I am truly truly willing to be here very very happy today is a very good day for many reasons and I am very thankful for being in this country and hosting of this tremendous event. Today my heart is at peace and my faith in humanity has been renewed. When we came to the General Assembly in 2010, I challenged you to put your hearts and minds together and conclude a treaty for the world's blind. Well I would write a not so good song about it. Thank goodness you got it right. Instead tonight, I'm going to sing a song, well actually we're going to sing a song of celebration together tonight. It is humbling to know when the weakest amongst us is in need, you have to call with a stealing determination and a set of courage to make a difference. Today we are all brothers and sisters in the struggle to make this life in the future better, not for one, but for all, because all of you made a commitment to do good. From the bottom of my heart I want to thank the intellectual world, intellectual properties organization and the United States for never giving up and for giving into a new beginning for the blind and visually impaired. I also would like to thank King Mohammed VI to facilitate this very important diplomatic. This victory is most significant for many reasons, most obviously the positive impact for the blind and the visually impaired, but also it's a message to all world leaders that it is possible to do business and to do good at the same time. It should be celebrated and defined as a new world order for hope and peace. To the 300 million who are visually disabled, this new treaty is a major step towards access to the basics, such as works and formats, such as braille, electronic braille, large print, text, audio books and speech. The thirst of family for books is coming to an end, where I'm from 300 million, there's a lot of boats. Into that end I want to encourage all who are beneficiaries of this treaty to remember finding those leaders who have pushed this treaty forward. While the signing of this treaty is a historic and important step, I respectfully and urgently ask all governments and states to prioritize the ratification of this treaty, so it will become the law of the land in your respective states and countries. Because I love this. Alright, I really am and I thank you so very much. And praises the government a lot.


Hello and welcome to the session. In this session we will discuss the following question and the question says, in the formula P is equal to half A plus B square, find A if P is equal to 64, B is equal to 2. Before we start solving the question let us first recall what is subject of a formula, subject of a formula is the variable that is expressed in terms of other variables. So this is our key idea for this question and using this key idea we will solve the question. Let's start the solution now. This problem can be solved in two ways. In the first method we directly substitute the values of the variables and solve. So let's solve the question using method one first. We are given P is equal to half A plus B square. Also it's given in the question that P is equal to 64 and B is equal to 2. Substituting P is equal to 64 and B is equal to 2 we get 64 is equal to half A plus 2 square. This implies 64 is equal to half A plus 4 which implies 64 minus 4 is equal to half A. So we get 60 is equal to half A therefore A is equal to 2 into 60 which is equal to 120. So this is our answer using the first method. Now we will solve this question using method two. In this method we make A as the subject of the formula. Using the key idea we get subject of the formula is the variable that is expressed in terms of other variables. So we express A in terms of P and B. Now we are given that P is equal to half A plus B square. This implies half A is equal to P minus B square. So we have bought terms involving A on one side and terms involving P and B on the other side of equality. This implies A is equal to 2 whole multiplied by P minus B square. So in this way we have made A as the subject of the formula. After this transformation we now substitute the values of P and B. In this formula substituting P is equal to 64, B is equal to 2 we get A is equal to 2 whole multiplied by 64 minus 2 square. This implies A is equal to 2 whole multiplied by 64 minus 4 that is A is equal to 2 into 60. Therefore the answer is A is equal to 120. With this we end our session. Hope you enjoyed the session.


At the Artox Centre, we are developing the next generation in vitro models. They are called organsome chip. Organome chip has the particularity to be able to mimic the cellular microenvironment very accurately. This allows the cells to remain functional as well as the tissue that are made of these cells. For more than 10 years, we have been collaborating with our clinical partners from the thoracic surgery and the pneumology department to focus on the lung and its diseases by developing lung on chips. The lung is a complex organ whose primary function is a gas exchange. The respiratory tract is divided in two large airways which successively split into smaller airways to end up in the alveoli where the gas exchange takes place. The alveoli are tiny air sinks which consist of very thin membrane that are populated with cells, some in contact with air and others in contact with blood. For Paulien's project, we collaborated with the Helmholtz Centre for Infectious Diseases in Germany, the thoracic surgery and the Pneumology department at the Inselspital. My work focuses on the development of lung on chips that mimic the airbrot barrier including this specific macroenvironment. The first generation lung on chip use a synpolymeric membrane to support the cells. In sharp contrast, the second generation lung on chip that we developed during my PhD project use a biological membrane made of collagen and elastin to molecule found in the lung. Here you can see human cells from patient culture on this membrane, an hexagonal grid after sky fold to create the alveolar barrier. Each hexagon represent one alveoli with in vivo like dimension meaning about 215 micrometer. A small pressure apply at the bottom of the alveolar barrier enable the collagen elastin membrane to be stretched in three dimensions to mimic the bracing motion. This mechanical stress is not to importantly affect the cells and the function of the alveolar barrier. The beauty of this now improved lung on a chip system is that we work with patient derived cells. We obtain these cells from the OR or from patient with disease, we sort them and we culture them on lung on a chip and the aim would be in the sense of personalized medicine to develop a treatment for this specific patient. Another key novelty of this second generation lung on chip is a very simple fabrication technique that is based on forces known to help mosquitoes walk on the water surface tension. A drop of collagen and elastin is pipetted on an ultracine hexagonal grid where it spreads and creates a membrane. Cells can then be seated on the membrane where they proliferate and create a barrier. The membrane can then be cyclically stretched. The applications for such membranes are very broad from the better understanding of physiology and pathology of lung diseases to the development of drugs, new drugs and drug screening. This is a very nice example of a highly productive collaboration between different institutions here on the Ensel campus, the university, in-special but also sitem. This is what we need for our patients suffering from lung diseases, innovative new products, improving diagnosis and treatment of those patients.


So, the CSR, right now three companies have already signed something with us to revive three rivers. We'll work on that, but I'm saying still that's not a solution. This is not a charitable activity. This should be a policy matter, okay? As you make roads, you have to protect your rivers, all right? It's even more vital than the roads. So, what we do as charity, what we do as our awareness, what we do as our service is different. Let those things continue. But as a policy, we have to invest in that. This must be part of our budgetary process because this is going to enhance our economy in a huge way. See, right now Andhra Pradesh is talking about fifty percent going into horticulture. Believe me, the economy of Andhra Pradesh will bounce into something else in the next five, six years time. Already, their agriculture growth is twenty-seven percent highest in the world, okay? Simply because they built a little bit of infrastructure. Now, you make a survey and see, in my estimate, if you ask the farmers of the country, how many of them want their children to go into farming is less than fifteen percent. This is my estimate, knowing people. But you make a survey and see times of India should make a survey, you may come up with a lesser percentage than me. I'm saying this is a knowledge that we gathered over eight to ten thousand years of farming. There is no other country on the planet where such a large population knows how to perform this miracle of mud to food. How to make mud into food, it's not a small thing. And in the next twenty-five, thirty years, this knowledge is going to be wiped out. How will you grow food? Somebody is telling me, I don't know if the statistics are correct, they're saying seventeen percent of India's food is already being imported. So I'm saying with 1.3 billion people, if you lose your ability to go grow food, can you imagine the crisis you're working towards? We're not a small population, we're not Dubai, where we can buy food and eat it.


The difference between B12 deficiency and pernicious anemia is actually not that severe. B12 deficiency is also present in pernicious anemia, but the cause is different. So intrinsic factor is needed to absorb the B12 from the distal ileum of the GI tract. If there is no intrinsic factor present in the distal ileum, then the B12 cannot be absorbed and that particular case scenario is called pernicious anemia. Where for typical or other causes of B12 deficiency, there might be other causes and that usually has to do with certain disorders of the GI system. For a full video on B12 deficiency, please check out my full YouTube video. Thanks for watching.


Hi, my name is Yan Nozin, and this is a talk for Asia Group 2021 presentation titled Snacky Ceremonies. This is a joint work by Marko Kovais, Mary Muller, and Mihail Volkov. Let me start you by reminding what are the sickest snacks. This stands for zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge. And the idea is that we want to prove that some statement X, which is public, and some written as W, which is private, satisfy a certain relation. And from security-wise, we wanted to satisfy knowledge soundness. This means that prover who is able to convince the verifier should know a witness, W. And we want zero-knowledge, which essentially means that the only information we leak is that X and W are in the relation, and we don't even reveal the witness here. And finally, we want succinctness, which essentially means that the proof size is independent of the size of the statement and the size of the witness. Smallest Snack, so far, or at least once the smallest, is proposed by Yens Kroep in 2016, and it requires a complicated trusted setup, unfortunately, which has made it very difficult to use it in practice. So, what I mean by this trusted setup? Essentially, we have here a prover, a verifier, and some trusted central party. Prover knows statement and witness, and verifier knows only the statement. And then in the beginning of the protocol, the trusted party will generate what we call a common reference string. So this is a bit string from a very specific distribution, and he gives this to both the prover and the verifier, and then prover can use this to construct an argument, and verifier can use this to either accept the argument, which means he believes it or he will reject it. There are essentially two flavors of the common reference string. There are uniformly random strings, which is completely uniformly random bit string. Or there are structured reference string, which is anything besides the uniformly random string. And uniformly random string we sometimes call a transparent setup, because it's relatively easy to obtain a uniformly random string from some natural resources, which means that we essentially don't have to trust it anymore. We can obtain it by, I don't know, picking, for example, certain digits of pi or some other natural source of randomness. Unfortunately, protocols based on URS are less efficient. And then you have protocols with structured reference string. Here the setup is much more complicated, and we don't have as good ways of generating this structured reference string, but the protocols are much more efficient. So in case of structured reference string, the trusted party usually does something like this. He first generates a trapdoor, then he applies some function with the trapdoor, and this then generates the SRS. Unfortunately, anyone who knows the trapdoor can completely break the protocol. It is actually by design of the protocol that this is possible. Essentially this trapdoor is used to prove that the zero-knowledge property holds, but it accidentally also can break the soundness property if someone actually knows this. Which essentially means that in most applications, a single party should not be able to generate the SRS because otherwise, I mean, we really have a centralized trust in the system, which for example in the blockchain setting is not really acceptable at all. There have been several proposals, how to solve this. One of the earlier proposals was to use multi-party computation. So here the idea is very simple. We already have bunch of multi-party computation protocols. The trapdoor can be shared between different parties. So each party will generate its local trapdoor, then they run some multi-party computation protocol, and the final output is an SRS. F is applied to a master trapdoor, where the master trapdoor is some sort of a combination of the individual trapdoors of each party. Typically you get a property that if some fraction of the party is honest, then the final trapdoor does not leak, and the SRS has a correct structure. Unfortunately, it's also quite inconvenient if you want to run this with a large number of parties because they have to be available throughout this whole protocol, which might take quite a while. And also multi-party computation protocols are not that efficient if you want to run it with a huge number of parties, which would perhaps in a blockchain setting. So in response to that, yes, there have been proposed some specialized multi-party computation protocols, which are a bit more efficient, but they are still quite cumbersome to use in practice. Another possibility, which is a little bit better, is known as updateability. So these are essentially specialized snags, where the multi-party computation protocol has only one round. What do I mean by this? Now we basically have that each party generates a fixed trapdoor, and the first party will produce some SRS and some proof of updates from one. The second party will just update this proof and generate its own update proof. So this update proof is something just to verify that the update was done correctly, and so on. And in these protocols we only rely on one honest party. And in order to verify the final SRS, you just need the very last SRS and some of those intermediate update proofs, which are typically short in those protocols. And there are now many works in this model, like Sonic and Marlin and Plunk, but in general they are a little bit less efficient than the non-optatable snags. So it would still be interesting to kind of make those non-optatable snags also updateable in some way. And finally, there's a solution by Bowie, Cabism and Myers, which is a player exchangeable NPC. The basic idea is that in these types of protocols, the trapdoor doesn't have to be committed in the beginning of the protocol, and instead they use a random beacon, which is like an extra party in the protocol. And then in each round of the protocol, also this random beacon participates, and we can kind of, we are just assuming that this random beacon behaves correctly. It produces some random numbers for us. And yeah, the output of the protocol is kind of the same as in the usual NPC protocols, but what is nice here is that the parties can be different in different rounds of the protocol. So now we are not anymore relying on the fact that the same party is available in the first phase and the second phase of the protocol. So this is a lot more convenient if you have a lot of parties in a multi-party computation protocol, especially in the blockchain setting. And now this protocol of Bowie, Cabism and Myers, this was used quite extensively, for example, with the Zcash protocol, Aztec protocol, Filecoin, semaphore, loopring, and so on, with quite some success. So let's look a bit more closely what is this random beacon here. The idea of the random beacon is that after certain time intervals, it would produce us a new random number, and why it's useful in this previous protocol is that we can basically use this previously unknown random number to randomize this current state of the SRS. Unfortunately, it is quite complicated to construct secure random beacons. There's a heuristic approach which has been used in this blockchain world, which is that you just take a hash of a relatively recent blockchain block and you now say that, okay, this is my new random output of the beacon. This is only a heuristic approach if you actually want to do it securely, then it's a very challenging problem. So ideally, we would not want to use a random beacon at all. So what is our contribution here? Firstly, we propose a security framework for non-interactive arguments, which have a ceremony protocol. So this is a protocol for setting up the SRS. And you can kind of see this as a generalization of the notion of optimability if you're familiar with this one. Then we propose a simplified version of CROC16 ceremony, essentially a simplified version of this Bowie-Gabbison-Meyers protocol, which does not use a random beacon. So we completely eliminate this assumption. And finally, we give a proof of security in a mixed model of algebraic group model and random record model. This technically quite an advanced security proof, which we will very briefly go over as well. So let's take a look of that security framework of our proposal. So let's start with the ceremony. Firstly, we have our proof of algorithm and the verifier algorithm as usual. But the SRS is now split into independently updateable parts, SRSU, which we call a datable SRS, and the SRSS, which is a specialist SRS. So the idea here is that SRSU is independent of the concrete relation that we are trying to prove, and the SRSS already depends on the relation. Then we have an update algorithm, which is used to update the SRS. It takes in the previous SRS, a set of update proofs, and an index, either a U or S, depending on which part of the SRS we want to update. And then it produces a new version of the SRS and an update proof for that SRS. Then we have an SRS verification algorithm, which takes as an input an SRS, and the set of update proofs, and either resets it or rejects it. Yeah, so what does the model actually look like? Basically, we do updating in two phases. So first, we update the universal SRS. This is the SRS without a specific relation, and it goes as an unusual updateability model. So the first guy updates and produces a proof, and so on. Then we finish the universal updating phase and fix the SRS, the universal SRS. And now we have, let's say, some relation that we want to use. And we take the SRS, which is universal, and we generate initial specialized SRS. So this is an SRS which depends on the relation, and we start updating this. And as you see here, these parties in the first phase and second phase, they don't have to be the same. So from updateability perspective, we argue that there's actually not much difference if you work in this type of updateability model, where you fix the universal SRS at some point, and then go on with the specialized SRS, or you just have your usual notion of updateability. And the final SRS is just the conjunction of the final updateable SRS and the final specialized SRS. And from the security wise, we want completeness in two flavors, actually. We want update completeness, which essentially says that, okay, so if you have some SRS which verifies, and we make an update, then also this updated SRS will verify. And we also have pruber completeness, which is essentially the usual notion of completeness in non-interactive serial noise protocols, that, okay, so if the SRS verifies, and the non-pruber generates a proof, then also the verifier will accept the proof. But these are just some properties to guarantee that a protocol even makes sense. Then we require update noise soundness. What this one says is that, for every efficient adversary A, there exists an efficient extractor, such that if the adversary outputs statement X and some proof pi, and it verifies, then the extractor is able to extract the witness from the view of A. So this is all the internal knowledge that the adversary has. Yeah, so you can extract the witness and the SRS here is generated by interacting with the challenger. So essentially what we allow is that in the first phase of updating, the adversary can request the challenger to update his SRS. And by the end of the universal phase, the adversary will submit some SRS-U together with some update proofs, such that at least one of those update proofs was generated by the challenger. So essentially there has to be one honest update. And the second phase works basically the same way. So now we have some SRS-U already fixed. Adversary can request updates for specialist SRS. And by the end of the phase, he submits some SRS-S, a specialist SRS, and update proofs such that at least one of the updates was done honestly by the challenger. And then we borrow the notion of subversion or knowledge, which was invented by Bellara, Huxpower, and Stapuro. And the idea there is that adversary is allowed to pick any SRS and a set of update proofs such that they verify. And in that case, there must exist an efficient extractor that can extract a tractor from the SRS. And this tractor can use to simulate proofs that are indistinguishable from honest proofs. So yeah, this is our security model. Okay. So now let's go and check what this ceremony protocol of CROT-16 roughly looks like. So CROT-16, as I mentioned before, it's not with one of the shortest proofs so far. And we can split the SRS into a universal part and the specialized part. And here this G is generator of one of the bearing groups and H is the generator of the other bearing groups. And X is some integer, which is a tractor. So X, alpha and beta, here are actually a tractor. And the specialist SRS kind of looks something similar. But what we can notice here is that the universal SRS has essentially monomials in the exponent, whereas the specialized SRS does not necessarily have monomials. So here we see some much more complicated polynomials. But essentially what we maybe update this is that in the first SRS, let's say if you want to update this element, an updater would pick some X prime, exponentiate, let's say this element with X prime to the power of Y, and then the updated element will look like such. So this X prime X is now the new tractor X. And if you want to update the second phase, then already the X, alpha and beta are fixed and they're only updating delta. So updater would pick some delta prime and again exponentiate. Let's say this element, for example, by one over delta prime, which means that now this delta here is updated. And beyond that, we also need to include that update proof, which essentially allows us to verify that the updating was done correctly. So what this proof contains is in case of X, for example, tractor X, it will have G to the power of X times X prime, G to the power X prime and H to the X prime. So X prime is this new tractor here and X is the previous tractor. And then we also have a proof of knowledge for X prime. This is something which we need for a security proof. And the verification looks something like this. So E here is a bearing operator. And we can verify that this G X prime was computed correctly by running this function, for example. And then we also verify the proof of knowledge. So this proof of knowledge is actually something very specialized protocol. I won't go very much into details here. But so far, the protocol that I've introduced is essentially the same as the Bowie-Cabison-Meyers protocol. But here we somehow already are deviating a bit. We are requiring stronger security properties for the proof of knowledge part. What we essentially prove in the paper is that this proof of knowledge has to satisfy zero knowledge and the very specific flavor of soundness, which will have straight line simulation expectability. So this is a very strong notion of soundness. And in addition, the soundness adversary is allowed to ask from the challenger a group element, as we can see here, where X1 to Xn is some secret value and F with some polynomial chosen by the adversary. Additionally, we allow the adversary to query the random protocol. And we prove this in the model which combined random protocol model and the algebra group model. As a group model, I will introduce now. So yeah, let's look briefly what is our security model and the security proof. I will give some very brief overview of our main security proof. But before that, what is this algebra group model? So here we have an adversary and the challenger. And in algebra group model, the challenger can give us some group elements. And whenever adversary outputs a group element A, then he also has to output integers, which are a linear representation of those group elements. What I mean by this is that A has to satisfy this type of relation between the elements that he has received so far. And now the challenger can send us some new set of elements. And again, when adversary outputs some group element B, then he has to also provide integers D1 to Dm, which again satisfy this type of linear relation. But notice here that now we can depend both the elements that were sent in the first round and also the ones that were sent in the second round. But this is what we assume from the adversary. So essentially this is a restricted model of computation where adversary is forced to output something that he would usually not force. But this has become very widely used in the bearing base setting. And additionally, we assume a random oracle where adversary can input some bit string X. And in return, you will get a group element Y, which is a random group element. And our security of our main result depends on Q1, Q2, discrete logarithm assumption, where basically adversary will pick a random exponent Z and send these group elements that you see on the screen. And now the adversary is supposed to find an integer Z, which is the exponent. So it's the usual discrete logarithm assumption, but adversary gets more knowledge than usual. And the statement of our main theorem is that if 2n minus 1, 2n minus 2, discrete logarithm assumption holds and we work in this combined model of algebraic group model and random oracle model, then we achieve update knowledge soundness for the ceremonial cross 16 smack. So this is cross 16 snack together with this updating protocol. And notice that here we don't require randomly which is one of the main results or main achievements of this paper. Oh, yes. And the end here stands for the number of multiplication gates in the circuit of the relation. So I will very briefly go over of a high level strategy of our main security proof. And this will end this talk. So essentially the idea is that, okay, we pick some algebraic adversary A, and then we will construct an extractor. And this extractor will output specific coefficients, like this algebraic representation coefficients that I showed before, which we claim that will now correspond to the witness. And our rest of the proof will actually we will be arguing that this output of the extractor is indeed the witness. Well, we use several games. Game zero is the original update knowledge soundness game with adversary A and the extractor that I just described. And so if you find is the setup of the proofs in some phase five, then we call the critical query to be the last honest update that is the update timing by the challenger. And in game one, what we will try to do is try, we will guess the index for the critical query before the beginning of the protocol. And we don't know this by I guess. And basically, if we guess it correctly, then the challenger will on the ice, I guess query, he will not update the SRS proposed by the adversary, but he will instead generate the completely fresh SRS, which is unbiased. And he will instead simulate the update proof. So now what this will guarantee for us is that the SRS from this point on has not been up to this point has not been biased at all by that nursery because we generated it freshly. And we will use the serial knowledge and straight line simulation extractability properties of this protocol knowledge sub protocol to show that these two games are indistinguishable. And then the algebraic group model part of the proof looks something like this. We define a polynomial q in the trapdoor variables x x alpha x beta and x delta where if you apply basically the trapdoors at the point at the index guess that they will be zero exactly when we accept. So this q is essentially something very complicated polynomial, which depends on the verification equation, all the intermediate SRS states and brand more common responses to the adversary, and also the agent coefficients of the adversary. But it will have this property that it is zero exactly when we accept the proof. And now the proof will branch into two parts. In the first part, we say, okay, suppose that this polynomial q is not zero. Then we show that we can do a reduction to this variation of the discrete logarithm assumption. And if it is zero, then we show by arguing the structure of this polynomial that whatever the extractor outputs is actually the witness. So this is a very technical part of the proof, but it indeed seems to work out. So so much about this proof. And this was the by far the hardest part of this paper. I think it took us a couple of months to get this proof correct. But yeah, so the main takeover helped this paper. Even non-updatable snarks can be updated if we allow it multiple phases. And this seems to have very little difference in practice if you have only one phase updating or two phase updating. However, what is actually important is that this one phase updatable snarks are also universal typically. And by universal, I mean that the SRS does not depend on the relation. And this might be actually much more difficult to achieve. But there is actually a protocol called Mirage where they do modify code 16 to also obtain universality. But this is already quite the big modification, I would say. But if you apply this paper together with Mirage, then you can get a version of code 16, which is both universal and updatable. So yeah, thank you for listening.


I'm not going to share my screen because we would just be looking at the handbook. I will talk around a couple of things. So make sure everybody has the great. Okay. All right. I see the numbers picking up. I'm going to go ahead and get started. I think we're on recording. Great. Okay. So I'm following along our agenda. We've added to the handbook a management development series. Section in the leadership portion of the handbook and I'm following on along Monday, June 26. Abby and I will be working together to create hopefully a very valuable series for all of our managers. New as well as managers who have lots of experience. So we're going to run the gamut and really include everyone in the conversation. It's our job to facilitate a hopefully a quite a valuable discussion and then put together learning opportunities for you. But it's also our expectation that all managers will take accountability for creating meetings and attending meetings and completing the assignments that we're putting out because these are all things that will work together with you on down the road. This not just for, you know, a one time event, the a few housekeeping rules. We will record all of our sessions in case that people can't attend, they can join and we'll attach the link to the recordings in the agenda. So we'll be updating the agenda, excuse me as we go along. And I'll ask because of that that we don't share any confidential information. If you have a particular example that you want to go over for anything that we've covered, please contact Abby or myself and we can certainly have those discussions outside of this forum. We're going to be creating relationship opportunities for management. There are at least three ways that we're going to start off with. We're going to create management or we actually have already finished creating management cohorts right now they're called groups a b and see they need better names than that. I will share those with you. Let me share the link and I will put that in chat. The workbook has already been shared with you so you can go ahead and jump in that workbook. If you can, if not, you can jump in it later and I will be sending an email to follow up with everyone so that everyone's well aware of what your management cohort is and what your mentor and mentee pairs are. Well, what does this mean. We've divided you based on the profile that you filled out for us. We divided you into three management cohorts right now called group a b and c.  I'll follow up with that in that email to make sure everybody is aware that that's homework do before the next time we get together. So hopefully some natural leadership will come out. You will have lots of creative ideas and you'll come back with a professional appropriate exciting and engaging leadership cohort name. You've been assigned to a cohort based on your years of management experience. So those in the profile with the lowest amount of experience in management have been assigned to group a Group B was the mid group and group C and you can see here by the color code. We have a lot of group C's. So we have a lot of managers with a good deal of management experience, which is awesome because they can help us with this curriculum. You've also been assigned mentor and mentee pair relationships based on those years of experience and a few other things that Abby and I talked about along the way. So this workbook will give you those assignments and your second homework assignment is to connect with your mentor and or mentee. Some of you, as you can see, have to assignments. If you were kind of a mid level manager as far as experience goes, then we assigned you both as a mentor and a mentee. If that gets too busy for you. Let me know. And as we were missing a couple of people. So we still have a couple of other mentor opportunities that we can assign, but there was some overlap. So I gave some of you double duty. In your in your roles again in that mentor mentee relationship. I asked that you get together over the next couple of weeks. Introduce yourselves, talk a little bit about your management experience, talk a little bit about the the profile and and what you bring to the table and what ideas you might have and what challenges you have and your and your mentor or mentee share that back and forth and hopefully you'll come up with some great ideas for us as we go forward. I said those interrupt you. Some of us joined in later because we had a meeting that overrun and we don't have the link available. Okay, no problem. That is in the it's in the chat, you know, it is the it's called manager team assignments. Thanks. Richard and Sarah shared it. Yep. So you in the chat you have two links just to recap quickly you have the leadership page in the handbook and now I've added this management team assignments your cohort assignment your mentor and your mentee assignments are in here. They are creative, but they are within the assignments of the experience levels that you have so You can't change them. All right. Let's see any questions on the management cohorts your homework for creating a an exciting engaging energetic name for your management cohort and the homework to meet up with your mentor and or mentee partner over the next couple of weeks. Joan, do you mind if I write the homework and I Google Doc that I share with everybody on the one hand. We'll be able to take notes, but on the other hand, I might be duplicating what's already in the handbook and spreadsheet. I did not add that piece. I will add that right after the meeting earned to the agenda in the handbook so that that was my intention. I just didn't get that in there and I apologize. The rest of the homework is here. I will add it directly underneath so you can either take it in a Google sheet, but it's going to be here as soon as we you know by the end of my day it will be added to the to the handbook. My intention is that the handbook will have all of our assignments and all of our our talking points. Okay. All right. Awesome. Let's see. I'll also add now. Let me let me note here that I've only shared the manager or the manager team assignment workbook to specifically the managers. The workbooks that we're going to share with you are not going to be shared with everyone in get lab with a link because there will be some specific information this one not so much but I'm keeping it consistent across the board. So I would like to put a link in the handbook to this but not everyone will then be able to get to adjust the managers just you as managers. I don't know if that'll create confusion. Give me feedback if you want on that if it's better just to share these you know these spreadsheets outside of the handbook I'm okay with that too. I was just trying to make it accessible so that everybody would have it but again people on the outside and individual contributors won't be able to click on these and get to them. Okay. Let's see. Coffee breaks asking again this the idea of these the series is to provide you with as much valuable information as we can in the limited time that we have the hour that we have together once a week sometimes every other week depending on the schedule over the summer. But I need what we'll need then is we'll give you information and we'd really like for individual groups to pick up if if a management cohort wants to get together. That's fine if mentor mentee pair wants to get together. That's great. And then if you want to go outside of your cohort. Now you have a list of people who are in the different stages into the different experience levels. You can reach out to someone else and ask them study assignments that we'll be giving will have the open for you to see what other managers are inputting. You can always reach out to another manager who has a similar challenge that you do or that doesn't seem to have that challenge and you want some advice so coffee breaks are encouraged as part of this process. Our next agenda item performance reviews. We will be switching up the performance review process for 2017 for the performance year 2017. We're going to go with a semi annual review process. We are going to build out and push out to you in the month of July a review for the first half of 2017 and then in January you'll complete you as well as the individual will complete a performance review for the second half of 2017. I'm using that cadence because I'm trying not to overwhelm everyone with administrative responsibilities, but as you all well know those of you who've done annual reviews before. We tend if we do an annual review to forget what happened in the first half of the year, whether it was really great or or whether it was really bad. Probably more likely that you'll remember something that happened that wasn't so great and the second half and overlook something that was that would offset it or that was great in the first half. So I want to be sure that we're looking at a lesser amount of time. They'll have the same set of questions for both and then we'll have an overall summary at the very end. So you'll have the same amount of effort in both reviews and then we'll have a very small summary that will either be attached the second half or will be an individual of its own. I'm working with lattice. We will continue to work with lattice for performance management performance reviews and I'm working with with lattice right now to build this out so that we can get it rolled out at the very beginning of July. You'll have about the first three weeks in July to get those done for the first half of the year and then we'll store them away but you will have them at your fingertips for reviewing for the second half of the year as well. So again they'll be there for you to look over the history before you add the second half. We'll also be adding 360 feedback. Many people gave that as a had a question why weren't we doing 360 when we did the 2016 reviews and there was a couple of reasons we didn't we didn't have nearly the number of people in the organization participate because of their eligibility for the 2016 review. So I held off on having the 360 in addition to the fact that we pushed it out really quickly so we could get the merit process. Managed and out of the way and and this way we'll introduce it. Everyone will have plenty of time. I don't have all the options selected on this yet or I don't have it built out thoroughly yet so I'll be rolling this out and on our next meeting the week of July 10th. You'll either have it already or it will be just coming out so we'll talk about it again then if anybody has any questions along the way. The ratings that we create in first half and second half and the overall ratings will be part of the 2018 merit process which will happen in the first quarter of 2018. I anticipate the schedule looking like you'll complete the second half performance review in January and the overall rating with that along with that and then in February we'll run through the merit review process for an effective date at the end of the quarter. Any questions on the performance review overview. Okay. Let's talk about homework. I've already given you two assignments. Might as well give you a few more. We have a team development discussion coming up on July 10th. I skipped the the week of July 4th for those managers who would not be available that week. I was having trouble finding availability so just went ahead and skipped to July 10th. I haven't sent that in that invite out yet I want to talk about that a little bit as well to make sure that I'm being considerate of everyone because we have a large rather large group there are 32 at this point managers and you're spread across the globe and building out global invites it can become difficult so I want to talk about that before we close off the call. But the homework assignment. We are going to step into a team development model. It's a rather aged model or the beginning of the model was was in 1965 actually I've given you some some resources that you can look over here. The model is and I'm sure that most of you have heard the terms forming storming norming and performing there are additional Stages that were added later we'll talk about those in our July 10 meeting but we're going to focus on these first four so that we can decide where our teams are and how we can get everyone to the performing Stage as quickly as we can but understand that as we add new team members we may slide back and we want to help with that process Abbie and I will use the the exercise To have ongoing dialogue as we meet with our managers Abbie and I meet with most managers. Hopefully you're all on a schedule of at least a bi-weekly meeting with us. And this is one of the many things that will be an ongoing dialogue for us to continue to help you evolve your teams. So team development is our first theme. We're going to provide a workbook to you right after this meeting. I think let's see if I can Give you a peek at that. I think Abbie has it mostly done and Abbie I added everybody in for Access so I put that in the chat and if you want to jump in there. I believe you all have access now. Let's take a quick look at it and then you can ask any questions that you might have before we adjourn for homework Let everybody take a second to go in if you want There are a number of infographics that you can pull and Abbie found a really what I consider to be one of the best ones to explain each of the four stages. She's also built in a really neat progress graph for us. So what we're going to ask you to do is we're going to ask you to fill in the blanks for your tab. Please don't work in. I'm actually open mine to Michael's tab pay attention at the bottom. The tabs are labeled with your last name comma first name find your tab after a bit of research after logging into Grovo and taking the manager 161 develop your team. Grovo course, which is a manager course that's about 30 minutes long. And after taking a look at these resources that I have here for you Bruce Tuckman stages of team development which is in Wikipedia. It was a really good explanation as well as another infographic that we liked that's the tasks for each stage after you've taken a look at those define your current stage for your team. And we were adding a second a second request, not just a stage can be really long. It can be something you skip through really quickly. It can be something you say okay we're past that. But if you were in a stage like storming sometimes it can take a while to get past that. Norming is one of the longest stages. So what we've put in here is a progress bar. And we want to know whether you think you're at the beginning, the middle, or if you're ready to advance and move out of that current stage that you're in. So from one to three you'll list your progress here. And then if you would answer the four questions that we have under action plan. Once you define your stage and the progress we'd like to know what is holding you back from moving forward. What do you think is holding your team back. What steps should you take to move your team forward and if you're not sure then you can put here's what I think but I'm really not sure. I'd like to know if our environment encourages healthy team development and if you have suggestions. So if you think not then make suggestions as to what we can do to encourage team development more than we do today or what teams individually can do to encourage development. That's the homework assignment for our our first piece of curriculum, which is on team development. Again, this is Hayden. When we're talking about teams we're talking about our own teams that we manage or we're talking about cohort teams. Ah, great question. Excellent. Thank you. Your own team. So you're the team of people that you manage. Yep. Thank you. Perfect. That was excellent. I know I probably confused you with being on too many teams now you have all these team assignments. As I said that once you complete this exercise, we're going to create a bit of a summary to talk about on July 10 and you will all have access to each of the tabs. So you can, as I said, find people that have a similar progress rate as you do or you can take a look and find someone who's having a challenge and help them through that challenge with things that you've done that have been successful. That's the idea is to put put people together that can help each other move forward. So that is the essentially the time that I wanted to or the curriculum that we had prepared for today, because there are things that we want you to do and we want you to get together as your your cohorts. But I also wanted to leave plenty of time in this particular meeting for questions, thoughts and ideas. If you've had a chance, if you've been a part of another manager cohort in the past, if you've been a part of a manager or management development program leadership development program. Please feel free to give us feedback and thoughts and ideas. You just got the handbook update so you might want to take a look at what we have planned. As you can see, it's not all well flushed out like the next couple of weeks we wanted to get the first couple out of the way to see how it went and then we can roll from there. Well, let me open the floor and see if anybody has any conversation that will be helpful to us. Hey, Joan, thanks for that. I've got a general question. I assume it's relevant to other people in my group as well because most of the people in my group manage development teams. I think of a lot of the development teams as, you know, not really separate teams that work together but as groups of people who work with another team a lot of the time. So for instance, someone from my team might work with someone from Jacob's team or someone from Dower's team might work with someone from Tim's team. And they'll often do that more closely than the people who are reporting to the same manager as them. That's just the way we structure our work. So I was just wondering how we sort of define those stages in terms of a team that doesn't necessarily work alongside each other as much as other teams. That's an excellent question, Sean, and maybe not unique to GitLab and certainly not unique to engineering, right, when you work across teams. My suggestion is I'm looking for us to start within your team and to take a look at the group of people as to how they build out how they're functioning as a group within your team. And then we'll cross, we'll do cross-functional or cross-team development as well. Does that get you started or do we need to flesh this out a little bit further? Am I not? I think, I mean, as the H has added something as well, I think I might need to flesh that out a bit more. Maybe because I don't have the experience, but just because if I could pick pairs of people on my team who really don't work together that often at all, and if I'm trying to pick a rating for the team as a whole, it's kind of hard because how am I considering that as a group if they're not necessarily interacting with each other that closely day to day? That's a really, and I'm reading the chat that Hayden has said, yep, that might be the same for sales and that's an interesting dynamic to bring into play here. Let me think about it. I'll certainly open the floor for anybody who has any other thoughts or ideas. This is under development. I want to create the right exercises in the right environment, the right learning environment for GitLab. Honestly, I really didn't think of it that way. I didn't think of it as so much that the individual teams don't actually work together as much as they do outside or cross-functionally. Maybe we redesign and come up with a cross-functional exercise as well. Other thoughts or ideas on this? Yeah, maybe we can make it a bit more actionable. I've been thinking about a few things while we were talking here. So we could maybe go over, I just based some ideas in chat. So, Shawna, how to give good feedback, how to do a one-on-one, how to talk about promotions, how to organize meetings, how to give performance feedback, bonuses, assign people to projects, collaborate with other teams, identify underperformance, actions on underperformance, reward achievements. Would that be helpful to go more specific? I see some of those were mentioned sort of further down the chain in this series. But yeah, definitely those are the sort of things I'm looking to get out of this. Absolutely. And that's why if you do look at the agenda, those are all there. Those are all topics that we're going over. I think, Sean, are you speaking specifically about the first assignment, the team development assignment? Yeah, absolutely. So just for this team development assignment, I don't really think of my team as like, hey, let's all get together and work on something type team. Right. It's like, you go and work with this person, you go and work with this person and then I sort of check in on you and see how things are going. And maybe they work, you know, for instance, one of my teams working quite closely with Dower at the moment, because he's working on a project that's related to Dower's team. So Dower and I will sort of swap developers quite often for things like that as well. So let's say, yeah, no, no, this is great. This is perfect because this is again, we've created the, that's why I've created the management cohorts by experience so that people can share experience. With, with exactly the things that you've put in here, Sid, are all again covered. And those are our, you know, we can certainly move those up a little bit. But let me, maybe we redefine the, and it's not a definitive as to your direct reports. Maybe we look at this on a more holistic level. If you do not have a team of direct reports that works very tightly, so people ops, we work as a team. And I can probably do this exercise really well just for that, for that group of people. But in your case and in all of engineering and maybe it's better for sales. Maybe we look at this as at a higher level. How do you believe we as a team function? Where are we? And what can we do to continue? So this still, you can do this on any size. You can do this on the organization level. You don't have to have it on your direct reports. So I'd probably say this can be really valuable from both perspectives. Those people who work directly with their team and can actually apply the stage to your specific team do the exercise that way. If you want to look at this on a wider scale, there are certainly areas I believe. I don't know that I do not believe that we could all say, hey, we're as GitLab, we're in the performing stage. I think we could probably be a little more realistic and say as a team, I think we are storming and here's why. And that would be valuable. So as long as you're looking at this as a group of people that makes sense, you could call that team anything, any size group or any group of people that you wanted to define that as. The goal here is that we find out where we can make improvements and that we help you get the right resources or make the right decisions or we start programs that are specific to where our challenges are. Does that make more sense maybe? Yeah, assuming I've understood it correctly, you're saying that I could treat this as answering for the development team as a whole, even though only a section of the development team reports to me and then other people who also lead development teams could do the same. Absolutely. Or provide our own input on how we see the development team. Absolutely. Again, this is just a quick exercise. This is just one of the series of 10 meetings that we're going to go through. So we're not going to spend a lot of time on this. It's not the whole basis of the program. It's just one piece that we wanted to start out with so that we could begin to see where teams were maybe having trouble getting past that forming or that storming stage. So please take a look at it from your perspective. There's no law here that says you have to do it on your direct reports. Make it make sense to you if you want to get together as an engineering team. Feel free to do that.  This is again going to be something that Abby and I refer to each manager. This is really for us to help you down the road. Does that make sense to everybody? That sounds great. Thanks, John. Yeah, I was going to say I had similar questions to Sean. So thanks for asking Sean. But I think what you're just saying, John makes all the sense, because for example, in the norming phase, it says begins to work to optimize team process. But in the development side of things, processes are more between teams than inside the team because as Sean said, people inside my team don't work together all that much. So this process is more so applies to, you know, collaboration between back end and front end, the build team, production team, etc. So I think that really helps. Awesome. So the way I'm hearing it then, whatever teams, let's see, let's say the back and front end work, you know, collaborate on things. Maybe this is about that team as a whole, right? And if you have concerns about we're really tripping over something, we're not able to really perform at the level that we want to. So that's what this is supposed to be about finding finding those areas of strength to share with the company and, you know, to help get other people past challenges or raising a flag and saying we're really having some challenges here. And if we don't raise the flag, we're probably going to end up with bigger problems down the road. So hopefully the investment on this is a couple of hours as far as thinking through it and filling out those questions and looking at the resources that we've given you. And feel free to reach, I know most of you meet with Abby on a bi-weekly basis. If you are going to have that meeting in between, she can also guide you. And if you're having challenges, nobody's going to make an announcement if, you know, you didn't answer a question. It's okay. You know, this is really for us. It's for our development. Hey, Joan, Lee here, just a quick question. Sure. On the team development stages spreadsheet, there's the current stage where you choose and then progress. I assume that means progress within that stage on a scale of one to three. Okay. Yep. Sorry, Lee. I had explained that and maybe some people arrived because it's gone pretty quickly. Yes. Define the stage that you believe that team of people that you're talking about is in and what progress one to three are they in that particular stage because the stage can be pretty long. It can be, you know, we can get over it quickly or we can hang out there for a while. Got it. Thanks. Perfect. Yeah. Other questions, other thoughts. Abby, I want to make sure that we check off all the boxes that that's it's brought up. I believe they're all in the agenda. If not, they're on our list of things to talk about. But we'll make sure that we incorporate all of these things because again, the idea of this this time together is that we give you valuable information, give you some exercises, and we begin an interactive process across the multiple experience levels that we have and the very valuable experience that many of you bring to the table. If no further questions, then we'll get together the week of that.  I said I would ask you. This is the best time I could find you know that that kind of 1230 to 130 I can do 12 to one to to fit the global team. We've taken 11 and 1130 with the fgs and the team call. So I was trying to find the next possible decent time for the gamut that we have is there.  What else can we do. Are we okay with with approximately the 1212 30. I'm sorry, I'm using Eastern standard. So the the nine nine 30 PST the later afternoon 5530 on the may aside. Are we okay running with that since it's middle of the of the road for a little while and we can catch up with the recordings. I'm also. Oh, go ahead. Sorry, and I just put in a suggestion. Time wise, it's good for me. But for me personally Tuesdays would be better because Mondays I do one to one with my team. I think Marin's also said the same thing. Let me ask the question I could make it a little earlier it looks like on Fridays because Fridays we don't have the fgs and the team call. Would anybody be interested in maybe a little bit earlier time on a Friday. I know for some it'll be the end of your day on a Friday and do you want to spend you know am I holding you up from from closing out your week talking about the exciting topics of management. Okay. All right, Dowell likes really really likes is no meeting zone Fridays. No problem. All right, well then I'm going to go for for well I was I was headed for the 10th. But I can certainly look around. I don't expect everybody to be able to make it and that's okay that's why we're going to record I hope you can make it to as many as you can. Well, we'll start from there and if we need to tweak it we certainly can I was going to plan like two or three out so you had them on your calendar because I know summers get really busy. Maybe maybe like idea is because it seems that it will be hard for everyone to find a slot so maybe this time should be rotating that last week is on Tuesday next week is I don't know on first day or the other way just to try to balance. I am that's a great idea come here I like that I won't I won't do Fridays. All right, I've got I got the general consensus that nobody wants it on a Friday I'm also that's fine by me I just that was the only other time I found. Okay, well let me look around. I'll take the most for the for the week of the 10th I'll take the most available I'll find the most available and then we'll maybe rotate from there and again catch up in the recordings. Please feel free to invite Abby or I to any of your cohort meetings where you want to have a few minutes of our time. Feel free to create a cross cohort meeting. That's the ideas that we're putting resources together so this is kind of an open invitation to share information. And we'll see you the week of the 10th. Thanks a bunch. Thanks John.


Jack's PBS Kids Club would like to wish a very happy birthday to the following club members. Sponsored by Wolfson Children's Hospital. Jack's PBS Kids Club would like to wish a very happy birthday to the following club members. Sponsored by Wolfson Children's Hospital.


Welcome. Thanks for joining us. We are thrilled to have you back for another episode of the nonprofit show. Today we are diving deep and we are sharing with you about how you might unlock pro bono consulting. And Karen Epstein is here with us to share that information with us. So before we dive into the conversation, Karen, we of course want to make sure that our viewers and our listeners know who is on today. So thank you to Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy for having this whim of a dream that the show would last two weeks. I haven't said this in a while. We are coming up on 600 episodes and we are just I am thrilled to serve as your co-host. I'm thrilled to have these high level conversations with rock star nerds. And that's that's a compliment, Karen. So please don't be offended. But I'm Jared Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. And I just I love nerding out with our guest with Julia on all of these topics. We have to give a shout out to all of our presenting sponsors that keep our conversations going and growing. So thank you so very much to Blumering. Thank you to the American nonprofit Academy, fundraising Academy with the National University, nonprofit nerd, your part time controller, staffing boutique and the nonprofit thought leader. Many of these companies truly have been supporting us from the very beginning and they're here to support you too. So please check them out. I always like to remind you in about twenty eight and a half minutes is the best time to check them out, not yet because you don't want to miss today's conversation. But if you do miss any of our conversations from today or previous, you can find us on Roku, YouTube, YouTube, Vimeo, Amazon Fire TV, as well as podcast. So go ahead and queue us up in your podcast listening channels. You will find us there too. I mentioned earlier in the green room chatter that I'm still drinking my morning coffee and you can tell I still need to keep sipping on it. So Karen, we're thrilled to have you here. You know, for all of our viewers, our listeners, this is a live show. Nothing gets edited out, including these bloopers, but we are thrilled to have you. So welcome, Karen. Thank you for having me. Yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about, you know, what you do. I know we shared that you are in the New York community. But tell us a little bit about PENPAC. Sure, sure, sure. So I am a Penn alumna. I graduated 30 years ago, came to the non-profit space later in my career, probably 15 years at this point, and a couple of years ago became connected with PENPAC that was founded by a classmate a year below me. And really, she just had this great idea that she could leverage the passion and skills of Penn alumni to tackle strategic challenges for nonprofits. So we bring together a really diverse group of volunteers of alumni. I mean, all they have in common is that they're alumni of the same university, but otherwise they're really diverse group by race, age, you know, experienced profession, and we bring them together with non-profits that are also really wide ranging startups will establish well established across a lot of program areas and we work with them on customized projects across a lot of different strategic topics, fundraising, marketing, operational analysis, you name it. Now, is this kind of kind of geographically centered to the university? Or could it be anywhere in the country where you might have alums? How do you how do you plug all those fits? Right. So we're actually based in New York. We do a lot virtually that we meet with many of our clients in person. We also do projects in Philadelphia and in the Bay Area. And yet over the past couple of years, as more of our work has become virtual, we do work with some clients in certain programs that may not be based in any of those geographies. Our primary, you know, larger scale projects are typically in the cities where where we're based. So those three metro areas. How do you and the entire organization? I have a couple of people I'm going to share this with that are also alum. And this makes me want to create an alum with my university. So thank you for for doing this. You know, today's conversation I feel is a hot topic because there's so many organizations that are so very desperate for help.  So would you, before we go into how it works, would you define exactly like what pro bono is? Sure. Well, so pro bono is really skills based volunteering. So pro bono consulting can still be really broad. I think it's really a matter of where you're sourcing it in terms of what that can mean. Right. I mean, you can have an individual who volunteers for your organization and they could do pro bono consulting or you can work through a nonprofit like us or others or consulting firms or corporations that offer it to nonprofits. So I think that's kind of how it ranges by who's providing it. Right. Yeah. Thank you for that. You know, I love that you use the phrase skilled based. So it really, I think, opens up the mind to what this looks like. So talk to us about what you're seeing. I mean, especially with Penn, you have such a wide variety of alums. What are some of these things that you're seeing and how is it working? So when we find clients, we don't necessarily commit to them to be able to provide a lot of specific expertise. I think that what our volunteer base offers in terms of their general skills is the ability to come in and do analysis and research and provide well crafted recommendations. Some projects require some more specific expertise. It could be marketing, it could be finance, it could be human resources. And so certain areas are easier for us to source. And so when we do a call for volunteers, there are certain things that we look for, depending what our projects are. We pick our clients, our projects first. And then we look to staff a team of volunteers for each one. Is that hard for you to find these skills based? Yeah, I would imagine they're graduating from Penn. They're pretty high level and they're probably super busy people. Do you want something done? You ask someone who's busy. I've heard that before, too. You're so right, Kiran. It's true. You'd be surprised. I mean, our volunteers range and some of them are very busy professionals. Some of them are either out of the workforce or taking a break from the workforce, but many of them are busy professionals. Often when they need a group meeting time, I mean, most of our project teams meet in the evening. And some of the work can be done on your own schedule, but clearly there's meetings that need to be coordinated with both the rest of the team and the client. Actually, the good news for the most part is that we don't have trouble finding. We're always looking for new volunteers. Don't get me wrong. Please reach out. And yet we for the most part have been able to find plenty of interested people, which is which is great for us, for the nonprofits. And I think it just says something about people's interest in community engagement and service these days. Have you seen that increase over the last three years? I guess, you know, the question is the increase of organizations asking for help and the number of individuals seeking that, you know, civic engagement piece.  I think it depends on the communication and outreach efforts to so who you're who you're targeting and who you're reaching. I would say that overall there is an increased interest in community and civic engagement and not just, you know, you hear about it as a generational thing, I don't actually find that that to be the case. I think we're really finding it cross generations. Yeah, that makes me happy. No, it really does. I'm sorry, I interrupted you.  But, you know, I'm curious for those of, you know, our viewers, listeners, watching and listening, how do we go about seeking pro bono work? Like, how does that work? What do we need to do? I'm thinking like, you know, get all of our ducks in a row. What do we need to do to prepare for asking someone for help? I think it goes back again to where you're looking for it and what you're looking for. So our typical program are these projects that run, let's say, 10 weeks each spring and fall. And if you know that you're looking for that kind of, you know, robust project where it would be helpful to have a team of different perspectives, I think it's finding the organizations that offer that kind of opportunity. And usually there is an application process. And often you need to apply for it well in advance of when the project would launch, both to prepare on your end for what the project would be and setting a team up to get ready, but also because, as I mentioned, we find our projects and scope them before we then find a team. And that takes some time on our end to source them and prepare them and train them. Again, I'll step back a little bit from just what how we do it and mention how how else you can go out and about finding pro bono consulting, whether it's a team or an individual.  There are consulting firms that take on, there are for-profit consulting firms that largely have for-profit clients that take on nonprofits without charge the same way. You know, when some people hear pro bono, they automatically think legal, which is what the law firms do. They take on pro bono clients. You may often be connected to individuals on your board or through other networks that can offer to do a project for you. You know, I would say that falls within pro bono consulting, even though it's a really different model and you just need to be really comfortable with who's raising their hand, because when you have an organization like us or a firm, you don't have kind of that risk factor of an individual who may or may not be committed. If something happens with one of our volunteers, you know, we've already vetted them, we've trained them and we can replace them where we have the rest of the team that can step into their shoes. So it's a little less risky in that regard. Yeah. So, you know, you brought this up and I want to kind of talk or explore that a little bit more because there are some pitfalls. And I love that you said they can be replaced. I mean, talk to us. I mean, I don't even want to think about that, but share with us what that looks like for you. Well, you know, the that the slides as pitfalls are relying on volunteers, and that's again where I want to distinguish or draw the line between volunteers and pro bono consultants, because typically volunteers are unvetted and come from a range of backgrounds, not necessarily with specific skills they're bringing.  We have a team that interviews everyone who applies. And so one of the biggest things that we're looking for is their bandwidth and their commitment so that they was so that when we put a team together, we know that we can deliver on the scope that we've agreed to with our clients. That makes sense. One of the questions I have for you and it might be a touchy subject, but do you ever worry and maybe not for your organization, but just kind of pro bono, pro bono in general, you know, about an organization or sorry, I should say an individual, you know, taking on intellectual property or being privy to confidential data, how do you address this and what would you recommend? Good question.  I guess when I see the range of clients and projects we take on, it's not a ton of confidential information that they would risk kind of going broad with and I'm not really sure kind of what the incentive to our network of volunteers would be. I don't know how much there is to capitalize on the same way there might be for, you know, a for profit company. Yeah, I would imagine, you know, that organizations seeking support in this way of pro bono consulting. And I love, Karen, that you mentioned the difference between a volunteer and a pro bono consultant, very different. So thank you for that. Again, another opera aha moment. But I would imagine, you know, that, you know, that organizations that are looking for help might also have that concern of making sure that they safeguard their information, their data, whatever that might be. Are there any other pitfalls that we might want to consider? I think the biggest thing is understanding if you're working through an organization, what they do to mitigate those risks, right?  And it offers a tremendous amount of value depending on what you're looking for, but you're taking on a different level of risk. If you're using it to source volunteers where you need, you know, bodies for lack of a better term, it could be a great resource. If you're looking for a team of consultants and you're looking for them to bring like a certain level of skill with their outside perspective and which with their range of perspectives, it's important to understand a little more about the organization you would be working with that provides that team. Yeah, really interesting.  It seems to me that because you're starting first with a project, understanding it and then filtering in the talent, you probably have a pretty high degree of satisfaction on both sides. Is that true? Would that be a fair statement? I think that it is. And we do some evaluation of both sides gathering feedback. And so that's a process that's still kind of a work in process on our end. Yeah, I think that our our consultants, our volunteers, for the most part, are really satisfied. They love that they are providing something of unique value. They really appreciate the skills that even though they bring skills, they're gaining others. They appreciate the skills that they're gaining. They appreciate the network that they're gaining, both of their teammates and of the clients, the exposure into a different industry. Many of our clients stay with us for multiple projects. And that's not something to be taken for granted because the time commitment is pretty intense. And so we do offer kind of lower bar opportunities to stay engaged, both with clients, you know, one night events or one off opportunities, as well as ways to engage with us in more internal roles that maybe don't have the same type of obligation in any kind of intense period. Now, in the Green Room chatter, you mentioned something that I'd never heard before and I'd love to revisit it. And that was you use the term low bono. Yeah, can you share more about that with us? Yeah, and I don't know how exact a term it is, but I have come across it. I think that some individuals, you know, are looking to give back and not. And I think they do what they provide, you know, low bono, low cost consulting, below market consulting, they do it for a few reasons, both because, you know, they're looking to take it to for some compensation. There's also the idea of it's important to have a client have skin in the game. So that they're more committed when there is some sort of investment they're making. The other thing that I'll mention, and it's true for PEN PAC and some other organizations that provide pro bono consulting for some of our programs, this is true. Sometimes there is a contribution that's given to the organization for all that they do to provide the staffing and the infrastructure and the quality control standards that that does not go to the consultants who are volunteering their time. But so sometimes there's a little, you know, people see a disconnect, pro bono is free, and sometimes the volunteers are providing their services for free. Again, sometimes there is a fee to the organization, usually pretty de minimis. I'm so glad that you brought that back up, because low bono is not a word that I hear often, but if it's not the Webster Dictionary, it might be after this episode. I know I just love that. So thanks for describing. Let's talk about because we don't have too much time left, Karen, but let's talk about how we might cultivate these consultant volunteers. And I kind of feel like consultant volunteers shouldn't even be in the same conversation anymore, but, you know, because you schooled us on that, which I love, but how might we, you know, truly cultivate these relationships? Well, it's interesting because when I think about how we cultivate our volunteers that are consultants, it's almost a lot of it. A lot of the same lessons we've learned applies to broader volunteer engagement and how other nonprofits may want to cultivate their volunteers, whether or not they are consultants, right? So one of the things that I mentioned is that we offered like a range of opportunities and entry points because some people may not be able to commit to 10 weeks to five hours a week over that period. And they may want to find a way to get their, you know, to dip their toe in. They may want to find ways to continue to engage when they don't have the bandwidth. So I'd say that one thing to keep your own volunteers active is find opportunities, a range of opportunities that work for them. I think it's also important a second thing to learn in terms of volunteer engagements, whether they're consultants or otherwise, is to support your volunteers, make sure it's rewarding, provide training and development and resources for them so they feel like they're getting the support that they need to be successful. That is a great point and thank you for sharing that. Would you go into that a little deeper? Like how how can we support them? I know you gave us a couple of examples, but what are the trends that volunteers are looking for right now? Like what are they seeking by way of support? Well, with skilled volunteering, pro bono consulting in particular, I think that they are often, again, as I said, they bring skills, but they want to develop others, so maybe they're really good at research and analysis, but they haven't developed their presentation or leadership skills. So we offer best practices. We offer training.  So you're learning from that. And we have a pipeline where you can then progress into those roles. So I think that that training and development piece is key. Yeah, I really appreciate that. One of the things I hear often is from board members and board development is, you know, oh, we need a finance person. So let's seek this person out from the financial industry. Well, the reality is maybe that person with their skilled, you know, asset, maybe they want to dip their toe into marketing and do something, something a little different. So thanks for shining light on that. We often find that and it's an interesting balance for us because I truly believe that we have two sets of beneficiaries, that it's really our nonprofit clients as well as our volunteers. And so while our clients may be looking for finance expertise, as you mentioned, we may have people with finance skills that are looking to get onto a marketing project, and so we have to balance that. And that's really interesting because, you know what? I would not have thought of that. I would have thought that it's like, you know, stick to the knitting and if they come, if they're a CPA and they're just going to be doing that. And that's fascinating. I'm a CPA and you don't want to put me on an accounting project. Oh, gosh. I do because, you know, I do think regardless of age, because you mentioned PINPAC in particular really has a diverse age base. And I love that. You know, and it really does speak to the fact that all of us, many of us, I should say, are really lifelong learners and looking to gain additional skill sets, it might be for a next chapter in life and what that might be. So I just I think it's really important for us to hear that. I would just add to that on that point. It's not only that we're looking to be, you know, lifelong learnings absolutely. But what you can learn when you bring together a cross-generational team is really unbelievable. And when we do get feedback, we often find that that's the kind of thing that people point to. OK, that's what we need you to come back to talk to us about is the cross generational team, how that works, how it's shifting. So again, we would love to have you back. I I know I'm confident that many of our viewers and listeners are going, you know, OK, I need to Google this, I need to figure out PINPAC. I want to submit an opportunity. How would we go about submitting a project, a potential project to your group, Karen? Yeah, so for our for our projects, our longer term ones that run in the fall and the spring, we accept project, we accept applications twice a year. And so for the spring, they will open up in maybe October. I have to check the date. But it's all on our website. And not only can people go to their web, our website, they can absolutely email me to Karen at PINPAC dot org. And yeah, I I have to apologize every day for my name. That's what it is. And that's what you know, I think this is great. Check out PINPAC dot org. It's just fascinating. And I agree with you, Jared. I think this could be one of those things that so many different organizations look at starting their own type of structure to to reach back into their communities. It's it's just a wonderful, wonderful idea. And really an interesting way to bring a lot of support and labor and knowledge to our nonprofits. Just fascinating. Karen, I am a big fan of Pro Bono broadly and happy to try and connect people with other organizations, whether they're not alumni of the university. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you for that. Thank you. Yeah. Check out PINPAC again dot org. Karen, this has just been fabulous. And and I think it just re reenergizes my my spirit when I think there are people out there that are well compensated who worked hard again across the trajectory of their careers and yet they want to get back to their communities. It's awesome. It's just awesome. I agree. I agree with you. I feel very fortunate to be able to work with with individuals who are so willing and generous with their time. Yeah, it's just awesome. Well, you've been a delight to be on again. I'm Julia Patrick with the American Non-profit Academy been joined today by my trusty sidekick, Jared Ransom. You're going to get to enjoy her by herself for a couple of days. I'll be rejoining you in a couple of days as well. We want to make sure that we thank all of our presenting sponsors without them, we would not have people on like Karen discussing such wonderful things. Blumerang, American Non-profit Academy, Fundraising Academy at National University, Non-profit Nerd, Your Part-Time Controller, Non-profit Thought Leader, and Stuffing Boutique. These are the folks that are joining with us day in and day out. Jared mentioned this, but I think Jared in is it next week or the week after we will hit our 600 episode? The week after, I believe it's I believe it's like the first week of August, so amazing. Yeah, we've been we've been hyping it up, you know, and I know. We have been. I think we started hyping it up and we didn't really know the date. But we did. Congratulations. Great to have you. Well, I think we're being part of the journey truly. We could not do this without our amazing guest and leaders like yourself. So, you know, our presenting sponsors, thank you, thank you, thank you to all of our guests, our viewers and our listeners. Truly, all of you are part of this team that keep us going towards this milestone. So, Julia, you know, I know we cannot do that alone. So thanks to all of you. Yeah, it's really amazing. You know, as we end every episode, we'd like to remind ourselves, our viewers and our listeners to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.


And as announced previously, we have the right now and before we go to the next point of our agenda, following the visit to Ukraine last month, it was possible for the Committee of the Regions to not only express to the Ukrainian government, namely to President Zelensky, the support and the willingness of the Committee of the Regions to Ukraine, but also to strengthen the partnership that can exist between the two sides to promote the cause of local and regional self-government. Today, it's our honor and pleasure for the Committee of the Regions to have a message from President Zelensky exactly about this. Before going to the message, I would like to welcome to our meeting the Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Embassy Mission to the European Union Ambassador Tadezhko and ask him to convey to Ukrainian authorities and to President Zelensky our deep appreciation for his willingness to share with us some words, some thoughts, and to convey also our full support and the war efforts and the preparation for the accession of Ukraine to the United to the European Union and also in the cause of the local and regional democratic self-government. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we are ready. And in fact, this way of life, we are also now united, united as never before, from the Dutch to the Eastern Ukraine, we see the only principles based on the organization of joint life, based on the control of the countries, based on the interaction between the state and the communities. Democracy and the respect for the individuality, the equality between the people and the communities, the respect for others and the power of the United Nations, all of this is our Europe, all of this is us and all of this is what we should not find in our common enemy. We must remember this. We are now fighting not only for the share of one of our countries, not only for the share of the Eastern Europe, but also for the share of all of Europe, which it has to stay, stay after us and you, ladies and gentlemen. When the cities and communities of Europe, your cities and communities, give support to our people, they help more than just people, they help ideas of Europe, our common home of all Europeans. And I thank you for this. When the Committee of the Regions of the European Union and your cities and communities work directly with Ukraine, with our cities and communities, this is a cooperation that strengthens and not just us and with you, but our Europe gives it strength. Thank you for this. When we introduced the decentralization reform in our country, we focused on the best European practice of governance and decentralization between the center and the communities. Now the control system in Ukraine, even in the conditions of the military time, corresponds to the European system of democracy. There may be different national views on what to do, what to do with the specific system of power in a specific country, but the basic principle of respect for the regions, respect for the government and community are obvious for everyone. Such examples of our common unity, of the common values of our common rights of life, are enough.  And the most fundamental connection of Ukraine to the European Union. I thank you for the fact that you support of our people on the path of integration and I am also sure that there will be one more thing Ukraine will be such a part of Europe in which there will be no ruins left. We will take every ruins that Russia has brought to its war. We will rebuild everything, we will do everything so that our strength, the strength of our people will be clear. In Ukraine there is a special institution, the Congress of the local and regional authorities. It is the Maydanchik that we have created to give more opportunities for the development of our region and the village, to make a better cooperation between the central authorities and the local authorities. Obviously, the Congress has to play a fundamental role in the construction programs. I invite you to cooperate at all levels, from the Congress of the local and regional authorities of Ukraine, as well as at the level of the entire committee of regions of the EU, as well as directly at your regions, our regions, your cities and communities, our cities and communities. I invite you to get to work and with the offices of the international cooperation that are being created for the most active work of the reconstruction of Ukraine. I invite you to visit our country, to visit the part of our Europe in which the share of our Europe is now resolved. It is resolved both as a weapon and as a reconstruction, both as a war and as an institution, as well as at the level of the central authorities and at the level of every village that values what we are the free Europeans. Thank you for your support. Thank you, Mr. President, for your attention, for the Committee on Ukraine. Glory to Ukraine!