to-day basis definitely head over there and follow me um I do a lot more like motivating things and projects and stuff like that here on my youtube channel but I do a little more day-to-day on my instagram page I hope this video gave you some motivation and some inspiration hit the subscribe button if you're new here and I will see you guys in my next video thanks for watching


Okay, the recording is started. Let's just take a moment to pray and then we will proceed with our class. I'd like to invite somebody to please pray with us together as a class and then we will get started. Anyone can pray please. I'll pray. Let me pray. Go ahead.  Lord, as we are going to learn your living world, Lord, let your spirit empower us, Lord, and keep us fresh, revelation as we keep praising the ones to finish life, Lord. So, Lord, let us all experience the goodness of you as we sink to your powerful world, Lord, even today. So, Lord, I pray in absent law, Father, give us your heart to understand better law, Father, and I pray for all the students in the past. Okay, thank you. Aaron's line must have dropped. All right. Father, we thank you. Bless this time together in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Good morning, everyone. I think while Aaron was praying, her line may have dropped, so I'm sure Aaron will connect back. Welcome, everyone, to the class. So, this week in this course, welcome back, Aaron. We finished your prayer and we said amen. Okay. So, yeah, not a problem. Not a problem. All right. So, this week in our course on church and ministry administration, we are talking about a very important area, which is human resource management, which is learning how to manage people and we are focused mainly on church staff. Next week, I mean, after this class, hopefully we'll finish everything today. The next week, we will look at another side, which is volunteer management, that is, which is again an important part of a church or a Christian ministry because a lot of people who serve would be serving, a good number of people serve as volunteers. How do we work with them and so on? Okay. So, let me go back to the notes for this lecture. So, we quickly review and move forward. Right. So, in talking about church staff, human resource management, we said, you know, we have staff, we have consultants, we have volunteers. So, volunteer management, we will talk about it in the next chapter, next class. We are mainly dealing with staff and most of what we see on staff will also apply to consultants, but consultants, you know, work a little differently. They pay, they are paid hourly and they, and some majors do it on a work basis. Things that they finish, we pay them. Right. So, taking care of our own staff is important and I think some of the things we are sharing here are important for Christian organizations, churches, and it will be useful, you know, for people to make, you know, include them in the way they run the church or the ministry. Quickly to review, we talked about the hiring process. How do you hire the right people? And that's very important because you need the right people, the right places to, you know, for the organization to be able to do what they're working, what we're working towards. Right. So, we talked about having role descriptions, clearly defining what you need, what the person fulfilling that role should be able to do. We talked about having an interview process. That means a formal way of bringing somebody into the organization. Like we said, sometimes what happens is, you know, people are passed a message, tell somebody, hey, just come and start working or come and join. So, there's no formal interview process and then later on, you know, things go bad in FX relationships and also in order to avoid that. If you do a formal process, it makes sure that you're putting the right people in the right place. You know, and I was just sharing some things on how we do the interview. There's just some practical things, basically to ask different questions to, you know, to find out, you know, certain areas of the person that you're interviewing, some of the red flags and so on. Right. And then we said that, yeah, so sometimes you may do reference checks.  Then once that is done, you need to put everything down as a formal offer letter. And we've given you samples for many of these things. Also give them the staff guidelines so that they know what is expected and employee orientation, getting them ready to start work. So, let's go into the other parts of managing employees. We started talking about employee compensation. We went through some of these statements here. Why it is important to pay people well, because then they can focus on their work and not be concerned about their finances and their money situation. Otherwise, if people are very concerned about their money situation, then they really cannot do a good job at their work. Right. But how do you determine that? On what basis do you determine the pay? Of course, there are a lot of factors that go into it. Of course, it depends on what the organization can afford. So, as the organization has the capacity to pay, then you're able to give people a little bit more. But then you also look at all of these other things like the skills, the responsibilities, the leadership, the performance, are they personally growing and their commitment to the organization, the experience that they bring. All these things are factors that you take into account when you decide on the salary of a person. But ultimately, you want to be fair. So, you want to be fair to everybody in the organization. So, everybody in the organization is looked upon through the same criteria that we have listed here. And based on that, you determine the pay. Some of the other things that we do as a church and which, you know, as a Christian ministry, you can consider doing is giving some other benefits to the employees. One thing that we do is we provide health insurance. Now, when you buy health insurance as a group, that means all the staff and their families are covered. Family members are covered. So, you know, it's a benefit you can provide for the staff and their families. Another thing that we do is also here we call it as employee provident fund. That means, again, this is determined by the government. They say that, you know, the government decides how much each employee contributes and how much the organization contributes towards the employees provident fund or what we call as retirement savings. It's for the future after they cross 60. They can take that money out. Generally, sometimes they can take it out earlier if they wanted for other, you know, emergency reasons or whatever. But so, you can contribute towards those retirement savings. You can provide leaves paid time off, which we call as vacation or there's also sick leave and there is emergency leave. So, we have paid times off. So, we have about 11 days, which are public holidays.  And then we also have five days of sick leave and five days of emergency leave, something like that. So, we have said, okay, so these are all the days in the course of a calendar year, you get these, which is a benefit so that they can, you know, refresh themselves or attend to personal things. Provide opportunities for learning and development. We'll talk about some of those things. And also a bonus. And of course, a bonus also depends on how the organization is doing. If the organization has money, then at the end of the year or whatever, whenever the organization decides once a year to give an extra amount to the staff, the employees. So, these are just benefits. These are things that make people feel happy that, you know, they are working. The organization organization is doing something to take care of them. And of course, all of these are equally available to every staff. So, all everybody receives, every staff receives that. Now, of course, when you're working for a Christian organization, like a church or a Christian ministry, there are also some intangible benefits that can be given, right? One is involvement, the benefit is your involvement kingdom work. So, that gives a lot of meaning to the staff. I'm actually doing something that is serving the cause of God's kingdom. So, that's a very powerful benefit. We also give opportunity for missions. So, I mean, the last two years we have not had missions, but before that, missions. That means traveling and ministering outside around our country. So, every staff can take one, can do one fully paid mission strip. That means the church will pay for their travel to be part of the missions once a year. So, they can choose, you know, the mission coordinator will plan out those missions. And then they can choose to be part of the missions. But of course, they have to contribute meaningfully on the missions strip.  And then they go. So, we give them give opportunity. If they want to go on more, they can use their vacation leaves or some ministry leaves and go on mission trips.  Of course, this is dependent on performance.  That means nobody's going to take the job away from you because you're doing well and the organization is doing well. Other benefit is growth opportunity. That means you can grow. You can grow professionally. You can grow in your role. You can grow in the different opportunities, the kinds of work that is being done. So the different ways of different opportunities for growth. Also, we provide, you know, as an organization, you can provide a good workplace culture. We will talk about culture in a different chapter, you know, so that the work culture is something that that makes, you know, makes it fun. It makes it enjoyable to be part of the organization. And we'll talk about how to, you know, define that culture, how to create that culture and so on. So workplace culture is also a very important, intangible benefit. People enjoy that. Okay, I can work here, work with good people, etc. Some other thing would also be the brand. So if you're working for an organization that has a good name, so example, either a church or a Christian ministry that is well recognized in the Christian community, then you have a brand and it's nice to say I'm working for such and such an organization. And people, you know, immediately respect that and they appreciate that. So there's a brand recognition, so to speak. And then there is also the quality of life, which means hopefully, you know, people have time to do things outside of work with respect to their personal interests or their family, travel, whatever they may be interested in. So these are intangible benefits.  So these are other benefits that, you know, a Christian organization can provide for its people. And we have to constantly look at these things so that make sure that, you know, these things are actually happening. So I will just quickly go through this and then, you know, go through these various aspects of human resource management, then we'll have time for some discussion towards the end. Now let's talk about employee management. That means it's one thing to, you know, have a team of people working together in the organization. But, you know, how do we keep them motivated? How do we take care of them? How do we, you know, make sure that everybody enjoys the work? That's important. And, you know, to treat people well and etc. So some thoughts along those lines. I think somebody's trying to come in. Let me just check. Daryl, okay, Daryl's coming. Okay, Neelam. All right, can you let them know? Neelam can join. Aaron is joined. Okay. Yeah, usually when I shift, okay, Neelam is coming. Usually when I shift to a PDF, this auto admit doesn't work. So people get stuck outside the class. All right, I'm going back to the PDF now. All right. So we're talking about employee management here. How do we, you know, what are some things we can do to keep people excited about the work that they can give their best, they can be creative, they can be passionate, they can do extra things whenever it's needed, so on. Right, so here are some things. I'm not saying this is a complete list, but these are some common, generally commonly understood things behind employee motivation, staff motivation, right. First of all, you need to provide meaningful work. The work should, they should see meaning in their work.  So meaningful work. They have room to make choices, make decisions. So then that's you're empowering them in their sphere, in their role, within their role. They're making their decisions, choices. That's also very good. We have work that is matching their competencies, right. So what they're good at, you need to put them there. And if you put somebody in a role where they don't have the skills, then it can be very frustrating for them. It can be sometimes overwhelming for them. And, you know, so it can be very discouraging. So, you know, you provide work that matches their competencies. You also provide work that stretches them, you know, that's all. It makes them learn new things. It makes them develop new skills or gives them new challenges in their area. So that's always a good motivator for people that say, I am growing. I'm learning something new. What I'm doing, I'm taking up a new challenge, things like that. Another motivator is to highlight progress. Hey, you've made progress.  And this wonderful, you highlight it within the team or you appreciate people within the team for the progress they've made. On a larger scale, you can think of engaging people and decision making. So, you know, again, this can be done at the team level or it can be done as a, as a group level. Now at APC, our staff, like I said, is still a small group. We only have about 25 people. So it's easy, you know, when we call for a staff meeting, everybody can participate. Everybody can be involved in, you know, general decision making. And also in smaller teams. So, you know, in their own teams, whatever they are doing, they can be involved in making those decisions. So that, that also encourages people, empowers people, providing positive reinforcement. When somebody does a good job, you, you know, tell them, hey, nice, nice job, or you just appreciate them. Thank them. That keeps people motivated. So you're giving them reinforcement. And if you also appreciate people visibly, you know, that also is a good thing. Like you send an email to everybody saying, Hey, this was done, or this team did this, or that team, you know, was, did this project, whatever. You know, so there's a visible appreciation within the organization for the contributions by teams or by individuals. And that keeps people motivated. Ability to trust the team. And of course, when the team develops the competencies that they need, and they're doing good work, you can just let them go and, you know, keep, let them do their work. So when they feel trusted, that also is very empowering. You can coach with feedback. So, you know, we will provide feedback and help them work on things and develop things. And so that the coaching part also motivates people and helps them give out their best. And then providing inspirational leadership. So, and they see their own leaders doing stuff that is bigger and bigger than them. Then they say, Well, we can also do it. And it inspires them. So these are some of the common things that is, you know, that that goes to motivating people. And we need to think about these things within our organizations, so that, you know, we can, we can intentionally do these things.  Now, of course, it was between me and them. So nobody else would know. But that's okay, you preach today, then I'll sit and listen. Then I'll give feedback. You know, this was, this can be done better, that can be done better. So there was like, you know, a personal coaching happening feedback being given. And of course, now most of them are all mature already. So even when I do give feedback, it will be, you know, on just on the finer details, but most of them by now are mature in their ministry in what they do. But in the early days, there was a lot of, you know, feedback being given and that helped them grow, you know, develop. Today, there's another baby, we're coaching the team, the pastoral team is, you know, we do these mentoring hours on Thursdays, now with all the Bible, with the Bible college students. So it's just an open time and people come and ask questions. So that is actually a coaching time even for the pastors, our faculty, because, you know, you have to answer questions impromptu, that means you don't have time to prepare. Somebody, some students asking questions you have to answer.  And then sometimes I have to give feedback after the session, you know, saying, okay, here's additional information that could be shared on that question and so on. So what's happening is we're constantly helping them develop in their pastoral role, in their ministry role. And, you know, at some point, they will be very good in what they're doing. But these are different ways you can motivate people who are staff for working, so on. At the same time, we have to address demotivators, you know, what negatively affects people, right? Here are, again, a few common things. One is employee turnover. So if in an organization, people are constantly leaving the organization, employees are leaving, it can have a negative impact on other people. Now, as a church organization, one of the things is, for us, of course, there are people who leave for various reasons, you know, and one of the reasons is that they would want to go and pursue their own ministry. So over the years, we've had a lot of people who worked with us. At some point, they would say, okay, I want to go and start my ministry. I want to go and start a church somewhere or, you know, and we never stop them, we encourage them. So from that perspective, we do have at least every year, maybe one person will leave, they want to go and start something.  Of course, we recognize that every time somebody leaves the organization, it does have kind of a demotivating effect on the rest.  Why couldn't they stay? But then we also have to look from a perspective that they are pursuing something they want to pursue. And we shouldn't stop it. So we just release them, bless them and let them go. And sometimes we may even help them start their ministry, you know, wherever they're going. So, but keep in mind that people leaving an organization does have some sort of a demotivating effect on the organization itself. Then of course, there is workplace culture. You know, if the culture is very toxic, if it's very too much pressure, too much workload, I've already mentioned that here, but if the culture, the work environment is not good, it can be very demotivating for people. Part of it has to do with relationships, part of it has to do with how people work. So we will be doing, we'll be having a full chapter on workplace culture, organizational culture, but that is very important to make sure you have a healthy workplace culture. We'll talk about that in detail. Sometimes reorganization can be a demotivator. If you move people, you know, across, and sometimes we may need to do it. We have done it. We need to reorganize. We have to move people from, you know, different roles and all that. That could have a demotivating effect. And so that has to be managed well, but sometimes it is very necessary if there is a need to rearrange, you know, or redesign our systems and processes. Too much workload can be demotivating. Sometimes personal challenges that they are going through can impact their work and that has to be dealt with separately. I'll quickly run through a few other things that we do all in the under employee management, some things we can do. One is making sure that people enjoy the work. So most of the time, this is done informally. That means as you're talking to people, hey, you're enjoying your work. How's it going? So in an informal way, you're gauging if they like their work. What can we do?  What are your interests? So that's a very informal way, but it's a very important way. Usually the informal way is much better than the formal way because in a formal questionnaire, people usually don't have the opportunity to say what they want to say. But in an informal conversation, hey, how are you doing? How's work? So they will say, and I want to do this. I'm thinking about it. So just keeping a pulse on how people happy in the organization is important. It gives you ideas on how you can make things better for them while they work. The other thing we do is we tell people, you know, what we tell is we tell people to do their own evaluation and plan for the next year, set their own goals, and then we review that once a year. Usually this happens in November, December of the year. Now, of course, the plan from 2019 to 2020, you know, those two years now have been disrupted because of the pandemic. So we are not holding people to whatever they had put down in the document because a lot of factors affected what could be done. But otherwise, what happens is we tell people in November, December to plan for the next year in their areas of ministry. They review the previous year, they plan for the next year, and I've given the sample document. They themselves write down, okay, that's what I'm planning to do. And then we have a meeting. We can update or revise the plan. And then the following year, when the year is happening, we just, you know, on a monthly basis or an informal basis, we keep track of what is happening. For me, with the pastors, I would meet with the pastors once a month just to review what's happening. And then again, we have a six month review and then review in December. That's at a pastor's level. For most of the staff, it'll be just a review at the end of the year, while their team, immediate team leaders are reviewing, you know, on a monthly basis. But the point is, they are able to plan. They are able to review. And then based on that, the planning, you know, at the end of the year, we can decide their bonus, we can decide their increment for the following year and so on. You know, so this is something that happens. Regular review meetings happen. Maybe it could be informal, how are things going? Has this been done? How things progress? Or I, before the pandemic, I used to meet with our pastors, each one, each pastor, one on one for one hour every month. But I will review with the pastor, the associate pastors, what is going on in the areas of ministry and also with the ministry leaders, what is happening with their ministry and so on. So we should do it in a regular monthly review meeting. But, you know, the last two years that we've kind of let that go simply because, you know, we don't have the opportunity to do the things that we would normally do. So we've not been doing it now. We'll resume it once things get back to normal. Now, so another part of, you know, just working with people, employee management is handling underperforming employees. So this is a challenge simply because in a Christian organization, you know, people obviously want to be, they expect, okay, you have grace, you have to give me grace and, you know, they expect that you have to be loving, you have to be kind, gentle, all of that, which is fine, which is true. But at the same time, you know, if people are not performing, then you have to address it because it will be affecting other things that are happening in the organization. So as a, you know, whatever leadership capacity you are in in the organization, this is a very difficult task of having to sit down with somebody and tell them, look, you know, your job is not up to the, your work is not up to the mark. It's a very difficult thing. But, you know, you have to do it. You have to get feedback. And usually, we take, we take the three strike approach. I mean, first time, things are not going well. You sit down to give them a, you discuss things with them. And you say, look, things have to improve. Then you do it a second time. If things don't improve third time, you close the case. That means you have to really relieve them. So it's a three strike approach. You've given them two warnings. If it doesn't change, then you have to release them. Now, sometimes what we do is we try to reassign them. So you take them from one role. Maybe they don't have the skills in that role. Maybe they don't have the aptitude. And so you try to reassign them, put them in a different role. See how it goes there. If that doesn't happen, you know, if there is some, you know, if there's another role for which they're suited, you can try to reassign them. But then you can only do it two or three times. After that, if they're not performing, you know, you've given them two or three chances. They're not performing then. You just have to, you know, make a decision. Maybe you have to release them or move them to some sort of an hourly type of role where they only do the things that they can do and leave it at that. So that handling in underperforming employees is a challenging thing, but that needs to be done. In the light of that, what I recommend is always do it in face-to-face meetings to address difficult matters. This was a mistake I used to make in the early days. I remember in the early days, you know, I made tough decisions, but I communicated it through email. That was a very bad thing. Maybe I had my reasons for doing it. I was very busy and, you know, especially in some situations, the person who was working was working remotely. They were working from, you know, south of Bangalore, and our office was another part of the city. I didn't want to make them come all the way across town just for me to tell them that, hey, things are not working out and we need to stop your consulting engagement with the church. So I just sent it by email, but the fact that I sent it by email upset them even more. You know, they said, why didn't you speak to me? So those were mistakes I made personally in the early days of the organization, but then I learned, you know, I learned, okay, difficult matters always sit down face-to-face and talk, explain it to them so then they can be a dialogue. They can ask questions. You can explain it and don't do it by email. Have a conversation. Talk to them. You know, tell them you've looked at the whole picture.  So this is another thing I learned very important. Always put these things in writing because they may forget, you may forget what you said. They may not understand, you know, the reason why you made your decision. So when it's in writing, they can read it two or three times and realize that, look, you know, you have been patient, you have been gracious, you've given them a lot of time to improve, all those kinds of things. Plus this is a written record of that decision, you know. So this whole issue of handling underperforming employees is a challenging thing, but that, you know, you can do it well. And if you do it well, then, okay, everybody is at peace and things will still work out fine, even though the process is difficult. Okay. So that's just a quick run through on, you know, managing church staff, managing employees. I'll try to finish the rest and then we'll have time for questions. Another important thing is trying, you know, giving opportunities for people in the organization to keep developing, right? That means they should keep getting better and if they get better, of course, the organization also benefits. So we need to have some ways in which we can help people get better. So some of the things that we do is, of course, one is on the job training. So we give people the time they need to learn, to do research, to read, you know, whatever related to their role and their work. There's this constant on-the-job training where people are doing all the IT team, others in the media. So we encourage, okay, you learn, you develop this skill, try this out, okay, experiment with that. So on-the-job training happening. Then we do encourage people. Okay. And nowadays, you know, there's not too much need to go to formal courses because a lot of these courses are available online. We encourage people to do online courses, learn things. The other things that we also provide is we let our staff attend Bible college courses. So every staff is entitled to attend, I think, I think two courses every semester or something like that. So that, you know, it's part of the, it's counted as part of their work.  We also encourage them to attend weekend schools. It's not happening now, but under normal conditions, weekend schools used to happen. So we used to encourage our staff. You can attend these courses. The weekend school, it's counted as a day of work. So that they, if they sit, they attend the whole school. I mean, that Saturday, it's part of their, it's considered a work day. So it's just incentive for them to, you know, develop spiritually. And the other things is also when there are new projects or new opportunities, new roles, these are things that we can provide to help people grow within the organization, something to keep in mind.  All right, let's wrap up with a few things and we'll have some time for discussion. So performance reviews are done once a year. So once a year, you sit with the staff or the immediate manager will review their work and will recommend that, yeah, they've done a good work. So we can, and they've developed themselves this year. So we can increase the salary or the contribution has been very good. This is what we planned for their next step in their work and so on. So that happens once a year for all our staff. And then there will be difficult situations, as I mentioned. And sadly, there will be situations that result in immediate termination. Now for underperforming employees, like we mentioned earlier, you know, we do this three strikes approach. But there are situations that result in immediate termination. So this has to do more with the issues of integrity, issues of, you know, behavior. So if there is a situation where there is a lack of integrity, so, you know, in one situation had to do with finances. So there was a mishandling of finances in such a situation, immediate termination, you know. So it's the end of it. That's it. There's no more, no discussion, no questions, no warnings, nothing. It's, this is your last day at the organization. So we have had to do that. In one situation, it had to do with inappropriate conduct. There were two married people getting into a relationship. And this happened in the church office. So the first time I saw it, I had a suspicion. I just took the man aside. I said, hey, this is not right. And please be careful. But then within like a week or two, I got a call from the wife saying, this is happening. So basically, there was a married man, there was a married lady working in the church office. So the wife of the married man called me, said, hey, this is, you know, this is happening. So that same week, I called both of them, I called the wife, I called the lady, I called all of them to church office on Saturday, verified everything, made sure, yeah, this thing is going on. And at that moment, both were terminated. So this is a very difficult situation. And there is no grace, because like this, nothing, something like this is not allowed to happen. So these are difficult situations when it is has to do with, you know, integrity, inappropriate behavior. Now, in a corporate, let's say, you know, if, if there's an affair going on, that's, that's their problem. But in a church setting, it's very different. And it is, you know, we've also put it down in our staff guidelines. So before they join the organization, they know these are things that, you know, are not going to be tolerated. And, and if there is any kind of, you know, this kind of behavior, and sadly at APC, we've had to do some of these things. It is sad, but you have to be farmed because you're protecting the organization when you make such kinds of decisions. So there was immediate termination in these cases. No, no, no grace. Now, generally, I'm just going to finish up here. Generally, then an employee or person leaves, you want to have a conversation. So a formal way of trying to find out why they are leaving is good. Now, if you are terminating them, you're dismissing them, then obviously the reasons, the reasons are obvious. But then if somebody's choosing to leave, then it's good to have conversation. Now, so we've done it in the past, but of course, you know, nobody's going to tell you in your face the reasons, the real reasons why they're leaving. So that's a, you know, sometimes it's almost pointless to do this, have this conversation because they don't want to offend you or they don't want to tell you why they're leaving correctly. So, but then you're just giving an opportunity saying, hey, please let me know if there's anything we can do, things like that. And it's a learning time, so that if they give us useful feedback, we can change, we can improve. So sometimes people do give us feedback that we can work on, that tells us, you know, something is the point out what is lacking. And then it helps us improve. But in most cases, they won't, they won't tell us. So we'll have to try to find out, you know, where did we go wrong? Where could we have done better? What could we have done differently to keep them so on? Now, just one thing is sometimes there's a big change in the organization. And we may have to let people go, not because they were bad, not because they didn't have the skills, but because there's a change in what the organization is doing. So those things, you have to handle very graciously. And in such situations, instead of giving them one month notice speed, I usually give them three months notice speed. For instance, in 2019, and I think it was maybe somewhere there, some, you know, we had TV programs going on, on God TV and so on. And then I felt, in fact, I told them maybe two years ahead, I said, hey, at some point, we will get off God TV because there's a big move of people from watching traditional television to consuming content online. So two years in advance, I said, hey, at some point, we're going to discontinue TV because our TV programs because you know, people are moving away from that, the main channel of consuming digital content. So I should tell them, I was kind of trying to prepare them also for it. And then, so two years in advance, I told them, you're going on. And I was waiting to see, you know, when do we make this change? Because it's very expensive every month being on God TV, on the TV channel, producing the programs, paying for the telecast time and all that. And then finally, we had a meeting with the trustees. I discussed it with that advisory board also. I said, see the time has come, people are, you know, using online channels and not people are moving away from television. So they said, yeah, go ahead. We can end our contract with God TV. So I had to make that difficult decision, which is informing God TV that end of the year, they're going to stop. But at the same time, we had two very good people. And they were very good people, you know, they had, they were good in their work, but we don't, we didn't need them because we were going to stop our TV programs. So I told them three months, maybe even more, three months in advance, I said, see, December we're stopping it going to be a last program. Three months, you have to find a job, I'll help you find a job, you'll send me a resume, I'll give you contacts, you know, so I did what I could. So that's another, that's another scenario where you have to let people go not because they're bad, but because the, there's a change in what is happening in the focus of the ministry. And so in a very gracious way to the best you can, you help them and you, you, you know, you have to release them. Right. So in a quick way, I've touched on various aspects of taking care of church staff and how you can, you know, take care of them, help them. And so some questions that I had noted from previous years, people have asked, you know, what, what can you do to help people grow in the organization, give them training, give them resources, give feedback. In the past, somebody asked, how do you separate personal life of church staff and they work at church? So this is a very important question that, you know, we don't, we try not to interfere outside of work hours. But at the same time, a lot of things are happening on the weekends, you know, like services are happening, conferences, seminars are happening on the weekends. So weekends do get caught up in, in, in ministry. And so if they're working on the weekends and during the week, we let them take the day off. And on that day, don't disturb them, let them have time with their family. But at the same time, I mentioned, you know, some scenarios where personal life can impact what happens in the church. And a lot of these things have happened, sometimes even with our pastors. So, you know, one situation happened where one of our pastors, they're not pastors right now with us. But, you know, they got into a business financial thing with somebody in the church. And then the whole situation went out of control. And it came to me. And I had to sit down. Now, it is very difficult situation because this was a personal dealing. It wasn't, it wasn't something church, it wasn't something church did or church, it wasn't church involved. But that person who was also a pastor at that time with us was doing some business or doing something on his own work. And he was involved, you know, financially with some person in the church. And it just went sour. So it became a big problem.  And so we made it a policy among our pastors not to be involved in any financial business dealings with anybody in the congregation. You know, if you are a church staff or, you know, don't get involved in financially in the Congress, because it can affect the church and so on. Now, in that case, unfortunately, both the family affected and finally even the pastor, their family, they both left church. But it was very difficult situation at that time to handle and address and sort out. And eventually things worked out like that. So these are different situations where, you know, keeping the personal life of the church staff or pastor and they work, you know, keeping it separate is, it's a challenge, but we have to try to do the best we can. And how do we pastor our own church staff? You know, so it's a little difficult because I'm also their boss and they're also congregation members. So there are times I have to speak to them as a boss or a leader. And then there are times I have to speak as a pastor to the same people. And so, you know, having to understand the difference is a challenging thing. But we try to do it. And then we also try to give them time, you know, opportunities to grow spiritually while working, doing their work as well. All right, let me wrap up. I have crossed my time limit. So any questions so far? Any thoughts on church staff? First of all, one question. So this is aligned with what we discussed today. So you are running your own business, right? A new creation IT business. So there you were like, you were a CEO. So now in APC, you are heading as a senior pastor and the founder. So the question is, is there a leadership change the way you work with people? So or more or less similar. Like, you know, maybe you would have worked with a full professionals on the ground in a new creation IT business. Now here, it's mix and match, like, you know, professional plus ministry and everything. So question is, is that a leadership change the way you work with employees and ministers faster? Very interesting question. So I would say it's more of addition.  So, you know, dealing with people from a professional perspective. So I still continue a lot of that. But then the same time to bring in this ministry side of things. That means to look at it more, not from, you know, how much money you're going to make out of the project. Or, you know, we've got customers to satisfy. And, you know, I have to be a little bit more lead and lenient here. Now, when we're doing the, you know, in the software company side, it was very tight. You know, there's no tolerance for mistakes.  Whereas in the church side, you're giving, I would say you're giving a lot more extra grace and you're being a little bit more empathetic and more compassionate, which on the professional side, you know, it's, you can be a lot more firm when you're dealing with people. So here in the church side, it's a lot more, okay, you know, try again to this change. You know, I would say a lot more gracious because on the professional side, the customer is not gracious. You know, they don't tolerate anything. If it's not done, it's not done. You know, money will not be, it won't be paid kind of thing. That is on the church side, it's a little bit more, I would say tolerant, more gracious. So, so, so I tried to blend the two to blend the professional, corporate style and learning, along with the more empathetic, gracious Christian leadership thing. Does that answer your question? I don't know. Yes, Pastor. Trying to blend the two. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Is there any other questions? A question, just one more question here.  And there's, there's, there's already a relationship that's been established since, you know, we have hired people from church. So, but when you deal certain things as a boss, there is a, there is a personal hurt that kind of happens, that could possibly happen, you know, in any organization, you know, when they've already established a relationship and then they work as a staff. And, and when they deal with that person as a boss, there is a personal hurt or, you know, that could happen. But how to deal with those situations at the beginning itself, you know, to let the people know, even before joining, the church is church and work is work and we deal certain things in a certain way. Because in corporate, it works a little differently. It's work and personal is personal. So, you know, just to, just to put. Yeah, so very, very, very good question because this is, you know, it always happens, right? Because from, because there's, there's a very personal connect, a personal relationship and in all of that, and then at the same time, work has to be done. So I think from the very beginning, that is, when we start, we have to keep work-related things at that level.   Yeah, we can talk like that. But when you're talking about work, this is how we want. And sometimes I've had to tell it directly to people, you know, most, what I have found is most people understand the difference.  Maybe let's use the word fellowship. And they understand the difference between work and fellowship, I think. But some people may not, they want to mix the two and say, hey, no, no, no, no, no, let's keep this separate. Because work, we have to hold people accountable. We, things have to be done. So we talk like that, you know. And when somebody is coming for some, when the same person is coming to you for counseling for something personal, okay, now you're doing it because of a fellowship or a pastoral role. But if they're coming to you, you need to be talking about the work, you have to say, you know, right and wrong. Yes. Yeah, so my experience has been, most people understand that difference. In some cases, when I see that they are not understanding the difference, then I have to tell them that, you know, this is how we will work. If you make it clear, then they also will learn. Because as a staff, as a colleague also, you know, we could have that kind of a relationship problem because we are from the same church.  And then when you share certain things as a colleague in a work related matter, there is this personal thing happen. So I just wanted to understand like how to deal with and, you know, in a more gracious way. Thank you. Thank you, Pastor. All right. Good, good, good questions. Okay. We will wrap up today. Next week, we will talk about volunteer engagement. And maybe even, so that's just one chapter, I don't think it'll be very long. And then we will talk about communications. Like, how do you communicate within the organization? Volunteer engagement is very important because like we saw, you know, the thing about, we have about 300 some volunteers and many churches, many Christian organizations, a lot of the workforce are actually volunteers. So we have staff, but a lot of volunteers. So then how do you manage them? How do you keep them motivated? All those things are some practical things we'll talk about, which will be useful. Okay. All right, let's close in prayer. I know we've taken almost 10 minutes extra. Let's close and we will dismiss. Somebody could please close in prayer for us. Loving Emily Father, we just come into your presence of Father God. Thank you for the state. Thank you for today's class of Father God. I pray for all the people who are joined of Father God also pray for our pastor. And I pray for today's class, what we learned of Father God Jesus and help us to cope up with all the challenges and other difficult things in our ministry, in our workplace of Father God. Give us wisdom and knowledge of Father God. Let us be faithful in our designated works of Father God Jesus. Thank you for guiding and leading us in Jesus name. I pray this prayer of Father God. Amen. All right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for being part of our class. See you again. How good we can. Thank you. Hi. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.


The other day, my friend Chris hit me up asking me if I wanted to go to New York City. Of course I said yes, and I packed my bags. But for this trip, I wanted to pack light. Not just because the trip is 48 hours, but because I didn't want to have the burden of carrying a luggage bag and having all this stuff. I wanted to be more free, by no means am I minimalist. But for this trip, you could say I was. Special shout out to Tortuga for sending me the set out laptop backpack that I'm able to use for my everyday commute and short adventures like this. Now that I gave you a little backstory about this trip, let's head to New York. Alright we made it to the rooftop. Do a little photo shoot without the new gear. Outline New York. Get something to eat. Starving. He was so hungry he couldn't even wait for his food. That's being prepared right now. But he's been saying he's been hungry for like three hours and we've just been walking around because we're just overwhelmed with all this touristy stuff. At Times Square, so hopefully the weather holds up and it doesn't rain too much and we're going to try to hit up Soho. One of these days, we definitely want to hit up Brooklyn. I haven't been to Brooklyn, well I have been to Brooklyn, but a short amount of time and I know there's a lot of gyms there. There's a lot of really nice places we can take some pictures, some video and just get more of a vibe for the city outside of Manhattan. I decided to get some fries and I got a Philly cheese steak. Typically my go-to when I go to city is in the East Coast. We decided to go to Brooklyn and we're going to catch the subway and we got blessed because the rain basically stopped. Never really did rain but we're on our way to Brooklyn because we want to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and it's about to be sunset. The sun's not out. We should be able to get a really nice skyline view of Manhattan. Brooklyn Bridge and the ground is actually wet and I was not prepared. I got this t-shirt on. Chris has to go to bed.