147 connector has been completed and there are four to five other developments going down east of us on cheek road so I love I would love the fact of having fewer lesser density within the community I would like to let Kyle speak and let me just think on it for a minute thank you Mr. Mary yeah thanks and thanks Mr. Miller as well I think channeling a little of what I feel like I heard from Bonita I've got to give a giant caveat here in that we're across many different neighborhoods and communicating across people that didn't necessarily know each other before this so I am very hesitant to do anything like speak for anyone else I can only give kind of my own personal opinion so with that giant caveat being said you know I think I'm the belief that the hallmark of a great compromise is everyone walks away feeling kind of disappointed so with that context I think me personally if there was room to move on the density and of the conservation area I would say yes that would give a window where if we could compromise on those points that would at least present an opportunity I feel like I personally could support this that said I don't want to there are a lot of compelling points being made especially on the cheek road and Merrick more front to me which is less of a personal issue for me and more of something where I can more just want to support my neighbors who know the issues more personally there so that's something where in terms of like what is necessary and appropriate there I don't want to give a blanket you know approval where only these two things matter because I don't think that's the case but in my view a lot of the concerns whether they come down to the walkability of the neighborhood the streets the traffic impact the conservation the environmental impact they all do kind of boil down to these two giant factors and I think we're all here with the goal of a compromise and figuring out how to get to a yes with that in mind I think those are the two levers I would pick to pull to get there and I would hope that we could get there if there's room to move Mr. Chairman that's really all I had and I appreciate the straightforward and sincere answers we got from both sides I'm still not sure how I'm going to vote I will say that from the last time we saw this a lot of things in this development plan that are are I think really good I have to say that Mr. Seiver's careful look at the engineering problem associated with that sidewalk is something I really appreciate also the what I call the transitional use line that was drawn inside that red line inside the development plan where we're going to put single part at least some of the single family home component of the new development up against the existing single family neighborhood so that existing neighbors won't have a townhouse building immediately next to them I think that that's a really thoughtful and clever idea for addressing some of the concerns we heard last time with this case so that kind of thinking involved here and as a result of people getting together and talking I find very rewarding and I hate to lose those gains simply because we have gaps that we could close and I would love to see those gaps close because I believe we have people of good will on both sides of this but we've already delayed it once and we may have to vote tonight I'm not sure where we stand on the 90 days given the confused nature of our schedule so I'll listen to what the other commission members say and be persuaded by them thank you very much thank you commission Miller and the staff can correct me if I get it wrong we continue this from our July meeting so I believe there's only one cycle and we're about to get back on track in terms of meeting just once a month so but it's less than a month so I think it's a pretty limited amount of time so I believe we'll be voting this evening Commissioner Durkin I'm not going to raise what everybody else already went into a lot of detail on the opponent side and I appreciate the time that everybody has spent on this I do have one question for 10 cybers have you heard from any of the business owners along Harvest Street so I'm moving away from the residential concerns because I think they've been spoken about at length but on the industrial uses on the other side of the property of Harvest Street I'm just curious if you've heard from any of them thank you Commissioner Durkin Tim cybers for about the associates yes I have spoken with a few of them most of them it was either two or three of them specifically the developer or property owner at the end of Harvest Street it's number 14 on the plan that abuts our property but all the everyone I spoke to along Harvest Street was in favor of this development they had no concerns with it okay I was just concerned just having moving the residential use closer to the more industrial use and just as a concern really of losing that kind of use in Durham since it's being sort of forced out by residential development and just wanting to keep those uses available where they are so it's not really a full fed alleged complaint necessarily just something I wanted to raise I'm also very much on the fence and leaning towards no just given all of the other concerns that were raised but I just wanted to bring that one thanks thank you Commissioner Durkin thank you chair sorry that was looking for the unmute button you know I was kind of looking at that I actually went around that whole neighborhood it is real looks like a real challenging area to really develop in that area and what one of the things that it seems to jump out at me is this area has kind of been a buffer between the residential and the commercial use or industrial use and like Commissioner Durkin just brought up the concern about bringing that closer to each other and it sounds like adding the connectivity to Cheek Road all of a sudden kind of brings that neighborhood into that industrial realm so my concern would be is the safety as well with people going through or traffic coming through and it seems like bumping up against these infrastructure issues with streets or roads that are not set up to handle that type of traffic so my concern is I guess it would be another question to transportation again is there any plans for upgrading Cheek Road or doing anything to help improve that flow or to improve the potential that this neighborhood may bring as far as connectivity Burling Thomas Transportation so currently there are no funded projects planned but the long range transportation plan does include a modernization project for Cheek Road but it would still be just two lanes with bicycle lanes and sidewalks and that project is not currently funded okay thank you again it just comes back to looking at the neighborhood certainly in Milan Woods it's a really nice neighborhood certainly a lot of just a lot of just really good attributes to it and opening that up for traffic just seems rather negative to me as I could see why the residents are concerned about the increased traffic and the connectivity to Cheek Road and I do appreciate the developer trying to mitigate some of the different concerns as well as some of the transportation type things so anyway that was just my comments thanks Commissioner Morgan Commissioner Baker thanks just wanted to point out some of the things I like about this project first is the average block length that's not to exceed 700 feet this is something that comes up a lot something that we need to incorporate into standards but a lot of developers have been putting this in especially Tim the proximity to Merrick Moore really the proximity to existing areas, existing neighborhoods and transportation to me shows that this is a property that should be developed even though this area doesn't have the connectivity that it should have and the infrastructure isn't where it should be that from a locational standpoint and proximity to jobs and other things this is a relatively appropriate place to be building something also the trails I'm happy to see the commitment for trails 30% open space higher than normal compared to what we usually see the stormwater improvements important and also responded to some of the things that the neighborhoods wanted to see the front facing gable architectural feature not quite reaching what I'd like to see but certainly worth noting and then of course the fact that again because of improved standards over the past months and maybe even a year or two there will be sidewalks in both sides there will be street trees in the right of way and so there are a number of good things here and also the fact that Tim worked the neighborhood thanks to the hard work and organizing of the neighborhood the initiative that the neighborhood took and so that's to be applauded to me this is another textbook case of low density unsustainable sprawl note that this property is five times the size of the property that we saw in the first case that we saw today very very large site it's not a it is a slightly awkward site but it's very large there's a lot that can be done with it this proposal is for a ton of single family detached as well as single family attached to me that's a limitation of housing options for such a large property I don't necessarily agree and support the idea of there being a lower density but I do support the idea of protecting the valuable open space that exists on the property and to me that means that there's an opportunity for additional concentration of the residential units in the form of another type of housing maybe it's a small scale multifamily also just in thinking about enhancing access during residence to small scale walkable commercial employment opportunities that's woven into the fabric of such large sites there's nothing here that speaks to that especially given the scale to me there's also sort of a lack of a guarantee as we saw in the last case to ensure the buildings front on to centralize true public civic spaces I love seeing alleys for best practices purposes not a necessity for me it doesn't really swing me in one direction or the other but it is something that I like to see also just that there's no indication again that we're going to be seeing any sort of sustainability and green building standards of green building elements of the development maybe there will be but we don't have that secured and that doesn't make me comfortable especially given the reality of climate change and then as always affordable housing we can't talk about this issue enough this is the issue of our city the issue of our time and 40,000 dollars for 100 acres it's just too bad it's really too bad and the reality is that we can't demand more but we can certainly ask for more and hope that developers eventually start doing the right thing I think some people might say well it's something versus nothing but not me and I think a lot of the other commissioners on here would agree with that so those are my thoughts I'm going to be voting against this case despite some of the things that I like seeing and we'll hand it over thank you commissioner lampreed thank you I have just a couple of points I'm also going to be voting no on this I appreciate the developers addition of the sidewalk to Merrick Moore elementary I think that's extremely important especially given the moving community testimony about a six year old child dying on the road I think it's an important obligation of the planning commission to protect people in our community and when we allow development that is the large scale sprawling development in an area without pedestrian or bike access particularly to an elementary school I think we violate that obligation the sidewalk helps certainly as does the possibility of access to the elementary school through the neighborhood itself which I believe would be possible based on the map but it would be very dangerous to get anywhere else aside from the elementary school basically so I'm not comfortable moving forward given that and I want to thank bike Durham for their involvement also and raising some of these important safety issues and the community members who've raised them I take them very seriously and I also want to point out that for such a large development look that is sprawling which I'm not inclined to support I would look to see what other community benefits are there and weigh those the development that we looked at earlier tonight and that narrowly passed they were looking at providing $173 per unit to the affordable housing fund whereas this developer is offering about $90 per unit based on my rough math and about as compared to the prior developer who's offering about $217 per unit to the Durham public schools this developer is clocking in more around 45 so I think we've seen better and we've had close a close vote just tonight on greater community benefits and so for that reason I'll be voting now thank you thank you thank you chair I just briefly want to say you know I feel like we've been seeing a lot of promising movement lately with a lot of the cases we've seen and this is another example of where there's a lot to gain because as everyone has said there's been a lot of improvements made on this particular case since the last time it received the planning commission which was before my time but nevertheless I see the improvements and I think that to me is inspiring because we as Durham are asking for more and we are demanding more and we as a planning commission are asking for more and yet we still haven't quite got there and I think that is both unfortunate but also inspiring because I see the vision of where we are going and what we are asking developers to do and what we want our city and our county to look like because of some of the comments other commissioners have made tonight I will be voting no on this proposal but I look forward to seeing more improvements in the future thank you thank you commissioner Armandolia anyone else commissioners who would like to speak raise your hand or not I'll share that I'm in the same boat I appreciate all the additions here and I wish we were in a position on some other cases that we've had recently where either the community was here saying we worked it out, we listened to each other and we found that common ground or the neighborhood was good and they didn't need to come and share any concerns that they had because everything worked out it pains me because this is the third case in a row that Mr. Cybers has brought that has a great deal of positive changes and I know he is working hard and yet we still are at an impasse where very reasonable community members are making reasonable raising reasonable concerns and so Mr. Cybers I hope you keep at it because I do appreciate a lot of the proffers you made the stormwater proffer tonight as Mr. White noted that's the kind of proffer I want to see over and over again so I hope you will stay with it and I hope there is time before this moves to city council for additional conversations we are out of time here at the planning commission so we're going to vote this evening and I am going to vote no to continue to stand with the multiple community members who spoke this evening but I do hope that this conversation will continue and there may be some opportunities to keep working to find common ground even though we are in the home stretch at this point so thanks for hearing my comments I don't see any other commissioners asking to speak so this is the appropriate time to make a motion Mr. Chair shall I please Mr. Chairman and members of the commission with regard to case Z19 0000 21 the property at 2720 Fawcett avenue I recommend that we send this forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation second thank you moved by commissioner Miller seconded by commissioner amandolia and we'll have a roll call vote please commissioner amandolia commissioner amandolia no commissioner baker no chair busby no commissioner dirkin no commissioner johnson no vice chair kington no commissioner lamprey no commissioner miller no commissioner morgan no and commissioner williams no okay the motion fails 012 thank you thanks to everyone who stayed with us this evening and offered your feedback on this case we do have one final item it's not a case but I'm going to hand it to miss smith to run the 2020 election of chair and vice chair okay so it is September hard to believe but it's election time so so many elections okay we'll start with the nominations for I'll take nominations for the vice chair position like the nominate vice chair kenshin I'd be happy to second that if it's required be great any other nominations for vice chair I move that we close those nominations seconded and I'll take a roll call vote on the nomination commissioner amandoya commissioner baker yes chair busby commissioner durkin yes commissioner johnson yes vice chair kenshin yes commissioner lambfreet yes commissioner low well I don't know yes commissioner McIver yes commissioner miller and commissioner morgan yes commissioner williams and I apologize vice chair kenshin that I ask you to vote for yourself I just a little slight there sure he begins at home yes okay so now I will take nominations for the position of chair I would like to nominate chair busby for chair seconded whose second was it morgan yes are there any other nominations I don't have a nomination but I would like to ask anyone who's nominated to questions okay go ahead for everyone who's nominated my question is everyone that's won everyone who's nominated what what are your top priorities on the planning commission in light of some of the recent movements that we've been seeing and the second question is how will you represent the views coming out of the planning commission including our views of advancing a just inclusive and sustainable city how will you represent those views on JCCPC as the only I know that that's breaking from tradition because we usually just but but I'm just those are important questions and I think that you know obviously I support you as chair and I know that you'll be able to answer those but I like the idea of us having a little bit of discussion about the planning commission in general and the leadership on the planning commission absolutely and well first of all I would say this is absolutely just a group effort and it's harder than ever at least for me I'm sure it's for all of you as well doing this by zoom and maybe this is a timely time to ask the question Nate because finally through the backlog we are now back to meeting monthly my number one priority personally on the planning commission and it's frankly why I've stuck with it when it got really hard during these endless zoom meetings where we were up late and I have lots of other pressing things as all of you do I want us to finish the comprehensive plan but to do it in a way that has critical community engagement we get the equitable engagement right but that we also do it soon enough that it does happen on schedule because as you've noted numerous times the things that we are getting done are when we're raising the bar on the comp plan and on the UDO and the things that undergird everything we're doing every time we raise the bar then we have to deliberate on all the other items so for me that's just my number one priority and I want to work with all of you to make that happen we'll talk about this in a minute but now that we're through the backlog I know that the staff believes that they can take on actually starting to schedule one just some more updates in our regular meetings but two to get back to having our periodic gatherings that we were having off of our meeting schedule to talk about the comp plan and some of the other changes and things we want to make I also would love to figure out some of the stuff that we do isn't written in stone so now that we're through the backlog I'd love to work with all of you to think about how might we do things differently we don't have to do the public hearings the way we do them we don't have to start at the time but we've been starting so this is a time for us to rethink how we do things and not just because we might be meeting remotely for some time the engagement of the public is more critical than ever so anyway from my perspective that's my priority but I want to hear from all of you and my commitment to all of you is that I will work with all of you and we're a team to do this together to try to advance how we do our business and the priorities that we bring to the mix I'll say on the JCCPC you know the thing that I can do is I can let you all know when the meetings are coming and let you know when the agenda is up the challenge to be frank with all of you is the agenda is often up a week beforehand and so I don't know what's going to be on the JCCPC's agenda until about a week out and it's another big packet on top of our regular packet but that said I will flag that and I would love to hear from all of you to represent the planning commission when we have those meetings and to be able to better flag when things are coming but I'll also work with staff to see if we can get advance updates about things that might be coming through JCCPC that will then come to us because I know it's tough when we get stuff and we get told it's been through JCCPC it sort of has that imprint of approval and now it's in front of us it'd be nice to actually have an update somewhere in between as well so I hope that answers your questions yeah that's great thank you I wanted to throw in that with regard to our virtual meetings I have it on the very highest authority that by the first week of November we will have a vaccine and we will be able to stop doing it this way not even for me so I'm happy to answer any other questions but we have a motion since I'm presiding over the election we have a motion by Commissioner Landfrey seconded by Commissioner Morgan and it seems that Chair Busby has addressed the questions that were posed it was actually the other lawyer with the curly motion did you make it I wasn't looking down oh look at that I was so dark you do look a lot alike I was actually looking down and did that by voice I apologize motion by Commissioner Durkin and seconded by Commissioner Morgan can I get a roll call vote starting with Commissioner Amondola yes Commissioner Baker yes Chair Busby oh never mind don't vote Commissioner Durkin yes Commissioner Johnson yes Vice-Chair Keyneson yes Commissioner Landfrey yes Commissioner Lowe yes Commissioner McIver yes Commissioner Miller well I don't know yes Commissioner Morgan of course and Commissioner Williams absolutely well we'll do this again at the same time next year I'm just going to say thank you looking forward to continuing to working with all of you and Vice-Chair Keyneson and we got some big work to do but I'm excited that we're through the backlog and we can begin to pivot back towards some proactive work together Grace anything more that we need to know today so next month we're just back at our regular meeting time so three weeks from today and that is our only meeting in October is that correct right we have we are meeting in October and we're going to either have we're going to most likely have three cases before it just we're trying to firm up some things right now we've had so much in the way of staff changes that we're trying to get our feet back under us and but keep some things moving at the same time so we'll see you on regular schedule in October that is correct great so can you update us on the status of appointments as far as I know they're just being advertised right now so I know that commissioner Santiago's appointment may have already been advertised I do not know that I need to check with the clerk I do not believe commissioner our Turks was or maybe it's getting ready to be because he just vacated the seat at the last meeting so those are both city appointments correct and then we have we will seems like we will have and then commissioner Johnson did you want to share your news with the group if I didn't I guess I should go ahead and do it now yeah I mean I thought it'd be a good time as any so but so I've informed Grayson the planning department well through her as well as the chair and vice chair that at the end of the year I'll be stepping away from the commission due to me for positioning and preparing to have her own some pursuits in 2021 that will require me to be away from I'll still be home will still be Durham in the triangle area but I'll be away a lot and so in respect for the position and honoring the responsibilities that come with it I think that it's best for me to see step aside and let someone else come in and take my place so at the end of the year I'll be stepping aside I hate that I think our resolution is going to be not cool but good for you right so so to answer your question commissioner Miller we have two that are being sought now and we'll have another vacancy at the end of December that we'll be advertising for but I will keep you all posted on how those progress right thank you very much grace of course any any other business for this evening all right we are adjourned thanks everyone have a good night thank you everybody thank you good night


Hi, y'all doing today? I messed that up. I gotta do that again, sorry. Welcome to the RubyConf keynote. I'm your host, Saran, and today we're talking about how to build authentic and engage, that's right, two things, communities. Now, the keyword, the star of today's talk is that very last word, communities. And to really dig into communities and explore it and unpack it, first I have to tell you a little bit about my childhood. So I'm Ethiopian, I'm an immigrant. I was born in the capital of Ethiopia. Shout out if you know what that is, it's Addis Ababa. And my father came to the U.S. to this country first, and then my mother and I followed about a year later. And when we came here, I grew up in a very traditional, stereotypical Ethiopian immigrant household. Now, if you are not familiar with the stereotype of traditional Ethiopian immigrant households, don't worry, I'm gonna tell you all about it. My father was very strict, he was a disciplinarian. He believed in education, and well actually that was kinda it, he really just believed in education. He believed that if you got good grades and the only good grade, of course, is an A+. Unless you're in one of those really sketchy classes where they don't do pluses and minuses and you just have to deal with just an A, then fine, we'll take it. And he believed that you would then go to a really good college, and of course that college was Harvard. I don't think that he knew about Ivy Leagues as a concept, but he knew about Harvard, so that was the goal. And if you did those things, then you would end up with the most respectable profession that there is, which is of course to be a doctor. So we've all failed as a unit, we failed. That's okay, that's fine. And if you did these things, then you would have a life that was not necessarily happy, but that was successful. And why be happy when you can be successful? So that was his goal for me, that was the life that he planned for me. And so in order for me to follow this plan, of course I had to have a distraction-free childhood. Anything that would take me off this path was just not acceptable. Having friends over to have fun? Absolutely not. To go to other people's houses where they would not be doing their math homework? I don't think so. To go to the mall where lives the ultimate distraction boys? Not okay. So let's just say that I didn't really get out much as a kid. In fact, the only community that I really knew and that I interacted with on a regular basis was our own community, the Ethiopian immigrant community. And if you think about the Ethiopian immigrant community, really if you think about any immigrant community, it's a relatively vulnerable one. You have people who've left everything behind, going from one country to another country, which often feels like going from one world to a whole other world. They don't always speak the language, and if they do they don't speak it well.  They're also leaving behind their professions, their careers, because a lot of those, especially professional degrees, do not transfer. They're starting over in almost every sense of the word. And when they get here, they're not always welcome. They're not always wanted, and they're definitely not always safe. But for some reason, they seem to always find that welcome, wanting, safe place in our living room. That's where they gathered. And the person who gathered them was my mommy. That's me and my mommy. Aren't we so cute? Yes, we are. As you can see, I've always been, always been fly. And my mom was a community organizer. She was a community builder. And at that point, you know, as a kid, I think I took that for granted. I didn't think much of that because, well, she's a nice lady. She cooks good food. Her living room is nice. It has some cushy seats. So why wouldn't you want to hang out with us? But if you really think about it, especially as an adult looking back, there were lots of nice people in our community. There were lots of people who could cook well. And frankly, there were people who had bigger living rooms and more resources than we did. So why did they keep coming back to our living room? What made our living room feel so magical? There are a few things I think that my mother did intentionally that created this magical living room. That's what we're going to dig into now. The first is that she was first to serve and last to eat. She was the host that ran around and made sure that your plates were full, your cups were full, that you were happy and fed and comfortable. And maybe at the end, if she had a chance to grab her own plate, she'd put something together. And we'd kind of chase her around and go, you need to eat, you need to eat, you need to eat. And she'd go, uh-huh, uh-huh, okay, whatever. And she was so focused on making sure that we were taken care of. And by doing that, what she told us was that we were the most important people in the room. That our needs were valued. The other thing that she did was she led by observing. She wasn't one of those hosts who would clink a glass and make an announcement and say, hello, welcome to my dinner party. I don't know where that accent came from. Definitely doesn't talk like that. But she didn't do that kind of thing. She led by watching, making sure you were happy, noticing little things, jumping in to fix them. She'd look at your plate and she would notice that you didn't eat one of your dishes. And she would go, why didn't you eat that? Was something wrong? And you'll say, oh, it was too spicy, it was a little too spicy, don't do heat that well. And she'd go, okay. And she wouldn't say anything. But the next time that you come over to the magical living room, she'd have a whole set of dishes just for you. And they were the not spicy version of the stuff that everyone else was eating. And she'd pull you aside and she'd go, this, this right here, that's for you. And she wouldn't make a big fuss about it. There was no announcement of how amazing and thoughtful she was.  The last thing she did is she solved many little problems. My favorite example of this is Thanksgiving a few years ago. So in case you don't know, Thanksgiving is an American holiday. We don't really do that in Ethiopia. But because you have the day off and we are in America, we celebrate, we have family over, we cook mostly Ethiopian dishes. We also do have the turkey and mashed potatoes and mac and cheese. And one Thanksgiving a few years ago, we forgot the gravy. And I said, thank you, yes, yes, yes. It's horrific, I understand. And I said to my mom, oh, Michael, we forgot the gravy. What are we going to do? Is the grocery store even open at this hour? It's pretty like, oh, my God, are we going to have to go to the gas station? Are we getting gas station gravy? Unacceptable. How are we going to solve this problem? And my mom said, don't worry, I'll take care of it. And we're all crowded around her in the kitchen watching her, and she goes and grabs some flour and some spices and some turkey juice. Is that how you make gravy? I'm not entirely sure. And she whips together something and it's the best gravy I've ever had.  We, our spices, are not made from flour and spices and turkey juice, okay? Our spices are made from a lot of onions and a lot of spices, okay? That's our version of sauces and gravies. We don't do turkey gravy. So the fact that she just figured out how to put together gravy while everyone's standing watching and waiting was incredible to me. And at the end of the day, Thanksgiving would not have been ruined, arguably, if there was no gravy. But she saw that little problem and she jumped on it, she figured it out, and she made dinner a little bit more delicious for us. Now, if you abstract some of the steps I've talked about in these examples, you might notice a little pattern, and that pattern is that she was understanding, understanding her community, understanding her people. She was building, whether it's gravy or new dishes. She was learning, she was observing, taking a step back, taking notes, and then she was iterating, making it better for us. Do these steps look familiar? I kind of hope they do. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like product building, right? It's kind of like the stuff we do all the time. What she was doing and building up her community and creating that magical living room for us is not really fundamentally that different from what we all do. And in doing these things, even though in her world she was applying it to relatively small problems, after all, most of the examples I gave you were related to just food. By doing these things, she made us all feel like we were valued. She made us feel like we were wanted and welcome and safe. Fast forward many years later, I am now an adult, I'm a grown woman, thank you very much. And I decided that I was going to learn to code, and if you don't know, if you don't remember, if that was too long ago for you, learning to code looks a lot like this. You turn into a cartoon when you learn to code. Now, learning to code for me was super frustrating, it was painful, it was difficult, it was like it was me against the computer, and the computer is always right. And I did it for a few months on my own and then I decided to apply and enrolled in a boot camp. I graduated from the Flatiron School in Manhattan. Actually, they're in a bunch of places now. Shout out to the Flatiron School. And when I got to that boot camp, I was suddenly in a room full of 44 other people who understood the highs and the lows, who knew what it felt like when nothing worked, and how worth it was when it finally did. And for me, the biggest value of that was really that community. And when I graduated, I felt so lucky, I was so excited.  And those are the rules. And when I graduated, I was so excited. I said, yes, I am finally a real developer, I could do things, I know some stuff. But really what I knew most was the fact that that community of students was really what helped me get across that finish line and finish strong. Now the problem is that that community in that boot camp cost me $11,000 in many months without a salary. And this is frankly kind of on the cheap end. Boot camps nowadays go up to $20, $25,000. And even if you can afford that, and keep in mind, there aren't like student loans, right? And even if you could afford that, not a lot of people can go three, four, six months without income. And then another couple months when they're looking for a job. So that's an inaccessible investment. And what I understood from that experience is that community is key, especially for me, community was everything and also inaccessible. But don't worry, I'm gonna do something about it. I have no fear. I decided that I was going to build a way for people to have that sense of community. I was gonna build something called Code Newby.   Okay, y'all got some learning to do. That's okay, I'm here. I'm gonna figure it out. Don't worry. So a Twitter chat is when you have a hashtag for us. It was Code Newby. And then you pick a time in a day for us. It's Wednesday. It's actually today. Wednesday at 6 p.m. Pacific time, 9 p.m. Eastern time. And the idea with a Twitter chat is that if you all get on Twitter at that time and you do a search for that hashtag and everyone's tweeting and using the hashtag, then you get a nice little thread. You get a conversation you can follow. You can jump in. You can favorite. You can retweet. You can engage. And so I said this Twitter chat medium sounds like a really good accessible way to find other new developers, to find your community. And at that point, this was about four years ago now, it seemed like everybody was doing a Twitter chat. There was a Twitter chat for every single topic. And so I said, okay, how do I build a magical Twitter chat? What does that look like? How do you make it magical? Well, for us, there are a couple things. Number one is we had three rules. We start every single Twitter chat with three rules. Be helpful, be supportive, be nice.   But the other thing it does is it signals to everyone else what they can expect when they join. It says, hey, if you need support, if you need help, if you need a little bit of kindness in your world, especially on your coding journey, this place will give you that. The other thing we did, which I think is very, very important, is we were disgustingly, sickeningly, aggressively nice. If you tweeted us and said, oh, I just finished a coding tutorial, you know what you're going to get? Five heart emojis. Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.  Yeah, you're proud of that? Uh-huh. Yeah? That's right, that's right. Oh, I'm sorry, are you nervous? Are you nervous for your first technical interview tomorrow, for your first developer job? You are? Yeah? Well, get these huggy smiley emojis, okay? This is the best one. Seriously, this right here is where it's at. Right here, huggy smiley emoji. But in being aggressively, disgustingly nice, what we're doing is we keep out people who find that kind of annoying, because it is kind of annoying, right? Can you imagine going up to someone trying to be mean to them and going, you're ugly, and they're like, I love you. Then it doesn't really work, what do you say? You're like, okay, I need to get away from you. Which is fine. Here's the thing about inclusion. Inclusion makes it sound like you want everybody in your community, but you don't. You don't. There are some people you'll want to keep out, okay? You want to keep out the bad apples and the mean people, and when you're really disgustingly nice to people, they don't want to sit with you. And that's fine. That's totally fine. In fact, I didn't even appreciate how seriously I took this until a few years ago. It was a Wednesday morning I woke up and I had this horrible pain, this terrible pain in my right shoulder. And throughout the day, it was getting worse and worse to the point where I couldn't even lift. I couldn't lift my arm. It was so painful. And literally two minutes, two minutes before the Twitter chat started, it got so bad that I started screaming in pain, just crying in pain.  Raise your hand. How you doing? Mmm, so fine. He looks at me and he goes, I think we should go to the emergency room. And I'm like, no. It's Twitter chat time. And I said, I'm going to dictate and you're going to type. So he's sitting at the computer on my laptop and he's responding to people and tweeting. And I'm like, there's not enough exclamation points. We have three exclamation points minimum, okay? Susie tweets, oh, I just finished my first book. Congratulations, Susie. And there's a time in your life when you find yourself screaming emojis at the person that you love. And when you realize how seriously you take the work that you do. So the Twitter chats are going amazingly. People are finding mentors and support systems and resources and saying all these wonderful things. And then I started getting a few DMs. I got a few messages from people who said, hey, I love what you're doing. I love this Twitter chat idea. I want to participate. I want to get that help and support. But when you do your Twitter chat, I'm still asleep. I'm halfway across the world. It's two o'clock in the morning for me. Or it's six o'clock in the morning and I have to get the kids ready for school. What can you do for me? How can I join in? And this is when I realized the developers and Twitter chat organizers have a common enemy. Time zones. Terrible. Terrible. Oh. The worst. The worst. And I said, oh man, what am I going to do? I can't be awake at every single hour. And especially at that point, these Twitter chats were a fun side project and I had a full-time job. And even if I could, I don't really want to be doing Twitter chats at every single hour. But I said, I think there's something we can do. I think we can iterate and we can do an alternate chat. So now we do a morning chat on Sundays at 11 a.m. Pacific time. And that one's more of a coding check-in. It's an opportunity for you to say, here's what I did this week and here's what I'm going to do next week. It's a nice little accountability situation. But here's the thing. If those people had not spoken up we would not have those Sunday morning chats. That time zone issue wasn't one that was top of mind for me. I was so excited about just the fact that we have this community that that barrier was in my blind spot. So Codenoby continues. Things are going great. The chats are going awesome. But what I realize in these Twitter chats is that Twitter's a really great way to discover new people and new ideas and to quickly, efficiently get a lot of information in just one little hour. But it's not a great medium to dig deep, to explore, to unpack something. And so I thought, okay, what's a better way to do that? And because my first job out of college was actually working at NPR, I thought podcasting, audio, that's a really great medium. It's a really great tool to do that. Now when I looked at the technical podcast, the options out there, what I understood was that there is, there are a lot of technical content but few technical stories. A lot of the technical shows nerd out, geek out about the tech, which is awesome. But from newer developers, this idea of coding is interesting because of what you can do with it and who you can do it with and what the effects are. There's this whole story element, the people of it, the where, the why, the how, that's really, really fascinating. And I found largely overlooked by these podcasts. But I have no fear, I am here. And I decided that I'm going to build the Code to Be podcast. But how do you build a podcast that is magical? What does that look like? What does that mean? So there are a couple of things. Number one, for our community, it is super important that they hear validation that they belong. That is huge. Because when you think about who developers are, there are two pretty dominant narratives. Number one is the idea that you went to a top 10 school, you have your computer science degree, and now you're working at a big tech company or a hot new startup, and you're kind of set for life. Or the other one is that you were born with a computer and you've been coding since birth. And that's kind of it. Those are really the two main stories. And I knew that wasn't true. I know that people become developers from all different backgrounds and for different reasons. And I wanted to showcase that. And so what I did was I tried to pick guests who come from all different kinds of back to different places. So here's a little snapshot of some of the guests that we've had. And we try to think about race and gender, but also parts of the world, what languages they code in, how they got to coding, how they became developers. And it was fascinating to me to hear stories of people who I just assumed have been coding since they were born, telling me, oh, I didn't actually discover coding until I was 25. You had a cat's great example, created EmberJS, right? Did not, did not know coding until he was about 25. Chad Fowler, another great example, was a saxophonist. Could you have guessed? A saxophonist. Didn't know what code was until about 22, 23. And those stories are super important to tell. And in doing so, you create almost an anti-narrative that says that there is no narrative. That if you want to do it, if you put in the time and the work that you belong here, there is a space for you. So validation is super important. But there's another kind of validation, which is that they can do this.  I'm not made for this. I'm not born for this. And it's super important for me that we combat that. And there are many ways to do this. A lot of it is in the types of questions you ask and the guests that you pick and the way you design the interview. But there's something really small that I try and do that I want to call out. A lot of times in our shows, we talk about technical things. And the guests will mention a buzzword or some piece of jargon, some technical term that the audience may not be familiar with. And so they'll say, for example, testing. Let's do a simple one, testing. And they'll say, hey, you know, you can test your code. And most hosts, if they catch that, they'll say, oh, can you define what testing is for people listening who may not be familiar? And that sounds very thoughtful. It sounds like a nice kind thing to do. But in phrasing it that way, can you define testing for people who may not know what that is? What you're really saying is I know what testing is. You know what testing is. Those other people should know what testing is. But for some reason they don't say, can we help them out? It feels a little bit like charity, like knowledge charity, that's a thing. If that isn't a thing, I totally coined it. I came up with it. But it feels a little bit like charity. And for the person listening, it's a little paper cut. It's a little reminder that I really should have known what that is. So what I try and do in my show is I pretend not to know anything. That's my strategy. Testing, oh, what is testing? I've heard of that before. Can you explain what that is to me? I try to be the audience, to be that person who doesn't know. And it's funny, because sometimes I'll get texts from friends who listen to the show and go, I know you know what that is. And I'm like, yes, usually I do, but that's not the job. The other thing that I try and do to make this podcast magical is that I try to get out of the way. This is super important. I am the host, the executive producer, the booker on the show, but I am also the least important person on an episode. And I'm going to prove it to you. I'm going to prove that I get out of the way. This is our episode, season five, episode eight with Chad Fowler. These are the audio files for it. As you can see, that top row is my audio. And that bottom is Chad. Chad likes to talk. And as you can see, I don't really say that much. In fact, most of those audio waves aren't even me asking questions. They're sound effects. They're me going, mm-hmm, and mm-hmm. That's all you need to be a podcast host, by the way. If you can nail those two sound effects down, you are good. You are absolutely good. But I am not the star. Me talking doesn't really do anything for the audience. It's Chad. It's his story that's inspiring, that's educating, that's entertaining. So I try and give him all the space that he needs. And just to prove to you that that wasn't a unique example, here's one we did with Scott Hanselman. This one's an early one. This is episode 17. We've done 190 episodes so far. And same thing. I think Scott likes to talk a little bit more than Chad. That's okay though. But same idea, right? I say very, very little. And he says a whole lot, as he should. The audience learns from him, not from me. So things are going great. People are saying awesome, amazing things about how they're learning and they're inspired and they're excited and they're motivated. And then about a year ago, we started a brand new show called the Base CS podcast. And yeah, okay. I did not pay them, I swear. Now this Base CS podcast came from a woman named Vaidhi Joshi. And she... I didn't take you all everywhere. Y'all are awesome. Oh my goodness. And she... Here's the third one, ready? And she also graduated from the Flatiron School. There you go. And she did not have a computer science degree. And she really wanted one. She wanted that education. And so she decided she was going to teach herself. So for a year, she was going to learn all the computer science. She was going to turn it into blog posts. Every week, she was going to publish a blog post. And I remember seeing the tweet announcing she was going to do this and I thought, yeah, okay. That sounds like a lot of work and I know you have a job job, so we'll see how far this gets. And she did it. 52 weeks later, there are 52 blog posts and they're really good. And I read that and I thought, we need to turn this into a podcast. Because if we did, we can make computer science education accessible through a whole different medium. And so now we do these 20-minute episodes where I'm the student, she's the teacher, and she's teaching me computer science and there's lots of puns and bad jokes and it's great. Raise your hand if you've heard of Car Talk, NPR. NPR show Car Talk? Okay. Someone recently compared it to Car Talk. They said that it was Car Talk, and that is very accurate. So if you like Car Talk, you'll probably like the bassiest podcast. And so about one season in, I get an email from a listener and the email says, thank you so much for creating this. This was wonderful, it was super helpful and it's been really important to me and my being able to level up because I'm blind. So a lot of the computer science education that I've tried simply isn't made for me. I can't consume it. And this is one of the few mediums that's actually worked. And I read that and I thought, holy crap, that's awesome. But it also made me very aware that in all the stuff I was doing and the content I was creating and the people I was trying to help, not once did accessibility cross my mind. I never asked that question of, ooh, how does this affect people who learn in different ways? I don't know about that. And in that email, it drew my attention to the fact that well, if you can't hear, then what do you do? You can't listen to the podcast, so what do you do? And so because of that email, we iterated and now we do transcripts. So we transcribe all of our bassiest episodes in our Konobi podcast episodes. But here's the thing. If that one listener hadn't spoken up, we would not have transcripts. It's not something I thought about. So if we look at the different examples we talked about, the bassiest podcast, the Konobi podcast, the Konobi Twitter chats, these are all online projects, which is great because that means that you have internet connection, then you can join in, you can participate, you can download, you can subscribe. It's awesome. But there's something really special about in real life, right? There's something different about being and hearing you and talking to you. There's something very different and special about that. And if I think about my own career as a developer, conferences have been super important to me. And I really wanted to do something for newbies, but the thing that I understood from all the conferences I've gone to is that most conferences aren't great for newbies. They're just not made for newbies. But once again, have no fear. I am here. And I'm going to build the ultimate conference for newbies, and it will be called Code Land, the Land of All the Code. And this conference is going to be magical. But what makes a magical conference? What does that look like? Well, there are a few things that are particularly important, some specific pain points for newer developers. One is it's really important to follow and understand the talk. That's nice, right? To understand the things that you hear. That's a good idea. One tricky for new developers is when they go to technical talks, even the ones that are called beginner-friendly or newbie-friendly aren't really newbie-friendly. They're new to this particular topic-friendly, but not new to code-friendly. Let me explain what that means. When you learn your first language, usually it hurts. It's really painful. You don't know how to navigate the docs. You don't realize that error messages are your friends and you should read them, not run from them. You don't realize that when things break, you did not break the machine. There are lots of little things about learning that first language that can be hard for new developers.  It's a lot easier. You know how to use the docs. You may not actually read the error messages, but you consider reading the error messages. Right. We're getting better. And it's much easier for you to look at something that's broken or not working and go, that's totally normal. That's just how it is.  I don't think I can do this.  Let's be doing something right. That's the difference. And so when new developers walk into these technical talks with words and jargon and buzzwords and all these things that they don't know about, they go, oh, crap, they get overwhelmed, they get frustrated, and they check out in a way that I don't think more experienced developers do. And so to combat this, to help people stay on the same track, we created these conference booklets. And these conference booklets were a huge pain to make, but totally worth it. These conference booklets were me going to all of our speakers and saying, I need a list of all of your resources so that if people want to learn more about this topic, they know where to go. And I want a list of all the tech terms that will be mentioned in your talk and a definition.   And it was a really great way of saying, hey, you won't get lost. We're here. We're taking care of you. And it was super, super helpful. The other thing that's super important is that newbies need the why. I think the more technical we get, the more in the weeds we get, we get like really excited about the weeds. We get really excited about the implementation and the how does it work and what is it doing. And we sometimes kind of forget who is it for and why are we using them in the first place and what are the side effects. We forget to take a step back and talk about the bigger picture but for new developers that bigger picture is really important. That's the part that gets us really excited. And so to make sure that we address this at CodeLand, I personally coached each of our speakers. Over the two years there were over 80 speakers and I worked with every single one of them to go through their talk outline, their notes, their slides and their actual presentation to make sure that the message, the framing was going to connect with our audience. And the last piece that frankly might be the most important one is that this magical conference needs to be financially accessible. Conferences are super expensive. They're expensive to put on and they're expensive to attend. And a lot of us might take that for granted because we probably have companies that are paying for our tickets, paying for our hotels and if they're not paying completely they're probably heavily subsidizing a lot of that. But for people in the Konobi community, they don't have those jobs yet. They're going to the conference to get those jobs where they can go to conferences for free. There are still teachers and nurses and truck drivers and if they go to a conference they're paying out of pocket. And if we think about the expenses of a conference sure there's the ticket usually a couple hundred dollars, sometimes a couple thousand dollars. And then there's the hotel depending on where it's located it can be a hundred, a couple hundred, a night. And one thing that I really appreciate about RubyConf and RailsConf is that they move around they try to go to big cities, small cities they try to make it geographically accessible but most tech conferences don't do that. They stick with the big cities. So if you're a new developer and you're trying to get to a conference now there's a pretty expensive flight that you have to pay for. So if you think about it from someone who is going and not getting subsidized for going they're spending potentially thousands of dollars on three days that may or may not help them be a better developer. That's a big investment. And so what we did to help to alleviate some of those financial burdens is we had a scholarship we had an opportunity scholarship and we covered whatever you need to be covered in order to come to the conference hotel, childcare, metro ticket. And we wanted to make sure that the reason that you didn't come wasn't because you couldn't afford to. So conference is awesome everybody loves it they think it's the best thing ever. It's wonderful. But here's the thing about conferences. If you forget something if you miss something or if you mess something up entirely there's not that much you can do about it. You can't deploy a new build to a conference. Is that a thing? You just kind of have to take notes sit with it and hope you do better next time. So here are all the things that I wish I'd done and things that I missed. We're going to call them learnings. Here are the things that I learned. Number one, one of the things that I learned one thing that I did not think about one thing that I missed was close captioning. Shout out to close captioning at RubyConf. Shout out to y'all for that. I think a week or two before the conference I said hey are you going to do close captioning and I was like what? What now? Who? Didn't think of it, didn't cross my mind. Another one, child care.  Also something that just didn't cross my mind. Someone brought up someone said hey is there going to be child care and I was like who, what? Next one, dietary restrictions. This one I wasn't that bad. I asked everyone what dietary restrictions were. I asked on the ticket and said please tell me all your things and I'll take care of it. I also told the caterer, I said here all the things please take care of it. But I forgot to ask about labeling all the food. So I had people throughout lunch coming up to volunteers going can I eat that? Is that vegan? Is it gluten free? Is it vegetarian? And it became this little problem but an annoying problem especially for the people who were looking for food that they could eat and not being able to find it. And the last one the last one I'm going to share with you all is photography and privacy. This one takes a little bit of explanation. So here's a tweet that we saw that says I love this idea for events and conferences. This is Stephanie Hurlbert, if you don't know her you should totally follow her on Twitter, she's awesome. And she tweets it helps some people feel more comfortable but it would have helped me attend events at all after I escaped an abusive relationship and was worried about stalking. I wasn't able to go to any events for months. And it's a little sticker that you put on your badge that says hey please don't take photos of me and definitely don't post photos of me. And the only reason I saw this tweet was because of this other tweet. This is from Hunter. Hunter where are you? I know you're here somewhere. Where are you at? Hey Hunter! Hunter tweeted directly at us and said Code Newbies maybe you all can do something like this for Code Land. Just a simple yes or no on whether a person wants a sticker at check-in would be super easy. And I said yes Hunter that would be super easy. And we didn't know about this in time for that conference but for next year we're going to be ready. Next conference I took my notes I have my to-dos we're going to fix all the things. Code Land 2018 happens and I'm proud to say that we iterated on these things. We got closed captioning.  We got those food labels for those dietary restrictions. We got stickers for the photography and privacy. But here's the thing if all those people hadn't spoken up and they hadn't raised their hand and said hey did you think about this we would not have made a better conference. Code Land 2018 comes to an end and in my closing remarks I say these things. I say look at all the things that we didn't get right the first year but we improved this year. Thank you so much to everyone who said something. Thank you for the feedback. It was super helpful. And I said if there's anything that we missed this year please let me know. Please keep that feedback coming. Send me an email, tweet me, DM me. Let me know what things we can improve for next year. That night conference is over back in my hotel room sitting at my desk open up my laptop and I have an inbox full of things that we missed that year. Here are a few of the things that I learned. Someone tweeted and said you should have more environmentally friendly options. Was that you? Were you the person who emailed me? Someone said hey you should have water coolers instead of water bottles. I think that year we had okay don't judge me, we're friends right? We have like over a thousand water bottles and I'm thinking it's super convenient. You just grab them, you go. You got hydration on the move. It's awesome. Great for conference attendees, terrible for earth. That's what I learned. Thanks Marty. And that was something that was called to my attention because of that email. The second thing, a prayer room. We had a few attendees who were running around trying to find a private space to pray and someone had to call that out to me and say hey this happened think about this for next year. This next one is interesting. This one was a request for a low carb lunch. Let me explain. One of the lunch buffets that we had was called a summer picnic and it was mac and cheese, fried chicken, I think some mashed potatoes, good food, you know wholesome food, comfort food right? Kind of like Thanksgiving. And I thought it's delicious it's going to be great. But the thing is when you have a venue that's that heavy and you're sitting in a room for six hours, a single track conference and there's a lot of people so it gets warm you get a little sleepy and it can be hard to pay attention if you just had a ton of mashed potatoes. And so this person said it would be really great if there were just some you know some fresher, some greener options. And that just never occurred to me. I'm thinking I like mashed potatoes. Doesn't everybody like mashed potatoes? Doesn't everybody like mashed potatoes? But that was something that just never occurred to me. Another one is bigger seats.  These seats were kind of small and uncomfortable. I'm sitting there for six hours and it literally hurt. It hurt my body to be at this conference. It's not something you want anyone to say about your conference. And so I read these things and it's really easy to look at this list, this little snapshot and go really, come on. I got to worry if my furniture is inclusive. What does that even mean? What is inclusive furniture? I don't know. But now I got to think about all these things. This is a lot to think about, especially as a conference organizer there's so many things to do, so many things you can miss, so many things you're juggling at the same time. And it can feel like my list just got a whole lot longer. There wasn't a list of things to do, it wasn't just that. It was a list of things that I missed. It was a list of my personal blind spots. And I looked at these emails and I was honestly really grateful for all the feedback. And I was really thankful that so many people reached out and told me what I could do better. And there was one email, one particular email that I got from a woman who had some really good feedback. And I said, this email was so helpful, you need to go to all the other tech conferences and take notes and tell them how they can improve and then we'll all have the best conferences ever. And she responded and she said, oh, I don't do this for everyone. In fact, this might be the first time I've done it. I did it for you because I know that you'll do something about it. And that email reframed the inbox for me because the inbox wasn't just a list of my blind spots. It was a list of all the people who believed that I would fix it. But how do they know? How do they know that I care enough to do all these things? Because if you think about the work of a conference organizer, a community builder, a lot of it is completely invisible. Think about the things that you see. You don't see me sending hundreds of emails to potential sponsors hoping to get this funded. You don't see me on the phone with a caterer hoping to get enough mushroom burgers for all the people who need mushroom burgers. You don't see me lugging hundreds of conference booklets from the printer to my car hoping they're going to fit in my suitcase. You don't see any of that. In fact, the only things you see are a few tweets and you hear my voice asking some questions and that's kind of it. The bulk of the work is invisible. Most of the work is done in the dark. There's nothing you can point to and say you see that thing right there, that thing that she did, that huge act that proves that she will take this email seriously. You don't have that. It doesn't exist. So how do you know? The only thing that is there is these series of little acts, these little interactions, these little things that I've been doing consistently for years. And it turns out that's the stuff that matters. It's these small, consistent acts that build trust. It's not that one key hire. It's not that one project you just open sourced. It's not that one initiative you've announced and you're proud of. That's part of it. That's part of the story. But that's just one part. It's these small, consistent acts over time that build trust. It was constantly going through this loop that we talked about, understanding, building, listening, iterating over and over again, no matter how big the small, how big the small, how big the problem is, how small the problem is, constantly going through this loop. This is what community building truly looks like. It's not that glamorous. And when you do these things over and over again, you run yourself through this loop over and over again, that's how you make people feel safe and wanted and welcome. And when you eventually find your community, it's wonderful. It feels so good. Hopefully you found some of that today. Hopefully you found some of that at this conference. When you find your people, you find the folks who are going to support you and love you and help you. It feels wonderful. It feels great to belong to be understood as an amazing feeling. But for the people who create that space, it's just a lot of work. And it's work that frankly never really ends. There's always going to be something to build and to fix and to make better. And I remember even when I was a kid watching my mom manage that magical living room and watching her run around. And I would look at her and go, oh man, I don't want to be like that. That looks exhausting. She'd always collapse at the end of an event after everyone leaves and she'd go, oh, I'm so tired.  I swear. It's spot on. I hope she's not live streaming this. But I would look at what she did every single event and I would go, oh man, I definitely don't want to be like that. Which is kind of funny now because as I'm getting older I'm finding myself slowly turning into my mother.  Where you're becoming one of your parents. I say things even the way I laugh, I answer the phone. I hear my mom coming out of my voice. It's kind of freaky. It makes me a little uncomfortable. But when it comes to community building, all I've ever wanted was to be like her. Is to make you feel safe and wanted and welcome. Thank you.


What should one think about when creating teaching material? All people are susceptible to boredom and confusion. Either of these or their combination can lead to frustration. Once frustrated, a learner will find it exponentially more difficult to grasp or retain new information. The student's mind will be elsewhere, unmotivated and uninterested. Therefore, an instructor should make it a priority that each and every student can not only understand the created material but be interested in it as well. Materials for learners with different interests So how does one create engaging and educational material for groups of vastly different people? I believe that the first step is always the same, getting to know the students. On a very fundamental and human level, a teacher should place great importance on knowing every face and name, as well as having a basic understanding of the culture of those being taught. Then the instructor should have the student's express interests, desires for learning English, if applicable, English comprehension, and generally just communicate with the class. The initial stage should be used to learn as much about the students as possible. This information should be physically recorded and used as a reference when designing future material outside of the classroom. Through introductory activities, surveys, and observation, a foundation for creating materials suited to the classroom should begin to materialize. Once one begins to understand their students interests and English levels, one can combine this personal information with school, syllabus requirements, games, presentations, etc. to create lessons. Taking everything one knows into account before moving forward is key. Teaching materials for younger learners If teaching children, a sequence of fast-paced burst activities might be useful. Consider flash cards with pictures, shortboard games, creating scenarios with fictional characters represented by toys, and the like. The games and material should use what is known about the students. For example, one student likes horses and another robot. Pictures of these can find their way into the material, even if the words, grammar being taught has nothing to do with animals or cyborgs. It is important to introduce elements that a teacher knows will peak a student's curiosity, even if only for a brief moment. This, especially true with children, acts like the fire that keeps a hot air balloon in flight. Too much stimulation and the class will run away with itself, too little and the lesson will crash into boredom, confusion, and frustration. Children have short attention spans, and thus a balance of fun and education must be met. This cannot be done without an understanding of the students. Teaching materials depending on the topic Young children will, of course, not be the only people taught, and therefore more consideration needs to be put into creating teaching materials. The older a student is the easier it is to learn what kind of interests they have, yet almost paradoxically it can be harder to still their attention away swiftly, like with a child. Their attention must first be captured, and then nurtured. Long-running material is one possibility here. A story that is in part created from input given from each student, and that continues to run.  These stories could be altered to fit the class and even the mood of the class on a given day. Weather and temperature, day of the week, time of day, etc., should be considered when creating material. It is important to be able to pivot from the original lesson plan while still being productive and interesting. For example, if it's a dreary day and the students aren't feeling up for the role-play exercises planned, having a backup lesson or two could be useful. Where to find useful materials? There are more teaching resources online and in books than any person could ever hope to read and incorporate into their lessons. This is, of course, a very good thing. The success of games, activities, drills, tests, presentations, and projects, all waiting to be implemented in the course material. But the information that cannot be found online or in texts, the core of this essay in the heart of my approach to teaching, is what exists in the individual. Understand the students, what they can and can't do. Where they have problems. What they like. What bores them. How they're feeling on a given day. Take all of this, record it, remember it, and utilize it in every lesson in some way or another. That, I believe, is what one should be thinking about when creating teaching material. Are you ready to teach English abroad? Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.


Okay, welcome back everyone, we're here live in Las Vegas for the Splunk conference. This is Silicon Angles the Cube, our flagship program where we go after the events that strike the ceiling from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the founder of Silicon Angles. I'm Joe, I'm Mike Gohose. Hi everybody, I'm Dave Vellante at Wikibon.org. Marcus Zim is here. He's the Vice President of Product and Solutions at Splunk. Marcus, welcome to the Cube. I got to ask you, so last night we were closing the show and I said I got to see more from Splunk out of the ecosystems. I got to see a better focus on developers. That's what I want to see. Honestly, God, it was not a set up, I get up this morning and here's this news release, News Splunk app's website launches with more than 400 apps and add-ons, so I guess in my face. Yeah, boom, there it is, right? So, we read your mind. Well, it's fantastic that you guys are doing the things that I mean, an analyst like myself says, okay, what do I want to see more of and you guys are actually skating to the puck, you're ahead of the game and I think that's what people don't really appreciate and understand about the organization is how fast you're actually moving. So talk about the announcement a little bit. Absolutely. Well see, in the keynote, there's only so much you can talk about, right? And there's so many things that are new and great about Splunk and the ecosystem is just fundamental to Splunk. I mean, think about it, what's the iPhone without the I2 in store, right?  We're delivering solutions to different type of segments, right? And security is growing like really fast, IT and application management on a big, big trajectory and then all the business analytics. So we need content that turns this Splunk platform that we have, this horizontal platform into a specific solution for our customers and then we need the best marketplace, the best store for people so that they can find that, they can put this together into solutions and where they see premium high-quality content, content that doesn't come from Splunk but from this entire ecosystem, I mean, that's what it's all about. That is all about the apps, right, John? We've talked about this a lot. Yeah, I mean, Marcus, one of the things we talked on the intro just this morning when we kicked it off was the use cases are so diverse with Splunk. Yeah. One of the dangers companies can get into is kind of groping and jumping on a use case where you guys have a more of an enablement strategy and that's proven by the ecosystem partners that are here at the event because you guys have a lot of leverage with your platform. You don't really know the use case and benefit until your customers put it to use whether it's, you know, so there's a variety of use cases. How does that change the strategy for the product? Does it? And what does that do for the ecosystem in terms of an enablement? What are you looking to share there? All right, okay. Well, it's a big topic. First of all, I want you to understand that, you know, we talk about ecosystem, but ecosystem is just this variety of different players, right? I mean, ecosystem frankly starts at developers within our customers. Take any large customers, there's people there that actually, you know, takes Splunk and turn it into what they want it to be, right? They embed it into other tools that they have, they might integrate it with other things. This isn't even a partner yet. This is still within the customer. Then there is people who really build content and who actually want to make money of that content. And actually with the new apps.splunk.com, then our new marketplace, we've actually put in better mechanism for people to monetize content. We believe that's actually really, really important in the next growth phase of the ecosystem. Then there is, don't forget, system integrators. System integrators who then take a lot of this content and actually put it together into solutions for our customers. We have initiatives for every single one of those target groups. Talk about the system integrators for a minute, because one of the things about indirect sales is the ability to enable people to make more services revenue. Yes. It's kind of not talked about because it's kind of not that sexy, but services revenue is the lifeblood of the channel. And what are you seeing for use cases that you guys are enabling in that integration model? What use cases? What are integrators doing with Splunk that's driving value for them? Okay. Very good. It really does fall into these three segments that I mentioned before. I mean, there is people who do a living of really helping big companies run their data centers, their IT infrastructure, and then these services, these business services that they provide. So yeah, Splunk fits into that. There is Gardner has coined the term IT operations analytics. It's a new space and system integrators are helping customers build solutions in that space. It's a security. The large system integrators understand how important security is today for their customers. And security actually borders also into fraud, fraud detection, which is a huge topic, which a incredible business value, and you need a system integrator to help you there. And then last but not least, people have business processes, and what maybe people don't fully realize yet is like if Splunk is able to kind of make an application run well, a monitor and manage it, then we can also actually manage a chain of these applications that make a business process really well.  So we fit right into kind of how they make business. One of your features of your announcement was the new version of the REST API. And Dave and I always talk about this. The cloud has really enabled this API economy. So what have you guys seen in the evolution of the API? And you have the new cloud version out of product. What is the role of the API with Splunk? And how do you see that evolving? Well APIs are just fundamental for what's interoperability, right? So we are the platform for machine data. We're the data fabric in our customers' enterprises. So if you are a platform, you know, one of the things, you've got to be open. You have to interoperate. If you're not, you're not a platform. I mean, it's the two things. You've got to have content that people build on top of it. If you don't, then you're not a platform. And you've got to be interoperable. So the API is the key element to being interoperable. And we do that in many different ways. I mean, we have ways to bring Splunk content into, like, portal environments, like SharePoint, for example. And we talked about some of this in the keynote. We have ways with, think of the ODBC driver as a type of an API and people be able to consume data from Splunk in another tool. And then also, obviously, just to tie Splunk into a business application or business process. And that's where it gets really, really interesting. So this is an interesting topic, right? Because you guys are first to market. You make the market, basically.  I mean, we've talked to folks like Cloudera about this. The open-source community then comes in and says, oh, wow, OK, we can do some similar things. So you've got to embrace that, obviously. Talk about Splunk's relationship with the open-source community, your utilization of open-source software. How, you know, I always ask people on a scale of 1 to 10 how open-source friendly are you.  Some companies, you know, they're all in, like, Hortonworks. Where do you guys stand? Well, we use an incredible amount of open-source in our products. They're very savvy users, adopters. I mean, we have people in our engineering staff who have been contributed to the Linux kernel. So, I mean, there is personal connections there. There is expertise in how to work with that. And then- There's respect for that community, obviously. No, absolutely, absolutely. And then, well, let's talk about Hunk, for example, because that kind of is a play together with the open-source of the future, which is the Hadoop open-source community. And we believe there's a give and take, right? We are, we're actually working with the ecosystem partners in the Hadoop environment. We're, I mean, as I told before, we respect and we bring open-source into our product. But then we also feel with Hunk, we actually really added to the open-source community. We brought some value to Hadoop that actually just, you know, will take that ecosystem to the next level. So, let's talk about some of these applications that you guys developed. You got a new website that you're launching. It's the Splunk apps website. There's 400 apps that you're launching. These obviously weren't all developed yesterday. These are apps that have developed over time that you're now consolidating onto the website, right? So it's 400 now and just last year alone and the last 12 months, 100 new were added. Now, some of the ones you're calling out, the Splunk app for VMware, the REST API modular input. You've got stuff in here from Pentaho, Datasift, social data streams and modular input. You know, talk about some of the ones that you're highlighting in this press release and what about them excite you? Excellent. Well, let's talk about classes of application. How's that? So there are ecosystem application. You mentioned Pentaho, pre-learned as mentioned in the press release and really these are applications that Splunk did not create that the ecosystem created and we're very fortunate to have this kind of vibrant ecosystem and have someone like pre-learned, you know, enhance Splunk in terms of predictive capabilities. That's huge. That's big, that actually kind of accelerates innovation. Pentaho is very similar. I mean, have like a BI player partner up with us and interconnect the two of our application platforms. Okay, so this is the ecosystem. Then we do add kind of weekly, monthly, new, what we call inputs. So if you think about Splunk, it's all about building analytics from machine data. Machine data comes from all kind of different devices and you know, there's an app for all of these different devices. If that app exists, things just get faster and time to value. I mean, you might have noticed that in the keynote. Instant value is just something we're absolutely fanatic about. This is what Splunk is all about. We want to be that different enterprise software where everything's fast, like instant gratification. So a lot of these apps like the SNMP or JMS, JMAX, they're basically there for people to just more rapidly build solutions. And then last but not least, the category VMware app. So VMware app, I'll put in the category of premium applications. VMware is actually an application we charge for. There's an extra price tag for it. We have another application enterprise security that is actually ranked by Gardner as a leader in the SIM Magic Quadrant. And it's a big deal for us. So these are not just tiny little applications. These are really fundamental big building blocks. And so with these applications, we want to be thought leaders. We want to- And you can charge for them, right? I mean- We can charge them and people- VMware customers are used to paying. Here you go, but this app is something where we collect more data than VMware does for their own monitoring tools. Yeah, and they'll talk about their monitoring tool, but you guys are like, say, adding value beyond that. Exactly, so it's like these hard ways to get the machine data, that's number one. And then also if you look at the visualizations, if you might have seen in the keynote, there's really beautiful interactive, like not just visualizations, but task flows. So these are apps that just are, think of them as a next generation of apps. Well, in VMware, sometimes very hard to decipher what's going on inside of VMware, because it's this abstracted layer and everything's just sort of blended together. So tools like this are critical. What's the business model for this market? So you didn't call it an app store. Yes. So you're not selling the app, it's not a transaction site, right? So how's it work? Your partners, they resell Splunk, or they get preferred access to Splunk, or they go to customers that have Splunk. How does that work? So a good question. And I think it shows really nicely these kind of growth stages of the ecosystem. So in stage one, what was important for us was really to get as much content into that marketplace as possible. So you do that by just having, you know, and have people consume it. So you want to make it a community-based approach, right? You want people to share their content, and you want to do it for free. So you get a critical mass there, yeah. You get the critical mass, and then you're actually getting to stage two, where now you want to pull in ecosystem partners that are really serious about building this content. And there, yeah, you want to have an ability for them to monetize their content. The new store that was announced today actually has a feature in there, we call it the directory listing, where we actually allow them, our ecosystem partners to link out to their sites with it, then they can transact. So we're not a e-commerce marketplace, but we give people now the ability to use that as a listing, just have a place where everyone comes to, and then transact at fee in their environment. You know, we're talking about VMware before, one of the models that I would ask you guys to take a look at, I don't know if you've looked at this or not, the metric that VMware used to use still does, I'm sure, but Todd Nielsen, when he was in the cubes, what was the statue on? For every dollar spent on a VMware license, it was like 10, 12, $15 were spent in the ecosystem. That's a sign of real success, reaching that critical mass, and then the second point, stage two, where you're pulling in partners that are serious that can monetize this, that gives you a lot of leverage. So that one-to-end metric is always a key indicator. I don't know how you actually track it precisely, but there's probably a way that you can reasonably estimate it. It's, this is key for us. So again, we're at this borderline between phase one and phase two. Awesome.  And we're actually setting very concrete signals. I think by us starting to charge for content, we're setting a signal that, yeah, you're an ecosystem partner, you can make money of that too, right? That's actually very important. We're now giving new abilities to actually, you know, logistically how to do that with this directory listing. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Mark, thanks for coming inside theCUBE. We got the hook on time, but I'll give you the final word. What should folks know about the ecosystem and the developer focus real quick? Share the focus of the soundbite and the developer. Oh, the focus, soundbite, just to wrap it up. Well, number one, this is a top priority. We totally understand that the ecosystem is just a phenomenal lever point, leverage point that we have. There are multiple initiatives as I laid out. The ecosystem is not just one party, it's many, many different parties. We have a long list of things that we do for every single one of them. And, you know, as I stated before, I think we're at the cusp of that getting really big. So I'm just super excited about the next couple of years ahead and what the ecosystem will do for Splunk. There it is, the developer focus, it got a real platform, enabling platform, very hot. We're at the Splunk Conference. This is theCUBE, we're right back with our next guest after this short break.


This week a close seven deals, $3.2 million worth. I posted it on Facebook, so I had a big week. I have a big week next week, September is huge. $200,000 in commissions in September, but I don't even want to hear anything about September because I'm thinking so hard about October. October is where my mind is. That's where I want to be. That's October is what I'm really worried about right now because I only have two pending right now for October. So that's what I'm really focused on. Where am I going to get deals to close on in October? September's done. And that's the way you guys should be thinking, what's next? Not, let's close it. They're going to close or they're not going to close. We can't really control that at the end of the day. We'll do what we need to do to keep it going, but we're not here to try to force things, right? We need to let things happen naturally and then try to find more things that happen naturally. Spend your time finding things that happen naturally over trying to force everything because what happens is you spend too much time forcing and not enough time finding things that naturally happen the way they're supposed to. People want to buy and sell. Your job's not to tell anybody to buy or sell or talk anybody in and buy or sell. And your job is to connect with them and stay in touch with them forever for when they do decide they want to buy or sell, you're their agent. That's your job.


What's up y'all it's your girl Kenzie here from Layton Sports Cards, and I am ripping a personal here for Josh V We've got a 2022 prism football hobby box as well as a 21-22 Panini prism basketball All right, we're gonna start with the football Good luck Got orange rookie of the mirror white for the Raiders 2-2-49 Bonito Washington Got silver rookie of equanwood Purple deuce McAllister sinks to 125 Watson and Jordan Davis Silver lockdown, Micah Parsons red wave of uh, Chris Carter to 149, Typhon Thornton Prism break Trevor Lawrence. We've got Hyper to 175, uh, Jalen Ramsey Shot white and a Kenny Pickett rookie base We've got an RPA in here very nice. We usually won per case. We've got Tray Hendrickson on the silver And RPA is gonna be a Malik Willis to 99 That is one of 99 there Nice it there, Josh Malik Willis RPA a lave rookie base across silver rookie emergence of Damian Pierce Blue wave of Marlon Humphries to 199 Sondhaskan, Jalen Pitchery fireworks, Breeze Hall rookie, we've got Greenscope rookie of Cade York for the Browns Cade York to 75 there Aidan Hutchinson and Brian Cook Silver Keenan Allen Greenscope John Lynch to 75 bucks Phillips Wanda Robinson That's silver George Kittle First auto up it's gonna be an Emmett Smith auto.  We got the RPA Emmett Smith That's cool Blue ice of Steve Largent for the Seahawks to 99 Duffy George Pickens Hyper to 175 Micahyte Lafe Algiers Purple ice Micahyte to 225 Desmond Ritter Doolitch And we get into the basketball Fireworks silver Garrett Wilson Orange Richie Grant to 249 Biggitty and Sauce rookie I will do it for football Now time for basketball 21-22 prism Team Good luck Ruby wave Jimmy Butler Jared Allen hyper Yeah, Johnson rookie Silver Saban Lee. We've got a Campazo blue for the Nuggets out of 199 Springer rookie Charles Bassie rookie Pulsar Rudy Gay Red Monte Morse for the Nuggets out of 299 Scotty Lewis rookie Silver Rudy Gobert Hyper Marcus Zagorowski Wiggins Got 75th anniversary Brook Lopez and first auto up is going to be Clippers on the sensational rookie signatures Brandon Boston jr BB action there Yeah, yeah, I'm full John. Sorry. I just saw your comment. Luca Garza chamberlain kita Probably overly full Silver John wall. We got mindset silver LeBron Evan Mobley rookie base and Trayman rookie base Ruby wave is uh Onyaka Okangwu Piper Jason Kidd Jalen Green rookie and Coventa Excuse me, uh red rookie of Jared Butler for the jazz of 299 Kisbert 75 years David Johnson Ruby wave Joellen bead purple Kevin Garnett 299 LeBron fearless Santiago Dama rookie Dosumu rookie Silver rookie IO dosan dosumu Hyper Chris Paul Preston rookie Orange Rudy Gay Shangoon rookie base Jalen Johnson last pack here for you like Josh Silver Lonzo ball silver prismatic of kawaii Leonard We have thundered silver sensational signatures rookie Jeremiah Robinson Earl Okay, see and bleat Trayman for the third and Jordan pool Alrighty Josh that will do for your prison mixer. Thanks so much for hopping in. We'll get this sent right out to you


After almost 12 years, the European Space Agency's Beagle 2 lander has finally been found. But we still don't really know what happened to it, but it's still a really good story and it's a story we're going to look at today on Vintage Space. The Beagle 2 lander, named for the ship that took Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands, was part of the Mars Express mission. It was a simple but sophisticated spacecraft designed to look for life on Mars through geochemical and atmospheric analysis. But it never got a chance to look for life, at least not that we know of. The mission landed but never phoned home. But now, after 12 years of searching the rough landing area, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and specifically the high-rise camera on that spacecraft has spotted what looks like Beagle 2 on the surface of Mars. So here's what should have happened, and here's what might have gone wrong. The mission called for Beagle 2 to land in Isidus Planitia, a low-altitude landing site that meant the entry could take advantage of more aerodynamic braking. The entry descent and landing was pretty standard. An aeroshell with a heat shield would protect the spacecraft during atmospheric entry. A drug parachute would deploy first, slightly slowing the spacecraft down, and pulling out a main parachute. Then, a tenth of the mile above the surface, airbags would inflate around the lander. It's the same type of landing the Murr Rover speared an opportunity made in 2004. The airbags would cushion the spacecraft as it hit the surface, bouncing and rolling until it naturally came to a stop. Once stopped, regardless of its orientation, by virtue of opening its cover, the spacecraft would ride itself and then start the science. But that didn't happen. The last contact ESA had with the lander was on December 19th of 2003, when it separated from the Mars Express orbiter. Things looked good going in for a landing, but there was no telemetry collected during landing. Scientists would have to wait for a signal from the surface to know that it got there safe, and that signal just never came. The high-rise images show the lander and what looks like the parachute on the surface, so we can probably rule the parachute out as the failure point of the landing. But another possible fail point is the airbags. The airbags were actually only tested once. They were inflated and dropped onto a level surface, hardly the type of environment you would find on Mars. By contrast, NASA tested the airbags for the Murrovers hundreds of times on different types of surface at different angles. But finding Beagle 2 is kind of a step in the right direction. At least we now know that it made it down to the surface and didn't completely fail and smashed to create a crater on Mars. So what do you guys think about finally finding Beagle 2 after all these years? Let me know in the comments below. Want more vintage-space content every day of the week? Follow me on Twitter as AST Vintage Space. And with new episodes going up every Tuesday and Friday, be sure to follow me right here so you never miss an episode.


really said, right? If you buy an expensive Drake meeting greet, and I just listen to Drake, right? What you have to say is far more valuable than what I have to say, right? And I think that's a great way to filter. And then you even touch on that nuance of festivals versus your actual show, right?  You can't improve what you can't measure, right?