But the goal is to answer everyone. All right, so it's 1203. Shall we go ahead and get started? Let's do this. Great. All right, so hi. Welcome, everyone, to our discussion on how to build your book marketing platform and stay sane with Elizabeth Kaufman. My name's Taryn Edwards, and I manage the activities for writers at the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco, which is steps away from Montgomery Bart Station. And it's a pioneering library, cultural event center, and chess club founded in 1854. All right, so just to let you know, this program will be recorded for future viewing. And by registering for and attending this program, you acknowledge that your name and your image may be included in the recording. Since we're using the webinar function, your cameras are turned off, but Taryn, Elizabeth, and Barbara's cameras are on. All righty, so this event, I'm thrilled to host. And it's been produced in partnership with the San Francisco Writers Conference and the San Francisco chapter of the Women's National Book Association, two entities with whom I work heavily to provide writing classes and other learning experiences relevant to the San Francisco Bay Area writing community at the Mechanics Institute. Today, our speaker is Elizabeth Kaufman, and she is the social media director for the San Francisco Writers Conference. She's also an editor for independent clients and for publishing companies. And she's also a rigorous writing coach, book coach. And she helps writers find their voices and connect with their creativity. So you can learn more about her at www.writingrefinery.com. And I also put her URL and email address at the beginning of the chat thread. We also have on camera Barbara Santos, who many of you know as marketing director of the San Francisco Writers Conference and the Writing for Change Conference. Barbara, quick question. Will Writing for Change happen? It will happen. Great. How it's going to happen is we're still working on it. All right, so the way the event today is going to work is Elizabeth will share a lot of her knowledge for about 10 minutes, and then we'll be in conversation with her to address your questions. So we have a pretty good sized audience today, so why don't you write your questions in the chat room? And as I said earlier, we will fold them into the conversation as naturally as possible, and we'll try to answer everyone. All right, thank you so much. Welcome, Elizabeth and Barbara. Thank you. Thanks for having us and me, especially. I'm so happy to be able to come and share with you guys just a little bit about what I see as a challenge that a lot of writers are facing right now, and that's how to build your marketing platform, your book marketing platform, and stay sane right now, because it's a crazy world we live in. So I'm actually going to start us off, if you don't mind. If everyone could just take a moment from where you're sitting to put your feet flat on the floor and put your hands in your lap and close your eyes and just take a breath. Breathe in deep all the way down into your belly.  And let's just all be here and be present right now. We're not going lots of places because we're in lockdown, but it's crazy times right now. And so just being able to take the space and breathe and be here is really important. And I hope you can feel that and just feel a little bit of grounding right now. So I'm just going to jump in really quick with my slides here, and we'll talk about how to build your book marketing platform and stay sane. So there are three different, of course, it's going to be, sorry, it's going to be cranky with me right now. I'm going to work with my technology here. And you guys know how this goes, right? You know the technology. The technology can be a pain. I don't know why you don't want to work with me. Slide show? Go to slide show? I'm not even seeing it. I'm just going to click up here. It's to, there we go. There we go. OK, so there are three different platforms that I wanted to talk about in general that are the highest trafficked platforms that we're using on social media these days. And that's Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And I'm going to assume that you're on at least one of these platforms already. And that is awesome because we need to be building that conversation and connecting with your readers wherever you can find them. So finding your audience, that is the most important thing that we're looking for right now. And if you're not seeing engagement on a particular platform that you've been on for a while, it might be time to pivot and try something new. So I just wanted to point out these three platforms and what types of content resonates there really quick. And then you can take time to consider for your particular subject matter, whatever that book is, whoever your ideal reader is, where you think they might be in the social media world. So we have Facebook, which is a little bit more short form writing. It's definitely meme driven. I don't know if when you look at Facebook, you see lots of different stuff that is being shared around that a lot of it is political. A lot of it is also then things to distract us from, things that are political. So if you're in the Facebook world, it's really based around that community idea, building those groups and talking to people about subjects that resonate with them and that are exciting to you or that are directly related to the things that you're writing about. Then we have Instagram, which is image driven, short form captioning.  So people are less likely to read the captions if they're not captivated by the image that you're sharing with them. So you really want to think about, is the work that you're trying to market visual? Are you marketing an art book maybe? Or how can you represent the things that you're writing about in a visual way that will catch your potential reader's eye and then draw them in to want to follow you and have that conversation with you? And then we have Twitter. And Twitter has changed a lot in the past few years. Like it used to just be a stream of text and that was it, like you had 140 characters and it just kept like refreshing and new people were saying more things. And like you could only say so much in each tweet.  But now they have video and image capabilities so there's a little bit more wiggle room to try and figure out how to communicate with your audience. But like I'm saying, each of these is a little bit different. And so being able to just take some time to play with a different platform that you haven't used yet can be really good right now because everybody is on the internet right now and everybody is shouting all at the same time. And so the idea is to figure out how to say something that's relevant and that will connect with your readers in the right place. So if you have this beautiful long post that you wanna share with people, your thoughts that you've been writing out probably Twitter is not gonna be the right platform for you. But that's, you can kind of work with each one of those and just see what's working and then change to something new if you need to get a better result. So pick one platform and then get really good at it. And then once you feel like you've mastered that you can move on to the next one. But definitely don't try to spread yourself thin and or be repeating content across mediums too much because again you're gonna draw a different kind of audience in different places.  And so then my main point that I like to share with people when I talk about building your social media platform is that I congratulate anybody who has thousands and thousands upon millions of followers on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and whatever those platforms are. But all of those social media platforms should be a funnel for getting people to your website and onto your email list. Your email list is the only form of communication that you actually control to be able to share information and have conversation and connection with your readers. Facebook could decide to ban you for any reason at any time they don't have to have cause.  And it's nice that they give you algorithms and paid ways to connect with different people on that audience but it does not actually belong to you. So I'm just gonna harp on it a little bit as we go along but definitely make sure that you are drawing people back to your email list because that's where you have complete control over exactly how you wanna share with people. You can share frequent short emails, you can share super long, thoughtful, heartfelt emails, you can share videos however you want through your email delivery system. And those people that sign up unless they unsubscribe like they're your eyeballs to look at and to share with and to listen to and be in dialogue with. So because the world is so weird and inconsistent right now I just wanna point out that consistency is most important. And like figuring out what you can do and that you can maintain over the long haul is gonna be important as well because if you send a flurry of posts or emails or whatever it is right now and then you don't say anything for months that is gonna confuse your audience or you may have people that unsubscribe from your email list because you sent like 20 emails in one week when that's not like how you're gonna communicate with people regularly. And also like maybe you feel like you have tons of time to be posting right now or to be emailing people but like when life goes back to whatever the new normal looks like you wanna be able to maintain that pace of communication. So taking that time to stop and breathe and know yourself and know what makes you happy and how you when you add more responsibilities or more activities to your list you're gonna be able to maintain that is important. And then I just wanted to say that like knowing what you're talking about, what your voice is, what your message is to your readers and to the world through your art, through your creative practice, through the books that you're writing that is the most important. So it's possible that you could dive in and capitalize on some perceived opportunity but you're gonna lose part of that audience over time if it's not the content that is actually like authentically resonating with you and who you are. So just keep thinking about that as you're building your audience that you're trying to organically cultivate a readership that is connected to you and to the things that you're interested in so that as you continue to share they continue to be interested. There's also just like a side note in here like you could buy as many followers as you want for whatever platform that exists. There are ways to do that. And so then you could perhaps go to a publisher and say, ta-da, I have a hundred thousand followers on Twitter, look at my platform but none of those followers are gonna be actual like engaged and interested members of your community, they're just numbers on the page. So sharing content that is relevant to what you're writing about and to what you care about and to what your readers care about is the most important thing and doing that consistently and being engaged with your audience is what counts. And this is the main points that I wanna make and that is again that it takes time. You can't just overnight have success. Some people can maybe but there's like this, it's like that weird confluence of all the right things happening at the right time to shoot skyrocket somebody into fame and for most of us it's going to be one reader at a time, one follower at a time, you welcome them in and say, awesome, we're so glad you're here and here's how we're gonna connect together. So if you feel like your numbers are going slowly, I just wanna stop and encourage you that that's exactly how it's gonna go and it's exactly right and you're doing the work. And then next, your book is not for everyone. So if you have people that follow you and then decide to unfollow you, try not to take it personally because it's not about you really, it's about people having lots of different interests and lots of different voices all shouting at them at the same time and eventually you have to be able to curate to this and not this. I have time for this and not this. So your book will not be for every single person and that's totally okay because you're building your audience. So the best gift you can give is to stop trying to please everyone and to talk about the things that you care about and tune out the rest of the noise and take that time to build each individual, I don't wanna say, to build what you're trying to say in such a way that your readers keep coming back to you again and again and are excited to be able to like have that connection and to learn more about the things that you're interested in. So the last couple of slides I have here and I can just share these as we go along or I can email the slides to anybody who's interested in it later but I have some thoughts here on how to cultivate yours then when you're not feeling creative or motivated and how to practice self-care and boundaries around social media because it bleeds into everything. So these are just a few ideas for you when you're not feeling creative or motivated to reach out and I'm just gonna take a quick second to tell you that like at the beginning of this lockdown in March, everybody was all of a sudden in a panic and like worried about how to respond or like what to do and there were a lot of people that jumped into that space with leadership and like how to like cultivate things and how to encourage people and how to like build that creative practice or do this or do that and I being the writing coach that I am I felt like I should really be doing that too but also at the beginning of the lockdown, I got sick and I was sick for like three weeks with this horrible cold, it was really not good and so I did not feel at all like reaching out and I felt bad about myself for not doing it and then I remembered that, oh yeah, I need to take care of myself first and then once I feel better then I'm able to reach out or once I feel better and then I'm able to create more so I just wanted to offer that to you guys as well even though we've been in this space now for a couple of months and we're starting to feel like there's some kind of routine going on maybe some of us hopefully that like you still need to check in with yourself and make sure that if you're feeling resistance drink some water, take a break, go for a walk try something new and hopefully that'll inspire you to find some more content to create and be able to share with the people that have signed on willingly to be part of your community and want to hear from you and then my last slide is just here for how to practice self-care and boundaries around social media and this ties back into part of that staying sane while you're building your platform you're trying new platforms you're trying different things you're trying different frequencies of sending things out but like your social media and marketing and your platform that is not the purpose of your life that is a thing that you do to support the purpose of your life which is to create your art so if you don't wanna feel sucked in by it I recommend that you give yourself a time limit every day that you put it on your calendar that for 30 minutes I'm gonna work on sending out my Instagram posts or making you know liking other people's posts or sharing stuff on Facebook or whatever it is that you're going to do but give yourself a time limit and don't go beyond it that way you can have that compartmentalized time and you're doing what you need to do each day and being regular about it but you're also not like getting sucked in and doing it for hours on end which can happen because that's what like social media wants you to keep your eyes on them and not on the other things that you're working on so give yourself a time limit plan a schedule of posts in advance if you can so that you can either use a scheduling tool to be able to send those out or you can just wake up in the morning and say I know what I'm sending today and put it out there and that way you're not spending a whole lot of time each day thinking about what it is that you will need to post for that day turn off your notifications like there's really not usually a need for Facebook to have your attention all the time like it does not need to make your phone buzz it does not need to jump up and tell you that so-and-so liked your post you that's one more way that like they bleed into the rest of your day so turn off your notifications and then when you're during your scheduled time you can go on to your app and look at whatever it is that you want to and then I say use block mute and unfriend liberally like it's fine in some platforms you can people can follow you and you don't have to follow them back so that you can curate your feed but like you don't there are certain things that you don't need to have coming up in your feed or into your direct messages all the time and so like you are not required to provide that kind of access to yourself through social media either so be selective about who it is that gets to join you and like have access to you and make sure that you set up guidelines for how people are supposed to behave and boundaries for how people are supposed to interact with you and then you can maintain those with the use of these tools so that's the end of my slides and I wanted to know, I'm guessing there are some questions I think I could see some of that coming up in there so I'm going to start. I just wanted to say the advice you gave at the end about blocking and setting limits and boundaries I thought that was really great and very timely advice. Yeah, yeah. All right, well we have a lot of questions here. Good. Let's see, let me scroll up here and see what we've got. One question from Justine, she wanted to know if there was a particular demographic that you can kind of associate with the various platforms. She wants to know, in her experience she sees a lot of older folks on Facebook and she's just wondering if that's... Yeah, that was what you experienced. You're going to find probably that 18 to 50, 60 some on Instagram, that's that kind of age range that's there and then a lot of people that are 16 above on Facebook, there was an article I was just reading the other day that broke down the numbers for that and if I can find it, I can email it to people who are interested in seeing those numbers up front but that's definitely true that if your audience is in an older and above 60 demographic, then you're probably like looking to find them on Facebook and not on Twitter. Twitter is a little bit fast paced in that kind of way. So, somebody says, yes, she'd like that article so awesome, I'll write down to be able to send it to you. Great, Kate was wondering what service you use to integrate video onto Facebook or onto your other social media streams? Well, so in Facebook and Instagram, especially you have, they have video capabilities built right in so then you can, if you wanna create a video on your phone or on your computer, however you want, you can post that directly to those platforms. Instagram is different from Facebook in that regard. Facebook, I don't know what the time limit is on videos. On Instagram, if you're going to put something in a feed, you get one minute of video. You can use stories and get a little bit longer, it just breaks it into chunks and then they have Instagram TV where you can, they call it IGTV, and you can post really long videos there if you want to. And then you can share a clip of it into your Instagram feed so that people who are looking and scrolling through can find that and then go to IGTV to watch the rest of your video. It's kind of like a teaser. Yeah, go ahead. You finish. Oh, I was just gonna say if you are using, if you're talking about like using email to send videos to people or that kind of thing, you will wanna check with the particular email provider that you're using, like if I'm using MailChimp, they have, I think, a way to integrate YouTube videos and your main problem is really figuring out where you're hosting all of the videos that you are sending to people, whether you're hosting that on a private server or whether you're hosting those videos on YouTube or some other paid service like Vimeo or whatever that you can put there and then add in those kind of integrations into your email to send to people. But yeah, so that's the hardest part is knowing cause I mean, you know, probably all too well, just like I do that your iPhone, sure it has tons of storage and also it's super limited. Videos take up a lot of space and so then like getting those out and off into the hands of people who are interested in them is the important part.  You mentioned earlier about the importance of not relying just on social media to develop a following but to use social media to channel it into your personal website and your personal email list and all of that. Cindy had a question on, I guess on Facebook and Twitter you can include your own personal website but on Instagram, she says that you can't and she was wondering if there's a tool or what sort of strategy you would use to drive traffic from Instagram to your website. Yeah, so you do in your profile on Instagram have space to put a link but you only get to put one link on Instagram. And so I use two things. One, I use in the captioning on Instagram and you have a call to action, right? Like anytime you're doing, like whether you're sending an email or like putting a post onto Facebook you have a call to action at the end of it whether it's for people to respond and answer a question or to sign up for something on your email. So when you say that in Instagram, you can't, you're right, you can't have a direct link listed there but you just, most people say the link is in the bio. And so then what that indicates to anybody who's reading that is to click through to your profile and see the link that's there. And so you can change that link, you know all the time, anytime, however you want to but if you're somebody who has regularly different offerings going at once that you'd like to be able to have people access there's a program that you can use the free version or you can I think pay for upgraded features that's called link tree. And I'm gonna put that in the chat for people. It's called link tree. And mine, I use link tree for my websites and actually use it for the San Francisco Writers Conference Instagram as well which if you're not following us you should come follow us San Fran Writers. We'd love to see you there. But link tree will give you a custom URL that when people click on that it takes them to a few different selection choices. So then you can change those links out whenever you want to or add more and it can be a really long list if you want to of sign up for my newsletter or check out this free video that I made or download this packet for writers that kind of thing is all listed in there. And so that's how people are getting around the you can only have one live link and it only goes on your bio on Instagram. Oh, that was a thorough answer. You're my best. Elizabeth earlier when you first started your slideshow you mentioned the importance of curating your social media audience but what about curating your posts? Yeah. Did you really, Rick had a question asking how much duplication should you really have on Twitter and Facebook for example? I mean you kind of want to show your voice and show your personality in each stream but you also want it to be different and authentic. How much is too much as far as duplication? So I think you can get away with it a little bit but knowing that like, so if you are connecting to the same audience like the same people exactly on Twitter and on Instagram or Facebook then like that's it feels like a little bit like you're doing I guess too much work even though like if you're using Buffer you can put the same post in three places with one click and that's nice to be able to do that and we can talk about that again in a second but there's different types of information that get more activity on each of those platforms and that's really what I'm talking about. It can all lead back to the same idea and the same blog post or the same whatever it is that you want to talk about that is away from Twitter or Facebook but like on Twitter, the picture that you post on Instagram is not gonna, it won't size right and won't feel and work as well. So you just need to be able to, you can have the same ideas even and how you put it onto that platform changes a little bit but then also how you expect people to interact with you on that platform may change as well where like in Facebook, you tend to see lots of like comment interaction and that kind of thing people having conversations and Twitter it's a little bit harder. It happens but it happens in a different manner so like just being able to again note that the long post that you wanna put on Facebook is not really gonna translate to Twitter or to Instagram even. So like just being able to be aware of that.  Like if you wanna like Rick mentioned ask how much of his posts should be about personal interest versus books and how his privacy settings should be set but it sounds like there's no one answer it just depends on what you want out of the social media experience as well. Yeah and again you're looking to connect with your readers so personal interests are great to share as long as they're gonna be the same personal interests that your readers share and they have to do with the things that you're writing about. But that's actually why like that's why you see a lot of separation between people's personal Facebook page and their business Facebook page, right? Like that way you have that separation of like the people that are in my business Facebook feed they are there because they connect to me over the things that I write about and the things that I write about interest me because of this and they also interest the people that are reading my books. But those people there that are your book readers most of the time like sharing pictures of your kids or grandkids or the food that you ate that night like that's not necessarily good fodder for building your following for your business. It's fun to share that with your family and with your friends but for the people that are buying your book there's like a little bit more separation that needs to happen there. The people that can share their kids and what food they're eating right now and that stuff they're like the upper tier we'll call them of people who have billions of followers and everybody knows who they are anyways. Like Neil Gaiman, he can post anytime he wants about his kids or about like what, you know except for that I think he eats Marmite and I'm like not a big fan of that so he can just keep that to himself. But like, you know that kind of thing it's fine because he's super famous already. But when he was starting out before he got super famous he had to be a little bit more targeted in what he's talking about to his social media audience or his email audience or whatever to make it relevant to their interests almost more than it is relevant to yours. It's just, you're looking for that overlap. That's a great answer. Particularly when you're tempted to share some sort of political thing. Right, yes. And we're all being sorely tested these days because there's so much to talk about and think about. How many things you could comment on? You're like, nope. No. Nada has a question about how to get Twitter followers to be aware of what her handle is. So basically when you're building actually Kathy Turni has a great book on how to build a Twitter following that you should Google her. She's on Instagram, Kathy Turni, Kathy of the Sea. Look that up. And, but like basically what you're doing when you're on Twitter and you're trying to find followers is you follow people. And Twitter is good at like you give it like different topics that you're interested in and it will suggest followers for you.  And so anybody who clicks on that hashtag can see all the tweets that have come out that are on that subject.  But the point with Twitter especially is just like to be doggedly consistent about the things that you are the topics that you're posting on. And again, avoid the personal stuff of like I ate this or I these things or here's a picture of my cat although there is a hashtag cats of Twitter. So if you wanna be like talking to people about cats then by all means and I do that with my personal Twitter feed actually not my work one but my personal one. So if you wanna see pictures of my cat you can follow me at fairbeddy on Twitter. And yeah, so it's definitely it's more about like getting out there and engaging and answering people's questions or talking to other people or about topics that other people are talking about on Twitter. And then you can also share in like on Facebook with your friends there and just remind people that hey, you're on Twitter and you would love more followers and share your Twitter handle there for people. Elizabeth, you mentioned using a social media manager and you mentioned Buffer. Is Hootsuite out and Buffers in? I keep hearing more about Buffer. It's so many different things. Hootsuite is actually really cool but I'm pretty sure that the free version of Hootsuite is not as great as the free version of Buffer. And I like to use things for free as much as I can until you like hit that point where you really need like that much more management of the posts that you're putting out into the world. Like being just using the free service is so much easier. And again, Buffer has a really great free service available. Great answer there. Let's see, Darcy has a question. What do you think about using? Oh, she had a question about a separate personal page and then an author page, but maybe we've answered that in terms of how that is. Well, what do you think about how having separate pages will dilute your followers and divide your pool of followers is the words Darcy uses. Yeah, so it's kind of like hard to explain, I guess, but the idea would be that you are, like if you're gonna talk about books, you put on your author hat and you go to your author page and do that. And you have to train your followers, I guess on your friends on Facebook that I'm gonna talk about my author stuff over here and like direct them over there. And then it becomes about curating that space, right? Like so that when you're posting on your personal Facebook page it's for your friends and family as opposed to your author page which is for your book audience. And the hope being that you have people in your book audience that are not your friends and family. And I know Facebook blurs the lines on everything, all kinds of friendship, right? So I have thousands of friends on Facebook, yay. But do I know most of them personally? No, it's like we're connected through the book world and that's what I use Facebook for now. I actually don't have my literal friends and family on Facebook anymore because it just wasn't working for me. But because Facebook has an interest in who's paying for ads and who's paying for different kinds of services on their site like just posting your author related material through your personal Facebook feed is not guaranteed to get you the audience that you would want. You can't really manage who is seeing those posts and you definitely can't see any kind of analytics on who's engaging with it except for like, oh, like so many people liked this but if you wanted to know who's clicking through your links or how far the reach is for your particular post you don't get any of that analytics on a personal page. Whereas if you have that business page then you do have access to those analytics and you can use the tools that they have there as well to boost your reach to other audiences and draw more people in. And again, I'm just gonna go back to like Facebook is great and lots of people are on it and using it and also Facebook owns all of those people that are on there and using it. So if you want the assuredness of being able to communicate with your audience you wanna train them to go from that author page on Facebook from your personal page to your author page to your email because then you get that access to them. What do you think of using Freebie Giveaways to draw in new audiences? I mean, I absolutely agree with that. I actually am working on my own Freebie for people to offer in the next couple of weeks I'm putting together an author creative, creative wellness toolkit for people who are interested in signing up for my email list to be able to send you add that kind of information about not information inspiration let's reframe that a little bit for how to take care of yourself and fill your creative well so that you're able to do that important creative work. And so I definitely, definitely think having something to give away for free is hugely important in getting people to sign up and then being able to keep delivering valuable content is the way to keep people with you. And you just, you could duplicate those efforts on your start on your website and then share that on Facebook and share that via social media. Yes. Great, okay. So what do you think of medium and using that as a promotional tool? Is that really social media or is that a news source like salon.com? I mean, yeah, it is technically social media because even salon is technically social media, HuffPost, all of that is social media until you get to the people that are actually the paid journalists like everybody else is just editorial like whatever it is that we have to say maybe experts on things but it's not like our journalistic like outlet. We're just, you know, it's a platform that you can use. And so I would say if you have the creative space to be able to use medium and like grow your audience that way they do have a larger audience that you can be connected to. But again, like medium owns that audience. And I'm not sure I would have to read their user agreements but like they may own the content that you put out there as well. So like you really wanna be conscious about what it is that you're sharing there. And then again, use it as another tool to drive people back to your email list and to your own personal website where you're sharing exclusively content that is relevant to those people. Okay, I guess it all comes down to who owns what. And that's really something to think about when you're writing original content and putting it on social media. It's yeah, it's the same with Facebook and with Instagram had a thing it's been a number of years now but where they were talking about like who owns the images that are on Instagram and whether they Instagram has a right to use them in promotional material and basically you sign away your rights to any of the content that you're putting up there. And sure, you get to have it in your feed and that's yours. Somebody else, a user of Instagram can't come and steal that from you but if Instagram wants to use it. It was a big deal. Yeah, yeah, no, it's something you don't really think about but it's so important to keep in mind to own your work unfortunately you'll have to pay for that in terms of having your own website and your own URL but it's really important. Now, crowd management. Do you have any thoughts on how to tactfully get out of a follower relationship? So I'm gonna guess that it's turned contentious to follower relationship and honestly like what it comes down to depending on how the story is being told like if you need to block somebody or unfriend somebody or whatever you need to do like you have the freedom and ability to do that at any time that is totally on you to be able to do that. And if it's public enough that like other people might have questions about it you can open if you wanna open up dialogue for people to be able to talk to you about like what happened and like the steps that you took so like or what your policies are in general because like you get to decide it's your house and your rules. So like if people wanna come play they as long as they know what the rules are and can abide by you know then they can choose to abide by them or not but if they don't abide by the rules see ya. That's my thought. I'm like so not there for you know like massaging any kind of that stuff anymore. I'm just like no thank you. There are enough trolls on the internet that I'm like if you wanna you know you can find somebody to like go and have the same opinions with it but if we disagree and it's gonna be that contentious then it's over it's okay. Right what do you think about LinkedIn? I think it can be useful but it definitely depends on what you're writing about. And so then who your audience is right? If you're writing business books I think LinkedIn is probably amazing. I honestly don't use LinkedIn at all because it's super invasive. It sends me too many emails and like too many notifications and I just was like this is driving me bananas. So like I think I still have a profile out there with them but like I never go on there and look at it but the people who are again the people who are active on LinkedIn can really make use of that. So if you feel like that's where your audience is then I would say give it a go and if you're not seeing results though like then it's okay to put it aside and try something different. So the whole idea is to experiment and if you wanna use LinkedIn for a while and you're like getting no interaction with any of the posts that you're putting out there it might be time to try something different. That is a great answer. I always think of LinkedIn as being a place where you engage with people who are looking to employ or if you're trying to get employed or if you're trying to make professional associations with others in your same profession. For some reason I just don't think of it in terms of a creative outlet so much as maybe Facebook or Instagram or some of the more. Well I guess like if you're writing books for people on how to cultivate your resume or your business networks like I think those kind of things are definitely resources that if that's what you wanna write about then LinkedIn is a place you could put that information and people will pick it up because again they're looking for business networks and to find a new job and to work on their resume and figure out how to like impress more people or whatever and that is that kind of venue. So again it's like knowing which audience is where. That's great advice for all of us. Are there any other questions? Have we answered everything to your satisfaction? I've missed a lot of food for thought. I know I'm kind of dizzy with it all. Thinking oh dear I've broken so many rules already. I'm sorry to tell you Sharon but Richard is handling an issue over here so I've got things turned down that's why I'm not talking. Oh okay. Let's see Rick has a question about how to connect with different groups on Facebook. Yeah. I just always use a keyword search but. For sure that's what I was gonna say is like search for keywords that are related to the groups you're thinking about joining and then like depending on what you're joining the groups for you have to be aware of the rules that each particular community has for engagement because not every group that you go into is gonna be really excited about you promoting your own stuff there and in general I feel like that's a lot of places really don't like to hear self promo stuff but they do like to hear people promoting the work of others and so like that is the kind of thing that I mean again you just need to be aware of what the culture is of the group that you're getting involved in. That's some good advice for all of us to pay attention to the etiquette of any community that you're into. Sense the tone. Sense the tone. I know I get to ask this question a lot is it worth it to hire someone to do your social media for you? It depends on two factors. One, how much time you think it's gonna take for you to get it done and if you have that time to spare or not and then two, how much of your voice needs to be ingrained in the things that you're posting. So like it's possible that you could hire somebody to like take the posts that you've curated and that you've written already and to load them into Buffer or directly onto Facebook or Instagram or whatever and have somebody do that mechanical part. It does get a little harder for an individual to be able to have that voice accurately translated if somebody else is writing their posts for them. So it's something to think about and like figure out what works but it's not always, if you don't want it to sound like everybody else that's out there sharing the same meme or the same quote or the same images then it's still important for you to be involved there. So. Let's see, Kate Ferrell has a question about video interviews or conversations. Do you like this style where we have a conversation or do you prefer the single person presentation for when you are trying to share your knowledge? Personally, I like the conversation. I definitely thrive off of that back and forth interaction and when I'm watching someone else speak as well like there's, it takes a lot of talent to be able to write and present something that lasts more than like 20 minutes. Last more than three minutes sometimes, right? Like being able to get to your point and like say your point and deliver that much information. So like having two people together to be able to play off of each other and have that conversation. I just, I feel like I connect more to what's being said in that kind of way than if somebody is just filtering information to me. So. Right, you gotta see the faces. Yeah, I do. All right, well, we're at one o'clock. Are there any last minute questions before we say goodbye to Elizabeth and give her a great round of applause? Thank you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. This was very fun. It was, thank you. And thank you everyone for making do with the webinar format. I appreciate it. It's all such a great learning experience. Well, thank you, Elizabeth. I certainly learned a lot and I am just now thinking how I can calendar in a review of my marketing strategies. Put it on the calendar and maybe give yourself, you know, doesn't need to be hours, just 30 minutes every day to like do a little review. Yeah, that's great advice. All right, well, thank you everyone for attending and Barbara as always for organizing this and I look forward to connecting with all of you. Face to face and virtually. Yeah, Nina Amir is next week. That'll be awesome. Yes, yes, Nina Amir is next week. You can register for that at milibrary.org and Nina will be talking about mindfulness and getting into a writing practice. All right, look forward to seeing you all. Thanks Elizabeth and Barbara and I hope that you get some writing done today. Thank you. All right, bye-bye. Bye.


All right, I think I'm live gotta get comfortable in my chair. Oh, man Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I was supposed to go live a minute ago Technical getting back to my desk difficulties Good to see all of you here and this is not gonna be too long I actually have to go to try bringing the microphone close for me. It probably sounds better I probably have to go over today have to leave to go to an event today it in the D So we'll be talk. I'll be talking about that event. Maybe next week. There's So many things I need to talk about. I've been so busy lately. I have not done as many Videos as I want so alright See how like some troll goes to the thumbs down before we start. Yes, someone always takes the time to do that Let's see Unplugged cable that happens sometimes. Yep Everyone turn off your webcams. Absolutely. Hello from Poland All right, I Have some Polish ancestry The mostly I think my my great-grandfather was Czechoslovakian so not quite Polish, but We're going to oh I was going to break things All right, well, I need to download things. Let's go ahead and Do some discourse admin. I got all kinds of things. I'm doing on the side here I've been so busy running around doing this doing that. I have someone open to create a ticket Let's see Let's see. Let's see question And you know, this is a little bit longer on five time to read this I certainly can't drag it on the screen because it's part of our ticketing system So someone someone messaged us asking a question for vlog Thursday Okay, someone asked what the best setup is for MSPs this they're asking like when you set up a small businesses are the best practices and Yeah This it's hard because there's not just this question is basically says What are the fundamental features of a small business backups images online file storage and file syncing service version history strong password firewall? And what is the best general setup that is a opinion that you will Get argued forever. What's the best setup? And that's because it comes down to no two people have the same opinion I am using like the enable software and someone yesterday was commenting on me and Jay's video that that we should use some competing Software that that's where these opinions come in honestly so many of these softwares feature for feature are so close to the same It does make doing a determination Not easy and it comes down to which one you're more familiar with because if I said a software is good But you're familiar more so with another one and you end up misconfiguring mishandling or not optimizing that other software that you didn't know as well because you didn't have time to learn it that can be a huge problem There's sometimes stay with a little bit of what you know because there's sometimes when you break it down Like if you're comparing connect-wise to enable versus some of the other platforms out there That are really good platforms and you know people ask me all the time like what do you think of this one or that one or what about Ninja RMM or something I'm like, you know, they all make a good product I know people that are successful with each of these products so that it comes down to what you decide after you start evaluating them and Everyone hates them after they start using them and thinks the grass is greener on the other side so there's not an easy thing out there and I even I don't know if raised directly replying to this But Ray Orsini, you know, he's been on channel before he will be here again. Also check out the tech bar They're doing another one live show tonight. So do check that out where Ray and them but the He it Ray will tell you because Ray's worked in the MSP space. It's there's no easy answer on that What the best tech stack is? Look at what we use on our YouTube channel. Obviously, that's what I think is the best We really like untangle. We really like PF cent souls are two firewalls that we use all the time we really like the Enable stack for doing RMM everything else. I Like we like bit warden for password management. So to me that is Great now when it comes to fully integrated that becomes a little bit different because I we see bit warden is not the same as Passportal and the password manager offered by enable. That's where there's some differences So fully integrated becomes a wild card because fully integrated means you have to use everything that totally integrates And that may not always be the best thing you like I like bit warden because it's open source, but yeah, the other side of it is the I Don't know. There's not an easy answer for any of it. How's that? There's that's the best way I can describe it But yes, there's a patch for discord and so we are going to patch discord We got to get the backup stun so that's at least a Little process before you do the patching. Let's go ahead and run a backup So we're gonna go to settings and I'll probably should share the screen here. You can see my Here, all right now I can do it Let me stop sharing this remove And then we want to share Share, you know, I think I just share this one screen. So we'll just share Entire screen there we go Now you can see how I love this look you can see how I see stream yard I Can chat patch to Yes bit warden does support a enterprise authentication, but whatever you do this first I back up this and then we apply the updates now once the backups done We got a download the backup so which gets emailed to me. So it's gonna take a minute to do right here Also, while we're doing this I need to bring up Raw.io I'm working on a few other things.  Where's the data? Then you start replicating it across now This is only local replication anything important also gets off site replication as well And so I'm gonna work on a video on doing this. This is draw.io. I've been using it for a long time It also supports flow animations now, which is really cool But this is the way you can see the way things go back and forth and then there's reasons why most things start here except for this Thing runs this way to this way It's lots of little details that I'm gonna be working on for How we have all over data where all the data gets backed up and everything everything else but this took a little bit of time to get to because I had some legacy encryption so I had to Tear down which means I don't like not having duplicates of all it while triplicate if you count the offset But at minimum I want duplicates of all of my data on separate ends of the building here And different servers that are somewhat isolated from each other because they're not even on the same UPS system So I had all that so that took a little while to rebuild Keep keep another system that I duplicated all the data to delete the one server Rebuild it with all new encryption and now Resync all of it back up. It's not that much data, but so it didn't take too much time But it's just it's time-consuming getting it all done. Ah, cool backups are done Now we go to hit download and the download actually emails me a link So now I downloaded it once I download it then we're gonna go ahead and Run the update for this right here. So go ahead and remove that and we'll put back in some other screen So we'll say share share screen Chrome tab where's it at? Put the chat back up. Whoo So What else what did I miss in the questions here while I'm waiting for that email? Yes bit warden does have enterprise authentication Haven't seen the flow anime the flow animations are really cool when you want to present things I really love that feature So I will show the real quick the how the flow animations work. It is a little bit of confusion To where to find them because they are not where you might expect them to be let me click the download link first So where'd my download link? I can't pull. I'm like you guys can't see into my email Sorry about that. All right. It's downloading now. That's downloading so we can go ahead and share the other screen share screen Yeah, we'll just Do an entire screen again Now the flow animations just so you know you click on one of these It's not in here. I wish they made it a checkbox. Does that make my life easier? Also, I mean actually this is made too big for the other screens. We squeeze this down. There we go. Whoops It the flow animation is a checkbox down here under the properties of Each one of these now. Here's the downside. This is something. I don't like I love the fact that so let's say I was Duplicate a box here. So if I did this box and I want to drag from this box to this box, okay? That's not the right kind of line Because I just opened it, but if we say Like copy style or set as default style now all I do is draw a line here. It's great But setting it as a default style doesn't copy the flow animation you still have to go back in there and actually Check the flow animation box. It's a minor problem, but it's still kind of a dumb one I don't know why copying the style doesn't do it So I maybe I'll file a bug report because it seems like if I hit copy style the flow animation to be in there as well But there's actually a couple other little things you can do in inside of here. One of them is Turn them into like a more comic look So instead of them being just kind of straight it doesn't look as much in here But you'll we start getting closer you realize it. They have like more of a comic flow to them So there's a couple other extra things you can do in here if you want it But I like them like this they become nice when you start talking about things especially in true nests and it Adds a little bit of presentation to the video of art. Here's how all the data goes Here's how all the stuff does and then I might add like all the retention Policies because you set all these up with different retention policies How long do you want to keep these snapshots of this? How long do you want to keep all the replication data? Etc. Etc. So that's that Whoo. All right is the download finished for my backup it is which means I can go back to stop share Chrome tab Hey time to revise my diagrams. Yep Uh Yeah, my hand drawings all look like comics you're right you're right on that what's ought to do so one of the things I need to do is let's Many things open to many things. There we go Drag this I can drag it's over. I Want to update my forums? Have to get update Well to do you still recommend run shunet? No, it is not recommended to run shunas via USB I do not recommend running shunas via USB Yes So this is we can go back to sharing the screen There's these being easier way to do this share screen Yeah, we can just choose a window there we go Now you've seen what I'm seeing We're just updating all the packages on the back end I have unattended upgrades running but the which means it I just have it applying all security updates It'll apply these updates I always like to make sure all the latest updates are done then I reboot it then I make sure my forums come back up But yeah, this is some of the update process on the back end because it doesn't do There's a few updates that didn't do like some of the new kernel stuff So I went ahead and updated it. It's gonna set up the new kernel. I owe it or I'm using container.io Yeah, but do not run it via USB now You see see it used to be popular to run that way because It worked well enough, but over time but oddly I just took a USB out that's been plugged in since 2015 Continuously running on one of my servers. I just never replaced it. So Yeah, I I Need to do this right here if you I it's funny because I know how to do this But I don't have it set up on this computer. I have it set up on my studio computer, but raise right. I should do this Do you uh, you can also install like the virtual webcam? So the virtual webcam or the virtual output from obs will then feed to all the other things You know, it's kind of the fun challenge Like me and ray are not media production people where people who want to produce media So we have to spend a lot of time learning how to get all these tools to work in a coherent way so we can produce content for To talk about what we actually do for a living, but it's fun. It's definitely great fun learning all of this stuff and Ray's still working on some of the resources and videos on it I asked ray to join. Um, he didn't have time. He's he's in the process of uh You know redoing a few things He'll come on again me and ray have we have plans for some more videos coming up Done. All right.  Yes, absolutely Yeah, it took me to it's it's a whole other thing You have to spend time learning all your media production tools just so I can get it out there at the same time Understanding all the things I do want to talk about firewalls storage servers and everything else So this is back and forth of all the things that we need to put together to make this work So yeah, it's it's a lot, but it's um It's fun. It's just one of those things Yeah, ray ray says he's got a some type of business meeting to go to that doesn't sound fun at all, but Eventually somebody's got to pay the bills, I guess Uh, let's see do my forums reboot cross our fingers Hey, look at this Up for zero minutes All right, so it's I make sure everything starts up and then we'll pop up forums.laurancesystems.com Make sure it's working It is now we can run the other updates from there So click to upgrade I can share that too if you guys want to see what the upgrade looks like It can be done from the command line. I usually do it from the web interface. Um From tab, what is it? Yeah, this is what the screen looks like to where we update things So we're just going to go for first we got to upgrade the docker manager part It's just going to update docker manager while it does this We got to wait for the unicorn to reload Waiting for more unicorns We have a cycling unicorn. Look at this Cycling unicorns Ooh exciting Come on unicorns. Oh, let's see Cool the form the forums is up Um, this is stream yard And uh, I we started using stream yard for a few things Like the podcast interviews and then I said, you know, it's really works well for live stuff I've seen a handful of people using it ray actually uses it for ray with oit boype uses it for their system I really like stream yard. It's been a pretty solid Easy to use system It has separate audio recordings when you do interviews in case you need to have separate inputs for each one of the people on there Um, it's easy for comments It's one of the best ones I've seen to make comments easy to throw up on the screen like that Which is really uh, very cool to me The fact that I can do that Yeah, I had some interest in video work using take backup back in the day before I got an it then started doing some videos to get back into it But then uh, this time non-linear on run a pc much easier. Yeah, it's it's a lot it it's a lot so It's still updating this is So the forums may be down now because it's updating. I don't know if it stays up all this is at some point It will go down because it's gotta flip over to um this upgrade I should put a faster server in for my forums than the upgrade to go faster, right? but planning on storage and everything else is definitely one of the topics I'll talk about the other challenges of dealing with Um, some of the other tune asks, you know what I don't have Let me pull this up Because this might be interesting too This should be the right link.  That's not good Well, then I'm missing the other benchmarks. That's going to share Whoops Well, we'll sort that out another time. I guess I uh Have you looked at ovh for your forums? Why ovh for what what's ovh? I don't know what ovh is I use discourse for my forums So And you can see it's just kind of you know rocking out over here I was going to do This Let me drag it and share a different tab Yeah, I thought I had both benchmarks in here But I'm going to do some videos because There's a lot of questions that come up with how you lay out 60 drives So I'm going to do a video of laying out 60 drives and the pros and cons. I have a series of benchmarks I'm missing some of them though. I don't know where they went I don't know where I saved them. I should say But there's going to be some videos of breakdown the pros and cons of laying out vdevs in different ways I'll do some more graphics with draw it out explain that But it's it's going to be just one of those There's you don't put them in one big pool But you don't want to break them down into too many small pools Then there's always some person recommending to put them all in a bunch of pairs But that comes way at the sacrifice of all the storage So you there are ways to make it faster, but then you sacrifice all the storage you have there for it It's not ideal unless your only goal with speed not storage So there's a lot of different ways to think about it and I'll break down what all the different iops are Uh in each one One more update click here to upgrade There we go All right one more upgrade in that so that's kicked off All right, I'll stop sharing screen share If you want to see where it's at now we go back over to the Start upgrading. This is the second part of the upgrade. You got to kind of do things twice on there. So Is it possible to configure discourse you discord I like all the logins because it's easier to control. I I don't know if what other what oauth is supported So let's google that together. So while that's doing this, um I don't know. Let's see Authorize token Uh, let the look I don't know how to take I don't like using other Third party integrations for it For access token So let's see just kind of keeps discourse Try to see what if they have a list of external authentication I'm not sure which ones they support There's different plugins you can get for it essentially But I it comes down to you know what you want to do on there. It's like I prefer to have each person create their own granted. Yes That's one of the problems, of course is then you have one more to manage But that's what password managers are for the downside is especially if you do something like a third party authorization the Downside instantly becomes if that third party has a problem Then everything is connected to has a problem. Like you can't log into those other things I don't really like that. I like my my system to be very independent And I don't know how much harder it would be to um What do you call it like to manage the GDPR because sometimes people are weird and want all their stuff deleted and I've had a few people request that Hey, look, someone even said that probably before I said it downside is GDPR responsible that's That's one of the things like to comply with GDPR. There's a purge option and people have said I want to purge myself So I let them like if you want to delete yourself off my forums, that's easy I don't know how much harder that is If you're using like a single sign-on type system to tie into discord not really sure I probably not Is easy right now. It's easy because the email address that you use to register is the email address you log in with And also the email address you can use to purge yourself out of the existence of my system I don't block you from doing that if you would like to Delete yourself just go delete yourself I don't have any restrictions on that. I'm not here to stop you So, all right, let's switch back over to the chat. So let's say Share share stream we'll throw the chat back in there There we go Oh, let's see PHP BB was good for a long time Yeah, that's um PHP BB was a great system that was It was forever and before that for news sites everything used to run PHP nuke, which was really cool too currently, uh, let's see Currently building a true nas server and looking to connect multiple computers any idea of an intel x 7 10 d4 works with true nas Uh, I don't know. I what is an intel? I don't know that particular model So that's called what he said What is an intel x d4? Have no idea if that works in there There's a there's a whole section called will it free nas and that's where you get to ask all those. Uh, well, it's probably called it uh free nas I recommend a lot of these things. Uh, where's that? There we go I'm gonna switch to their forums, but if you um Where's the forums true nas community? There we go I really recommend looking at their forums You can post an error and almost any card you've asked about if it's at least a couple years old Has been asked about in the forum So the best way to figure out what card works with true nas is going to be to go into the forums Type in the model number of your card.  Hey, I can't get this to work with this model card. That's like the best way to uh Do that so Yeah, intel is generally very compatible with everything uh, the ones In the 45 drive server and i'll be this is the one i'll be doing a video on soon is Do These are what's in the 45 drive server the is the lsi hba adapters um For the hard drive adapters, so i'll be talking. I need to do a video where I just kind of break down What is an hba adapter? I think there's a lot of confusion around these but That's uh, it's gonna be easy with the 45 drive server because it's easy to kind of show and talk about these things um Network card compatibility most of the intel stuff is You know pretty good What's my opinion on sef storage a lot of people ask about that. Um Use it if you need it I do you need it is what you're doing needed amongst sef sef and gluster Both have the ability to but the performance may not be what you think it is the ability to be the front end presentation Of a share and the back end can be a series of other servers So it becomes your single point where you connect it to your sef system But then sef is then balancing across all these other systems to provide you data But that may come at the cost of performance And you still have to build network levels of redundancy between all the devices on the back end So it becomes a more complicated setup for your sand. It's not that I think it's bad. It's do you need it? Um, there's situations for sure that people need it for doing large-scale storage That needs to be on multiple machines There's especially needs for your large cloud companies and you know, you take someone who's got a store Absolutely insane amounts of data across multiple data centers. Yes. There are times definitely you should be using it Is it outside of a learning experience? How bad do you need it in a home lab is if you're planning to learn it because you plan to go into that cool Probably is it necessary? Probably not. Um, it's It's not I don't think there's anything bad about sef. It's just a matter of taking the times of it And 45 drives has a whole lot of videos about sef. It's a more complicated system You're adding actually a lot of complexity to your system But if the goal is to be learning things absolutely you're learning stuff Is the goal to Learn something else and just get the basics down and because you want to focus on Some other aspect of cyber security and you just need to get your lab up and running Maybe you don't add to any complicated things in there. So it's that's really my opinion on it. Uh, do you need it? So Return to site Hey, we are Up and running back with Up to the latest version. So awesome So good to go. We updated it the forums is back Is it is there I don't know I didn't not sure how to answer this Is there such a thing as a general mac based it system? What are the basic components of solid secure easy to use mac based for small business? I have no idea. I don't use mac Um, I'm not a mac person. Matter of fact, uh I I only have and let me I only own really And I happen to be the thumbnail today I only own one apple device and I can only process a single core so I mean, this is the only apple device I have so I can't answer a lot of those questions Uh about apple things. So it's just really not easy for me to do Um, I mean this I can review my one single core apple device It only could process one core at a time. It does a great job. I mean, I really like it, but I you know Here we'll do this Let's go here and I mean, look at this. It does a great job for doing single core, but I don't know. I don't know how that really helps um with your question. No I don't do I don't really do anything with uh apple devices. So I'm like the worst person to ask I've never touched them. I don't use them They're We do as a company not just as me as a company. We don't do it We don't have any clients that do if someone came in with a office full of Those type of systems. We wouldn't really be able to help them.  I'm like, oh, well We're probably not the right fit That's my answer to a lot of these people and it's funny because we get people sometimes That are almost upset. Well, I've called everywhere. I can't find anyone who does a good job with them And I'm like third niche. They're they're not the mainstay mac is a tiny That mac is huge in the personal space when it comes to the business space They're really a tiny tiny percentage of the market. I mean they have a more market share than linux But they're not the same market share. There are companies that specialize in it I don't know of any of them personally. So I don't have any personal recommendations Uh, there are companies that exist that do support for them. There are companies that specializes uh in in doing mac support, but That's not us. So I don't have any good answers on that Uh, I use obs and I use stream yard. This is specifically stream yard Yeah, granny smith was the first in my family to get an apple granny smith is good. I would say so is uh Who raspberries I'm really a big fan of the honey crisp apples. So I answered this question earlier and maybe it was you who asked it That's just a big argument about who has the best stack Everyone does I think enable is the best stack and uh Someone else will tell that connect wise is someone else will say They like their data was set up. Someone else will say they like their setup with ninja rmm And they're all valid answers. So there's no good. I mean, I'm gonna tell you I think that using unify is great. I think that using Um, the pf sensor and tango firewalls is great That's my opinion. Everyone has their own opinion on so there's not a Uh, there's not a definitive answer on this. I said that earlier in a video too. So um People use personal devices at home, but that's why more and more things are going to the cloud Matter of fact, they aren't just going to the cloud. This is actually where the market is shifting You see any young company you won't find them using on-prem applications on-prem applications is a legacy thing On-prem is used very limited your line of business applications at most things Even if they're not in the cloud and maybe the company hosted internally, they're all becoming web-based The reason they're becoming web-based is because windows is hot garbage and creates a lot of problems You create a web-based one suddenly it doesn't matter what operating system i'm using you just have to have a browser Um, you know quickbooks had an announcement that they're discontinuing the quickbooks Uh, they're uh, I gotta work. I wonder if I still have that link It was a big debate a few people were having. I don't have a link anymore. Um I could probably google it so I don't know all the details on this just yet outside of what is on this page and i'm about to share So let's go ahead and uh Quickbooks desktop is being discontinued. Why are we discontinuing quickbooks setups hoping you stay compliant as our top priority Given the recent changes to accounting and tax fraud along with the more on the horizon We need to ensure your your product and supported with regular updates. That's why quickbooks desktop customers can miss Updates and use software is out of date and not compliant. That's why I decided to discontinue the product Now this is in the uk But I my understanding is it's coming to the us as well So this is specifically for quickbooks uk, but it's it's a matter of time So all the way till january 2023 It it'll probably take longer to phase out here, but this is the way companies are going They don't want to keep supporting a mac version or a different version They want to support a web version because when they have to do an update to the web version They update the web version. They have one single based update. So this is um It's it's where this is going and why that's becoming the desktop people use is becoming less than that's relevant for things That's where the future is going. So yeah, there's no There's no doubt that more and more things your web base. Look how many think look at I'm doing all this web base I'm using stream yard to be able to share everything really quickly here So now I'm literally moving video around tied to a camera at all pulling through a browser without any desktop applications so Windows is not garbage because they try to make every user happy about making them know a product. Yeah And anything that can be made into sass will go with that route. Yes. Synology and um, There's people pushing against it. It's just harder and even for us We technically there's a good hybrid model coming you look at the way we use wiki for documentation It's a website. It's internally hosted that we manage. We host that's actually something I think it's going to we're going to see more and more of More and more internal well zen orchestra. Look at all the things I can do is zen orchestra And it's an internal application. You know what I mean? It's I'm not doing any of this externally When I do zen orchestra So it's all derp dot share share Chrome tab When you look at how I use zen orchestra I'm able to use all these functions. I'm able to look at VMs that are running I can say Which one's something I can look at here You know, we can build all these virtual machines. I can change network adapters design infrastructure do all this I don't load any application. All I need to do is open a browser and I'm able to do all this I can back up restore Um Do anything I need to do just like all right, just click on this and go there actually If I wanted to spin up one of these 2019 servers I just hit the button start and it'll spin up one of my Lab servers that I need for some testing and I'm doing all of this without having any type of Application I loaded. It's just a website with the username and password. This is really where more and more things I think are going so it's not just everything's going to sass. I think everything's going to web interface They killed off and some people aren't happy about this But they're killing off the application that manages zen because it's not as popular And doing this all web-based is easier and all of us can use it if I here's the problem If ever all of us are managing let's say we have we do actually we have a handful of my employees that are all using This tool to manage everything if I had an update. I have to run an updating everybody's computer. That's annoying I have to tell everyone to hold on guys load the new version of the zen console software or You update the web page once I update the zen orchestra tool once and everyone has it everywhere on all the different desktops they use this is Better and just more it makes a lot more sense matter of fact, uh, let me see Uh We have a couple servers. We have a few of them running in here. Let me open up the lab one No, there we go This is in our lab when we have running same thing if I wanted to fire any of these up I can I can start this one just because it on I think we have enough storage. I'm only using Our lab got bigger. We this is going to be some stuff. I updated my whole lab. So We have a lot of storage. There's only, uh 244 terabytes free. I'm sure that's enough, right? To to run all these Oh and windows booted that fast because the We're doing some more testing. This is a decent rise in host Um, so yeah, we just built a quick rise in system for this. It's it's nice how fast all this stuff is But even through the council here no tools no special thing loaded. I can do this I can Play with windows update it Now to shut it back down. I don't really need it on So It's one of those things everything's becoming more and more web based The uh, I've done videos on screen cracked the same thing if you look at like screen connect And that and that And that and that and that There we go. I can show this screen, but you know, this is like screen connect same thing I'm able to remotely manage systems Uh in here and I'm able to do this with This system here. It's you know, I mean all web based so all web based. I'm able to manage and control everything It's just kind of slick and like you say everything's getting very web webification as someone said a minute ago Uh, it's it's where the world is going and it just makes life a lot easier. Oh, let's see Is then orchestra a good server setup for multi vm servers and hosting websites and servers? um I think so, but it I mean I wouldn't resell hosting and resell access as an orchestra So I guess it depends on what type of hosting you're talking about so overall. Yes I like it um comes down to your use case yeah The web application of everything just means one problem. I network and we're all driven. Yeah The thing with web is how long will it take to get folks moved commonly to have you six Never no one's moving ipv6 The internet will find something the the world will find something that it needs beyond this and uh It's yeah, it's not it's not an issue. How's that? Yeah, is that orchestra is not a replacement or not even in the same category as plusc or c-panel That's very those are very different tools. Um, they're not not the same at all Myers Myers stores. Yes. Myers is around here The world's gonna keep making ipv4 work forever. That's my well until we don't need tcp ip That's I don't think ipv6 is coming because we'll replace tcp ipv before we go to ipv6 Um, do you have any personal experience with the rose will rsv server x chassis? I don't know anything about quiet servers because we've not tried to I mean people ask about it. I don't know Mostly if you build quiet servers Um, you just aren't going to buy commercial equipment. That's the biggest thing. Um You're gonna go for I don't know like commodity build hardware that way you can buy the fans that are quieter for you And it's not usually the chassis as much as just that Yeah, it's It's kind of not easy to find a quiet server. Let's just say that Yeah, it's gonna be ipv4 until we need chips on our brain. We'll go with that That's a fair answer Once we once we need that once to get to the chips in our brain. We're good. Yeah the You can go dual stack as long as things that you have work on it It's you know, some things still have problems with ipv6. I don't bother diving much into ipv6. Um It's not really there's not there's not that market and people tell me you're gonna have to I've been hearing that since, um, I don't know history of ip uh PD ipv6 how long did this start? Yeah, ipv6 was introduced. Um in 1995 and we exhausted The ipv4 exhaustion Was how many years ago? It was a long time ago It's not happening though. Not anytime soon I don't think i'm wrong I didn't I don't want to be right, but I don't think i'm wrong either. So Uh When will you do a follow-up for the home lab show 28 own your domain? What follow-up do we need to do? I guess so that's not it. What's the follow-up that we need to do on it? That's the part I may not understand now cell service and lots of uh What do you call that the meters on your house that do in elite any us at least The meters that do all the monitoring for your power like the power company meters are all ipv6 There's a lot of things sell the cell networks are back end ipv6 But then use interpreters to bring things back to ipv4 Yeah, no the um own domain video. Yeah I don't like I said, I don't know when You will do a follow-up me, but I'm not sure what to follow up on for that video All right, what are your thoughts on das versus ice cuz he performance costs? I don't know. I don't think I've seen dat I mean direct attach is nice but um I don't know it really depends on what you're buying. I don't see as much mostly we see we do external sands more than anything else So I don't think I don't see as many people wanting to go that route But I mean direct attach storage works. You can pop a court card in Eliminates the networking in between so that has a big advantage It's just a matter of how you want to build out your server And if you're building a multi server system Well, then you kind of need a shared storage medium You need a sand if you're trying to build a cluster of servers where the storage just has a common location So then that doesn't work Then orchestra versus open stack. Um, you're not asking the right question. They're not they're not the same One's a hypervisor one's an orchestration tool so It well one manages a hypervisor one manages orchestration So they're not they're not in the same category. So my thoughts are they're both cool products. They're both very different They're um, yeah xcpg sporting Windows 11, I don't know my client my staff is testing that not me. So I don't know I'll find out So that's where you're going Yeah, a little tired day, but uh, I don't know we haven't really done much testing with it There's there's so many bypasses In official from microsoft registry keys that allow you to bypass The windows 11 useless check on tpm.  So I don't even know why that matters It's kind of dumb Thanks microsoft, uh, steve gibson had tweeted about that. It was I think in his last security now I was just laughing about it What do you think about self hosting your own source code? Why not go for it? I don't see a reason why not the bigger challenges. How do you collaborate with people on it? I mean, I have lots of my own codes Uh, that I have not that it's great code. It's it's it's not shared with the public because it shouldn't be Um, but my I have lots of private repositories of things that I manage So I think if you want to host it.  So Oh hpmsa storage I don't I would go true nas. I would before I would go hp for sure. So Yeah, I I don't have much interest in the hp stuff There's a reason we work with very large companies that we're always taking out something that they used to have By one of the commercial companies and putting in true nas and there's a lot of reasons for that So I don't know if you want to use it go ahead. I'm a much bigger fan of the open source storage solutions such as true nas For flexibility and performance. So and so in 45 drives is really big fans of zfs and seff Those are solutions. I think are better than the weird proprietary solutions offered by dell or hp. So that's my opinion on it So that's I mean if you want to use the proprietary solutions by them I I don't have much of an opinion on them. I don't really use them I my understanding from talking to people about them between the licensing and things like that. It's confusing Um, it usually requires some type of sales person might be able to pick it up cheap on the secondary market, but yeah Your true nas scale is flooding your network looking for ix true nas and ix true nas local about a thousand per minute I don't know what you set up wrong. I would recommend posting in the true nas forums for that I've not seen that problem before So a good option for self-hosting things will even once while I don't know Um, I have lots of vms. I don't turn on very often So sometimes I just build something and I'm like, I don't really need that now and I shut it off It's just sitting there. There's not really a good option. It just Lives there, I guess Um Some things you like to self-host but use them for you the problem If you have something that's ever going to be public facing Like you said video calls and like if you want to use some of those tools They got to be up to date So if you're going to open them up to the public to do something like video calling You kind of got to keep them on to keep them up to date. That's just something to keep in mind. So All right, we're down to the last three minutes What are the few extra things we want to talk about for the next three minutes? I am going to the it in the d meet up For those of you that aren't familiar. I'll pull that up so we'll uh Share share screen Ooh 23 people in attendance Cool, but uh it in the d is my friends. They're casual networking for it people A Friend bob wattenspiel organizes this and uh Randy so they're definitely some cool stuff A lot of fun Uh, I'm going to go network with nerds in person in physical person. They have a few members in this group about 3000 Uh, this is a you know network with it professionals. See where see where our next event is hosted So we're going to be doing that. That's why I got a leaf here in a couple minutes So if you happen to be in the Detroit area Bash the like button as well Have you ever used intermediate sharing service? Uh, nope never used it thoughts on moving nas files to cloud sharing services in general Um, it's a security risk anytime You start sharing these things across the cloud like that. It's a security risk. Uh, so it's that's my thoughts on it Hey, Brett's right. It's gonna be it's gonna be fun hanging out with nerds So let's see any other questions we have I one more minute one more minute of questions Then I gotta then I gotta run to go to the it in the d I have no I've never put the doorbell on outside. So I'm not sure how well it works in sub zero Milkshake your coffee water. I'm a water drinker. That's what's in here mostly I sip water all the time It's my thing. I have tea. This is my I didn't put it away yet. This is my tea from this morning So it's got the kicking chicken on it. Come on. There we go Oh How do you trade off the security risks of cloud files versus nas attacks? Patch everything and hope for the best It's not there's not a guarantee Uh, it in matter of fact, one of our one of our projects is um, we have a client that is Because of security. They just don't want to risk it. They physically move boxes between sites Uh while encrypted they never transport any of your secretive data over the internet ever The keep networks the military does this too. I believe we refer to as a skiff They create these isolated environments of data and they it gives them very tight levels of control over certain data Um, I'm not an expert on that particular aspect of it But it's basically referred to is like air gapping things that is an important aspect to think about so No matter what is Much as right now, I know there's no risk with certain devices that are known There's no cvs for sharing something like unless a synology. I don't think there's any current cvs Uh provides you have a fully patched system, but that's right now. It doesn't mean someone won't find one tomorrow There's always a risk. There's no way to ever fully mitigate the risk. It's uh, that's the downside of tech That's why so many tech people the more you dive into cyber security.  There's just a matter of time before someone does it if you uh, look what I tweeted today Where's my twitter go to profile? I mean look at this clever stuff here Let's share share It's the last thing i'll leave you guys with so Failed a ban does not do proper input sanitization on the mail action for the mail who is causing The potential for commands and the who is to be executed So if you would have said could fail to ban be a way to take over my server So if you configured fail to ban to do lookups and then you also own and control the who is information And you're able to put executable commands turns out there's an input sanitization that someone found in failed to ban so If before I seen this I would have assumed they did proper input sanitization So let me say that nothing if it's online is I ever going to be 100 secure You hope for the best you do your best and say that I did everything I knew possible to secure this network And then someone bangs on the A port with failed to ban and takes over the server because it was running fail to ban and it didn't Properly sanitize the input from the who is when it did the mailer and executed a series of commands Think about that for a minute and then go is your nas file absolutely secure to be shared across the cloud? Is it I mean right now it is until someone finds out that they can Do this I mean It's cool. So Yeah It's something to think about so yes Yep, there's always some little piece that didn't get validated Somewhere that could be the the edge that gets someone in you everything you can to feel that you did everything you can That's how you sleep at night. You can't just there is no guarantees in tech turn it off That's your guarantee don't put it online. That's your guarantee um everything else is Yeah, so Oh true church you're a little late to the party because I have to run But awesome, uh, I will be doing some updated true nas scale videos, of course And I'll be mentioning true charts each time because they've got more stuff on there This is so true right here, so Uh Yep, the input sanitization is a problem persistent and programming Applications it in even when you think you've done it There's someone finds a workaround that it didn't work right. So yes ask apple about that. So yeah All right, um I am out of here. All right. Thank you everyone for joining. Thank you everyone to smash and like button Cool fill three throws post something happens or it'd be broken again Hey, we'll do absolutely looking forward to trusting out true nas scale This is actually I didn't say this but well the reason we've been shuffling all the data and moving everything is because I want to dedicate it another box that I can use uh to Go back and forth between core and scale and uh get things started out So all right. Thank you everyone for joining and I will see you next week and I'll be doing some videos in between. Thanks