Hi, it's Bridget. Welcome to Above Life channel. The purpose here is to inspire your spirit and to fill you up with hope. This video is a little bit about the behind-the-scenes. I think it's important for you to kind of understand what's up and you're probably a little curious about how things work behind the scenes.  My four dogs are, and usually my husband is not home. Sometimes he'll work from home, but usually he's out at the office. And so I am at home, and this is where I work. Now, this particular setup that you see is my couch in my living room. This is a very casual, comfortable place for me to work. And when I'm able to do so, when the huge bank of windows off to my side cooperates with the lighting, I record in here when I can. And why do I put pillows behind me? I bet you're curious about that. You might not be curious. For those of you who are photographers, videographers, or have your own YouTube channel, you might be, though. So I'm going to tell you. I have, because this adds like nice color, that's why I put pillows behind me. It feels cozy. When I watch the videos back myself, it looks cozy and comfortable. If I take these pillows away, my very white, platinum-blonde, yellow, butter-colored hair blends into the background. Doesn't do anything for me, and looks very boring to you, I'm sure. So I like to use these beautiful pillows to decorate. Plus, then, maybe you can feel like you're sitting in my living room with me. I mean, wouldn't that be nice? I hope so. I hope that's how you feel. And I like to change it up a bit. I don't always have that, whoa. I know some people that do YouTube's or YouTube videos or any kind of video for their work or their business, oftentimes, will have a specific background or a backdrop. I don't do that. It's too boring for me. Plus, quite frankly, I have to go where it's clean in my house, too. Remember the four kids thing? Yeah, it can be very, very messy here. So you often will see me as well right at my kitchen table. That's a place that I can set up quite well, and usually that's where I work. I have a tiny little desk in a corner of the bedroom.  And there's a closet there. And right there, there's like a little nook. It was supposed to be another closet, just like a simple closet there. And it's just a nook. And I have just a desk there. And so sometimes my laptop will be there. But usually I prefer to work at the kitchen table. And when can I do that when the kids are at school? So that leads me to another thing about filming. Okay.  And you love to get the videos every Monday, which I post them on Mondays. Sometimes I'll surprise you and put one up on Sunday. Have you noticed that? Every once in a while, if I know I'm going to be busy or I have kid appointments, doctor's appointments, whatever on Monday, I will put one up on Sunday. But usually Mondays. Stop back and visit Mondays and get that weekly new video. But you will probably know or notice that sometimes I look similar, right? I can look the same. That's because I will record multiple videos in one day. And I will do minor costume changes, such as with jewelry. Like I'll change my jewelry, I might change my earrings. I change my rings at times. You probably see that. I actually do have a beautiful sweet wedding ring that I can't really wear right now because I've lost some weight in the past two years. And so it's just a little too big and it makes me nervous wearing it. So I don't usually wear it very much. You probably never actually maybe even seen my real wedding ring. I do have a fake one that I wear that looks pretty big and impressive, but it's not real. It's a big gold one. I should show it to you actually. I think I left it in the bathroom. I took it out. I just took it off. But it's not real. And then I have a couple others that I like to wear from time to time too. So I'll change my earrings, my rings, my jewelry, that kind of thing. I might also change my t-shirts or my sweaters or sweatshirts. Oftentimes I'll wear like a tank top and then I'll just take that off and layer over it, put a different cardigan on, a different sweater, that kind of thing. Or because I live in Minnesota, which is in the Midwest in the United States of America. It's really cold here. So sometimes you will see me wear these awesome puffer vest things and part of it is because I get cold. Like I'm a chilly person. I should really be living someplace warm. You probably can't hear me very well because I think I just covered on my mic. There you go. So I'll put on like a cozy sweater vest or something or maybe some hand warmers or I'll just change change out a little bit. Maybe I'll you know put a different shade of lipstick on or something because I don't have a lot of time to... I shouldn't say I don't have a lot of time. That's not true. We all have the same amount of time. Everybody has the same amount of time. So when people complain about time, wow, we make choices with our time, right? So I have to maximize my time when nobody's at home because this is my home office. This is my home studio. This is where I do recordings, videos for you in order to do that. It's got to be kind of quiet when I'm channeling.  Oh, it's such and such. Not when I'm in the middle of a channel, which has happened on live streams from time to time. If you ever follow my Facebook, my Facebook pages, that kind of stuff does happen because it's real life. But so what I try to do is I try to channel a couple and I channel when I'm inspired to channel. I don't just go, oh, it's on my calendar. I need a channel today. Okay. I'm like, I'm going to work making my coffee. Okay. It's time to channel. I'm going to channel. It's not like that for me. I channel when I feel like channeling and I do try to set aside some time that I can channel. I'm a couple of times a week, but it doesn't always work out that way. If I don't feel like I'm in the mood to channel, I don't channel. And sometimes who I plan to channel is not the person I end up channeling. Let me tell you, because I kind of go on spurts or binges where there's a particular afterlife celebrity that will be hanging out with me or I'll be really connected to or drawn to. I've done that with Marilyn Monroe, with Freddie Mercury, with David Bowie. I've done it with George Michael. So I sometimes that happens. So I'll record multiple videos with that person, but I won't share them all at once or in one week or in real time. I'll save them and then I'll spread them out because not everybody, I know it's going to be a shock to some of you, but not everybody is a Freddie Mercury fan. Not everybody is a Prince fan. Not everybody is a David Bowie fan. You know, I know it's a surprise, right? But so I try to sprinkle it out, you know, but yeah, do I have favorites? Of course I do. And since it's my channel, I get to talk to who I want to talk to. I do have control. I do have creative control over my work for the most part. Some of the content, I can't claim creative control over because it's channeled, right? So that's how it kind of is behind the scenes. I thought I'd share that with you. I think it's important for you to kind of understand that. I think sometimes a YouTube recording world can kind of seem like this big mystery or what have you. And if you aren't used to, if you're not an entrepreneur or haven't had one in your life or you don't know anybody that has a home office or works from home, then I think this can kind of be a little bit of a mystery. So maybe it doesn't look so glamorous now, but this is real life. This is real life. And I also want to say to you that although I'm doing all of my channeling, my public channeling of celebrities here at Above Life Channel, and it's all free to you, I do have a business. I mean, I do, this is my work. Like this is my livelihood as well to work as a psychic, as someone that channels and connects with your spirit in private session and groups. I often, I often will offer classes and courses and series and that kind of a thing. I haven't shared any of that here at Above Life Channel directly with you. I may have shared a few events that I've had over the past six months or so, like a retreat or that kind of thing that's coming up. But I haven't, that hasn't really been a big focus at Above Life Channel. So there's a whole bunch of other aspects to me, as well as a person. But for the purpose of Above Life Channel, as you know, the point is to inspire your spirit and fill you up with hope.  It's interesting, isn't it? It's fascinating. I learned so much about life from dead people and famous dead people are super interesting because we knew them or have some kind of a reference to them as human beings. And so it makes it so much more, there's just, it's, it's so much more relatable, I think. And so I hope you enjoy the weekly channels. Remember, I do them always. I always release them on Mondays for sure, sometimes Sunday. And I do at least one brand new channeling every week. And with new content. And I usually try to do two or two different kinds of videos every week so that you at least get channeling related videos, right? Like this one, channeling related. So this is Bridget. Thank you so much for watching Above Life Channel. I hope you've enjoyed it. Remember, over with all of this stuff, you guys, the whole purpose of doing this is to encourage you to live your life like only you can live it. I mean, your life is special. You matter. And so the whole point of all of this, you guys, is to get you to realize and to remember that this is your life. So live it. Just live it. Thanks for watching.


So you want to make your own custom brush. Not a problem. The default brushes and substance are pretty cool, but sometimes you really wish you could just save the settings to something specific. If you're happy with the settings on a brush, right-click and create a brush preset. You're done. If you go on the left, it should appear. You can right-click, give it a name, and from now on, every time you click it, it will start with your desired settings. Hope that helps. Santa is always up. You have a fantastic day and I'll see you around.


So hello everyone, I think we can start. Thank you everyone for sticking by to the last session So my name is Ivo I'm coming from a company named ADM Interactive in Estonia short introduction about myself is I've been working with VTrupal since 2007 in different roles and like also doing some Community work back in Estonia with our like triple non-profit as well a Couple of words about our company as well. So ADM Interactive is a full service digital agency We have like different areas of operation starting from online marketing Managed cloud hosting but also like large part of our work is software development and and troupal as well Which we are like focusing on on today as well So my topic for today is the Estonian government portal The government portal is a troupal platform that has been in development actually for the last 10 years already and And and has evolved quite a bit during that time So what I would like to do today is Take you on a small journey covering those 10 years that we have been working on the platform and And sharing what kind of changes has there been Along the way so Let's get back 10 years so to 2013 And what was the landscape for us then Basically all the government institutions Had their own websites. They were like developing them all independently There was no centralized Solutions there were different technical platforms in play All the visuals or they like the user experience was were different across all the institutions And like all the solution was also like of varying quality, so ones were like better than the others and Also quite a lot of the the CMS solutions Also were like quite proprietary open source was Not used very much So around 2011 there was initiative by the government to just change this situation and and to Unify the user experience and like have a common platform to rely on going forward So the first step was actually to create a style guide for all those government websites there was Public procurement during which the style guide was developed after which there was also A development procurement And during that time The foundation of the platform was laid 777 was then selected as the as the baseline And the first version was implemented Quite quite quickly So during the next years the platform Was slowly getting adopted by different government agencies The use case also for the platform like expanded a little bit like initially there were The public websites that were like Put on the platform, but then it like expanded also to the internet solution of the different different institutions Also during that time As the time went by As it was built on triple seven triple seven was getting Already at the end of its life cycle also the visual side Already needed needed a rehaul So basically We were entering another phase of the project where we needed to Move away from triple seven to some a newer version So around 2019 We started or the government started a new vision initiative to move the platform To the next Drupal version The process again started with like Like the visual side or the front end side actually A new procurement was made to create a new like the design system for the for the solution First this one was implemented And then after that again like the development Procurement process started An agency was selected for the development and all the process basically started with We'd rewriting the platform as it was like triple seven before and of course it was not backward compatible So the first release of the new platform was Around 2021 and first first website Launched using the platform so Just a quick remark about the style guide and like the design Specifics of the project as well so the The concept here was that like the all the government agencies should pretty much to share The same like look and feel the same same identity. So the The citizens and people visiting different government agencies should have like the same experience And and like the Familiarity when they like move from from right to side There are some like Ways the the different websites can be of course like configured. They they have like their Tweaks that they can use Like customize the themes the colors a little bit but Overall the experience is quite similar going from from side to side So talking about like the specific features of the platform In terms of content model the initial version of the site was like your fairly standard installation It had your like standard Content types like pages news events We were like heavily using web forms, of course We did like develop some Different functionalities like the trash feature where you like good Delete content, but it was actually not deleted. So like we Were like changing a triple default behavior a little bit there And we also relied heavily on on the bar paragraphs module already to like and we created roughly 30 different Paragraph types for the editors to use and like assemble all the content They needed on the site So one other important aspect of this Second version of the platform is was also to create a central centralized hosting solution The way it was actually organized is that All the infrastructure setup is is actually handled by the government itself So we as a development agency are like more focused only on on the triple side under like the functionality side In terms of like infrastructure and the operations All the setup is done on on a government cloud Which is like the hybrid cloud solution used in in in Estonian Ecosystem, let's say the government ecosystem And and all of this is managed by the the IT center of the Ministry of Finance, so so there's this kind of like private sector public sector cooperation where like All the triple specifics are the like the two two agencies and all the like the infrastructure side is actually covered by the government itself Yeah, so maybe one highlight from this initial version That was perhaps this kind of benefit of this centralized solution So one of those functionalities we we built was a platform wide search Which basically means that When you go to one government website and you do a search then basically it Returns a result from all the different government sites on the same platform so From the technical perspective it was for us This kind of microservice setup There was like Solve based solution basically one index that indexed all the all the content from the different websites And and from the technical level implemented as such So I guess for us also during this whole process we looked for different opportunities to contribute something back And and and we were able to do so a little bit So there was one module for us That we found like missing So we like we had some requirements related to how Related to the media management. So what we were missing it was actually like Structuring of the the media in the triple system So like it did not have any like folder structure You have like hundreds of different files, but you didn't have like the way to structure those So before in the triple seven version we were using like the imce module Which like had those capabilities and triple like at first like didn't have so one one of those initiatives That we were able to complete this like to implement the media directories modules that we that we Also contributed and integrated to the platform So here we see that this it has had quite a good adoption. So other triple sites have like Found it also like useful and started to integrate it as well So going to 2022 The the the focus like quite heavily went into Making the entire platform likes more secure and more resilient to different cyber attacks So like the graph you see here actually Highlights the different between DDoS attacks between 2021 which is in blue And 2022 which is in red. So basically there was during that time there was like four time increase In in different cyber attacks. So if you're talking about the the government and the stonia, so They are often like the target there like the different actors are trying to Hack basically And all those hacking event Hacking attempts quite nicely also correlate to different political events like There was like the parliamentary elections. There was like the removal of one like tank in one city in arva and during that time like The cyber attacks also Very much increased so What we did in in that front Or or how it affected the the government portal is is we Implemented a system Where the the sites on the platform can can operate basically in fully static mode So actually all the sites can all the Drupal sites that are on the platform can operate in normal mode So do you have like the your normal Drupal dynamic functionality? You they can operate in basically failover mode, which means that like there if there is an attack Like the dynamic site can be replaced with a static version of the site but there is also a fully static mode that basically which means that The website operates in a way that it's it's only served as a static website and actually like there was It's it's not the not that easy or straightforward to implement So like there was a lot of work that went into it And how we approach it or how do we have to approach it? Is basically we took all the dynamic Functionality that we had developed on Drupal So we separated it out to different microservices So basically we could like leave Drupal as is Generate the static Version of it But still like keep all the dynamic functionalities like operational So this covered things like search the web forms and all their like views and listings and and and such so So that was was like the focus in in in that time of the project One one of those that I would like to highlight that I guess is is quite Quite cool functionality that we were able to implement so One of those microservices was was the the web for microservice So basically what we could achieve is that we could Combine the static version of Drupal With fully dynamic web forms. So how we approach that is we created Web for microservice which handles all the the validation logic or the submission logic So looking at the from the like the visitor visitor's perspective or like the static static version perspective of the site The the user is represented the static version of the page. It's like the built By Drupal the normal way But once the user starts to like submit the form all of this input and validation logic is then redirected from Drupal to the separate microservice and it also like Supports conditional validation all different field types And the admins can like still structure the forms as they like. So it's like I believe one of those very good achievements and And looking the amount of hours just also a lot of work that has gone behind it as well In 2022 We also started the new initiative. So basically Uh The local governments in in Estonia were also like using a quite outdated live free platform So this one needed to needed to be replaced so a new initiative was started where we were basically decided that the We take the government portal that we already have we extend it we like Make a theme more appropriate for the local councils and governments and like they can have the benefit of the Same platform as well So Like Estonia is a small country with 1 1.5 million people basically But we still have a lot of like local councils as well that and everyone Needs to have a solution and usually those councils are like don't have it the expertise don't have the finances So they can have the benefit of the same platform as well going future So one highlight perhaps from from this project is that What we implemented there are like what we call e-forms So how this plays out these again, it's related to web forms So the the editors of the websites can create the web forms Which like the the citizens or of the people Can then fill out directly on the web website These submissions are then converted to a document Which the person can like digitally sign straight on the on the website then it goes to To a layer called x-road which is like a system that we use in Estonia to change data between different registries of the government And through the x-road it goes directly to the document management system of the specific Like the council so and each council also have like many different system that they can use but for us like it's only a single integration and and So basically it's it's a solution where The councils can very easily like accept like legally binding Application from from from the people like just with a few few clicks in the few minutes So just to recap where we have like arrived today Like it's I would say the situation is is now very different than compared to what where we were like 10 years ago Now we have a situation where all the The agencies have a common visual identity like they're all their solution are like built on the same platform. It's It's accessible. It's modern And it's like has this kind of resilient and secure infrastructure behind it as well And it's currently like it's used by roughly 50 different institutions like there are 70 plus Local councils now also like coming to the platform and in the future And and there's like a lot of like interest in the platform at the moment by by other public institutions as well Yeah, thank you