Yeah, we on Boss Talk 101. Yo, hey, man, check it, check it, man. It's a unique house. It's your boy, E.C.O. And I'm here with the lovely official Miss Jamaica, man. And it's crazy, man. I'm checking out what's going on in the media. I just wanted to talk a little bit about Boosian, Lil Nas X going back and forth, man. Man, pretty harsh words were stated. I think it was a crazy deal for them to be responding to one another, especially when it's been kind of a gray area of the fact that they both kind of don't roll with each other, right? Yeah, especially Boosie. Boosie don't roll with Nas X, but did we ever hear that Nas X don't roll with Boosie? It's just because of the whole conversation about him. I wouldn't say homophobic just because he's saying, was talking about discussion about his own child. That doesn't mean he's homophobic. You know what I mean?  I'm sure that he knows someone that he has an associate for.  But when you think about what Boosie was pretty much talking about his daughter and alluding to the fact that he wouldn't give his daughter away, I tend to feel a certain type of way about that myself. But you know, what did he go a little bit too far when he tweeted what he tweeted about Nas X here recently? That's why we got on, because I'd like to see, you know, in our comments, just did he go too far with this one? You know, what did Nas do to bring on that type of energy? Nas X, he spoke about doing a song with Boosie, but you already know that Boosie, he don't mess with Nas X, OK? So for the fact that he said something like that to him or about him that robbed his feathers, but I personally don't agree with what Boosie said about him.   And I understand maybe it's a thug in him and so forth, and some people just don't care about what they say with certain things like that, but in a society of the internet and people watching and taking things very personal, you've got to be careful of what you say. Well, you know, like, I mean, when you think about Boosie, Boosie's always been very vocal about whatever he's talking about and passionate about what he speaks on. Today's society, it's all about views. Nas clearly, Nas X did that, Lil Nas X did that to get some type of recognition or some type of, why would Nas X even do that? Lil Nas X, they say he's rich and he's all, he don't have to do all that. Well, evidently, it's something there. He definitely threw the bait out there for Boosie to speak back to him. So I've been working on this song with Lil Boosie, bro. I had this song with Lil Boosie, he's gonna come out. Fire, I ain't gonna need a lot for it. He evidently enjoys the going back and forth, I guess, you know? Hey, man, you know, he know already what Boosie's gonna do when he says something like that. So evidently, he likes the trolling mechanism and hey, man, you know, you just got to take it for what it is, man, both of them playing for views. I really believe that. And so when I look at the beef and, you know, the way that they're going back and forth, I know already we're in a society that moves and vibes off of views, man. So I don't know, how do you guys feel about what Boosie said about Lil Nas? How do you feel about Nas? Lil Nas X really just trolling Boosie. What do you think? Is this something that, is this the society that we live in? Do you feel like Lil Boosie is homophobic?  Yeah, don't even mention me. What do you think? Let us know. So official Ms. Jamaica, do you feel like, do you think Lil Nas X will continue to go back and forth with him or you think he'll leave it alone? No, I think this is an ongoing thing. I think that Lil Boosie and Nas X, they're gonna keep going back and forth. Because as you said, it's a publicity thing. It's a way to be in the media constantly to keep themselves relevant. So I really think that this is gonna be this ongoing thing. At least until everybody stop paying them attention, which I don't think that's ever gonna happen. Yeah, you're right about that. So do you think that he's, basically all Lil Nas X said was that they're gonna make a song together, but I get it, man. This is crazy world that we live in, man. So, hey man, you guys stay tuned in, man. We're gonna be coming at you with different things like this from time to time because we like to hear from our people and what their insight is on how they feel about what's going on in society today, man. So it's been another great segment, another new segment. What we gonna call this? Y'all should put it in the comments. I leave the fans to tell us what segment. Name this segment. That's what I want y'all to do. Name this segment. Thanks guys. Thanks for tuning in. We on Boss Talk 101.


The European Union funding for a project on a common visa in the ASEAN region has just come together with Interpol and the ASEAN secretariat in Kuala Lumpur. We have done a study on common visa practices in the region as part of an independent study contracted through the HVV Centre in Indonesia. The importance of this is that trying to bring a large amount of people through the region in a secure manner but also keeping common business practices open for the borders. Through the HVV Centre we have looked at security, economics, policy and cultural issues that are important to the 10 ASEAN nations. The different elements of all of these practices are informing the ASEAN nations as to how and what kind of common visa system that they wish to have. Through Interpol, the ASEAN secretariat and the European Union I think we have come up with some options and good independent study practices that will inform that decision making.


In this episode, you're going to learn what it takes to transition from being a design practitioner to being an effective design leader. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, my name is Jamin Hegeman and this is the 143rd service design show. Hi, I'm Marc Fontaine and welcome back to the service design show. On this show, we explore what's beneath the surface of service design, what are the hidden things that make a difference between success and failure, all to help you design great services that have a positive impact on people, business and planet. Our guest in this episode is the VP of design and the head of experience strategy at Capital One and a longtime board member of the service design network. It's nobody less than Jamin Hegeman. The reason I'm excited to have Jamin on the show is that he's been on a fascinating taking him from being a design practitioner at a leading consultancy to now leading at design department with 700 designer. In this conversation, Jamin shares what it took for him to step fully into the role of being a design leader, which limiting beliefs he had to overcome and where he now finds a sense of accomplishment now that he isn't involved in the on-ground day-to-day design work anymore. If you stick around till the end, you'll have a unique insight in what it's like to lead such a massive team of designers and which lessons you can draw from this for your own practice. By the way, did you know that we share a video like this every week or so here on this channel? So if you want to grow as a service design professional and don't want to miss any of the conversations, make sure to click that subscribe button and that bell icon to be notified when a new video comes out. That about wraps it up for the introduction. And now it's time to jump into the conversation with Jamin Hagerman. Welcome back to the show, Jamin. Hey, Mark, how are you doing? I'm doing well. It's been a while since you've been on the show. Not many people have had the opportunity to do a sequel. So yeah, good for you. While we were preparing, I said I made a mistake. I said it was three years ago that you were on the show, but it's actually five. You were episode 19 and now we're at 143. A lot has happened. Good to have you. Good to have you back. Well, congratulations on that many shows. It's it's amazing what can happen if you just put in the work every two weeks like it's being consistent consistency. Jamin, some things have changed about the format since you last appeared. And we've got something, a new element. Well, new. It's been going on for quite a few episodes, but it's new to you. It's called our 60 second question rapid fire round. But I almost forgot before we dive into that for the people who didn't watch episode 19 and have no clue who Jamin is. Could you start off with a brief intro? What do you do these days? Sure. Hi again, Jamin Hageman. I am the vice president of experience strategy at Capital One, which is a bank based in the US. We also have offices in Canada and the UK. I'm also on the leadership team for the services. I network where I've been helping to lead that conference for the last 14 years, which is also a crazy thing. Getting to Europe, just keep putting in the time. It adds up. But going back to Capital One, just a little bit more context. Our organization is 700 designers. And my responsibility is to help define how we do design at Capital One and advance our maturity, as well as work on strategic initiatives that span the different lines of business. A lot of you're in an interesting position and I'm going to pick your brain in this episode. So but the 62nd question rapidifier, we need to do it. It's become a tradition on the show. I'm going to ask you five questions. Just answer them as quickly as possible. The first thing that comes to your mind. Are you ready? Ready. What's always in your fridge? Open milk. Which book or books are you reading at this moment? If any design justice. What was your first job? Working at McDonald's in England. Interesting. What did you want to become when you were a kid? I mostly thought I was going to be in the military. Hmm. Did you eventually? I did join the military and then quit. It's a long story. OK, we'll keep it at that. And now the question that did remain the same since episode 19, the first time you got in touch with service design, do you recall that moment? Yeah, I was in grad school at Carnegie Mellon and it was the first week of my classes and the second week of class. We were hosting the first international service design conference that I attended. Hmm. Yeah, there wasn't. I think that must have been 2009. Six. Six. OK, even before the Amsterdam conference. Awesome. Thank you for shedding a light on a little bit more who Jamie is. So we are going to talk about an interesting topic, which is the transformation or transition from being a design practitioner to being a leader of designers or design leader, a topic that has been on the show quite a lot recently. It's definitely becoming more and more an interest of the community. And also people are getting into the positions where they can actually share stuff. You're one of these people who is definitely in that position. Maybe we could start out by rewinding back from the position where you're in right now and going back to how did you end up in this position? Because I think that is quite important. Yeah, I'll give you. We'll start with the shorter version and then you can you can decide whether you want to dig in more. But for those that don't know, I was part of adaptive path in which you may or may not know about. But that was a design agency based in San Francisco that was started in 2001 and focused on developing user experience first with websites, then with mobile and expanding to digital. And then we started to advance the practice of service design. We had a conference and we had trainings. That company was acquired by Capital One, where I now work in 2014. And so the design leadership and consulting and things I was doing at adaptive path at first transitioned directly into Capital One. And I started doing that just internally for different parts of the business. I then decided to take a step deeper into design leadership and move to Dallas, Texas, where I started to lead a team focused on our financial services, which consisted of home loans and auto loans. And I built that team to about 55 people before taking this role, where I am now, which again is a horizontal role. So I moved to New York and focusing now on the whole organization. So I went from a consulting design leader to a leader of a business team and kind of learned what all that was about. And now I'm supporting all of our teams across all of our lines of business. I'm curious if you in hindsight can recognize some stages in this journey, defining moments, defining stages. Yeah, I mean, definitely in the beginning, I was I was more of a design consultant trying to figure out how to be a design leader of a business team. And it was easy for me to do all the same things that I was doing previously. And I think what I mind that next phase, which which kind of went along with with the job change, but didn't happen immediately. I think that that took me it took me a while to realize that the things I was doing before weren't the things that were going to work. I mean, some of them did, but there were a bunch of other aspects of the job that I wasn't as experienced and had to figure out just dealing with the all the business as usual aspects of the of the role and how you get things done in an organization as well as like, how do you lead a team that you you don't interact with all the time and provide that leadership? I think that was a that was a growing and learning period for me, you know, and and then I took those lessons to to where I am now and tried to apply them in building this this new team that I have for the last one and a half years been been building. So I think of it really in terms of that progression through through the jobs, but it each one, you know, the type of design leader was different. And and I've been just continuing to try to learn from it. And so feel like that that is my my continued growth opportunity. There is a lot in each stage. But one overall question that I have, which which I found intriguing when I was preparing for our chat was how would you define success nowadays? What does success look like and how does it maybe compare to? Your previous roles. I mean, at the heart, it's some of the things are very much the same. I mean, when when is an adaptive path, you know, we wanted the projects to be successful. We wanted to not would help us grow business. And then we wanted our team to be successful and was able to, you know, work very closely and directly with with people to help make that happen. And but as things have scaled, like, that's where it's become different. And and now I probably spend more time on just making sure that my team is set up for success. Then I mean, I spent a ton more time there than I do on like in the in the weeds working on particular business. Challenges my role is to really create the conditions for that to happen as much as possible. And so my success is very much linked to my team's success. And that that was actually something that took a little time for me to translate. Because, you know, previously I could be like, Oh, I did a thing. I presented to the clients, you know, I was leading and now it's well, my teams did these things. I need to celebrate them. And I need to acknowledge that they were, you know, that I'm associated with that as well, which I think was was difficult for me to say that. Well, I mean, I'm leading the team. So this is this is my work, too, even if other people are the ones that are really, you know, doing the things that I was doing before. And that sounds that that seems to me that that can be quite challenging. Like, how do you at the end of the day or at the end of the week, you look back on what has happened, that sense of accomplishment? How do you, where does it come from? I mean, it does come from, it's a combination of, you know, what I've done. But I also, again, I think celebrating what my team has done and it's interesting. I, I just celebrated another anniversary, anniversary four years ago. I started writing a weekly email at the end of every week to my team to increase my communication, increase their visibility to what I was thinking about. And I just call it like, this is the week in review. And I start off every week in the review with, hey team, here's what's going on and top of mind. And, and I would just, you know, talk about things that either I was engaged in or that I saw happening in the team and wanted to share back with them that, you know, I'm paying attention or I know about this or they should know about something. And, yeah, and I've carried that through multiple teams. And, but just keep consistently doing that. And I just changed shoes on the, the two list. And, and that I find that a very good way for me to reflect on what has happened during the week. Like, what was I involved in? What did I get to see? And then I, I, I rely on my directors to also help me recognize what have people done, maybe that I haven't seen that I should know about. And then, you know, and that gives me an opportunity to, you know, what have people done maybe that I haven't seen that I should know about. And then, you know, and that gives me an opportunity to, to dig in with them. Like, oh, what was that? And, oh, great. And then, you know, I can, I can celebrate that. So it, it gives this kind of always, always on way for me to know, like what's happening and then share that back. So people recognize it, that I'm recognizing it. I'm assuming you're celebrating the four year anniversary. Congratulations on that. But apparently, it didn't, this apparently came from somewhere. At some point, you thought, well, I need to, this might be a good idea. Was that, was there a pain underneath this? Was there a blind spot? How did you, where did this come from? And what was the bigger symptom, maybe? Yeah, I mean, multiple things. And this, this happened. This started back when I was leading that, that team in Dallas and recognizing that, yeah, I can't be everywhere at all times. I was getting feedback that people didn't know always, like where I was, what I was doing. And so I wanted to provide some visibility to that, to the team of like, okay, where am I spending my time? Because I can't be in all the same places that, that you are. And yeah, so that was, that was a big, big driver of it. And, and I've continued to do it because I do get positive feedback from people.  But also when I get new people, they're just like, wow, this is like a great thing to do. So signal to me that, yeah, this is a, this is a good thing to do. And, and again, I think when I was part of a smaller, I mean, adaptive path was 30 people and Capital One is 50,000. My team in Dallas was, you know, 50 to 60 people. It's, it's a different scale and being able to like spend quality time with everybody is really difficult. I wasn't, I didn't necessarily have that mindset when I first started and like how important that was for a leader to have that visibility and have that connection to people. And, and that has been one of the things that I've continued to try to figure out, like, what are the, what are the best ways to, you know, engage with the team with limited time so that, you know, I really know what's, what's happening with them. But they also feel connected to me. And I think that helps us all be successful. It's interesting. I already see a pattern emerging. We had a recent conversation with Todd Wilkins, also from adaptive path. And he basically described a similar situation. I think it was his time at IBM, if I'm not mistaken, where he said, people were eventually just saying, yeah, Todd isn't around. Like, where is he? He wasn't there. He wasn't visible. And it's, it's tough. Like, if you need, if you, if you have a team of 50 to 60 people, you know, it's hard to be visible and sounds like you experienced something similar and came to the conclusion that it is important to be visible, even though just through an email. Yeah. Yeah. And I will add, you know, the other thing that I've learned along the way is to, is to get help.  Maybe the email was like, you know, a specific way I chose to address it. But, but that's been, that was actually a huge lesson for me. Because I feel like I always felt, you know, hey, I'm, I'm the expert. I mean, particularly when I was adept, adapted path, helping to drive services, I'm practice and my involvement there. Like, I know everything. And then I come into a situation where I like, I don't know everything. I don't know. I still need to, to grow and tap into some places that I, you know, just weren't as, as required or required in a different way. So that was, that was, again, another thing for me. It's like, OK, really like taking in that feedback and working on yourself to be a better leader and understand like, again, what leadership means, what it means to be successful and, you know, how that is both you, but, you know, also a lot, your team. So I'm curious, like you didn't, I'm assuming you didn't get trained in leadership at the start. So what were some of these maybe other blind spots that you encountered through trial and error and you sort of wish somebody had told you upfront, because in these new positions, these new roles, new skills are probably required, new attitudes, new mindsets. What did you figure out the hard way next to being visible? It's great. Let's just dig into all my thoughts. Yeah. Well, I think, I think coming along with that idea that like, hey, I'm, you know, I'm doing well and successful and when I started to encounter situations where I don't have the answer, right? I don't know. I was not comfortable admitting that. Can you give a specific example just to illustrate the story? Specific, yes. I mean, like there's I feel like it's more of a general, general feeling I had versus like, OK, here's a specific example when I didn't do things. But like, you know, even when I first when I first came into the the business and I started being, you know, connected into meetings and people that you know, I was learning and here, you know, the business is running and they're there, they need to make decisions. They need to move fast. And if I didn't know something in that in a context, I might not raise my hand and be like, hey, slow down. Can you let me know what you're talking about and or what's that acronym? Because there's a million acronyms in any business that you need to learn. It's like a whole language. But, you know, I didn't do that right away. I again was thinking like, OK, I need to like show up like I know what's going on. And I don't think that was helpful for me, you know, because I think and I've seen other leaders do this very well, you know, come into situations and and I've been trying to, you know, increasingly learn this myself. Just like I don't I don't understand or I don't know what you're talking about. And I can't tap into my expertise to help if I can't do that. And that that to me, I'm sure was was holding me back when I first made that transition. And this is this is quite interesting because as a design practitioner, you're probably very much used to saying, I don't know, let's figure it out. Let's go out do some research, ask questions, having quite a humble and very curious mindset. What changes when you shift into a different role and the role of leadership, maybe being amongst non designers?  That's a great. It's I mean, it's not that I lost my curiosity. So that's that's not what I said. Definitely definitely curious. But I think, you know, I think when I made the transition, I also had the idea of like, hey, I wasn't really clear on what a design leader was supposed to do and what they were supposed to look like in that particular context. And I wanted to show up like, you know, hey, you chose the right person, you know, I'm totally good for this role, which which, yeah, I mean, I think like put me in a in a more vulnerable position in a different way than leading a design team. Because, yeah, I mean, as a as a as a consultant, I mean, that was the exactly what you're saying. Like, hey, we don't know the answer. We're not kind of presume anything. Let's go talk to people. Let's try to understand this. Let's do stakeholder interviews. And it's not to say I didn't do that stuff. But I think that I think and that's why I'm like, I'm not sure I can name a specific example. But I just I feel like in general, I probably needed to be more curious about how does this place work? You know, what are you what are you talking about? And but, you know, do it in a way that in the same way that you would do. As a designer, have that that curiosity of like, I'm here to help solve a problem. But I think for myself personally, and this is, you know, I don't know that this is the same for everybody, but making that transition to me put me in a vulnerable place where I wasn't, you know, like this is not completely familiar and that made me more cautious. So apparently, you had a perspective on what a design leader or what a good design leader needs to be. And yeah, I see. I'm like, I don't I don't know. And like, I maybe I did maybe maybe I didn't or maybe it was well. So let me rephrase it in this way. What's your current thinking about what a good design leader needs to be? Well, I mean, kind of basically, you need to understand design really well. That's that's kind of fundamental, you know, end to end from discovery to delivery and and ideally, like, have knowledge of all the different disciplines so that so that you can lead and provide insightful feedback. You don't have to have depth in everything. But but it's that is important because that is a key piece that a design leader is bringing. But then there's the, you know, that that's the design stuff. Then there's the business acumen, which is, you know, how to operate an organization, how to get things done, what what kind of, you know, how to how to how to prioritize what's going to be most high leverage for the business itself. And then there's the people component that we've been talking about a lot. It's just like just the pure helping people grow, helping to enable them to do their best in the job, clearing any roadblocks that they have, identifying opportunities that they might not be able to see because they're at a different level of visibility. So it's, you know, it's that designed core. But there's the business acumen. And I think that's where, you know, for me, this was great. I had no problem here. But when we started, when I started getting into a broader business context, that's where I got a little bit like, OK, I don't I don't know that I know everything here. And then the people stuff, I had some of that from from this, but not at the scale. So that's that's where I've been. OK, I need to, you know, adjust just my approaches because these same things that we're doing here aren't working in the same way. And developing like an acumen or vocabulary around a specific domain, in this case, business, like if we work for a client who's in the health care space, we're OK with not knowing the language because we know we'll learn it. And here, maybe as you described, like maybe already feel the pressure that you need to deliver from day one and that people expect you to notice stuff while. Yeah. And I think so it's interesting. You use the word expectation. I think I mean, everyone's different. I think I had a lot of expectations of myself and an idea of who I was as a designer. And I think those those aspects of myself were what caused me issues, you know, just, you know, needing to be more vulnerable, needing to be more more humble and and. You know, rely on some of the things that I learned before that you're pointing out. Like, yeah, I mean, I worked with lots of different businesses. I didn't know anything about them and you you learn. But you also have a different relationship and connection, you know, like when you when you are part of the business versus your consultant. I mean, at the at the end of the day, you've got a different home. And and I think that that that changes your perspective as well. Let's take into that a little bit because that's also you have the luxury to have been on both sides as adaptive somebody from adaptive path being hired by their companies to do great services and work. And now you're maybe hiring external agencies to work with your team. What is your general, I don't know, perspective on on these two fields? They're definitely different. And it was interesting, particularly, I mean, it's still interesting now, but it was interesting, particularly when I made the when I started leading the team in Dallas because we were that team was already working with agencies and and then there, you know, there were opportunities to do that. So I was suddenly on the other side of evaluating like, how are they doing and what is their approach and would I do it that way? And and that was that was an interesting thing to be on the other side of. I think what I've what I've noticed is I mean, what's definitely changed for me is when I and a lot of a lot of cases when we were working with clients, they they may not have had a design team that we were working with or maybe we were working with a part of business that that design wasn't connected to or they weren't as mature. But, you know, what what had happened in Capital One, and I think in a lot of organizations now is that the the maturity of design has grown, the investment of design internally has grown. So the relationship is is different where you know, there's. We're not as much tapping external agencies for like, we don't know how to do a thing. Can you come in and like do that for us? It is a lot more of like what we need expanded capacity to do something even when we have even if we do have lots of people like those those opportunities have changed a little bit. But I think the dialogue that I was then able to have with the with the agencies was was really interesting because I could I could tell. And in some cases, this still happens that the you know, the agency is pitching and trying to explain. What they can do or what design is and where, you know, I and others might be ready to just be like, OK, yeah, got that, let's talk about the work itself and and work through like how we're going to approach this. So that that definitely, you know, I didn't have as much of that kind of interaction when when we were at Adaptive Path. And but more and more, I think it's it's becoming a dialogue versus a pitch, like you said, it really depends on the maturity of your clients. And you're basically augmenting your teams nowadays rather than sort of outsourcing the entire challenge. The challenge stays you own the challenge. Yeah. Yeah. And in the. You know, that when I was at Adaptive Path, I think I would, you know, draw, you know, diagrams like here's the organization and we're coming in as a pin point and causing this change and hopefully all this stuff will happen. But only having, you know, a limited view of that organization as much as we did learn about it. But being on the inside, you know, you have visibility to so many different pieces and parts that that an agency just can't have access to. So I think, you know, it's been interesting to see how work like that happens. And then the work that has to happen afterwards for that to be successful. And I mean, it shed a lot of light for me on feelings I might have had in the past of like, oh, we did all this great work. They were really happy. And then nothing happens. Like, well, what happened? And, you know, you kind of move on to the next project. And maybe if you're lucky, you get to check in later and and find out did it work, did they do something, you know? But, like, my it's very difficult to take, unless it's, unless it's, like, more on the delivery phase, I think, for strategy in particular, it's hard to and services I, it's hard to just, like, take that and be like, OK, we're just going to plug it in and it's going to happen. There's there's, like, another translation layer that needs to happen to really integrate it into the business, and that takes more work. So, like, that's just another friction point that could cause agency work to not go forward. Again, an interesting topic, because a lot of, at least I hear a lot of stories of designers who, like you said, maybe are disappointed that they don't see their work being followed through or, quote, unquote, implemented. I'm curious what you have seen in your position. With regard to the trade-offs that need to be made of actually operationalizing maybe the strategy work that has been done through design. What are some of the real difficulties that you need to go through in order to get this out into the world? That's a big question. I know. It could be it could be anything and I mean, it could just be I mean, it could just be, you know, like, we had some work done. I had I commissioned some work for just just a journey map, like, hey, I need I need someone to look across all these different pieces from an outside perspective. And so I also want to say, like, agencies are still valuable. I am not I'm not arguing that and we use them all the time. It is great to get the outside perspective or the extra hands. And but, you know, it's like we might we might do that, do something like that, like create an artifact. And something shifts in the organization. That, you know, maybe maybe the business like reorganizes. And like suddenly it's like, well, this this doesn't map anymore. So either we have to rework it or it is just like we can't we can't use it in exactly the same way that we expected. You know, and or it might be like, hey, another another way I think about some of the even even our internal design work when it's particularly in more of the the strategies space or the discovery space is like this work helps people make decisions. It doesn't from an agency you might be thinking or as any designer, of course, you want to see your work come into fruition. A lot of design work like that, I think helps people make decisions. So Michael, like, that's amazing, great work, love it. There are things in there that just aren't going to work again for our organization. So we're all but it's inspired what we could do. And then that just becomes a different thing and gets incorporated into you know, the broader spectrum of things that are happening. And that's that that's been how I've been looking back on actually some of the work they did before Capital One. But it's but it's how I look at it now. It's like look, you know, it's success as a designer isn't always implementation. It is it's helping people in this case, the business make better decisions. So here's an option. This is what it could look like. We couldn't see that before. Great. Now that I know that I'm able to make better business decisions about what we can actually do it, even if it's not like take this completely and and do it as as designed. And this is a really interesting topic because helping organizations make smarter decisions. I definitely second that and believe that. The byproduct of this is that it's really hard to take ownership of success. And like everybody has contributed to some extent to to this decision. And then I want to reflect back on you and the teams that you lead. Like, how do you give them sort of this sense of accomplishment?  You want you want to say I'm being valuable. I'm contributing to the success of this organization. I'm making customers happy. But quote unquote, if the only thing you're doing is informing smarter decisions, does that become difficult? Well, it shouldn't be the only thing. But I'm just saying, yeah, I'm saying that that that is, you know, it's similar to organizations that promote, you know, shutting down projects, right? It's like, OK, you've learned enough to know, like, we're not going to go in that direction. So that that's just an aspect I think of doing some of this work that, hey, if it doesn't go forward, it's not because of the work. It could just be like that was what they needed. They needed to see that option to decide, hey, you know what? I mean, because sometimes now that we see that, we know that that's not the right thing for us to do and that that's a possibility. But like going back to your question, I mean, I think. Ultimately, everybody wants to contribute value. And as designers, we want to make things and make change and contribute to that. So that's that's hugely important. And that's partly why try to recognize and celebrate those things. And I care very much about that we are actually making impact in the organization. And that also is something that as a design leader, I have to be keenly aware of, again, like balancing that, like, great, doing good design. Is it going to have business impact? Is it really connected into the right people, places, systems for it to go forward? And and that that's a big part of my job is, you know, making sure that happens. Because yeah, I think all of my designers would say, you know, if there is work and there is work that sometimes, you know, we do and then it's like doesn't move forward. That's not the greatest feeling. Even if he tried to say, like, hey, that was good because we decided something else. Ultimately, we want to make that impact. And that's that's a huge part of my my job. That's, you know, a good portion of how I'm held accountable. It's like, OK, have have your team not just deliver great designs or experiences or strategy, but is there an associated business impact? Yeah. And is there an. So the way I'm translating this, your role is to make sure that the design teams stay on the right track or the the best possible track, knowing you should have the overview where the organization is heading into in the next, I don't know, three, five, 10 years and are the activities that the design teams are doing in line with helping to achieve those goals. Does it does that make sense? You need you need to know what what what the business is trying to do and what's important for the business again as a designer, you're you're bringing. Your job is to bring design into that context, bring in the human centeredness, bring in, you know, the the the tools and the things you need to do. You know, the the the tools and the things that we can do to help. The business achieve its goals, which, of course, should also be helping the customers and at Capital One, you know, our mission is change banking for good and that that's something that we care a lot about, you know, balancing that customer benefit and business objective. But, you know, we're I think designers are naturally inclined to. Focus on the customer, make things human centered, make things of good quality. And then, you know, we need to always be thinking about how that is going to. Fit in with the larger business goals and objectives, because if you do something and you can go back to this happens in the agency, it happens internally. If you do start a project that is not it has no real connection. And it's just like, well, hopefully we'll do this and something will happen. It's a high probability that it won't happen because it's not it's not attached already to something or an objective that is known. And then, you know, you know, bringing people along for that is also going to be super helpful and making something happen and that kind of impact. I'm really curious if you look back on the last eight years being in house, what were some of the quote unquote internal battles that you decided to fight? And then later discovered, well, these are the really important things. And these are the distractions. Like I'm trying to find the right words, but sometimes as designers, we tend to get hung up over details. What have you found are the details that we get hung up with? And what are the things that we should really dig into and fight the battles? You ask such large questions. You know, my main answer for all these things are, well, it depends. Yeah, sure. I mean, I think designers can get caught up on so many different things and that I think part of being a good designer is learning that. And I don't know that there's a hard and fast rule. I mean, sometimes corner radius of a button does matter. Sometimes it might not. And so it really depends on the situation. Sure. And I agree with that. But I'm sure that there are some examples. You are in your personal journey where you thought, Jamin, why did I put so much effort in like getting this decision? In the end, it's insignificant while this was a really important part. So without without generalizing it to the entire design community, what were some of the things that you feel? Yeah. I mean, I think I keep going back to the transition point of again from my consulting into into meeting. But one of the things that we were focusing on as a business was being more human centered. And I was helping to bring in services and tools. So journey maps, vision stories, service blueprints. Those things to me were always connected to designers. Designers, I mean, we were like inventing these things to a degree.  And I focus a lot on like, hey, we need to, our people need to be involved in the creation. And they got to like look a certain way. And, you know, after over time, I realized like, well, actually, you know, if people are getting the usefulness out of the artifact and they understand what's behind it and they're, you know, they are thinking about an end to end experience. That's more important. And then like whether it's in a particular template or if a designer is directly involved in it or not.  It's a business issue. But, but, you know, I was definitely more on the designers have to do all the things. And then over time realized like, well, actually, you know, it's that it's even if it's not of the bar or quality that I would do it. It's great that everyone has access or understanding of this and is using that to make decisions and owning it themselves.  No, I can't. I think there's so many things that were going. I mean, particularly, I mean, even at the time, although I think this still happens now, like people are talking about how you have to and particularly in service line, how you have to give things away. In fact, I was inspired by Todd Wilkins spoke at the service experience conference that I also was leading when I was at Adopt-A-Path and he spoke about a very similar thing. Like, you know, when he went to IBM and and, you know, listening to that as well as everything else was going in the world. Like I remember that being a point for me of like, hey, he's talking about giving it away. He's an example of his kids, which he often does and that stuck with me is like, hey, if my son is trying to learn how to tie his shoes and he does it wrong, like, I'm like, good job, you know, like, let's do it again. And I thought, that's a great, yeah, I mean, if somebody picks up a service blueprint and tries and doesn't do it exactly the way I would do it, you know, hey, just like, I'm glad you're trying to do that, like keep, keep at it and find something that's useful in the spirit of this end to end and experience that you're trying to support versus like, and give that to me. I gotta, you know, give it to the design team. We'll do it the right way. And it's funny and we sort of have to wrap up, but this also reflects, I'm hearing your own journey reflected in the story because you have to give yourself also the permission to do it quote unquote wrong, to learn this stuff and figure it out and seek help. And yeah, so I'm not sure if that was intended, but there's definitely an analogy to that as well. You're getting that, like, I have a high bar for myself and can be a perfectionist and have had to learn. And I think, like, maybe this is a closing point that whatever flaws I had as a designer and maybe as a design leader of like a small team, get multiplied when you put it in a greater scale by nature. And I think that's the real thing is like, you know, I probably had all these issues when I was at Adaptive Path, but they didn't have as much impact either on me or the team around me. And then, but now, you know, that is more scale, like, wow, I have to pay more attention to things that, you know, are about me, like know myself more and how they impact my career and other people around me. And that's, you know, that's a constant journey and actually has been really great personally for me to try to understand more about who I am and what I'm about and how to, you know, be more vulnerable and humble and, you know, help my team and the business. What's next on your journey? I never know, honestly. My underlying mission is to help advance the practice of design and I continue to look for ways to do that, whether that's supporting the services line network or, you know, leveraging this opportunity that I have within Adaptive Path and Capital One to do design at scale and learn how to influence a large organization to be more human centered and help it on its journey. As long as I'm, you know, keep finding those opportunities, you know, that's what I'll continue to do. Final question, Javen. What do you hope is the one thing that people remember from this conversation? I don't know. Maybe that last point that you got me around to is that, you know, the, you know, as you, it's really important to know and understand yourself and how that impacts the work and the people around you and if you are on a journey and aspiring to like lead more people and bigger teams, like whatever those things are, they're going to get more exposed and or, you know, get in the way. The great things will also help as well. So, you know, not to dwell on that, but it's always, it's always good to reflect on the lessons learned. But that, yeah, I think that's an important, it's an important point for me and my journey. And if that helps somebody else, then I'm very happy with this whole interview. And on that note, I think we have a title for this episode. Jaimen, thank you for your time. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for being vulnerable and sharing. Let's try to do another episode, not in five years, but somewhat closer. So once again, thanks for your time and for hopping on. All right. Thank you, Mark. Awesome that you made it all the way here. I really hope that you enjoyed the conversation and got something useful out of it. If this is your first time here, don't forget to click that subscribe button so you'll be notified when new episodes come out. Thanks a lot for watching and I'll see you in the next video.


Now, shall I take it away? All right. Well, thanks everybody for joining me today. I am gonna be talking about vernal pools and I'm just gonna share my screen here. There we go. Can everybody see that now? Yes. Great. So I'm gonna be talking about vernal pool ecology and conservation. One of my favorite topics. I've spent quite a bit of time kicking around in vernal pools and I find them just a delightful place to spend time and there's so much to learn and there's so much to see and they're accessible to people of all ages. So first of all, let's just start by talking about what is a vernal pool? Vernal pools are temporary, typically temporary bodies of water that fill up with water in the fall. They hold water over the winter and the spring but then come mid to late summer, they dry up like you see with the photo on the right. And if you're walking through the woods and you find one of these dried up spots, you might not realize that, hey, that's actually a vernal pool. And they come in lots of different sizes and shapes and this is sort of a typical vernal pool that is in the middle of a softwood forest where the water is relatively, it's relatively open in the middle. There are down logs, lots of shrubs around the pool but we also have these isolated little pools all throughout southern and central Maine that are, they fill, underlain with bedrock but then they're, they fill with water and again dry up during the summer these should be in a hardwood forest. And then here's just another view of one where you might have a little more shrubs that are growing in and around the pool. This one is already starting to dry down but it's not totally dry yet. And then they can also occur in floodplains along rivers where sometimes are old oxbows that are associated with river floodplains where the water fills in temporarily but then again dries down later in the season. Or they can be these deep little pockets of water that are held within forested wetlands where you have this nice hammock and hollow kind of topography and occasionally you have a place where the water stays there through the beginning of the summer season long enough to provide green habitat for the animals that breed there. This is another, not just another view of a pool surrounded by hardwood trees and some of the trees are actually in the water for part of the year and then out of the water for part of the year. And here's what it looks like when it's all dried up. That same photo and just go back again. So here's what it looks like when it's full of water and here's what it looks like when it's all dried up. This is another view of, in northern part of the state we sometimes have these pools that are as big as two acres in size that are found in the landscape. And again, they fill with water early in the season and then dry down and sometimes you get this nice mat of mosses and grasses that fill in the area after it dries down. Well, so what's special about vernal pools? What makes them unique? First of all, they don't have any fish in them. And that is really important for the amphibians that breed there because that means that the fish aren't eating the eggs or the young salamanders and frogs. And they also typically don't have frogs that need permanent water like our bullfrogs and green frogs both of which are actually quite predatory on other amphibians that might breed in these vernal pools. And the things that are again kind of unique to these vernal pools is that they are ephemeral meaning they are stood the water in them only stays for part of the year. They're typically small, maybe a 10th of an acre to a half an acre at best. And they don't have a permanent inlet or outlet in other words aren't streams that are feeding into these pools or leaving the pools. So they're just this big pile of water sitting on top of the forest floor. And then there's no breeding fish, green frogs or bullfrogs. So all of those characteristics create this very specialized breeding habitat for a number of our wildlife species. The first of which is fairy shrimp. This is a magnified view of a fairy shrimp. It's just like a larger shrimp only tiny and they have quite a unique life cycle here in our vernal pools. There's only a few of our vernal pools that have fairy shrimp in them but you'll see them swimming on their side and moving about and they usually just are in the pools for about six weeks and then they lay their eggs and they disappear again. And then we have our wood frogs which I'm sure most of you are familiar with their call. These are frogs that come out first thing in the spring and they, I will never forget the first time I learned about wood frogs. I was riding my bike on the bike path from old town into the campus of the University of Maine and Orano. And there was this little pool of water by the side of the trail. And I stopped and I heard this quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack sound. I'm looking around for the ducks, some mallards or black ducks or wood ducks or something. Couldn't find them, couldn't find them. Finally asked somebody at the, in the wildlife department what's making all that noise? And it turned out to be wood frogs. So wood frogs sometimes sound like ducks but they all come out at the same time and breed together in these vernal pools. And then we have both spotted salamanders. These are fairly large salamanders that have a dark background with bright yellow spots on them. And blue spotted salamanders, which are smaller, little bit smaller than the spotted salamanders. And there's quite a bit of genetic variation among them but this is a typical blue spotted salamander you might find in Maine. The yellow, the spotted salamanders are much more common than the blue spotted salamanders. And they have, these three or four species have really unique life cycles. So they all congregate in the pools early in the spring to lay their eggs but then the adults leave the pools. And for the wood frogs, they typically go from the pool here. Oops, sorry, I didn't mean to do that. They typically go from the pool over to another wetland where they hang out during the summer. They like that moist ground that they are attracted to. And then come fall, they will actually move from out of the wetland could be a forested wetland or some other kind of wetland. They move from that wetland up into upland forest habitat where they overwinter. And I'll show you some amazing photos of what they look like when they're overwintering in a bit. The spotted salamanders and blue spotted salamanders all go to the pool to breed, to lay their eggs. And then they leave the pool and spend the rest of the year in these upland habitats. They like sort of drier conditions and they will use small mammal tunnels underground to find their food and hang out during the rest of the year. So sometimes they're referred to as mole salamanders, M-O-L-E, just like moles that climb under the ground. And if we look a little more closely at their movements, what we find is that the juveniles act a little bit different than the adults. So as I said, both the wood frogs and the salamander, blue spotted salamanders spend the winter in these upland forests that you see up here. And then they go back to the pool where they lay their eggs. Once those eggs hatch and the young mature, then they leave the pool and the juveniles disperse. Quite a bit, they can disperse quite a bit farther than the adults that are hanging out around the pool. And they will sometimes disperse to an entirely different pool so that you mix up the genetic variability among the different species or to other uplands where they're searching for new places to breed. Some of them also come back to the pool where they were hatched from. And then in the summer, again, these wood frogs like to hang out in these forested wetlands that are nice and damp for them. This is what the pool looks like in winter. Doesn't that look refreshing right about now? That it is so hot today. They're covered with snow, there's ice under them. And unlike some of our other frogs and turtles, they don't burrow down into the amphibians that breed in these pools, do not burrow down underneath the mud and wait there. Instead, wood frogs turn into frogsicles. They literally freeze solid during the wintertime. They create their own antifreeze that allows the liquid that is between the cells to freeze, but the cells themselves don't freeze. But if you were to uncover one of these guys that's hanging out in the wintertime, this is what it would look like. They are the only frog that can do this. It's quite amazing. That's also why they're the only frog that breeds all that and the mink frog that breeds so far north. They breed way up into Canada, where nobody else, not no other amphibians are breeding. Then come spring rains. You start getting a bunch of water that lays on top of the ice. The ice starts melting a little bit and the rains come and both the spotted salamanders, the blue spout salamanders and the wood frogs all emerge from their winter sites and they start moving towards the vernal pools. Sometimes they all move at the same time and we call that big night. When it's the first warm rain and by warm, I'm talking about maybe 40, 45 degrees. And that triggers a response from the wood frogs and the salamanders to start moving. And they will get to the edge of the vernal pool when there's still ice on the pool, but they'll find those spots that are warmed by the sun where they can start gathering together and then mating and laying their eggs. This is what it, this you're actually looking through the ice now at a bunch of spotted salamanders that have come to the pool. The males usually arrive first and then the females afterwards. And the males actually lay these little packets of sperm on the bottom of the pond or the pool. And then the females come in and pick up those packets of sperm. They fertilize the eggs and then they lay their eggs. Sometimes you can see this mass of salamanders, all what we call big, it's a big Congress. They're all there together and moving around each other and bring your headlamp out and watch them at night. It's quite exciting, quite dramatic. And this is what the female usually finds some sort of twig or branch to lay their eggs on, to attach their eggs on. And that's where they will mature them over the next month or so. For the wood frogs, the wood frogs are what we call explosive breeders. They all show up at the pool at the same time. They're there for maybe five days to two weeks, that's it. And the males are calling, they're trying to attract the females. The females then select the male that they're gonna mate with. And if you look closely, you'll see there are actually four legs back here. So the male is actually a little bit smaller than the female and sits on top of the female while the female lays her eggs and she fertilizes the eggs as they are being laid. And then here are some other egg masses over here to the right. One large mass of eggs for each female, they can lay up to 2000 eggs in one egg mass. And here's a great photo of what they look like when they're just kind of hanging out resting in the pool. And this is what vernal pool researchers look like when they're hanging out in the pool. So this is one of a former graduate student, Don, who spent quite a bit of time in the pools trying to conduct research on who lives here, what are they doing, where are they going? And because of all the research that's been done through the University of Maine in Orno, we have a tremendous amount of information about just how special these vernal pools are. One of the things they've been able to do is attach little radio tags to the frogs and salamanders. So this is a little tag that just goes around the hips on the frog and then you can track their movement. It's only recently that we've been able to have radio tags like this that are small enough to attach to something like a wood frog. But look at what we've been able to learn by doing that. This is a map, this is not in Maine, but this is a map of each different color represents a different individual that was tagged. They all laid their eggs in this vernal pool right here in this patch of forest. And you can see that surprisingly, most of them have found a way to move through this subdivision across the roads and over to this little patch of forest here where they are hanging out then during the rest of the summer. There's one sort of stray one over here. I'm not sure what that one's doing, but, and then this one that found a different patch of forest to hang out in, but they move quite a ways. And here's a similar map for the spotted salamander. And what you can see here is that here's the vernal pool. Once they get to the houses along the road, most of them stop short of moving through those areas. So there, most of them have stopped as soon as they get to those developed areas. So they much prefer being in the forest. And here's another interesting symbol of movement. This was from wood frogs that were tagged in a little pool up off the Joe Mary road in Northern Maine. And what you can see here is that most of them are actually moving up the slopes during the summertime. And they're hanging out at the base of these large glacial erratics, big rocks that have been left there by the glaciers. And they, they hang out in the moss and the other vegetation, excuse me, that is found on those big rocks. And it's also on North facing slope where it tends to be a little bit cooler than on the South facing slope. A few of them have found their way up here to loom pond, but most of them are on this North facing cooler slope. And can you explain how they actually go about tagging them? It's this little, if you see here, that while they catch them in pit traps, so pit traps are little, our buckets, maybe five gallon or buckets that you actually hide in the ground. And as the individuals are moving either to the vernal pool or away from the vernal pool, they'll come across these pit traps and fall down into the pit traps. It doesn't hurt them, they stay alive, but they can't get back out. And so then they can take them out of that pit trap and put these little tags on them and release them again. So in the fall, the salamanders and frogs start moving around again. They leave the pool. A lot of times the pools fill back up with water in fall. It just, it's groundwater that feeds these. And then here's where our salamanders are hanging out. They like these little holes that have been created by mice or voles or molds. And that's where they tend to be found. And then our wood frogs burrow right down into the leaf litter, the leaves that are on the forest floor. I don't know if you can see, this is the frog right here, sort of hiding under the leaf litter. And that's where they'll hang out for the fall and winter. And interestingly enough, through additional research, they've been able to determine that the places where the wood frogs over winter tend to be those places that are more open and collect more snow than underneath the dense canopy of the forest. Those are also the places that tend to thaw earliest in the springtime so that then they can move back to their row pools to breed. And so now I'm gonna switch a little bit and talk about how are we conserving these pools? What can we do to help protect all these wonderful critters? And so current regulations are twofold. Both the federal government and the state government have certain regulations that encourage some protection around important vernal pools. And the feds have an area of concern that goes out to about 750 feet from the pool itself, which just means that if there's gonna be a development in or around that vernal pool, you try to cite it in a way that minimizes the impact to both the pool and then also the forest around the pool. And at the state level, if there is a significant vernal pool, and I'll bet you know what that is in a minute, the, there's a 250 foot area around the pool that it needs to be reviewed under a permit application to determine where best to do any sort of development or if there shouldn't be any development, but that almost never happens. And significant vernal pools in Maine are defined as pools where you have at least 40 egg masses of wood frogs and or 20 egg masses of spotted salamanders and or 10 egg masses of wood spotted salamanders. So in order to determine that, you really need to get out there in the spring and actually count the egg masses. You'll notice that the wood frog egg masses are very large. As I mentioned, they can be up to 2000 eggs in one mass. The spotted salamanders don't lay as many eggs and their egg masses are covered in this sort of jelly covering that makes them really harder for other predators, insects and whatnot to feed on. And then the blue spotted salamander egg masses tend to be a little more stringy than the others and even smaller numbers. Fairy shrimp only show up in about 20% of all of our pools. So they're even harder to find, but they are another, if they occur at all, then that pool is considered a significant vernal pool as well. But unfortunately, our frogs and salamanders don't know what the law is and they don't follow the law. They move way beyond that 250 foot area that is designated as a review area under permit. We know that they travel up to 3000 feet for wood frogs, 1200 about 1200 feet for the blue spotted and around 800 feet for spotted salamanders. So they're moving quite a bit more than the regulations take into account. So why should we conserve vernal pools? In addition to being really important breeding habitat for the species that I've already talked about, these vernal pools provide a tremendous amount of food for many other species of wildlife. So I'm gonna flip through some, well, let me just show you here. So one of the things we need to think about is what role these vernal pools play across the landscape. And as I mentioned, they often fill up with water in the fall and then they eventually dry down in the summer, but they're recharged by underground water flow that moves one to another and across the landscape. So we really need to be thinking about how we can conserve the entire system, not just the pool basin itself. And what we've found through lots of camera work and other studies is that there's all these different species that are listed here on the right that feed on either the eggs, the young or the adults. And they'll feed on the tadpoles, they'll feed on the emerging young juveniles, they'll feed on other insects in there. And each of the species that is in yellow are species that are also hunted by people. So we know that these are a super important food source for many of those species. So let's look a minute at who else? Well, I mean, look at that. There's all these eggs that have been laid in the pool, some of which now are already starting to dry up because the pool has dropped, the water level has dropped down, but that is, we all eat eggs, right? We eat eggs from chickens or ducks or whatever because they're a great source of protein. This is a huge source of protein for many species and many other species. Not all of them hatch, not all of them survive. And so they can be food for other critters. So I'm gonna run through now a series of photos that were taken by a remote camera at different vernal pools. They'll show you just how many different species visit and use these pools. And it might be fun, I'm gonna go kind of fast. So for each photo, try to write in the chat what you see. Just what's the species that you notice there? Okay, just stop here for a minute. What did, did we get any answers in the chat? I can't hear you. Sally, I can read it. Duck, mallard, deer, bear, fox, mink, bobcat, lynx, heron, raccoon, I may have missed some. Yeah, so isn't that, that's quite surprising, right? I mean, there are so many different animals that come into these vernal pools looking for food, including the owl, that's sort of a new thing we've seen. I actually saw this spring myself, I saw a barred owl sitting on a limb right up above a vernal pool after the eggs had already been laid and the adults were still in there and could tell that that owl was ready to go hunting in that pool. So that was, that was a surprise. So remember I mentioned that they use pit traps to collect the frogs and salamanders before they take them. This is a bucket load of frogs and salamanders that were caught in one of these pit traps that were leaving the pool after they had laid their eggs. And you can see just how many there are. So in addition to the species that were found, you saw in the cameras, we also have red-tailed hawks. We have snakes that are feeding on the frogs and the salamanders. We have blandings and spotted turtles that hang out in vernal pools during the summertime and they especially like to stay there. Actually in the, after the pool dries down, they'll also, what's called estivated, it's sort of like a summer hibernation. They'll hang out in those pools during the summer when they're in that late summer, when they're inactive and they move from one pool to another pool both to feed and to stay and to be in that water. So then we have a challenge in terms of people in pools, somewhat of a challenge you can see in this photo that sometimes people like to build their houses really close to the vernal pool. And that can be okay as long as the pool is not entirely surrounded by houses. And if the forest around the pool is maintained because you need the leaves that are dropping into the pool, you need the shade in the pool to keep it cool and sometimes the sticks and limbs that are in the pool for the amphibians to lay their eggs on. So we can get along together, we just need to be thoughtful about how we do that. And we know that roads can be particularly perilous to our breeding amphibians. The largest amount of mortality for wildlife happens near wetlands, including vernal pools. And of course people are dying at night, it's raining, it's always raining when the amphibians are moving to or from the pool. And so it's hard for people to see them. We also know that salt on the roads can cause this bloating to occur in wood frogs that interferes with their ability to move and potentially even to reproduce. I've seen this very thing and there's a great vernal pool right down the road for me. And we've found a lot of these bloated wood frogs in the last few years and just this year, for the first time, somebody finally was able to answer the question of what's causing that. So one thing that we can do is talk to the Public Works Department and say, hey, can that be a low salt or no salt area because it's causing problems. Another thing that we worry about is over time, if there's a lot of development in between all the pools, that makes it just a lot harder for the amphibians to move around. And does that mean that these pools will eventually become empty of life? So there's a lot of things that we can do though to both help vernal pools and still get along with them. A number of years ago in 2011, we completed working with these 10 different towns around Maine where we trained volunteers to go out and survey vernal pools in their communities. Some of the towns were able to survey basically every single vernal pool in the community, others surveyed just part of them, trying to determine which ones were the most important in terms of the number of amphibian egg masses that were there. So here's a training. We did a lot of training, both indoors and outdoors with folks, and we had people of all ages, families, adults, retired folks, kids. They loved going out and collecting the data. And then those towns were able to use that data to bring it into reviews when there were new subdivisions coming up or whatever it might be. And then we also, as I mentioned, road crossing is really dangerous for folks. And so again, with this pool right down the road from my house, the local land trust works together with the town every year to help the amphibians cross the road safely. So sometimes we have as many as 70 people that are out there at one time and the police actually close off the road temporarily for big night while we have all these families and folks that come out and help move the amphibians safely across the road. So yeah. Sharon Eaton says I have a friend in mass who helps critters cross the road at night. Yes. Are there any programs in May? There is. There's actually a relatively new program that's been created. This is something we've been doing with our local land trust for quite a few years, but now as part of the up pools and people program, which I'll show you in a minute, there's a whole section in there on big night and you can get all kinds of information there about how to help organize and host one of these big night events in your community. It's a lot of fun. And we also, as part of that work to provide additional information for volunteers. This was a great display at our local library where people could come and read all about the different amphibians and whatnot that live in these rental pools. And then we also gave awards out to people who came out through a drawing. So it's a local artist, Michael Boardman, who creates wonderful work and he created these new identification sheets and also a wonderful frog and salamander t-shirts. These are kids and these are adults. And then we know that we've been working with local land trust, with the conservation, we've worked with the community to create conservation subdivisions that will recognize the important rental pool and then work around that to create the rest of the subdivision. And we know that community forests also play a really important role in protecting some of these rental pools. And then landowners can really help. Private landowners, individual landowners in addition to those community folks can help. We're in the process of completing a stewardship award program. That just means you've agreed to help protect this rental pool any way that you can. And we created these wonderful signs that if you agree to do certain kinds of behaviors around your rental pool, then you can get this award and display the sign on your property. So we're kind of excited about that. And it's really pretty straightforward. Basically, you wanna keep disturbance out of the rental pool itself. Again, this is where the, this is a spotted salamander egg mass. This is what the juveniles look like when they're swimming around after they hatch. This is what the wood frog egg masses look like. And this is what the tadpoles look like when they're swimming around after they hatch. And sometimes you can come to one of these rental pools and it will just be teeming with all these tadpoles. And then in the first 100 feet around the pool where we know a lot of the adults spend their time when they're not breeding, this is the place where the juveniles will emerge from the pool. You can see these are all little tiny frogs that have just hatched that have left the pool. And then this is an adult and a small salamander that's left the pool as well. So be thinking about things like try to keep roads and driveways out of those areas if you can. And if there are any detention basins that are gonna be developed, try to keep those out of the envelope as well because they'll get trapped in those areas thinking it might be a rental pool when it actually isn't. And then a little bit further out, out to 750 feet. Again, this is where our adults are moving and juveniles are moving. Try to cluster development, locate housing away from the vernal pool. Keep the forest canopy intact at least 75% of that area. Try to control erosion and use silk fencing to exclude amphibians from the construction site and then eliminate or minimize the use of pesticides. We know those can be really problematic because amphibian skin is very porous so they absorb all that stuff. And if anybody's working in the woods if you're doing active harvesting we also have a series of recommendations for that that are similar but a little bit different to the recommendations for places where there are houses. No disturbance in the vernal pool in that first hundred feet around the vernal pool limit your harvest, keep a 75% canopy cover. So you've got that shade and woody material that comes into the pool. Harvest only when the soil is dry or frozen. We try to keep harvesting outside of the breeding season. And then when you go out to that 750 feet or 400 feet actually, 400 feet then also try to some harvesting is fine. Just try to keep at least 50% canopy cover and maintain that shade as well. Because remember these animals aren't just living in the pool. They actually spend over 90% of their time in the forest around the pool. Towns can also help. There's a new program that the state and the feds work together to create called the S.A.M.P. the area management plan. S.A.M.P. something, I forget what it is, something area management plan. Basically the idea is that if you have an area that you're trying to target growth if they're, and I don't know why towns down East may not even have this but certainly in this part of the state a lot of towns have designated certain areas for more dense development where you have a growth area. Let's say there's a pool, we're in a pool in the middle of that designated growth area but you wanna use it for housing or other commercial activity then if you find a landowner in the rural part of town that has some rural pools on their property and is willing to protect those the folks who wanna develop here basically put up money to help protect the land over here. So we're trying to protect a larger landscape where these rental pools can thrive over time. And then we have lots of rental pool information and guidelines if you wanna learn anything more about rental pools that I've just touched on today. There's this wonderful fact sheet that describes significant wildlife or significant rental pools. We have a guide for municipal folks on how to identify and protect rental pools. These are best development practices that are specifically designed for folks that are building subdivisions or whatnot and then these forestry habitat management guidelines. We also have some wonderful rental pool identification aids. You saw part of this poster before but it's two-sided just eight and a half by 11 that and all the animals are to scale. So the bullfrog for example is a lot bigger than the spring peeper. But these are laminated and they're really great tools. And then there are also these wonderful pocket ID cards that are on a ring and you can take them out into the field with you and use them to identify whatever you find. All of this stuff is available through our main Audubon website but it's also our website links to this of pools and people site that the University of Maine houses and there are many ways to stay in touch with that program. So if you want any more information here's where you can find it at the main Audubon website and search for rental pools on the of pools and people website. And if anybody has follow up questions for me you can reach me either by email or by phone. So that is all I have for slides and I'm happy to take any questions if there are any and I will stop sharing. People should feel free to unmute now and ask your question. Did I get you excited about going to visit a vernal pool? There's a lot happening there.  Sally and Jim here, I put a question in the chat but I'll just try and summarize it. First of all, the graphics on your presentation were wonderful, the photographs, the support. So I was struck by that map of the radio tagged frogs on the move and so they have seemed to have a very strong sense of direction. They do. From the pool to the forest across backyards and streets and so forth. My question is they move as individuals or they move as a group. How do they do, I would just call it geography. How do they have a sense of place where they are and where they're going? We don't really know the answer to that yet. We don't know whether, like with birds, we know they use the stars, then we know they respond to magnetic directions. We don't really know what these frogs and salamanders are using for their to direct them but they do have a very strong sense of direction you're right. And they will typically return to the same pool every year, year after year. They travel individually, they don't follow one another. As you saw even in the tags of all the different colors for the wig frogs, each one took a little bit different pathway but they definitely have that general direction from the pool to the forest where they're headed or to the wetland. Thank you. I will give credit for the slides to my colleague, Dr. Aram Calhoun. She's at the University of Maine in Orano and we have, two of us have worked together for many years on Verna Pool Conservation. She does all the research stuff. I do more of the outreach and education work but I credit her and her colleagues and graduate students with most of the graphics. I put a few together as well. Anybody else have any questions? If not, we'll stop the recording.


Well hello and welcome to Understand Men Now. I'm Jonathan Asley of JonathanAsley.com and I'm so excited to be shooting this short video for you today. Our topic, some men ghost. Ghost because you did this. Some men ghost because you did this. All right. Really quickly, if you're new to my YouTube channel, please hit the subscribe button. Hit the bell so you can be notified of new content. I shoot about three or four videos per week. All right, let's talk about men who ghost and this is in the early stages of dating and let me share with you. This is just gonna be a short video. It's a very personal share, but it's something that seems to happen or happened to me recently where a woman had, I was interacting with a woman on a dating app and and we stopped interacting and I found out through somebody else that she said I ghosted her and so I want to address this situation that happens in the early stages of dating where you're You haven't even gotten on a telephone call yet so this is the ghost that happens before the telephone call where you're interacting with someone through your little smartphone devices, okay, and you're interacting with them and all of a sudden the conversation ends. It doesn't go anywhere and what occurs to me that happens frequently is that there's an expectation that men are initiating all of the conversations that the expectation is men are initiating all the conversations and what happened in this particular case and this has happened frequently, I've interacted with a woman. I just didn't feel much rapport, connection or flirtation going on with her. I try to be flirtatious. I try to be get rapport going but if I don't feel rapport coming back, I just don't initiate something and what's interesting is that gets labeled as ghosting and so what's happening here is that there's this expectation that men are driving the bus in communication. I'm here to say it's a two-lane street of communication so when I stopped communication that woman could have reached out to me and if it was happened to be flirty, we might have continued with it but to label it as ghosting that's not what happened. I just chose not to continue to go forward and that's what often happens in the early stages of dating when a guy doesn't, you know, you go on a date, you have a good time and he doesn't follow up for a date. That's not ghosting. That's just merely he's just, it's not even that he's not that into you. It's just maybe there wasn't any initiation coming from her. So what I've observed is in fact I had a recent situation with the client some months ago where literally when she reached out to me she said, you know, the man she was interacting with didn't, he said, you know, I can't remember what he said but something like I'll try to get back to you or something like that and my response was, hey, send a flirty text. And see what happens and sure enough, he perked up just by simply sending a little flirty text. So she was about to write him off. I say, no, why don't you try something different? And so my invitation here is to recognize that communication is a two-lane street and it requires some level of flirtation. Another way of looking at is dropping the hanky, giving green lights because we men need encouragement to keep the communication flow going. So we're not necessarily ghosting when it happens. We just don't feel like you like us and we don't feel like you like us. We don't feel enthusiastic of putting in much effort and when we don't feel enthusiastic putting in effort we just move on to the person that's going to show some interest. I think one of the reasons why ghosting happens so frequently and I say I'm not saying 50% of the time or even 40% of the time but I want to say at least 30% of the time when a guy isn't communicating or connecting, it's because he probably on some level isn't feeling like you're into him. Now, I know you can't be into somebody just through this device. I get that but what I mean to say is some flirtation, some interest, some compliments. In fact, if you're not familiar with my acronym, ACE, A-C-E, A-C-E, A stands for appreciation. Men rarely get appreciated for their efforts so I'm always throwing in the word appreciation or gratitude in communication. The C stands for compliment. Men need some encouragement, men need some compliments. Hey, you're handsome. I don't know. I like your car. That's not really a compliment but maybe compliment him on his profession, the way he looks, maybe the way he dresses, some little compliment and then enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the E, A-C-E, appreciation, compliment, enthusiasm. Enthusiasm. For example, you can get the first message an interaction on a dating site like Bumble or Tinder or whatever and you can start with, hey, I really appreciate you responding back. Start with the words of appreciation. Start with that. Hey, you look really great in that outfit or some compliment or I really loved your profile. I loved what you shared in your profile. Some compliment and then some enthusiasm. The reason why they created these little emojis is to create enthusiasm. So use an enthusiastic emoji to create some energy because then that allows us men to come a little bit closer to you. We're sometimes scared. Sometimes we don't feel safe and it's not, there's this, I know you're getting a lot of advice. If he's really into you, he's going to come after you but we, most of the time we barely know you. We need some encouragement and that's my invitation for you. This is try these things. Try ACE. Try this awareness because oftentimes, you know, we're not ghosting for anything malicious. It's just, a lot of times it's just, we just not thinking you're into us and sometimes all it takes is one text message to shift the dynamic and I can tell you, I've had situations where a woman almost sabotaged a relationship by going into the negative and I'm here to suggest try the positive. That's using self-love and everyone who knows, I always talk about my book.  Anyway, self-love is stepping into, leaning into your empowerment, leaning into your sovereignty, leaning into the process because if you do that, you might be surprised and that's my invitation for you. By the way, a link to my book is below. Also, if you'd like to schedule a discovery call with me, the link is below a free discovery call to see if working with the coach is right for you and I'm going to wrap up this video as I always do today, giving myself a big gigantic hug of self-love. I'm going to reach into the camera and give you a hug of love, if that's okay. I'm going to ask you to turn to somebody and give them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love and we can all use more love in our lives. Thank you so much and wishing you a wonderful day. Bye-bye now.