So I have a challenge in pronouncing his name and Aynran's name. You're wrong, Brooke. As the Executive Director of the Aynran Institute, a former finance professor, speaks internationally on such topics as the clauses of the financial crisis, the morality of capitalism, and the endings of growth of government. Dr. Brooke is a co-author of Neoconservatism on obituary for an idea that no offense to the ideal conservatives it might be in the audience. He's also a contributing author of Winning the Unwinnable War, America's self-criminal response to Islamic totalitarianism. He will be selling and autographing copies of his latest book entitled Free Market Revolution, immediately following tonight's program. His writings frequently appear in the national print media and he often appears on national television. Just last month he was a guest on the John Stossel's Fox News program. Born, raised, and educated in Israel, Iran served in the Israeli military. Iran was a self-identified socialist until he was 16 years old, at which time he read Atlas Shrug. I look at him. Despite his best efforts to uphold and Aynran's arguments, he couldn't and went on to become a student of Aynran's philosophy of objectivism. In 1987, seeking a life in a place that offered them the most personal and economic freedom and to raise a family, he and his wife ever made it to the United States. I wonder if you've made the same decision today, I'm not sure. He has advanced degrees from the University of Texas and taught finance at the Santa Clara University. He is also a co-founder, managing director, and chairman of a financial advisory firm, VH Equity Research. In mid-1990, he decided to join the Aynran Institute's new educational program, the Objectivist Graduate Center. In 2000, Iran left teaching to become the executive director of the Aynran Institute and the go-to source for laissez-faire policy. Iran's fields of specialties include objectivism, capitalism, finance, business ethics, venture capital, economics, and foreign policy. Dr. Brooks, the topic tonight is Standing American, the free market revolution. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Iran Brooks. Who's in Silicon Valley, say? This is pretty cool. Coming from the election yet? Four more years. I think it's going to take longer than that. We lost. And we've been losing for a long time. We've been losing for a long time. At least we, in the sense that those of us who believe in free markets, those of us who believe in limited government rights, in the constitution, in the vision of the founding fathers, have been losing for a long... It's been a hundred years, a hundred years, of non-stop government growth, government increased intervention in our lives, in our economic lives, in our social lives, in every aspect. For the last hundred years, government has only grown. I don't care if Republicans win, Democrats win, increased its control, attempts to manipulate many conservatives here. During Ronald Reagan's era, government spending increased. Yes, taxes went down and that's great. A lot of regulations went down and that's great. But even Ronald Reagan's revolution lasted six years, eight years. Not much of a revolution. We're losing and we've been losing systematically. And it's time for those of us on the way to start asking the question. The fundamental question, if we want to win, is why are we losing? What's going on here? Now, it would be understandable for us to lose if we were wrong. If what we advocated for didn't work. So, you can make the argument, as some people do, I think they're delusional but they do, that capitalism just doesn't work, that free markets don't work, that they cause all the ills of the world around it. They don't produce wealth, that they don't create prosperity, that they don't allow the poor to rise up. History, fact, the opposite. Everywhere that free markets try, you get wealth creation. You get a rising standard of living. You get the poor benefit in terms of their lives.  This is too historically. I like to think of it this way. For the last 200 plus years, we've been running an experiment in the world. An experiment in which social economic systems work and which social economic systems don't work. And work here, I'm just talking about well-being of people, standard of living, wealth creation.  We tried communism, we went all the way out here, we tried communism. And hundreds of millions, tens of millions of people died. Standard of living's dropped. People all, common denominator was the lowest common denominator, right? That's what equality meant. We tried fascism, also out here on the left, right, by left. I wouldn't say pure capitalism, close to it. You know, we tried free markets. During the early decades of this country, you know, putting aside the issue of slavery, which you shouldn't put aside, it's a big issue. But this country, during that first 100 years, was the freest country in human history. And what happened? What happened in America when we had no regulation, no safety net, no government controls, no government intervention in our lives? Well, very little. There still was some, unfortunately. What happened? Well, we went from a second-rate colony. You know why we wonder what independence, right? Because the British didn't really fight. Because we were a second-rate colony. It wasn't worth it. They were busy with the French and the real battles. We were with the French and the Spanish. But 140 years later, what are we? We're the strongest industrial, military country in the world. Nobody comes close. By the break of World War I, we are in. We're even during that period called the 19th century. Capitalism is what happened. Freedom is what happened. And the consequence of that are the fastest economic growth in human history. We have sold millions of immigrants, and they worked, and they created wealth, and they created prosperity, and they created industry, and they created the world that we today enjoy. Because we demonize them today, you know, history books and our econ books. But that's the reality. The reality is a reality of enormous success when you have freedom. So we tried, and then we tried all kinds of mixtures. You know, we touched some, you know, socialism and some freedom, and all of these mixtures, and you can almost grow a graph. It's not 100% correlated, but there's a close correlation there. Between economic freedom and economic success. The more economic free you are, the more successful you are. Economic freedom. It's just there. It's right in front of our eyes, staring at us. How many of you have been to Hong Kong? What have you been to Hong Kong? Before you die, you have to go to Hong Kong. You've got to see the situation. Here's a place that 70 years ago was a fishing village on a rock in the middle of nowhere. And today it puts New York skyscrapers to shame. It is a magnificent city. And it's got 7.5 million people who live on this rock. And they have no natural resources. They have nothing there. Except what? What have they had? What have they had for 70 years? Freedom. At least economic freedom. They had protection of property rights. Did they have social security? No. No Medicaid. No safety net. And who came there? Did the rich from all over the world come to Hong Kong and establish this wonderful place? No, the same kind of people who came to America in the 19th century. Who came to... Who are you? Your ancestors who came to America. Were they the intelligentsia of Europe?  Ancestors. So I'll talk about mine. Who didn't come to America, but pretend they did. What does it say in the Statue of Liberty? Send us your poor, your meat, your hungry. That's who our ancestors were. They were the poor of Europe. They were the persecuted of Europe.  These were farmers who didn't know anything. They knew they wanted a better life. That's what they knew. And they came here, they made a better life. That's the same thing in Hong Kong. People got on little boats and got there somehow. They wished their lives together. Not for safety, not for hand up, for freedom. And they boomed. They flourished. GDP per capita in Hong Kong is equal to that of the United States. That's a measure of wealth. That's a measure of standard of living. And they're still free in the US. You know, the Heritage Foundation and Fraser Foundation in Canada, they put out these economic freedom indexes. And the United States four years ago was number three. And, you know what, they didn't waste this today. 13, 18, and dropping, and dropping fast. Hong Kong and Singapore are the top two. And you can see correlations there. You can see the relationship between economic freedom and prosperity. So why is it, why is it that we reject that? If for 100 years we'd be turning our backs on what leads to prosperity, what leads to success, what leads to a rising standard of living. What leads to the poor being better off again? Not just the middle class, not just the rich. Everybody's better off. So what is it? What is it that we resent about economic freedom? What is it that we resent about capitalism that causes us to vote against it? Because we don't vote.  People don't vote their pocketbook. They voted their pocketbook. We'd be living in laws that fake capitalists haven't. Because after juicers have made a pocketbook, people don't vote their pocketbook. What is it about capitalism that people don't like that causes them to vote against it, that causes them to advocate against it, that causes them to tolerate the ever-increasing wall of government in our lives? What is capitalism about? What are markets about? Volatility. Volatility. What is capitalism about? What is a marketplace about? Simple but capitalism is a big word. Markets, what are markets about? Risk, why do we take risks? Who cares about risk? Profit. Profit. We take risks in order to make something, right? You wouldn't take risk if there wasn't a reward. Markets evolve on the one side about profit, right? When Steve Jobs makes one of these or Meade one of these, why did he do it? To make money. The budgets of these were huge. I mean, Steve Jobs didn't say what if you were on wants, because then he would have sold it for a lot less. He had more features, better ones. What's I like? No, Steve Jobs made this because he was making money, but what else? It wasn't just the money. What else did Steve Jobs make these? What was the other reason he made these? Intervention. Yeah, but why did he care? Power. Because he loved it. Passion. He loved it, he had passion. He loved beautiful design. He loved to see the image of his product made out there. So Steve Jobs made the iPhone 4? Steve Jobs. iPhone in 2008, because the economy spiraling out of control. And I went to the mall to buy my first iPhone because I wanted to stimulate the economy. Let's go tomorrow.  No, so why did you go? Well, I mean, there's nothing wrong with helping a Chinese fellow man. They're not human beings, they're human beings. So why do you go to the mall to make your lives better? So what is the marketplace about? It's about people pursuing their self-interest. It's about people trying to make their lives better. It's about people trying to make their lives better. But on the one side, by making profit, by making money but also by enjoying the productive process which clearly is Steve Jobs' case you could see. And on the consumption side, by trying to make our lives better, by buying stuff. But it's our lives that we're trying to make better. It's about us. It's about our self-interest. And yet what are we taught from when we were this big about self-interest? I don't know about you guys, but I grew up in a nice Jewish family. My mother was a good Jewish mother. She taught me what? When it comes to goodness, when it comes to virtue, what should you do? What is good? What is virtuous? Think about other people first. Being self-less. What is the essence of virtue? What is the essence of goodness? As taught to us by our religious leaders, and by our secular leaders. What is the essence? One more. Altruism is two. What does that mean? Sacrifice. Selflessness. You just look clear because it's a word that we daddy around. Sacrifice means giving something up and getting what in return. Nothing. If you get something more in return, if you get immense satisfaction for what you're giving up, is that a sacrifice? It's not a sacrifice. Sacrifice is giving without the expectation of getting back. Because when I bought an iPhone, I gave up 300 bucks. Was that a sacrifice? No, why? Because I got something worth how much to me? You guys need an economics lesson. How much was what I got worth to me if I gave up 300 bucks? No! More than 300 bucks. Who would have bothered? More than 300 bucks. I get more than 300 bucks of utility, at least I expected to out of this. Otherwise, I wouldn't have paid for it. Who would have bothered? Make the effort? More than that. Trade is what? It's a zero-sum game. I give up 300. No. How much did Apple make on this? 200. 200 or whatever. 60%, right? 180. How much did I make on this? A lot. Probably more than Apple. And when I bought this, so what do we call that? We both? One. This is a win-win. We call this A, it starts with a T. Trade. Trades of win-wins. When you buy an automobile for $20,000, who lost? Both parties. I mean, unless you buy a lemon, you know, your expectation is that you can win. That's the goal. Trade is about win-win. Sacrifice, by definition, is about lose-win. So, lose-win, noble, virtuous, good, win-win, eh, we don't quite like it. We were taught from when we're this young that it's all about other. That virtue is about other people. That goodness is about how we treat other people. That everything is about other. That being self-interested is self-interested. So how can we have an economic system that's about self-interest when we know self-interest is a bad thing? Self-interest is not fair. Self-interest is not just. Self-interest is not noble. So what's profit? Can profit be fair, just, noble? No? Because it's self-interested. So we've given up. We've given them all high ground. The left has them all high ground. We're playing on their field. They have home-court advantage when it comes to their morality. When it comes to fairness. And notice Obama uses fairness and justice and all these words. And nobody challenges them on it. Because we've all accepted it. It's not because we disagree with them. It's because we've all brought into it. We've all brought into the fact that morality, nobility, goodness are about self-lessness. We talked about altruism. Most people think altruism is being nice to people. It's being benevolent. But that's not where the word comes from. Altruism is a relatively modern word. It was a term invented by a philosopher in the 19th century. Augustine Comte, C-O-M-T-E. And what he means by altruism is that your life is not yours. You need to dedicate your life to the well-being of other people. And you will be measured. Your goodness will be measured in what you do to others. And if you think about what's in it for me I get pleasure from helping other people. That's not moral anymore. Because you get any pleasure out of it. It's about truly subservienting yourself. Your own values. What's good for you to other people. That's what altruism means. And that is incompatible with freedom and it's incompatible with capitalism. But that's the moral code we all believe in. To guess what we get. Stagism and socialism and government. Because it's incompatible with freedom and capitalism and markets. So we don't get freedom and capitalism and markets. I mean, think about somebody like Bill Gates who I know is not that popular in Social Valley but a cent from it. How did he make his money? How did he make his money? The T-word. By trading, right? By trading. He sold us a product which we voluntarily bought. Did we get more out of it than we paid? Looking back way more out of it than we did. I mean, the fact that he standardized computing that we got software that we could all use and we could all communicate. I mean, the value to us of Microsoft's existence is unbelievable. Each one of us is an individual. And not just us in this room. Every human being on this planet is attracted by Microsoft. Now Bill Gates made $50 billion doing that $100 billion, however much you want. But how much did we make from those trades? Much more than $1,500 billion, much more. But we think of Bill Gates when he's making the $50 billion. Morally, ethically, is he a hero? Yes. Yes. Yes. I love you guys.  Culture out there, if we were making a documentary about him, he's not a hero. He's a pirate. He's not a good guy. Nobody viewed him as morally good. I mean, the best way would say he's a great businessman. He's a great technologist. And even that, a lot of people doubt big. Nobody talks about him because of morality. When did he become a good guy? And he gave it all away. And he hasn't given it all away, right? He's giving it. He's got the villains in the big house. See, he's only a bit of a good guy. What would it take for Bill Gates to be a saint? Now, I haven't talked to the Pope, so I can't guarantee this. But what would he have to do to become a saint? He would have to give it all away, move it to a tent, and if he's soaked some blood in the process of, you know, suffering, because that's the standard, then he would be a saint. This is the morality of making stuff, building stuff, creating stuff, and giving it away, offering. That's actually... I was at an awards dinner for businessmen in South Carolina. She can't accuse them of being leftists, right? South Carolina, Charleston, and they had this Lifetime Achievement Award, right? Now it's the speaker. Luckily, I spoke after this. So, they were introducing all these business guys, right? Giving them the awards, and these are long introductions, because they want to make a big deal out of it. So, ten minute introductions. One minute on their business success, nine minutes on their community service, and their volunteering, and their charity work. Now, there's nothing wrong with community work, and charity, and all that stuff. Nothing wrong with that. But nine minutes, and one minute, give me a break. Not only did they do more for their community through their business activity, just like Bill Gates will do much, much more in Microsoft than he ever will through his charity, by many, many factors. These businessmen got almost no credit for what really made them special, being in business. What really made them unique, where they really contributed and made stuff and built stuff. We don't value that. Because it's what? What did Bill Gates do, and why did they do it? Because it's so interesting. And we view that with disdain. We view it with disdain. We want, you know, we talk about charity and giving back and philanthropy. These are the, up here, these are the noblest thing in the world. Why? Why? I mean, it's compared to building something that never existed before, creating a new product, becoming a billionaire. What does it mean to become a billionaire? It means selling people a product you and want. That's what it means in a free market. You're changing everybody's lives. I'm not even talking about all the jobs that Bill Gates created, not just at Microsoft, but all the companies that serviced Microsoft, and all the companies that would have never existed if not for Microsoft, which I have millions and millions of, I mean, you can't add this up. You cannot add this up. It's such an enormous number. But he gets no more credit for that, because at the same time, he's benefiting himself. Benefiting himself. We hold a moral code today that views self-interest would disdain from an ethical moral perspective and views altruism sacrifice selflessness as the moral ideal. And we lose as long as that is the case. As long as that is the case. And so the revolution that we need, the change that we need the change that we need in order to win, it's a cultural change. It's a philosophical change. It's a moral change. It's a moral revolution that I encourage you to join. It's a revolution that says no. My life's purpose is not to sue others. My life's purpose is to live my life. I think the most of my life is to live the best life I can live. That involves helping people, it involves being nice to people, it involves even charity and community service. But that's not the essential of my life. It's about taking care of myself. It's about building stuff and creating stuff. That's what it's about. It's about trading with people. Benefiting them and benefiting myself. But not being ashamed of benefiting myself. That's the purpose of life. It's to benefit yourself. It's to make your life better.  It's about a real self-interest. Self-interest of human flourishing. Going back to our start, we talked about a morality of human flourishing. Pursuing those butchers to make us the best human beings we can be.  Our founding documents have a glimpse of this. Because, you know, what was the American Revolution about? Was it about teataxes? Taxes are higher today. It wasn't about a stand-out. It wasn't about taxes. What was the principle behind the American Revolution? Freedom from water. Freedom's a nice word. What is it freedom from? From charity. Not just from charity. It's freedom from what? What is a thing? From government? What kind of government? From control. It's freedom from courage. It's freedom from force. But the real revolution that is America, it's about freedom. Who's freedom? The individual's freedom. So before the American Revolution, who did your life belong to? To somebody. And where you lived, right? So if you were in English, who did your life belong to? Belong to the king, right? And even somewhere else, it might have belonged to the tribe. Or some collective, some group, your life, you know, to the pope, or to the community, or to the majority, called that absolute democracy, right? Somebody owns you. Your life belonged It wasn't yours. The American Revolution rejects that. That's the real revolution. It says, no, my life is mine. I have a right to my life. Right? Right means what? Freedom. It means freedom of action. It means I can do what is necessary to support my life. You can't tell me how to do that.  It's none of your business. So I don't know about violating your rights. You have no say in my life. My life is mine. That's what a right to life means. The American Revolution is the first time that politically it was stated that our lives, each one of our lives, is ours, not the states, not the kings, not the peoples, not the tribes, not the witch doctor, what's yours. It's ours. This is a revolution about individualism. The individual sovereignty of his own life to ejection of all the collectivism of the past. So the founder's had this sense of self-interest. And what does it say? The most important political document in human history is the Declaration of Independence. And it says that you ever wait to life, liberty and what? Happiness. Who's happiness in communities? Why does it say the public good? Nobody's concerned about the public good. They're concerned about your happiness. Each one of you is waiting to go out there and pursue happiness. Now is that a joystick? No, that's the most self-interested political statement in human history. That's the foundation of this country is built on a political system of self-interest. People pursuing their own values, people pursuing their own interests. That's what we need to recapture. And reject this whole otherism. You know what altruism means? Altruism. I think a lot of other. It's otherism instead. Making other people the center of all life. That needs to be rejected. And I know that's hard because we're raised on it. It's everywhere. It's in our culture. But if we care about freedom for us, then we need to reject it. I think what self-interest means because there are two things that the altruists have taught us. One is you've got to be self-flexed. But what do they tell us about self-interest? What is self-interest? When I point in a schoolyard to the kid in the corner and say you're being selfish, do I mean you're taking care of yourself? What do I mean?


Welcome to my talk. I called it making connections and it's kind of a reflection on the last 10 years of what I did in the WordPress community. So I put quite a lot of images of the last 10 years in there, so bear with me. I hope you can see them on the projector correctly. Otherwise, the slides will be available afterwards as well. I'm Simon. This was me back in 2012 when I started my very first WordPress meetup, but before that it took me quite some time. I started with WordPress in 2008 and it took me about three years to realize that other people use WordPress as well. I mean, I was aware that there are other people working with WordPress, but I did not expect them to be in my near vicinity, not in my own town. And it took me to my first WordCamp, WordCamp Cologne back in 2011 to realize there are other folks out there using WordPress, which was a strange moment for me. It took me another year to organize my very first WordPress meetup on November 15, 2012, and I never really stopped since then. I co-founded five meetups, two of them being WordPress meetups, three being WooCommerce meetups. I've organized two WordCamps, both of which nearly killed me. They were very stressful, so I'm even more grateful to local organizers like all of you to chip in the time and do the hard work. Back in 2012, I wrote a blog post, which felt like very WordPressy. Don't even try to read it. It's in German and completely useless. But we used Doodle to find our first date, and we sticked with the day of month ever since, so we had, I think, the second Tuesday of the month, and we used that over and over again. So that's the bare minimum, as I said. But let's go in a bit more detail, maybe, preparations. There are some things you might want to do upfront before you start your meetup, or maybe not before the first meeting, but at some point in time. This is the artwork we had produced a couple of years into our first meetup, where we said, oh, we need a nice logo, and we want to have some fancy header graphics for our social media and stuff like that. That's not something you have to do, by the way. Quite important on the list of preparations is find co-organizers. You pretty likely have a couple of people in mind already. You can organize a meetup on your own. I did that for a couple of years, but it's super stressful, especially if you want to do more than the bare minimum. It's nice to have a group of people around you can trust, and you can take maybe a month off if you have to do that for holidays or your own mental health sake. I already mentioned the date on the slide before, but I wanted to reiterate on that. I think it's very good to find a good date for my second meetup in Stuttgart. We had, I think, the third Wednesday of the month every month, and at some point we switched to another, I think, the second Tuesday. So we just moved that thing a week forward, but we doubled our attendees by doing just that, because it turned out that at the same time there was a blogging meetup. And there seems to be an intersection between blogging and WordPress. So have a look at your local calendars and find out if there's any collision in there. If having speakers for a meetup is your cup of tea and it doesn't have to be, it's super useful to invite them upfront. That way you have a set topic for a meetup, and you can simply go from there. You can write an invite, which I think is the next thing on the slide. And set expectations for the attendees you want to have at your meetup, so they know what they're up to. And if you're super fancy, and that's something we just started right before the pandemic, you can record talks that were held at your meetup. Like usually talks at WordCams are recorded. Those can be put up to WordPress TV afterwards. So other people can watch it or your attendees can rewatch it if they forgot something or want to recheck on some points made during the presentation. After the meetup there are some hyper-care things you can do in order to maximize the experience. It's a very American thing to say. Keep a close look at the comment section on meetup.com. For some communities there's quite a lot of chatter afterwards. People asking questions, people asking for maybe a link to a plugin that was mentioned, or they're asking for help with a specific problem. And being there in this comment section is very helpful. Same of course if you use other social networks, if you're like very active on Twitter or Facebook or Mastodon maybe. Be there, be engaged and help the folks who need your help. Something I think many even active organizers aren't aware of is ratings on meetup.com. If you attended a meetup, meetup.com will ask you for a one to five star rating and I think you can write some short text in there as well. This is very helpful for you as an organizer, but if you're just an attendee it's also very helpful to give your feedback on the speaker, on the topic, which helps your local organizers to improve their meetup. Very well organized meetups have blog posts they publish afterwards. And I have to say my meetups never did that. We're not that organized, we're just a mess, we're all over the place. But I think it's a very nice gesture to have like a written form at least for the main things discussed during the meetup. Think of it as like show notes for your meetup if you are into podcasts or something. And of course if you record the talk then make sure to upload it in some kind of timely fashion. If I don't upload our video the next day people will start asking for it on meetup.com. It drives me crazy and I usually say guys please wait a couple of days but people expect it to be there so it's nice to have it there. Let's go back to the preparation phase. And again yeah you can see that at least somewhat. Picking the right venue is super crucial for your meetup. And that depends I think on the country, on the region and even on the city you're in. But this image was taken in a local bar in Frankfurt where we went for our meetup I think in the second year that we had. And it's really important the venue you pick sets the stage for the meetup you want to have. If you were to organize a meetup in like let's say this room I think it would be quite natural to expect some kind of speaker and attendee hierarchy which is not necessarily something you would like to have might want to have. So think about the different settings and the different possibilities. I think for our Frankfurt meetup we had like everything imaginable. We started out in a private university which was really nice because we had nice desks. We had a projector we were able to show the people what we're doing. But also this private university was in a part of Frankfurt called Frankfurt-Pröngesheim which I never heard of before. And it took like 30 to 45 minutes by train from the central station to get there which might have been a reason why we spend like the first 12 months of our meetup all by ourselves. We were like four or five guys there and no one ever showed up. No no don't get me wrong that was great we had at a blast. We were able to try some things break some things learn a lot of stuff. But in the end it was not that cool if you want to have like an audience. So after this year we had to switch venues and we chose a bar in central Frankfurt which was really cool because yay a bar with like food and drinks and it was way closer to main station so people just went there. We grew substantially but that had its downsides as well because that bar had football screenings every couple of months during our meetup and I don't care for football at all. Not very German of me I know. And sometimes these screenings collided with our meetup sessions which meant that 90 minutes of that evening were just lost for me because I sat in that bar all the other folks were watching football and I was like just I don't care. So I was also quite happy to switch locations after another year again. This time we went to a local agency they provided us with a room we had to set up a couple of things by ourselves every month which was totally fine. We were able to have presentations again because we had projector and it was way quieter in the room which was also very nice if you want to talk to folks. So keep all of that in mind if you have like more of a school setting with a person in front talking to your audience maybe more of a workshop kind of situation where people bring their laptops work on sites or even want to do it more like eating with friends which is also completely fine and as I heard that's a very popular option here in Italy which is very cool I envy that. So these are the different possibilities and I brought another picture from my archive which is one of the last meetups we had in person before the pandemic started over in Stuttgart. Our meetup in Stuttgart grew a lot over time we started out as six or seven folks and before the pandemic hit we had regular meetups with 80 to 100 people and it's hard to find a venue for that because you have to cram all of these people in some kind of space and make it nice so we had that in at my old employers we had to place chairs every month which was fine but it was a lot of space for all to get around and there are a couple of requirements you want to keep in mind if you pick a new location. Top of the list for me at least is accessibility which I think is something the WordPress Foundation expects us to do as well so to have a room that's accessible for I don't know wheelchair users or people that just have a hard time climbing up a lot of stairs or something not a hard requirement but something I learned the hard way is pick a central location or at least something people have an easy time to get to don't go to Frankfurt point design because no one will join you there and I already mentioned that pick a suitable size for the meetup group you expect it's quite awkward in a big room to have just like four people sitting scattered around while at the same time if you have a room that's suited for 20 folks and you have a hundred people attending that's also complicated and the price which is something we had a hard time at now after the pandemic after the harder times of the pandemic because in general we don't have any money to pay for the venue if you have like a bar or a restaurant usually you don't have to pay anything because they just expect you to order some drinks some food and then everything's fine make sure that's the case up front but for a room for like 100 to 120 people which is what I was looking for it's really hard to find something suitable the foundation will pay some of the expenses for a I think limited amount of time so if that's something you have to rely on that's okay but maybe make sure you find a venue sponsor to get around some good sources I think I already mentioned all of them small bars yay great idea universities like this one also usually a good source for venues public libraries often have some kind of event space at least in Germany they do maybe we're strange I don't know which is also a good thing to get your meetup started I already mentioned agencies or companies maybe your employer or an employer of one of your co-organizers has a suitable room for you also a great choice and an odd one in this list living rooms I talked to Matt Malinwick a couple of years ago I think it was in Paris 2017 and he mentioned the way he set up the first ever WordPress meetup which was in his actual living room so if you are fine with strangers in your house maybe that's a venue possibility as well now that all the venue stuff is settled let's take a closer look at the format and maybe you can see me doing some kind of dance during the presentation I don't know what I did there so in Germany we usually have a speaker per night at our meetups that's not necessarily the right way to do it because I think there isn't the right way having a panel is also quite a nice solution for that you don't have to rely on a single person you can throw a couple of chairs there and have two or three people share the stage and discuss a topic or you open up the discussion to the whole group which is also quite a nice thing to do and have all people chime in with their experiences and their expertise the site clinic is a format that is quite popular in Germany in the last couple of years we have that at multiple meetups so people can bring their own websites and have them, I don't know, torn apart sound super negative have them be criticized in a constructive way so folks chime in with their expertise and say oh your search engine optimizations could be better oh your performance might be a bit better let me show you how to do it which is usually quite a nice experience for the people there and there's endless possibilities so just do your own thing again a couple of images this one was during our meetup I think this one from Munich is one of the best examples for the get together and just eat something it's the most German meetup experience I ever had there were pretzels and beer, lots of beer and they were just sitting outside and having a good time which was really nice and a panel discussion we had in Stuttgart during the last couple of months the last two, almost three years during the pandemic we had to switch things up quite a bit a lot of meetups went dormant for quite a while we in Stuttgart did not do that we switched to an online format immediately and I'm sorry I'm in this slide three times it will never happen again I promise we tried a couple of different things I think for the first couple of months I interviewed people during our meetup which is also an interesting thing but it felt like something you can only do for an online meetup and after that we realized that it's a nice opportunity to have because you can invite people from basically all over the world and we had speakers from New Zealand and Southern America joining our meetup German folks who moved overseas but who were able to give a nice presentation and that would never happen if we just had local speakers with us in the same room this is something I want to reiterate because starting a meetup can be quite hard that's why I called the section Hang In There and I want to encourage you to if you start a new group or revive an old group be consistent be there every time regardless of the amount of people showing up there was one meetup once in Frankfurt where was the only person there because no one else came that was okay I can cope with that but you have to be there you have to make sure it's a fixed date at least for us in Germany we do usually monthly meetups and it helps to have a fixed date every month like the second Wednesday, the first Tuesday whatever you choose, just stick with it if it works I personally also like to have a fixed venue so people don't have to look up directions every other month they know they have to get there at the same time to the same place and so on but it's also absolutely fine to switch venues up every now and then because your venue sponsor maybe has to have some other things done in the same room I already said that, just show up just be there, talk to the people at your meetup help them with their problems and they will come back that's basically the main message here in conclusion I brought a quote of Gandhi which I'm sure is something he said be the meetup you want to see in the world no two meetups are the same not in the same country and not even like neighboring cities the vibe will be different based on the venue, based on the agenda you said based on the way you approach the people showing up to your meetup and I think that's wonderful I travel around Germany once a year usually to visit every single meetup and it's always an experience because all the meetups are different in a wonderful way and I really love that about the meetup program Don't get caught up in perfectionism I wrote that down on that slide for myself mainly because I suffer from that I suffer from bad perfectionism and that's not necessary at all because the folks showing up at your meetup want the meetup to be great and they will be absolutely fine if you don't have fancy food provided for them if you don't have the fanciest of drinks or the fanciest of signage don't bother just be there, just talk to them and you can always improve later on and don't forget that the most important thing at a meetup are the people showing up or the people who want to show up so be there for them people, great so this is my final slide I promise some examples for let's call it late-stage meetup perfectionism the community in Glasgow had some roll-up banners printed which are completely neutral they use them at their meetup they use them at their word camp and they just have the basic amount of information they join the community with a couple of links to their meetup.com to their twitter account and stuff like that which is really useful I want to get something like that when I'm growing up at our meetup in Stuttgart we had the opportunity to do digital signage in the office building we were using we had a lot of displays there and we built something with WordPress to show some messages on these screens and these messages varied from this is the way to the toilets to this is what we'll do next time and the time after so that was a very cool project and now finally this is what I'm working on right now which proves to be quite difficult now that the pandemic situation gets better we want to return to in-person events while still holding the audience we gained during the pandemic which is sometimes very remote not in our own city so we're working on hybrid meetups which is a really hard thing to do and if you start a new meetup don't try to start with that but that's something I have quite a lot of fun with at the moment so this is the last 10 years of me organizing meetups thank you very much for your time and if you have any questions we can get to them now or later I'll be here for a couple of hours still thank you thank you Zivon any questions? ciao I'm Patricia from Geneva Experience Meetup Organizer and I have a question about when you go over 50 people isn't the foundation expecting you to to be a word camp instead of a meetup I don't think that they expect you to be a word camp because then we have to have a word camp every month I know that for example the meetup in New York has also more than 100 attendees quite regularly and they are still a meetup so I don't think you have to do a word camp automatically but you're encouraged to if you are a group of that size we tried a meetup day in 2019 in Geneva we were like 60 because when we do monthly 15 is not enough a lot of energy for only 10-15 people and especially post-pandemic but we were thinking to do now again a longer meetup like quarterly or something instead of monthly but then if it goes over 50 I have that memory or maybe I'm wrong about this so it's no problem for you to be like 60-70 I don't think that's a problem or at least I ignored it if it was a problem for now I will ask the community thank you I'm coming from a small town and usually it's very difficult you say interviewing also people can be a solution like getting the local business also interview it or online you have this idea you use it online or also in presence I'm sorry at some point you say that you interviewed a lot of people but will you do also in presence like calling local business or involving other meetup or something like that or you don't suggest to do that I would suggest to do that and that's something we plan to do as well so we will try to get again more involved in the local community and try to get everyone together again okay thank you thank you Zimo, thank you all


The Colosseum, Rome, interior view, stadium where 60,000 Romans gathered to watch the gladiator contests, mock naval battles, and Christians being fed to lions.


Welcome everybody and thank you for joining us for Unfiltered. Pastor David, welcome as always. Thank you, John. Pastor, my question is centered on the importance of worship. There are so many styles and different ways of worship. Why does our church worship the way we worship? And again, worship is in a lot of variations. Why do we do it before the God's Word and the significance of worship? You know, worship is taken from a Greek word, prosconel, and it speaks about actually an adoration, a posture of adoration being on the ground, if you will. It's been used to, the word worship has been defined as kissing the face of God. And so those of us who have been saved have the inclination within us by the prompting of the Holy Spirit to want to have that personal loving relationship with God. And so we give him our honor and our love and adoration, our praise and our thanksgiving in the variety of ways that it's expressed. We do that in a variety of forms. Our life, for example, is to be in an attitude of worship that we understand that, that the air that we breathe and the life that we have, our gifts to us from God that we're grateful for. So we can have an attitude of worship a long time before we enter into a church service, a public gathering of the believers in Christ and all of that. So worship takes different forms. It's normally the expression, it should be the expression, of a grateful sinner who's been pardoned and given the grace of God. That's where the origin would be, our love for Christ and what he has done for us in our gratitude. But it can take different forms. And for us, we begin our church services with an attitude of worship through song. Because from the old to the new, you see that you sing unto the Lord a new song. And you sing the song of remembrance, or you sing songs of praise and gratitude, etc. The Psalms is the greatest songbook in the Bible, obviously. So we sing to the Lord with all of our heart, because he has given us reason to sing. And so we do so to the accompaniment of music. There are some denominations, when in particular the states that you are not to sing with the accompaniment of any musical instruments, so they sing acapella. We don't see that, because when Paul tells us we're to sing hymns and songs of praise to God, the Horde hymn refers to the fact that the song is accompanied with a musical instrument. And so you read the Psalms and they'll instruct you. This is to be sung with strings or whatever. And you know, Psalm 150 is a very famous song. You let everything that has breath within them, let them praise the Lord, and it shares about a variety of different ways you do with the timbrels and the harp, etc., and all of that. So we sing unto the Lord this new song that God has given to us, the song of the redeemed. And we do that at the beginning, because our hearts are already given to God, that which is his, which he deserves. And so we open our hearts to him, and we prepare our hearts as we worship him to receive from him. So we're first given to him, then we receive from him that which he would have us to know as we leave and walk about this world. And it should be a walk of gratitude and thankfulness. And in Calvary Chapel, singing songs unto the Lord, these new songs are especially precious to me, because I didn't know songs of deliverance prior to getting saved and after getting saved and being delivered from all that I've been delivered from, including the torment that awaits those who reject him. How am I to live, and what more can I do other than to worship him? So we do that in preparation to receive the word from him. Amen. And something I like to talk about maybe in another segment is how that's changed, and it's become a production, and it's no longer about worshiping the Lord, but it's become about, you know, the production of the whole worship. Can you talk about it for just a moment here, because I think that's a good thing to talk about. Yeah, it's become a production. I've been saying stuff like this for a long time. When we first got saved, we had in the Jesus movement, we had people who were singing songs that God gave to them. Sometimes they'd be reading a Psalm, they'd set the Psalm to music, and then they'd bring it to church, and then they'd sing it before the congregation. And we were able to learn scripture through what we called scripture songs. And so that was pure worship to the Lord. That was inspired by the Spirit, and it wasn't something to be marketed. It was something that was enjoyed. And ultimately what happened is Pastor Chuck Smith allowed the production of, at that time, records. And Mike McIntosh would go with records in his trunk, and he would go up to go to bookstores, and he'd say, you don't want to carry these. And at first people didn't want to carry these things, because they weren't filled with harps and warbly songs, and they were upbeat songs. And at first they didn't want that. And eventually realized that this is what the youth is enjoying, this is how the youth is worshiping God. Unfortunately, what happened is a commercial interest of some producers got involved, and some secular organizations that are not looking to the glory of God, but are looking for the bottom line, began to have music that they owned, and were producing, and became more commercial. And then you didn't have to be saved to be singing these songs. And then what eventually did happen after that is a world crept even further into the church. And here you have now the Dove Awards. I've never understood what a number one Christian song is. I've never understood that. You know, what is a number one song? Well, it's sold the most records. What does that mean?  I've always been offended by these awards given to Christians who became celebrities instead of servants. And so that crept into the church. And that's why I prefer in our fellowship, I prefer people who love Jesus singing. And even though they may never get a record contract and probably shouldn't, they have a heart for Christ. And it's the love that they have for Jesus when they're singing to Him that draws me into singing along with them praises to God. But that is another more intricate subject that maybe we can delve into in the future. Well, Pastor, thank you so much for sharing with us. And I do want to invite you guys to our Wednesday evening service as we're starting Esther tomorrow. We're going to do chapters one and two. So, I mean, we were just talking about this. How long ago did you? It's been 30 years since I taught Esther, so. Yeah.  And I want to invite you guys to come out and join us. It's a great opportunity to come and invite your friends to get in worship and get into God's Word and the fellowship afterwards. So, we do look forward of you guys coming out and joining us. That's Wednesday evening at 7 p.m. in the chapel. And Pastor again, thank you so much for joining us as you always do. Thank you guys for tuning in and God bless you.


A plea deal for a man accused of driving drunk, crashing his car and leaving a passenger to die in northern Minnesota calls for no more than a year in jail. 41-year-old Thomas Quaylar of Grand Rapids pleaded guilty last week in Itasca County District Court in connection with the March 2017 crash near Hill City that killed the father of four, Michael Washburn. The Star Tribune says Quaylar's guilty pleaded criminal vehicular homicide also calls for 10 years of probation. He's due to be sentenced December 3rd. Authorities say that after the crash, Quaylar got a ride to McDonald's in Grand Rapids where he was arrested, prosecuted as alleged Quaylar's blood alcohol content was more than two times the legal limit to drive. His criminal history includes three other convictions for drunk and driving. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.