Okay, well, thanks for thanks for being here This is actually the first tour that I've given of our Chemistry Island chemistry world So this should be fun for hopefully fun for everybody out. I'm looking forward to it what we This was the the island that I that we used for the Texas A&M General Chemistry Lab project that I told you about I guess a couple of months ago My collaborator Dr. Wendy Keeney Kinnikutt had been involved in Second Life for At least what she had been involved in using Second Life for education for several years before this and so She wanted to collaborate on on the project I had in mind and that was great because she knew a lot more about the Second Life than I did In fact, she had already established a Second-life island that's part of the Texas A&M 12th Man Island and 12th Man is a I don't know. I always associate it with their their Texas A&M football But it's it's kind of a common phrase used at Texas A&M. So they have 12th Man Island in Second Life and Wendy has a Some some chemistry Exhibits and information on that island which is right across the bridge Right behind you And so you're you're welcome to go over there and look around there's also I think other faculty have established They have some a presence there. They have classrooms and presentations and Displays and other things going on I think among Universities I found Texas A&M has probably one of the strongest presence in in Second Life now See if we look at my bearings here Actually, if we go we don't have to go through it since You'll you'll see a lot of this stuff in the actual lab, but behind us what I'm looking at over the bridge There's a big black Backdrop and then what what is actually two very large graduated cylinders. I'm sorry. I'm excuse me Ring stands with burets attached When the students first came into Second Life They had to be trained to do a couple of things like Change their their perspective of what they're seeing so you know adjusting their camera They had to They they're and how to Well, they had to pick up a pair of goggles There and so there were some other very specific tasks that they were going to need to Use our skills. They were going to need to use during the experiments And so we had a training area that was set up like I say just across the bridge there the training was mandatory because You they otherwise we found they just would muddle around and and get frustrated and and take a lot of time that That they should have been spending just doing their their live experiments So this is where they would begin and what they would what they see and what you see is a pretty well landscaped Environment the building Um That's labeled held and fells to held and fells is the the lab building that That is actually on the Texas A&M campus where they teach their their general chemistry labs This is the second virtual rendition of that. It looks nothing like the Like the the the real building Wendy specifically asked the designers to make something that looked attractive, I guess the the One on Texas A&M, which I've never visited but the one on Texas A&M is I guess an example of of brutalist architecture. It's very Square and functional and could probably withstand, you know a frontal assault by military or something so This is a much more attractive building And then if you go or you can go around the building, there's like hills behind it There's actually a couple of displays. I will mention Wendy has a set up a display for her watercolors She's a really good artist as well as a chemist and educator So actually if you go behind you can see some of her picture Version virtual versions of her watercolors, which is pretty neat But we really wanted a nice attractive area for students to To come, you know to be in Even though they spent about probably two minutes In in the landscape portion, they spent almost all their time Actually in the the chemistry lab itself, which is where we can go now There's two ways to get there If you have the HUD you can click on the little home key and it will take you into the chemistry Lab room or at least the you might say the the starting point for the lab. So you can do that Or you can do it go a fashion way and just sort of walk there It's through the doors and to the right if you go into the building You'll see that there's a lot more to the building than just the chemistry The lab itself again, we wanted to make this sort of an attractive place for students to to congregate I don't know that they actually did congregate very much. You know, they were here for a class after all But it does look nice and if you can wander through it and there's some some Looms and there's a coffee bar and some other things So if you want to meet me next in the chemistry lab again by clicking on the Home button on the HUD or you can just follow me and we'll go to the Go into the lab Right now.  Um, so the outside of the building or the rest of the building is is a You know a new version of their their the actual chemistry Building at the Texas A&M, but this room was made specifically to be as authentic As an authentic replicate of the actual chemistry lab Um, we really wanted students to feel sort of comfortable like Like they had been here before they were only doing two lab experiments in second life But one we didn't want them to have to feel to become Acclimated to a new environment. We wanted to make it as similar as possible. Um, so everything in this room is a copy of what their their Regular chemistry lab looks like now I don't know if if you want to look in the On the far side, um, there's an opening into another classroom If you all want to go in there and look you can but it's Simply a classroom where the students would get their pre lab briefing. Um, so there's some slides Some slide screens set up Actually, there's still some presentations on display there Um, but it's it's nothing particularly special um now The students would come in and You can see these what are water molecules the little rotating red and white three little spheres Pairs of students um a student and that student's lab partner would each click on a um We each click on a sphere and they would be taken teleported to a lab platform We have enough lab platforms for an entire class. Um, but once you go to another platform, you'll be I go to then you're going to end up outside of my chat range. And so I won't be able to uh I won't be able to to uh communicate with you so, um If you Does anybody not have the HUD? Because I think that's going to be an easier way for us to get around Um, okay, so hearing no We're seeing no objections to that. Um, let's All go to the same lab platform now the HUD um that you were given was designed for Really designed just for the instructors of the lab course. Um, the students did not have this There's two sets of buttons. We'll look first. We'll use the ones in the uh, the blue and white portion Um, there are 12 lab platforms or 12 lab stations. Um Which is good because that means you can have 24 students Doing the experiments, which is about the right sides of a course.  All right. So this is where This is where the magic happens um Now if we look out past the edge, um of the the platform, we're actually way up in the sky. Um There are a couple of things that you can see here. Um, even before we get to the experiment you can see there's a Slag show this is showing um the same pre-lab briefing Um that the students got Earlier than the in the other adjacent classroom. Um, so if the students need to just you know Check something that they forgot about they can they can click through the the presentation slides um There is a rotating water molecule. Um That if you click on that you return to the room we were just in um There's Let's see There's a sphere. Okay. So well carry. So next to the water molecule Is this little thing with the green button if I click on that watch what happens to your HUD The lab station number one spot on the HUD just turned red Now if you were an instructor and you were on some other lab platform you would now know very Yeah, immediately that oh students in station one have a question And but maybe you've got a couple of lab instructors who are helping out one of them goes there And clicks on it and the red alert goes away. And so the other lab instructor can Then realize oh Somebody else has helped those students. You know, maybe Maybe the students had a question, but then they figured it out themselves. So they canceled the alert. Um, so It's uh, it was a very it's a very nice way for the students to um communicate Uh, you know in some ways kind of discreetly, you know instead of raising their hand and saying hey instructor I need your help. Um, you know, they could just click on a on a button and only the instructor would know that that student Oh that those lab partners needed help um Next to that is A spear if you click on that um You get a note card called laboratory links and you're welcome to do that um It has links to pdf files which contain the actual lab experiments The student in our study the students used the same uh lab manual as students in the real lab um, and so This was just another way of making that that information available to them And let's see and then there's oh and then the other Slide show is for the second lab experiment on this platform. There are in fact two lab Experiments available um we Since the the lab since all the students performed one experiment at a time um They could just go to the first one they went to is over here on the right To the right facing the the lab backdrop um and And then the next week they did the the lab experiment on the left um, so if if you're not familiar with what a chemistry lab might look like you're the uh The back the backdrop the the ground we're standing on is sort of reminiscent of a uh of a A chemistry a lab bench. Um, you'll notice that all the equipment is um all the equipment is Above uh, you know a larger scale. Um That was just to make it easier for students to see what they were doing. Um, you can in fact I believe you can fall into the sink. Um, pretty sure. I haven't tried that yet, but I'm pretty sure you can I know students could walk into the the lab balance. Um And and do kind of goofy things like that, but you know if you zoom in to The point where you don't see the back of your head then Really all you see is the lab equipment and it kind of looks like normal size. Um, so it wasn't as Kind of it looks kind of goofy, but you get you get used to it once you start doing the experiment itself um Before we do Well, I'm not going to go through and do both the experiments for you You can play around with it if you want yourself, but um One other feature of the HUD that I'll show you is so okay, so there's 12 lab stations and we're on lab station number one um And we got here using that the the blue and white portion of the HUD above that Are 12 buttons labeled 1 through 12 If you click on button number one in the at the top of the HUD the gray button Go ahead and do that and see where you end up. So just to let you They are on the other side of that black background. It's a one-way wall and And so this was used so this we could observe what the students were doing Um, without them feeling like they were being watched Sorry, I was answering a question in another window We clicked you you fell to the ground I didn't know oh That is I've never heard of that happening before that's Okay, so well you Let's see. So you you get transported to the back side of that of the the the black wall that were that I'm facing um I gave mine permission, but I didn't go anywhere So did did anybody get oh, I'm sorry. Excuse me. Um, did anybody get transported to a The back side of this where you could actually see people Uh, I mean, you know see see the lab bench from behind Well, uh Sure, why that happened? Um Oh, we may have We may have had a We may have had a permissions list that only allowed certain people back there And obviously none of you are all on there, but that's Hmm Yeah, I think that that must be it Oh, okay. Well, sorry about that. Well, it is a a nice little feature that that the designers made for us um That would allow us to kind of stand back there and and uh observe the students um, okay, but From the students standpoint this um, that wasn't really something Yeah, well you In fact, we didn't a flying it's interesting you mentioned that we never um We didn't allow flying because it's really not well We really just didn't want students to spend all their time goofing off. Um, and so Um, I think now we've opened up flying because we have visitors and you know, it is easier for people to get around um Um, but yeah, we we had turned off flying or for the actual uh For the actual work. Um If you all want to come over here, I can show you some of How we actually How students would actually do the experiment Um, so this is I'm not going to go into detail about the Everything about this experiment if if you want to really learn about it download the the pdf And and you can read about it.  Um And this is kind of a just a very A very Important it's an important concept in uh freshman chemistry And so this is but it's sort of a theoretical idea and this is a way for them to actually go about Collecting data where they can calculate this this value associated with with the chemical the chemical they're talking about is butane um and Both of these experiments are sort of the the topics were chosen because It's texas and texas is big on one thing petroleum um butane is is a petroleum Is a compound found in petroleum and so They they find the the molecular mass of a of a petroleum compound on the other experiment On the far side is actually measuring the salinity of an estuary That that is it's another I'm going on the on the gulf coast of texas they have estuaries and so that's um Another kind of texas themed experiment they had. Um, okay, so here You can go ahead and People can click on different items and what you'll see is a Uh in well in many cases you'll see a menu pop up and it will allow you to You know give you choices of of what to do with an item um so you should be able to Click on anything and move stuff around okay, so the uh when you When you try and do certain things Um, you might get a warning saying you must first like for instance open the door to the scale so this was a This was an issue that That Wendy and I and the designers thought a lot about um And that is what level of detail do we really want? Because if somebody were to say hey take the lighter and put it on the scale The student could do that and then they would know you pick up the lighter You open the door to the scale and you place the lighter on the scale in second life we Wanted them to really think about what they were doing We didn't want the virtual lab to do a lot of the work for them. And so I think some of the Some of the steps been a little tedious like If you want to put the lighter on the scale first you have to open the door to this to the scale Well, of course you have to open the door scale everybody knows that um But we make the students do Do that explicit step um now But this to some in some of these uh Some of these steps actually have a a I guess an important aspect to them as far as good laboratory Procedure for instance you put the if you were to tell the student Way the you know find find the mass of the lighter, which is a first step experiment Um, they would know to put on the scale and of course they would know how to open the Do that but they often forget to close the door And so when they write down their um They when they try to write down the mass That's displayed on the scale screen. They'll see that it's fluctuating a little bit Well, it fluctuates until you close the door and that that's what really happens in a real lab um The the the scale is sensitive to a tenth of a milligram, which is Not very much mass and so air currents actually affect that it causes a fluctuation in the But the scale is measuring so good laboratory practice would require the students to shut the door And then the scale reaches a constant mass And that's what they record so you know some of We may have Aired too far in some cases requiring the students to do every little thing But in other cases we really had a a reason for expecting them to do that um How did they move? Okay, so It some objects move automatically if they if you click on it and there's only one um It if there's only one task for them to for the object to do You can click on it and it will do whatever it's supposed to do if there's multiple things you can do with the object um multiple places where that object could be positioned then the students get a They'll get a menu and they and they choose which action to take um Yeah, that's right Leaning on the balance table does affect things um so Now the students did comment That because the menus were effectively kind of like a multiple choice test um They The students commented that this really did make the experiments easier in second life than they would be in In the real lab um And that you know, that was a deficiency of of Of our design, um, but it was really unavoidable Just couldn't the designers didn't know how to You know Allow students to like drag and drop Objects and and you know with the mouse cursor or something like that to pick up an object and move it um So it was just sort of what we what we had to to deal with um in some cases we um In some cases we did include a lot of options. You know most of which made no sense or Were incorrect. So the students in some cases had to choose from a lot of options Um to to do the the correct Step in the procedure, but in some cases, you know, the the choices were pretty obvious um now Let's see. So There were a couple of things here. So we can This object here is uh the thermometer and If you if you were to click on this thermometer, um, there's only one choice. Well What do you do with the thermometer? You check the temperature. So that's actually not that big of a deal. Um And Trying to read all the warnings you guys are you guys are getting Um, yeah, so you you got to fill the the tub before you empty it. Um You can they need to know the pressure the pressure is displayed on the back wall. So that's um 751 tour which is about regular pressure. Um, yeah, okay, so so sha was Shao, I'm sorry Shao's uh Said limited options are not a bad thing Yeah, I mean in general that that's true. Um, although We we actually had the students perform this Um, oh my gosh, okay Um, I we we actually had students perform this experiment or at least the first step of this experiment On their own as part of a uh a lab practicum. They they performed the real lab version of this And We found that the steps that the students Performed in detail within second life um help In the lab practicum the students performed those steps Better they were more likely to to Remember how to do them. There are some steps in this process. Um We didn't think about it at the time, but there are there's there's one step in this experiment where The the lab the virtual lab sort of Does skip over some steps Or it does the work for them and it wasn't something we really thought about but it Out to be the case. Um, that particular step Did not they they did not perform that step very well in the lab practicum So we really saw a strong correlation between The detail Of the steps the students had to complete in the virtual lab And how that Reinforced the their what they were supposed to be learning. Um So I think, you know, now if we were doing a pre-lab Exercise, yeah, we we probably would allow them to skip over a lot of the little mundane aspects of this Um, but this was a complete substitute. So we we always wanted them to We really wanted them to Uh I'm sorry. We really wanted them to to Learn as many of the the same steps as they would if they did this in a real lab. Um So now we can um Okay, so you can If you want to play around with this again, well, actually, you know, let me go through and And show you what the students had to do. Um, because this is kind of a A little thing together first you fill the tub with water um And Let's see then we're gonna need to get our lighter Uh, let's see we need to remove the lighter. Okay, so the the students would have um Recorded the mass of their lighter. Um, and and they would have had to do that themselves the the Virtual lab didn't record anything for them. Um, although So In the background there's Calculations the the the lab did run a calculation. It knows what that mass of the lighter was if the students write down the wrong number That's going to show about an error in their uh insults. Uh, okay, so we're going to take Tub on the platform let's see we to Take our 50 minute 50 milliliter graduated cylinder with that above graduated cylinder um I want to Fill it with water and let's see then we uh Raise it to the surface Okay, we then take our tubing here and we connect the two And let's see then Place the tubing in the tub okay, so There was a little visual glitch here the tubing um Let's see. Oh wait. No, I'm sorry. There isn't a glitch. They have to I'm sorry, uh Insert tubing into the graduated Okay, so The idea here is that you have butane gas in the lighter You have tubing running from the lighter to a graduated cylinder that is filled with water Um, but upside down so that now when we click on the lighter We can start the release of butane And After a minute or two you'll see and you can zoom in and see this um in in more detail But the the lighter is once it opened The butane gases released it goes to the tube and it collects in the top of the graduated cylinder And we do that so that we can measure the volume of butane gas that is collected And you can already see the volume of water of course as the gas collects in the graduated cylinder um It displaces water and so Water is pushed out and you can collect a a volume of gas um So they can measure a volume of of butane gas They measure the mass of the lighter afterwards and there's a change in the mass because some of the butane gases has leaked out of it And from the difference in mass and the volume of gas they they collect they can figure out Again the the molar mass of a butane um So that they have to do several trials and so forth. Um, so that's fundamentally what the students have to do And that's what they had to do for the lab practicum um Now let's say at some point You and I were doing this experiment and We realized oh, you know what we forgot to measure the initial mass of the lighter That is a critical step. We can't get the answer to our to our experiment without that information We're gonna have to start over Okay, so in your real lab you would disassemble everything and you'd have to clean some stuff up and It'd be a big hassle here. We have a reset button And when you click that reset button the the red button right next to the scale and click that And it asks it gives me a pop-up menu that says are you sure you want to reset and I sit Yes and poof Yeah, um, yeah, and then everything goes back to where it started. Um So it was just a time saver and you know while we wanted the students to have an authentic lab experiment Experience in in second life. We also realized, you know, they have limited time And how do you want students to spend their time in lab? Do you want them cleaning glassware? maybe um But Gosh, I don't know. I think there's better things for them to be doing like the experiment Um, I'd rather them have time to try the experiment again to get a better answer You know get better data than to spend their time washing out glassware But you know, that's a judgment call and I could see how people might disagree with that. Um, but You know, that's something that The one thing I really appreciated after doing this project is Really thinking about all the reasons why you design a lab experiment a particular way Some things you don't have any control over like that. It's gotta be three hours long um You know that you have no control over that but and in the real world you don't have control over Allowing student, you know, whether students have to clean up after themselves Well, of course they have to because they no one else will um, yeah or break stuff. Yes So we if we had had more time That was the next thing I wanted the the um designers to do is to include some kind of a random occurrence of Something breaks and the students have to maybe deal with that because things break, you know, you you draw a glassware It's not a big deal. Um But it does provide something a little more authentic. Um Again, you know, is that but is that something you want? The students to to focus on during this Lab time Um, so there's a lot of choices you have More choices than I thought about or more choices than I anticipated. Um uh, you know The when you're when you when you have the power to design the lab Environment from scratch. There's a lot a lot more things to consider. Um And so, you know, you can make it as Super authentic with all the hassles as of a normal lab or you can you know have a little bit of convenience thrown in um so now if we If you go to the other, um Lab station and you play around with that that's actually a more complicated lab Experiment both in the real world and the virtual world. Um, there's a lot. It's a little more tedious I'll just give you a little bit of warning. Um, there's It's a it's a lab experiment that focuses on very careful measurements um and you know, it It's not as uh, I guess it's it's well, it's just more complicated. Um, but you're and and That really allowed us to and in that experiment we really did incorporate they need 10 milliliters of water but They're dispensed 10.5 milliliters Well, now they have to remove 0.5 milliliters Okay, they do that, but they accidentally remove 0.7 milliliters. Oh now they have to add 0.2 milliliters This is like a normal thing in the chemistry lab that you just put up with And that was something we thought would be kind of a a good learning experience for the students. Um So that so we we incorporated that into the uh Into the lab as well. So the they have to dispense a lot of liquids in that other lab experiment to do their titration, but it's a It's a very realistic process they have to go through They uh, they record notes. Um, just on a on in the lab worksheet That's part of their lab manual so We could have had a virtual lab notebook associated with this, but Yeah, I don't know those I always thought those were a little clunky um And for the you know, the students really needed to write down a relatively small amount of Of data so a sheet of paper with you know A pen Worked worked very well Um, yeah, now the the nice thing though would have been You know by having them record data into a notebook Then you know that could have been stored and you know, the instructors could have looked at that data on their own instead of you know collecting sheets of paper but Yeah, you're right. It probably would be a A big endeavor Okay, so that looks like 45 minutes so um, I think I've tried to give you sort of a A An idea of What the students experience was as well as the instructors experience and what we were able to do and Um, I think you you were able to see everything with the exception of Not being able to Behind the one-way law So is anybody I've been asking questions, but it's anybody have other questions they want to they want to ask I'll be happy to I'll be happy to answer them and hang around but um I think you you know, hopefully you you picked up on how to do everything so you're welcome to go to other lab platforms and Play around with stuff following the sink you know Mixed up chemicals. I don't think you can't hurt anything And there's always a reset button future plans. Well, I would very much like to Take Not necessarily these but I'd like to do this in a virtual reality setting um with more Emphasis on Students actually handling the chemicals in some way with with br controllers or something like that Getting rid of all those menus um For instance would be a big improvement making this a more authentic lab experience There are there's a couple of commercial. I was actually just looking at them this morning There's a couple of of commercial Publishers that are creating vr labs and they're you know, they're they're pretty neat. Um, but I think there's Oh, I think you know, we we could do better. Um So that's that's what I'm really looking at now is is Doing stuff in in virtual reality I appreciate everybody attending. This has been a lot of fun. Um And uh, like I say, you're welcome to To poke around, you know, you can you can go to other lab platforms. Um just by using the HUD And uh Like I say just You know, see if you have any questions or wonder how we how we get anything my My only uh, I have to apologize in advance. I don't know anything about the actual programming um, but if you uh If if there's something here that you like or or want to learn more how it was done I can give you the names. Um, well random coal um is the uh Is the the guy who did most of the design of the the lab experiments themselves. Um I'm typing his name in the chat And I know he's still he's still active in second life and and other types of things. Um, no, he is He lives in oklahoma actually um near um Right, I've never actually met him. Um, which was very strange to like Send somebody a check for a fair amount of money that I've never met But you know, uh, I got over that.  Um, but uh, but windy knew him and so, uh, so he was so we hired him for this work Yeah, I know I I as although I'm It's something I have to get used to all right. I am getting used to um But I'm in real life. I'm not actually real active on social media and sharing and things like that Um, yeah, you know what that was good So many funny things happened during this project One of them was just trying to explain to people at florida tech Explain to administrators What we were actually doing like what is second life? It's like is it a software? Is it? Uh, uh, you know, is it a publishing company? I I think I I think I just I gave them just enough information that they you know Didn't ask too many other questions um And you know, it was the research was funded. So that's really all they really cared about All right. Well, um Let's see Trying to see if there's other Because if there's no other questions then uh, like I say feel free to look around and look around over at uh On the 12th man island adjacent to this There's there's actually some some neat stuff. There's there's an agricultural set of an agriculture Set up. There's um, some people doing um Education they've got some presentations over there And then there's there's windy stuff. They've got a bunch of cute things for for chemistry So, um Yeah, there's windy Yeah, yeah, actually she's given far more um She's given a lot more tours of um Of our project than I have um, I know last She I mean, I forget when the last time I saw her in the world, but she does virtual world conferences presentations and stuff um So yeah, well and she's all she is retired and so um Yeah, that bandwidth may be may be an issue Okay. Well, um, and you know if if any other questions come up or you want to take another look or talk to me about it feel free to to uh Contact me and and uh, be happy to chat some more. Okay. Take care. Bye everybody


Hello, my name is Lina Greene and I'll be moderating the panel on rural broadband. It will actually be a very interesting discussion because we have panellists both from the emerging markets as well as from the developed countries and as you know rural broadband means different things to different people. Are we talking about access of broadband of 256 kilobits or access of 30 megabits and what is rural? Rural in an emerging market is very different from rural in the developed market. So these are some of the perspectives that will be taken. In some ways you could categorize the three areas. One would be looking at the regulatory issues as different regulatory bodies are looking at how do we promote rural broadband because they see this as an economic imperative to bring economic prosperity to the country. At the same time is that a human right if people talk about access to communications but is that the access to a phone call and then it became internet and then now it's broadband. So these are the some of the issues that would be looked at. Do you need funding in that? Is there grants that are necessary or is there sufficient business models? Now the business model side of it is also very interesting. Some countries would then give out a grant or a bid and most of the times in some countries the big companies get these grants whereas some people are point of the view that smaller companies community providers should actually be encouraged because the cost of acquisition of customers and the cost provisioning is a lot lower therefore they should be encouraged to provide these services. There's also a component of technology because are we talking about bringing fiber to the rural areas? Are we talking about bringing 4G to the rural areas? And then you have interesting technologies that are being adopted say in India like mesh Wi-Fi where they're offering up to 1 gigabit up in the mountains of Dharamsala. So these are very interesting components of rural broadband. And then last but not least I think one of the critical parts of bringing rural broadband which is the same question we talked about when we were trying to universal service is can you really bridge the digital divide without bridging the energy divide? Because in a lot of especially emerging markets the rural areas also have an energy issue and so the component of being able to address the two looking at energy efficient technologies as well as using green energy to bridge the digital divide where broadband is concerned. So this is quite a wide range of topics we have about six panelists looking at it from different perspectives. I strongly encourage you come to our session because it proves to be very very interesting and I'm sure we would learn a lot from what you have to contribute but I promise you you will have a lot to learn from what the panelists have to say. So see you at our session.


So you two team keep it clean. What's going on? It's a engraving here with another video and Patrick Queen with another number He just came into the league last year. Obviously. He was a rookie But going from LSU to the Baltimore Ravens. He went from wearing the number eight to 48 and the 48 I'm not a really big fan of that number on linebackers But for some reason I don't know it's just different with the Ravens. It doesn't look as ugly with the Ravens So that 48 grew on me and I know it grew on a lot of y'all, too And we saw of course on Twitter the exchange between Patrick Queen and Lamar Jackson friendly exchange Where Patrick Queen once that whole thing with the jersey number swap came out and it became official Patrick Queen was like hey LJ Let me hold that number eight but Lamar wouldn't budge of course and of the rule with that is that if you decide that you want to change your jersey number and You have to buy out all the jerseys that are left So, you know what Lamar like it's super hard to even get a Lamar Jackson jersey You know people that's still looking and searching for Lamar Jackson jerseys. So if he were to buy them buy them all out boy That would be a lot of money. It would not be a good investment for him but With Patrick Queen I'm sure a lot of he got a lot of Jersey sales, too But it's can't be on a level of Lamar Jackson, obviously, but now he's number six and It's going to take some getting used to for sure But hey, it is what it is now That's who the last person I had number six for the Ravens. Was it Kara Vedvik? I feel like it was him, but I'm not a hundred percent sure But either way now we got He's gonna be number six Malik Harrison number 40 Lj fort is 58 and Wait, the numbers just gonna be all over the place But I think I feel like Patrick Queen is the only Raven that changed their number Because the Sean Elliott just earlier today. He tweeted about it that he said he talked to Sam cook It was like a look man Let me get that number four, but Sam cook was like no, I'm straight. I'll keep it I hold on to that So the Sean Elliott said he gonna continue rocking out with the 32 and he actually had a couple number changes himself Because I think his first number was 21 Then when Eric Weddle he got cut so then he changed his number to 32 So he's rocking with the 32 right now. And of course Marlon Humphrey a couple years back he went from 29 and then Earl Thomas came aboard and Marlon Humphrey changed to 44 and That's what he's been rocking with for the longest now Anthony avid he used to be Number 34 and he changed it to 23. Well, is he 34 now and he used to be 23 It's one of those two I forget So there's been and Nick Boyle was another one Nick Boyle used to be 86 but then he changed his number to 82 man So these numbers they go a little crazier than you think like when you sit down and really think about it's like oh man Yeah, these dudes been going through number changes But now with the new rule in place where you could do the college numbers. It's been even even crazier So anyway, Patrick Queen new Jersey shout out to everybody that has his or had his Previous Jersey because that ain't his jersey anymore. Now. It's officially a throwback after one year. It's a throwback But it's all good. I love y'all team. Keep it clean. I appreciate y'all team keep it clean and Just like Patrick Queen is when it comes to the number 48 We out


Felly, ddweud. Yn dyfodd awsiau yn gwybodaeth i gyd yn y ffugor yw yw... ..dwyfodd awsiau yn gwybodaeth. Oeddiwch chi'n gwybodaeth, mae'n gwybodaeth yn ymweld ychydig... ..yna gwybodaeth i ddweud yn gweithio... ..yna gwybodaeth hynny. Felly, y fawr dyfodd awsiau yn gwybodaeth... ..yna gwybodaeth i gyd yn gwybodaeth. Yna gwybodaeth, gallwch chi'n gweithio... I below is a 기 became spaces that encouraged design thinking and how we can all unite together. Open source simply put these designers, and this isn't me just saying it because I'm the designer. It truly does need design to be at the very heart of the project. And design when I say it like this isn't just a role either. I'm gonna kind of get to that in this story. Ac mae gennym ni cofnodd rydyn ni i ddweud y gweithio i gyd. Y gweithio gweithio ac yn y cyfnodd cyfnodd, mae'n arddangos o projecau cyfnod. Mae'r gweithio yr cwestiynau i ddweud y gweithio i gyd wedi bod y gweithio iaith i ddweud y cyfnodd. Mae'r gweld yn gwneud ar y projec a'r gweithio i gweithio. Mae y gweithio i gael o'r holl. Rydym yn ei gael i'r cymryd yng Nghymru, yn cymryd, yn ddorol a'r ffordd ar y peth erbydd. Rhyw gydweithio'r cyfryd, ac mae rhaid o'r holl fydden nhw'n ddim mae'n gweithio ar y gyrthio. Mae'n ffrifau'r cyffredig yn ôl. Rhyw fod yn dechrau'r cyfryd, rhaid o'r holl fydden nhw. Mae'n gweithio'r cyffredig yn gweithio ar y gyrthio. mae'n methu o'r cyfle o fawr o'r mfawr o'r ffont yn rhoi gweithio hwnnw. Yn dweud yw yw'r cynnig o'r pallolaeth yn reilio'r cofusio. Y dweud yw'r gweithio bryd yn dylwg i'r progett i gweithio'n enhygiadau. Mae ganddoedd yn spadyn i'r llyfr y MGTG yna yma y dweud. Bydd yna'r cymwyn i gynnwys yma yn olygion. A chwechwch i'r ddyliad blaenbau Ion iawn i'n ddyrchon a wnaeth o'r ddyliad ar ôl i'r arferaeth i'r ddyliau'r gymuned. Rhyw hwyl ochr eisdo i ddigonio o ddwyllprinigion. Rhyw hwnna o mynd i'r ffordd diolch i'r ddwyllprinigion Ion ffordd i'r ddyliad, ond investigation i'r ddylch yn bachod wideron. Rhyw hwnna o mynd i'r ddylch yn budgeisio ddyliad. Dao wedi gweld yn yr ysgol er fydd. I've said the word designer quite a few times. Open source often attracts hybrids, and this is actually something we should embrace and we should encourage. You could say WordPress itself is built on this principle. We also often expect wrongly, in some cases, a high technical ability from our designers. So this is all about finding balance between this. Being open to blurring and hybrids, but being open to anyone that wants to specialise or wants to perfect in a particular field. Because yes, most will identify with one more or the other, but as a project we have to level up design beyond just one role. And we have to be careful of dismissing opinion, but also respectful of those that are making this their career path. There is a problem though. Being a designer, as I said, if I'm honest, an open source today isn't easy, and I say this from my heart. It's hard working in the open. Every single person has an opinion, and every single person has a very loud design opinion. Oksyn designers on the front line, and designers as a result, they feel both good and bad directly. We create from a heart, and because we do that and we train in empathy, at times being an open source project, it's far from nurturing or recharging for us as an experience. Those people tidiously working can feel themselves drained, reduced, in some cases, pixel and of polishers and pushers around, and that's no way to treat a designer. The design voice is often, unless space is given, quieter. And often in open source projects, it's far from quiet. My journey in open source, like many designers, hasn't been easy. There's been ups and downs. I've worked as a contributor in my own time whilst around my own business, and recently, before my recent role, I've balanced being a contributor with working full-time. It's only been the past few years that I've got to really be donated full-time back to the project. It's a long journey, and right now, only a handful of single-digit designers are able to be donated full-time to the project. If you compare that or balance that with developers and other roles that are donated back to the project, it really doesn't balance out. But I don't want to sound bleak, but every single designer in this project will have at some point thought, is it worth it? Because the fact is it's not easy, and it's often harder than it should be. Don't get me wrong, contributing is a hard process for every single person that does it, and that probably extends to other roles in fact it does. But there's that layer that is sometimes oppressive for a designer. You're working in a system, a maze, that's really designed to be solved by a developer. Nothing seems to fit when you're trying to work. The feedback fire hose, that's easy to drown out any form of creativity that you have, and meet your own design voice. When everyone has an opinion, space for yours seems really, really hard to find. Even the lead developer notion that we use, and it's a constant of our project, that's broken for designers. Exclusion means everywhere, and anyone wanting to actually level up in this role sees that. We need to change that, and I feel that we are changing that, and that's part of what I want to discuss today. But there are times it's incredible, so I don't want to paint it completely as negative. There are times when it's amazing. The fact your work can be in a product so wildly used is thrilling. That first time you see your design work live on someone's site from far back in a cafe, that moment. Or that time you hear someone who's saying that they changed their life because of something that you made in WordPress. That's really incredible. Every little one of these successes adds up. The little ones, the first commit, the first names recognition, the first time you're asked for your own opinion as a designer in Cawchart, that's a big one for any designer. That time you became a team rep, or that time you design led a project, every single little success adds up and keeps you within the project. And as I said, open source matters for design outside of WordPress as well, because closed systems available only to those that have money, that's not good for design. And by its very nature, the true concept of open source works for design. Many companies are recognising this and WordPress has a long history of enabling people, no matter what level the designers to join and learn and level up for contributions. And it's not just designers we do this with, people have come to the project, learned the skill and then been able to make a career out of it. And experienced designers also gain through contribution, takes them out of their space, shows them a world and exposes them to really exciting things. The problem though with most projects is they attract the same people. This also can go beyond countries to accessibility and diversity as well. Even a project that attracts designers does not mean that it has this solve at all. Maybe it's just actually attracting one particular type of designers. This still is not good. And it's a challenge, but it's one incredibly worth pursuing. By having a wide range of really different designers, you end up with a rich deep pool to create from. And this can only be a good thing for the project. If we truly want inclusive design, we actually need designers of all types. The sheer cost of access to design products often actually rules that out for designers. And open source can change this through the tools that we have. Recently we've, within WordPress, had access to an envision licence and things like this for the design team really changed the way that we can start giving people these tools to work with. If only a handful that a privilege work on WordPress, then we actually design with bias and that's not a healthy project. So I don't know if you've heard this word design infusion but design infusion is about making everyone in the project aware and activated on design. And whilst this notion of design infusion is something people say a lot, I actually tend to think of it as design activation because to me infusion is a little bit passive. I drink a lot of tea so I think about the tea bag. It doesn't really do much, it just infuses. So activation is when actually action happens. It's actually doing something about it. And how does this help? Well, it means your scarce resource of design spends the spreads far greater. It means that those designers get to focus on the important work and don't have to focus on being and doing everything. This is particularly important for developers as they can actually guide their own work. If you design activate a developer, you really enable them to not be just checking in constantly with designers, you get them to be able to make these decisions. And I'm not saying to remove designers completely, just to make sure I haven't gone too far over there. What I'm saying is it's about protecting and using the valuable resource that we have. A design-activated community runs deeper than just the roles that I'm communicating. It's empathic with experience at its real core. And the voice of the users shout across from every single corner of the project. Design-activated developers, I actually think of the future and the kind of the first thing we need to do. Designers are often, as I said, in this project, the scarce commodity. And that becomes a problem when we force them to be doing everything. When we do this to developers with design, some of that burden gets spread and developers become empowered. When I'm saying they're just not handing over that work and that conversation starts to happen and that's incredibly important. Ideas generate and this incredible workflow across between both roles starts to happen. And then other roles join in and you get this great big design conversation that's not just limited to a tiny role of designers. This truly is where exciting things can happen in a community. And where a good first pass can be made in patches once the developer activates with design. This saves time. Issues can be iterated by expressing in design. When you express it visually, conversation is very easy across different countries as well. And I've seen this happen with Gutenberg. I've been lucky to see many examples where developers have suggested something, explored, experimented, had that freedom and then designers have worked with them. And similarly, designers, if they wanted to, remember we shouldn't force everyone to do anything they don't want to, such as designers being technical, they've explored within code and that fluidity of roles has given that space to freely experiment and it's important to nurture and grow as a community. I hope you'll show me why we need to do this, but how do you create a space that matters? How do you enable design to be at the heart of an open source project? We start simply and build up and making it sound very easy. Respect is a cornerstone of this and that's going to sound a little bit obvious at first thing in the morning. But we want to care about everyone, right? We want everyone to feel that they belong in the project and that comes with respect. We have to, though, recognise that different types of people, those that focus on different roles, for example, or those that are different culturally, may need a different kind of space. And ultimately any space that is caring will be better for anyone. But we have to recognise what is caring for each role and each person and each type of human and then encourage it. And this needs designers from a design perspective to be heard, to speak up and be allowed to lead. The idea of archaeology is something I think we forget in this project. What do I mean by that? Well, I actually was searching before you suggest something. Before you suggest something, it's archaeology time. I can make it sound very corny, but that's kind of what I think about whenever I'm coming to something like a track ticket or I'm coming to something like a GitHub issue. I want to know the context of this before I comment on this because then I'm going to be able to comment better. So before you suggest something, if something's midway or being worked on, investigate. And see this as an exciting part of your process. If you really want to move a project on, actually research if it's been suggested before, this amazing idea that you have that's burning in your brain. And this goes even more for a project deeper into its lifecycle. It's likely come up before and absolutely you might have the key to unlocking something that's been stuck for a very long time. But you also might have the key for something completely different. And knowing and adding that context means that you can give that answer and that comment in the right context and really move the project forward. So I've said it before, but experimentation is probably the hardest thing to do because it requires giving space and a lot of trust and that respect again to do this. But it's the biggest thing that we can do is creating a safe space for that within our community. And this is from allowing experimentation through to just giving space for ideas to just happen. Those what is, those kind of ideas that seem that they're not going to be implemented. Just see how far they go. This is how boundaries are pushed and the really incredible work happens within our community. And don't worry about waiting until it's fully formed. If you think you've waited long to show something, you absolutely have. And if you don't think it, you absolutely have waited too long before you show something. Getting those ideas out, allowing people to have that respect to show early it's really, really important. And not judging, just being open to that work as well. If you have that, this kind of culture of feedback which I'm going to discuss in a minute, we have that freedom to do that. And these ideas are going to shoot and thrive from that. Another really simple thing you can start doing even today is visualise everything. And I'm talking about not just adding screenshots to poor requests or issues. We use a lot of words in our project and we use a lot of words for a multicultural project as well. So if we just start communicating a little bit more visually, we can avoid some of this as well. Designers are amazing. We are incredible. We're also really calm about what we say ego-wise. But we are not my readers. And none of us are. Beyond this, don't really stick to words to describe something. If you're stuck and you're having an endless conversation loop, hands up who's had one of those where you're just all talking in words to each other and no one's understanding what you're trying to say. That's most of the room at this point. If you start to just visualise that, draw, sketch, you might think that you can't draw, but I've got news, every single person in this room can do some form of drawing. It could be shapes, it could be cutting out and pacing things together and drawing lines over it. It doesn't matter. Communicating visually means you can get beyond that kind of word ping pong that you'll be going through. And all voices really need to be heard. I said this a few times, but it's so important. Goes to that culture of feedback that I alluded to that needs to be cultivated. Space should be created and the community shouldn't be just focusing on who is shouting the loudest. And I think we do that sometimes. Feedback needs to be learned. It's actually an art that should be practised by everyone in the community. It's a skill that we all need to learn and we all need to really, really practise daily. A community's ability to give feedback or not is really a good indication of its health. And when a healthy feedback culture exists, every single voice flourishes and is heard. And what I mean by this is not that there's positive unicorns and bunnies moving and happy flowers everywhere feedback. A good feedback culture gives critical feedback, gives feedback that can be actioned, doesn't just say everything is sunshine and amazing, actually moves on. Feedback that is just purely positive is pretty much as bad as feedback that is just dismissive. Respect when you do this starts to flow for the community and that cornerstone is established. So we expect also designers to do a lot of roles and we have this really scarce resource. And this goes for anyone that is a leader in our project at the moment. Just like designers, they are scarce and this is really a wrong way and approach to do this to people. We need to create a community and tools where designers can thrive. I have myself felt this, self and outside pressure to do all the things. I think anyone within Wordpress has felt that. We feel that we should be everything we can be and give everything of ourselves to the project. But we have to change this and we can't just, with regards to design, and we shouldn't just teleport a loaded designer in and say that's done because that doesn't really solve anything. Numbers don't solve anything. This is a community and a project change. Part of the answer is that design activation. But the other part is recognition. A lot of the work designers and other roles do is invisible. And that has to change. As a project, we need to make visible all the work that at the moment is just happening and we're accepting that's happened and you probably don't even know that happens and really recognize that. Because a good community for design is actually a good community for everybody. I don't say this casually because it's important to know. And what do I mean by that? Because that's quite a big statement, right? We often, the very things that designers thrive in mean that anyone is going to thrive in. A community needs to give space for voices. How do you actually start by having this good community? Well, there are a few ways and I'd like to share those. At the moment, we have a design team and that's a start and that's one that we have only, if you think about the length of the project it's been quite a long time for WordPress and it's something that we've only had really strongly for a few years. Designers need to be in all areas in United supporting each other in those. Recently, the design meeting changed to try and include more people from different time zones. And the Japanese design community now have added their notes to the weekly posts. That's a really great thing, they're having their own meeting and their own language and then adding their notes. And all of this really adds up to being more open for everyone. These delicate small little steps are really, really important to the culture of the project. Now, this is a binary view as many of the people blur amazingly into different roles but this is all those identified as designers in the last point release. Since someone like you doing something high up in WordPress actually matters. I will note there are several people that fall into model with different roles and also into different roles that I haven't highlighted like support and editorial. Again, these need more people as well. Shouldn't just have one person representing one big type of role within the community. But designers haven't always had this either. With the most recent involvement of having designers co-leading releases we've started to get representation a little bit more. And even more so now with focused design needs from Gutenberg. Those in the project are starting to see a place they can aim for if they want. And again, it's important to note that we shouldn't create a system that forces everyone to get anywhere by becoming a design lead. You can actually contribute in any way.  Giving that opportunity is key. Designers in fact any role actually need to be onboarded into this project. My mind hurts a little bit thinking about if I came to WordPress today how much I would have to understand all the context and the nuances I would have to get my brain around to really function in this project it's a lot. You can't just land someone into this vast universe of an open source project and expect them to survive. This is something we're trying to fix as a design team and actually across the whole project there's movement to try and change this. It's important though to note that onboarding also has to adapt across different countries. If you only have your onboarding targeted at a type of person remember we're going to track that type of person. We want to be able to have that openness and different voices within our project. Onboarding also should adapt and be iterated. It shouldn't be frozen. Onboarding is not a checkbox we go I've done onboarding and done now. Never have to look at onboarding again. As designers we think of this user journey we should be thinking of the contribution journey and contribution needs to be seen as a product. With that really the community can start thinking about the ways to fix and create the best contribution product that we can. A mentoring also is something that is I firmly believe is crucial for any type of contributor. Often this is done casually one-on-ones but I think it should be done in more organised programs within the community. And I think it's done in certain teams but we should be doing it across the whole project. This goes beyond just onboarding and can answer a lot of the time zones and diversity because it's more one-on-one and more supportive in that way. Mentoring is something I personally really do want to see more of here. And it's also an amazing thing. If you haven't mentored do you know it's a two-way experience? So anytime that I've been lucky enough to be involved in mentoring someone I've also learnt a lot myself. So this one is interesting to say because we do have a design team but I think that's a starting point not an end. And in many respects often because we have a design team it becomes isolated from the other roles. And design needs to be truly in all areas and that activation across the whole project needs to happen by having designers involved. You can't activate an area that has no exposure to the designers that just doesn't really work. And it's not a bad thing having a design team at all. It's amazing that we have that but it's bad if it becomes a walled space where designers huddle together and don't explore from. And that is generally a sign that you haven't got a healthy space if designers are just huddling in one corner together. It's not necessarily saying they feel safe to go anywhere. Creating safe paths and bridges and empowering designers to really go off and choose their own adventure across the entire project that is where success comes for us. So in this last kind of part of my talk I want to really talk about the future and how we go forward I think will show as a project where the design truly is at our harm. It also shows the project is left to be dominated purely by developers. And while some might be okay with that I don't actually think that would be a good thing at all. There are designers starting to thrive in the project and more designers are starting to see it as a potential way to contribute. The time is right to build on this. Tools are really, really important. Our tools we use in GitHub are better but they don't actually recognise designers and they don't really work. And whilst we can wave a magic wand and make all everything kind of better today in our tooling we had to invest not just in Workplace as a project but in our tools. In seeing how designers and developers actually any role can be enabled to do the awesome work they need. As a project we need better recognition from non-cold contributions. And at the moment it's just too fragmented. It's really difficult. You have to get all these silence, you have to kind of do all these connections to be able to function. So this is some GitLab and it's a start but it's a very exciting start for me because it means that not just code is recognised and that's really important. If we're counting contributions by lines of code what does that say about us as a project? Our tools need to be inclusive and GitHub actually has some really bad not inclusive features like negative emoji reactions for example. These can be used to suppress voices and they can actually be an instrument for bullying in a project. If you come to a project you're new and you're commenting on design and someone does that on your comment what is that as an experience for you? You might not agree with that but not actually commenting to them and just giving them a thumbs down emoji is not a great way as a project to progress. We really need to focus on creating workflows that nurture and allow any role to thrive. And one of the things I'm sure we're going to need sooner or later that's a term that comes up time and time again it's come up in community conversations it's come up in word count talks it's come up and it's really happening with things like Gutenberg. We can't go on as a project without a single source of truth. We need to audit what we have from code and design and then look at solving the problem of whatever a design system means for us. And I say that because as a project we need to determine what it means and adapt. Patterns really are the key here and Gutenberg has unlocked some of that with the components. We need to turn that key and walk through the door together as a project. Because along with that and setting some guidelines and more consistent expected experience across WordPress is good for the entire project. A system allows a scarce resource of designers to be treated in respect. And they don't have to invent everything everyone gains and iteration can happen on the components themselves. So design truly I feel does matter in open source it matters now and it matters in the future. It can't just be ignored or thought of as the same as development and assume that it's okay. We need to create a space for designers to thrive and this isn't going to be a project just for developers. Let's all kind of hopefully agree that. Let's finally refer to WordPress in a comment. Try not to say WordPress developers. I see that pretty much every hour or every day within this project on posts and comments. There's not only developers involved in this project. There's not only developers involved working on core. Designers in other worlds need recognition and nurturing. And then we get to keep them more within this project and that's a great thing for the project. We need all different types of designers as well and not force designers to be everything. Allow a designer to specialize. Allow designers to be in from different countries. Welcome any designers because we get stronger as a project by doing that. And if we do this, we truly can thrive together and achieve that goal of democratising publishing. Otherwise we're just developing publishing and putting colours and icons on it. So thank you. I think I have time for some questions. I have some time for questions. If anyone's got any questions. A, I'm going to open it. If you want to ask questions about Gutenberg, I'm also happy to. Generally I don't think there is a resistance if you speak openly about it. I think it's not knowing it's the biggest resistance, if that makes sense. And I'd seen that was in Gutenberg having designers working with developers, there's not been a resistance, it's just worked. And some incredible works happened because of that. And it's that kind of exposure. That's why activation I think is really part of it that way. I think it's not a different change in mind if you just have a communication and talking. I think it's quite difficult if you are a developer that has only worked in developer teams and not, even in companies sometimes, we silo different roles in companies and that's not great. And I think on a company level, in agencies or infrastructure, a lot of people are starting to realise that's not the best model anyway. These diverse teams of roles actually produce better work. It feels like a really ABC thing when you start thinking about it, but we didn't used to do that. And there was almost like different flaws, wasn't it, that's like developer flaw. And then there was this. By using words like engineer, I think we start opening up the term developer a little bit more because there's all those kind of conversations happening as well. So I think it's just having that conversation. Resistance is purely that, right? Like just talking. Any other questions? Everyone obviously needs coffee. We are on experience then. So adopting those ideas, are you seeing new people brought into the group or is this all within the existing word best group that are already very familiar with each other? Yeah, a couple of years ago, the design team was just one or two of us talking to each other in the design channel, which was adorable, but not really a way to have a design team conversation. The design team for WordPress has kind of gone like this. It's had quite a lot of people, then it's had a lot of more people. And we're definitely going up now with the amount of people. We have an amazing collection of team reps. We have weekly meetings. We even at one point stopped having weekly meetings because there just wasn't enough people to have weekly meetings. And that's not a very good sign. So I'd say by doing this, and we haven't done all of this at all, because I say we, because I'm talking about my idea specifically here and my idea is alone on what should be implemented. It's what the collective of people who are focusing on the team reps. That's what should be implemented. This is a very personal talk. But some of the ideas I would love to be added, but I'm sure that there are other people who have different ideas. And that's about being open to this. There could be someone that turns up next this week in the design team chat that has the secret to Gutenberg phase 20, right? That is the future lead. There could be someone here that comes to the contribution day tomorrow that is a future design lead. There's all of that potential and being open to that is the biggest thing I think that we can do and by being open to that, we are having more designers. We are having design at contribution day. So I didn't, that kind of fizzled out a little bit and that started to happen more as well. It's not an instant fix because it needs to be a conversation had by everybody involved in the project. And it's a difficult balance, but it's starting to, I'd say it's starting to happen, which is so exciting for me. That's kind of what I want out of WordPress and what I want out of any projects I work with is to just have that space that people can try to do what they want. So seeing someone come and then thrive and be able to do the work, that's like the biggest happy to me. If there's people in the room who are interested in getting involved in those sorts of things, what advice would you give them to get them started? So if you're around, I would say come to the contribution day tomorrow. The main reason is it's just a great way to just in one day level up really into it, like immersive experience. If you can't do that, then go to make.wordpress.org. I'm trying to remember who I was this time. I've only had one cup of tea, so that was very difficult for me. And just read the descriptions of the teams. The reason that I say that is you can start to learn where you think you'd want to contribute and start then following through the links there to read the blogs of the teams. Each team has a specific blog. And just start discovering. You can join chat.wordpress.org. You can also, the UK community has a Slack, which if you don't feel quite ready to go fully into the bigger wider open source project, just coming and joining that community is quite good for you. If you are local to the area, there's, I don't know, do you know when the Manchester meet-up is? There you go. So the third Wednesday of every month, there's actually a meet-up here.  And you'll be able to hear some talks, I think it's great to me. They have different formats, so I was just checking whether there were talks here. And just be able to come and have like a meet-up conversation. I don't know if you've done like design or develop or any other type of meet-ups, but they're really, really great for you to just come over an evening and just network as well. So there's a lot of different ways that you can start joining. But just kind of choosing your path. I would say start by listening. It's going to be a lot when you first come into any project. Just start kind of finding a way, talk.  I'm happy to talk. So just come and say hi and I'm happy to find, you know, kind of how you can kind of get involved as well. How do you explain to people that when you're saying designer, you don't mean the person who does the print? Do you mean people who are actually handling the user experience and keep it in their place? Yeah. I think that's not a conversation you can say in a sentence, which is an interesting way. I don't really speak for my own personal experience because I'm not someone you want to make things pretty and necessary.  And that, I think, is a good starting point. I do use sometimes the real world examples of the things that you use, the products are designed, the buildings that you live in, the towns that you function in. That tends to get people stopping thinking about the putting pixel little icons and start thinking about that everything they experience has been designed by someone. And that's kind of like, once you open that door for people thinking about experience, then design opens up as a concept in a little bit. But I think it's similar for developers as well.  So it's a discussion we need to have. And I think that's part of like this role use is we need to see it. Like as a designer, you need to be able to see someone that is using the word design and you need to see that there's a team for it, but you need to see the breadth of it. And it's very interesting how over time the phrase of what the design team has evolved, just a couple of sentences on the make-side of what the design team is, because we need to be saying everything that we do and saying that in one or two sentences is a really interesting challenge. Just following on from the comment here. It seems reluctant to use a word that would perfectly design engineer. In the car factory, we understand exactly what design engineer is. But I think that... Design doing criteria for the design of the product. But then the problem of design engineer is that means that some designers will say, oh, I need to be technical. So we have to be sensitive for that. Not every designer is going to code. Not every designer should have to code. So I think it's a great term, but it's a term that doesn't necessarily help everybody. And that's part of the conversation, which is why we probably don't need to talk in roles. We just need to talk about experience is a great unlocker and just start talking about the people that are going to be experiencing the product, the customers, the people we call users, the people we call whatever we call them, who are going to be daily interacting with WordPress. We shift the conversation onto the experience and we shift the conversation onto what their journeys are like. Then we stop getting hung up on titles. Titles are something you put as a hat on a human. And we need to start thinking about what the experience is like. I think it's quite true that it's a very hung up on titles. Oh, designers are very hung up on titles. Everybody is hung up on titles, right? Because in the outside corporate world, quite often the title means a pay increment. It means a recognition. It means, well, I've now got to this point, so I'm senior vice hamster wrangler. Whatever, you see some people with 20 different things in their title of gerbils or something.  I'm saying gerbils and hamsters, but it's this amazing thing that we say, but that's taking us further and further away from the people using our product. The more things we add to our title, the more things we're focusing on us, not the experience. Thank you. Great. Thanks very much, Tommy.


Hi there, my name is Devon. I'm the Finance Officer at the Society of Antiquaries and this year, if I could pick anything for my Christian stocking, I would pick the 10th century Viking talk in Brogues. I find these two pieces incredibly well made and I do find it quite fascinating that the Vikings were focused on honouring war and battle and that sort of thing and they managed to craft these intricate pieces.


Hi, it's Bridget. Welcome to Above Life Channel. The purpose here is to inspire your spirit and to fill you with hope. Today, we're going to be talking with Judy Garland from The Afterlife. Now, Judy Garland has a playlist here at Above Life Channel, so go ahead and check that out because we've channeled with her one time before. So the reason why I'm talking to Judy today is because she was on my mind when I woke up this morning. I actually could feel a conversation between her and Mickey Rooney, and I thought, what's that all about? That was kind of weird, but in my psychic life, you know, weird is pretty much normal. So I thought, let's channel Judy Garland and find out what that conversation with Mickey Rooney is all about. Plus, there's some other questions that we have for her, don't we? Actually, you guys had some questions for her. Maybe I should ask her some of the questions you guys have. Okay, in order to do that, I have to actually look up that video. So I might need to do that in a separate video. We'll see. We'll see you guys, okay? We'll see how long this gets. Okay, I have to do number three, I guess. That would be fine for you Judy Garland fans. All right, so many of you know that I actually live in Minnesota, and I have actually been way up north where the Judy Garland Museum is where she was born, and her family lived for some time, and I want to say Grand Rapids. I think it's called Grand Rapids, and like I'm already in an altered state. You guys, this is the thing, okay? So I know you guys are going to be like, get on with the channel. So you're going to have to skip ahead if you want the channeling, but I got to tell you. So here's the deal. When I start to channel somebody, if I can already feel the spiritual energy, especially in this case when there's kind of two spirits that I can feel, I become kind of altered. That's what I'll call it. I mean, I'm altered. I'm feeling altered, and then it's hard to use my mind to recall things. So it might sound silly to you that I don't remember the name of a city that's famous for Judy Garland's birthplace in my own state, but it's hard to remember to connect the mind to what I'm connecting to spirit, because I'm connecting through a heart-based, clarsentient channel and the channel of clairvoyance, which is visual imagery. I'm also using clairaudience, which is the listening, the ability to listen to spirit. Okay, so I've been up there last summer, summer 2018. I went up there and I took a ton of video. So there is a video for the museum and the house of the birthplace of Judy Garland, you know, the gums was what their names were at that time. So check that out on the playlist. Okay, so let's get to this. Hello, Judy. It's nice to see you again. It was, it's been some time since we've talked a good year, I would say. She says yes. Yes, it has. She actually has shorter hair, her hair is short kind of like mine. It's a little curly. It's beautiful brown. Very youthful looking. She has beautiful skin. Her skin is really beautiful. Like it's very like soft and it's just, it's very, she's very beautiful skin. She's telling me something about, it wasn't always that way.  Like she's making me feel like it's not perfect. My skin's not perfect and it makes me feel like there's bumps on her skin. I don't know if she was very sensitive or allergic to things, but she's mentioning that. So it's kind of like she's saying, look deeper. Look deeper. Things aren't always as they appear to be. Okay, so I felt you and Mickey Rooney talking to each other and I understand historically that you guys were friends and both child actors in Hollywood at the same time. Can you talk to me a little bit, give a little insight as to why that conversation was something that I would be able to tap into right at the beginning of a morning because usually you guys at the beginning of a morning you are right between the time when you're waking up from your sleep state into your state of current reality into the day. There's like this window of time. So sometimes you can actually intercept or receive information even not intentionally at that point in time. So just so you're aware that's why it's a really good time to meditate right away in the morning, even before you get out of bed or right after you're out of bed, you know, when you're still kind of sleepy. So why is it that I could hear that? What's up with that?  We were talking about how funny it is that things have changed so much. Now the whole scene of Hollywood and all of the reality television and even the movies are so different than they were in our time. It was considered, I know for many of the golden era of film or the golden age of film and it looks so spectacular and very much, you know, a time of musicals and extravagant productions and now it's so different. It's not based on the artistry of the art, the artist, the art form of performance, it's much more of a artificially created experience. So the effects and the technologies have brought just a completely different experience. But I think it's generational, she says, but I think it's generational. We were contemplating what it would be like if we were in Hollywood today and how there is a, there's sort of a nostalgia about being in Hollywood and old and, and as you know, she's, so she's talking to me, you guys.  She's saying that, she's showing me. So I watched this video of Hollywood Forever Cemetery and I know this is going to sound so silly to you maybe, maybe not because you like to watch things like channeling spirits. But I, in order to get inspired for my work to communicate with the afterlife, I like to watch the YouTube videos of the celebrity graves, just the ones that, that show the, the beautiful history of the cemetery and the gorgeous monuments and the honoring of the celebrities. And I have to be careful though, so that I don't watch things that give me too much information about the celebrity, like just one celebrity, but just kind of a general, here's where this person is and here's where this person is and look at how beautiful this is, that kind of a thing, so that I can see it and then I just can feel it, you guys.  You could do that. That sounds so silly, but it's true. All right. It sounds very strange to say that I am inspired by watching Hollywood graveyard videos on YouTube. Silly. Actually, it's not Hollywood graveyard. The actual place that I, or the, the particular cemetery was the Hollywood forever cemetery. And I understand that you, Judy Garland, removed that your, your human remains were moved from New York to LA to Hollywood, so let's talk about that a bit. I do want to get back to also coming back around and talking about why you and Mickey Rooney aren't together right now, because there's something important to there, I feel, as though, and she says Hollywood ain't all, it is not all, it's cracked up to be. It's not as glamorous as you think. It's glamorous on the outside, but on the inside, it's extremely lonely and it's a cold, harsh place. And it's a, it's like a cat fight and it's a struggle for survival. And she's like, we are lucky, her and Mickey Rooney. She's like, we are lucky that we survived. We are lucky that we lived as long as we lived. And I think that's known, Judy, because we know now about the history of child actors and how there wasn't protections for child actors and forced to work long periods of time in medicines and pills and forced diets and things like that. Things that adult actors also did were also applied to children and children. And actors were treated like adults, just expected to do all these things. And from some of the horror stories that are out there about you and Mickey Rooney and being drugged up to wake up and drugged up to go to sleep and given cigarettes and caffeine and all these crazy, crazy things, now hearing about that really taints the image of the glamour of those times in Hollywood. I mean, it really gives even movies like The Wizard of Oz, it gives it a really dark side. And I know that that was, you know, you were a star of that movie and of that time, both the two of you were. And so is that, is there something specific about, right now I'm filming this in November, you guys, is there something specific about the date? I feel like, so Mickey Rooney was married several times, I think eight times or something like that. And that when he died, he was really taken advantage of by his family. And it feels like, and he was like an old man that was, you know, neglected and mistreated abused. And, and I remember that there was a, he testified before Congress, I think about elder abuse or that kind of thing. I remember that. And because, you know, the political stuff was interesting. And that he did that. And I can't, to be honest, I can't believe he lived as long as he did. And Judy says, neither can I. He outlived me. How did he outlive me? Now was there a romantic interest between the two of you? She says, no, he wasn't really my type.  But he, she's making me feel like he was younger than her, or there was an age difference there. And that when you suffer through something, when you experience the horrors of Hollywood, and you have someone else that really understands the experiences that you went through, that's something that bonds you, that suffering it bonds you. And I don't like to, she says to me, so she says, you know, I don't like to speak of this. And that's why in originally in the first interview that I had with you, it was much more like she's making me feel like I like, so I feel colder, like I literally feel cold, all of a sudden my hands are cold. So if you watch the first video that I did with Judy Garland and channeling her, you'll see that it was really a kind of a weird thing. And I wasn't quite sure that I liked her. I mean, and she says, that's okay. She said, oh, that's all right. Many people feel that way, even my friends, even my closest friends. So did you have that kind of personality where you were kind of a jerk? Or what's the deal with that? She says, I wouldn't say that. She says, I wouldn't say that.  It's weird because she's kind of speaking in present tense. Maybe it's because I feel her and Mickey Rooney and they're having a conversation. And it's almost like I'm listening in on them talking in the afterlife about their human experience. And if I can hear that, then I can get the lessons or the messages to pass along to you, which I have been doing in this first part of the channeling. If you haven't figured that out, I'm sure you have. You can feel that, right? Can you feel that? Because I want to talk to her about things specifically, but she wants to bring in his part of his experience as well. And the ability to overcome the obstacles that are placed before you. And it's the overarching theme in part is life is what you make it.  And it does affect them. It does form them. And that Hollywood and the image of Hollywood isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's not. There's so much more. And like she said, look deeper, look deeper. All right. Well, we can tell that because in recent history, in the last few years, there's been a lot of scandals that are political and social and like social justice things and Me Too movement and lots of things where we've seen people in Hollywood taking a stand for, you know, things like poverty in the world or doing things for climate change and things like that and being really philanthropic, like stepping up and doing things, not just doing it for PR purposes, but doing it because that's what they believe and they know that they can make a difference. So we've been seeing things like that. But we've also been seeing things like exposure of actors and people in power like Harvey Weinstein, like Bill Cosby, who have abused people and others as well. There are others, numerous other people that have been, whether they've been racist or womanizers or rapists or whatever, it is really showing like that power. It's opened up the doors like everybody can see behind the scenes now into this, even like in the news to like news anchors, you know, being exposed and for their power position and the treatment because of like Hollywood status, that kind of thing, fame. And so it's really been a lot, there's been a lot going on. So in part, it feels like it's almost like that is a part of a karma that's coming up for child actors early on and actors and actresses early on that have the pressure to have to fit a certain mold, particularly women it looks like from their conversation, women and children, young people. She says, oh, yes, it's quite different now. It's quite different now. She says it's quite different. It's not safe. It's not, it's far from ideal, but things have come a long way, come a long way. All right. So can we talk about, like I said, I watched the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. For some reason, that particular cemetery, I'm like right now, I'm like so like feeling it. So I don't know. It's November 2019. I don't know you guys, if somebody else famous is planning to make their exit soon. And again, it's November 19th, November 2019 when I'm recording this, because I'm drawn to that particular cemetery, Hollywood forever. So interesting. All right. So you moved, like your family moved your, your memorial. So what's about, what's that all about? From New York to Hollywood. What's that all about? Did the rent go up? That's kind of how it feels. Did the rents go up? She says, well, you know, the weather is so much better in LA. She says, the weather is so much better in LA. And she says, I think it's, it's a matter of convenience and the opportunity to allow others to connect with my legacy is what kind of what it feels like, but I'm not sure. But to visit my grave, she says, I get far more visitors in LA than I would in New York. But maybe it's just because it's new. You guys get the feeling it's been like in the last year that she would, that it was moved, the grave and the memorial and all that was moved. So your daughter, and then I see Liza, Liza Minnelli. So are you okay, Judy, talking about that a little bit? She says, well, you're going to ask me, ask me what you want to ask me. And then if I don't want to answer, I won't answer. She's very brazen too. Like, she's like, Hey, just ask me what you're going to ask me. And if I don't want to answer, I'm not going to answer. And she says, she's very talented. She's very talented. But she makes horrible choice in men. I'm like, okay, she's very talented, but she makes horrible choice in men, horrible choices with men. Okay, I'm feeling like she has a daughter too. Does Liza have a daughter, you guys? I feel like there's somebody else like a grandchild. And I feel like so what's their competition between you and Liza? Like I know that you perform together and things like that. But was there competition? She says, she says, there's always competition. There's always competition and Hollywood is cruel. And there's always competition. You have to stay relevant. And as you age, at least during my time, as you age, lucky for me, luckily, lucky for me, I have my voice. I have other talents besides beauty. And so I had much more opportunity to continue my career and be successful long after many other actresses had to hang up their stars. So that's what she's making me feel like. And she's like hanging on to your youth for as long as you possibly can. As long as you possibly can. And then she's making me see like I'm seeing snapshots of other actresses like Garbo. I see her. And she lived to be an older age. And then I see, you showed me somebody else. And I can't remember because I saw Garbo and then I saw somebody else. Who else? Oh, Marilyn. I saw Marilyn. She did not. It feels like she alienated her family, you guys. Like she's kind of admitting that she wasn't the best person. Was that because of the addiction or the pills, the drugs? Oh, yes. Yes, of course. But you can't blame your choices on pills. You can't, at some point, you have to take that accountability for yourself. And realize that you can't numb the past. So, all right, Judy. So I see a lot. I do see abuse in your past. A lot of like abuse, like not just mistreatment physically, but like I see sexual abuse. I see just a lot of mistreatment. And I feel like did that affect your mental state? Or did you have some mental health issues? Do you think before that? Because right now, days in our society, we talk about mental health a lot. And so, and mental health and addiction seem pretty closely connected. We also have prescription addiction, because we treat the mental illnesses with medications, which thank God, for many, it saves their lives. But what do we go too far is the question, you know. So what do you think that the, that life creates the mental illness and that needs the addiction to soothe that pain or dull that pain to allow you to function, you know, in the present, because it's from the past? Or do you think that you already had something that maybe an anxiety or depression tendency that just this situation and experience just got made the depression worse? And so then it showed up. And then, then there's more of a mental health crisis. How does that make sense? I think it, I can't speak for everyone. I can only speak for myself. And it was natural. It was, you have to understand Bridget. It was normal. It was completely part of the landscape for adults and children and doctors to prescribe medications, to wake you up, to help you to sleep. It was normal. It was completely considered normal. Even IVs or shots, it was considered normal when you're under the care of a doctor. It was just as expected. And everyone, everyone, everywhere did it. And they shared, you know, medications and sleeping pills. If you didn't have a pill, you just borrow one from your girlfriend. And it was so, it was a normal part of life. It didn't seem that different. It created a need for a dependency, yes, on the substance of some sort to go up and to go down and to fulfill a need.  Sorry about that. It was like a quick fix. And after a while, it didn't, doesn't work very well. So then you have to find something else and other things and combinations of things. And she's making it to like pills and like vodka or pills and a clear alcohol. I don't know what the clear alcohol is like. It looks like vodka to me, but it has a smell to it. I don't think it's not champagne. It's not like bubbly like that. It might be white wine. I don't like white wine. Not a fan. Not a fan. Too dry for me. Too dry.  You just get, it's just, it just becomes, it consumes you and it seems normal to you until you have these crises. Like she's making you feel like she has these mental breakdowns where she doesn't know if she's going to be alive or dead. And then she comes back and she works her way back up and everything's okay for a while and then it goes back down. But it's not like in and out of addiction. It's like in and out of, she says in and out of craziness. In and out of craziness. Like she says you have nightmares. She said I had nightmares from my experiences and you just don't want to think about anything. So you just, and she says I wasn't a good person because of my demons and those monsters were not made by me. I did not create those and I did not ask for that. So to answer your question, mental health was not a concern until after Hollywood, until after my experience in the movies. Now some might speculate that my mother had influence on that and while she pushed me and pressure and did apply pressure to me, she wanted the best for me. She knew that I could be successful and I had a responsibility to take care of my family and I just accepted that. I don't blame her for that. I just accepted that. Could she be mean or cruel? Yes. But that's all I knew. I didn't, I don't blame her. I don't even blame her now. So what about your relationship with Liza then? I mean I know you have another daughter as well and a son but do you, it seems like with her because she's so public and you know a well-known actress and performer and do you, you know, and it seems like there is competition between you but it also seems like there is love there. How could you be like a mother? Do you think you were influenced by your mother? And like, because it seems like, I don't know, I don't know, it almost seems like a love-hate relationship with you and Liza. She says, that's a good way to describe it. That's a good way to describe it. But now there's only love. You know that. There's only love in the afterlife. When you connect with your heart, there's only love. I didn't, I'm not going to blame my craziness or my incompetence, my incompetence at times or my episodes. She's kind of making me feel like she had these episodes of not being able to just really crabby, almost like bipolar, you guys. Like really mean and crabby and then fine and then mean and crabby like or passive aggressive maybe is a better way to say it.   There's a lot of things I could blame on other people but why do that? Why do that? Too many people do that. Was I jealous of Liza? Yeah, her youth. Her youth. She was so young and vibrant and beautiful. She had these beautiful eyes and it was a pleasure to perform with her. It was a pleasure to perform with her. It was like when we were together and actually performing, not the practicing, not the planning, none of that, but the performing it just felt it felt like we were as one. Like we were really like she's making me feel like that was when they were really harmonizing. They were really connected. That was like that was a great part of their relationship is what it feels like. I think that Liza would probably say that too. I think she probably would. Yeah. All right. Okay, so let's see what I'm doing for time. Ooh, gotta wrap this one up, you guys. I think we should do a number three in the future. So it would be great to ask her questions that you want to know about her life or Mickey Rooney because he came in a little bit or she was speaking for him or talking to him. So we were able to hear a little bit of that conversation. So if you have questions about Judy Garland that I should ask her in an upcoming channel, go ahead and put it in the comments below. So then when I do another video, I will read your comments and use those to ask the questions. All right. This is Bridget. Thank you so much for watching this afterlife conversation with Judy Garland in the afterlife. Remember, the purpose here is always to inspire your spirit to fill you with hope because this, this is your life. So live it. Just live it. Thanks for watching.