Comunity Discussion: TLDC News and Updates - Summer 2021

Luis Malbas  
Hello,

Happy Tuesday. Let's see. Good morning, Lisa. Thanks so much. We've got both Lisa's and Lisa rocket, Lisa sparco. Lisa, thanks for messaging me this morning and letting me know that I've set this wrong. I had it set at 4pm and not am which I am prone to occasionally do. I know that's happened a few times in the past. But yeah, I'm glad you caught that I did sort of want to get some folks in here live this morning just to see if I can get a little feedback on some of the things I'm going to go over in the news and updates that I have to sort of share about about TL DC. So we'll see if we get if we get folks in. I know that I have been I haven't been promoting my crowdcast episodes as much on social media lately. And it's sort of been a little test for me to see how much traction I really get in that way. But we do have a few people that are registered for this one, we'll see if you know, my sending it wrong, if that kind of screwed things up, but we'll see what happens. But Kara is here. Again, Lisa Crockett Michelle Shea, Lisa sparco. Thanks so much. So let me get started, I did kind of make a little bit of a presentation to kind of go over what I'm talking about. As you may or may not know, what was it a week ago, Friday, when we did AI dc 21 let me know if you guys can see that presentation, by the way, or just those slides. aitc 21 was kind of unexpected in how the audience size and, and how busy a god and, and, honestly, it's been over a week and I'm still kind of digging through responding to emails and messages and they're just coming in. And, you know, that's great, I love it. The thing is, is it really kind of hit me hard, like I started to really reconsider pretty much every aspect of what I do. Thanks, Michelle, for for mentioning that. But every aspect of how to LDC is, is kind of constructed. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that, and some of the things that I'm doing and how I'm going to shift things a little bit with, with how I produce stuff. So if you guys can see that, let me go ahead and sort of talk about how over the last year and a half, you know, since especially since the the pandemic began, really, for TL DC I've been in kind of a just adjusting on the fly, right, because to DC when I first started this with, you know, with a couple partners back in 2016, it was really kind of about eventually being able to put together live conferences and doing sort of like smaller events. And, and the virtual piece was still kind of at that time was TBD, we sort of had played around with the idea but weren't quite sure where to go with it. But especially since everything with the pandemic, I've just had to adjust all the time, just watching and sort of making making, making plans based on what was going on in the world, especially the pandemic. And it has been constant change. But I think that in some ways, I'm almost kind of going working backwards and rebuilding what we have here because of AI dc 21 and, and learning as much as I did about accessibility and inclusion, and that's just the piece of what I'm going to talk about today. But I did want to sort of discuss discuss that a little bit. I kind of stepped back and these are kind of the core values that I'm trying to instill into, into what I do and these are just personal things and things that I've always tried to carry with me with when when it comes to considering t LDC and there are things that I've learned I've been in this space doing this kind of thing for you know for a long time for over 15 years. Oh, thanks Kara.

And and this is the stuff that's kind of important to me and these are the these three items were pretty much what I go but go back to whenever I feel a little lost and not quite sure where I'm going with with TL DC because honestly for the most part, I feel like I have a massive imposter syndrome when I'm dealing with with handling this community. And and I often question what I'm doing and and why I'm doing Certain things, but these are some of the things I go back to when I when I consider what, what, what I want, how I want to guide things with this community. The big thing for me is really trust and integrity is making sure that the decisions that I make surrounding this community are things that will, that will that people will know that I'm not going to take your information and sell it to anybody. I mean, I hate to say it, but I can't believe how I get emails from other from people all the time from just spammers wanting to sell me lists from other l&d organizations like, hey, do you want this list from you know, this big organization, and, you know, this other big organization, I have 1000 names I can sell you and, and that's terrible. And, you know, of course, people make money off of that, but I would, you know, that's not something I would ever do. And I don't think lnd is, is, is a focus enough where people really crack down on that type of thing. But I want people to come here and understand that you can, you can trust being here that I'm not going to, like, leverage your information to for for monetary gain, you know, just without your permission, that's not really something I'm into. Yeah, and so Kara, saying, I make my middle name the conference, and it's bananas, how many daily emails I get, yeah, it's crazy. And I also want to make sure that I build a space that's safe, like, if I ever see activity that that I think is negative, I call it out. And it's it has happened, it has happened, where we've had, you know, folks that are out there, we're all different, everyone has, you know, a variety of approaches to look at the world. But when, when there are people that that show up that I feel like are either for like ego reasons or whatever want to demand more attention than others and will put people down or bullying Anyway, you know, we put a stop to it. So I'm, I really try to make sure that the spaces are safe for for for everybody. And the other thing which I try to carry is just to share as much value as I as I can as much value as possible, just try to make sure that the things that I'm actually taking in that I'm that I'm trying to share them and I do it in a way that I know how to do it, I'm not somebody that you know, can post a bunch of stuff on social media and share that way that just isn't, isn't my thing. So it's really through this community. And I try to stay focused on this, the way that I can do it, versus try to do it the way that I feel like every you know, other people do it, it's just this is just my way. And I try to be generous, generous, and highlight the greatness of others because I do feel like I am in I experienced that a lot. That just the greatness of other people, every single member showcase, every guest that we have on is just for me, it's incredible how how talented everyone is and how willing and generous they are. And I like to be able to, to showcase that because it's important to me. And then the other thing that I have is, is just connecting people to one another, I feel like, since I've been in this space, doing what I've been doing that has always been really, really important to me is being able to introduce people to one another. And I think that's also just a part of my personality. And then if there are activities, where I see people kind of that they create division within the space, I just basically turn away from it, it's not, it's not something that I can spend any my resources on or, or generate any attention to because I'm kind of, I run so lean anyway. So I really just try to connect people to one another. If I see activities that aren't in along that line, then I kind of just move on to the next thing. So these are three of my core values. I'm sure that there's more if I had more time to sit down and think about it, but this is basically these are the ones that stood out and I did my brainstorming the other night.

And so I'm going to move on to kind of with that, you know with with those core values in mind, I want to talk about how AI dc 21 kind of really just I mean, I had to I slept all weekend after after that event. And I actually had, you know, a lot of guys know, you know, I got guitars in the bag. I'm in a rock and roll band. You know that the Saturday after the brought the event. I had a really nice club show that I played and totally nailed it. I kicked butt that night. I was all over the place. I think some of it was because of the event I was I had so much, you know crazy energy and I was totally exhausted but You know, after the show, I had people coming up to me talking to me telling me, you know, like, Oh, great, you know, just strangers. But in the back of my head, I'm like, Man, this is cool. But does anyone know like, the cool thing was we had a big event yesterday. And there were over 1000 people that showed up. And I was actually more proud of that than my than then than playing live in front of a bunch of people. That's how much a DC 21 had me, but it was because it really that event, I think I've seen the power of putting on a great virtual event. But I'd never I don't think any of them have ever impacted me the way this one did, because I kind of reassessed my whole foundation of how I look at stuff. So these are some of the things that I have put together that I'm that I'm I'm planning on doing our I'm in the process of doing. And I'm, you know, it's it's been, it's actually been really, really tough this last this last week trying to, to navigate through all this, I haven't been able to even get through all my my messaging and emails. But the first thing is, you know, here we are in crowdcast. I don't know if I can stick with this platform. We've been here since 2017. But I need something that can do captions. And so I'm reassessing this, I contacted them and ask them about being able to be more inclusive and the accessibility of the platform. And they didn't don't have a plan. They're just like, well, we have a new release coming up. But I can't tell you exactly what that's about. And if there are going to be any features that will help you. And I I just it wasn't a great answer. So reassessing this platform, maybe migrating away from crowdcast, it seems like we are we've been here for a long time, we've got over 700 plus videos that are in the archive in this platform. Not sure if it's gonna if it's going to continue to work for us, and I'm not getting any good answers about it. So I might message again, to see if I can get some more specific but not feeling great about it. I'm also started changing how content is posted. So that it's more accessible and inclusive, inclusive. And that is actually a huge project. It is it, it ends up becoming, you know, my my workflow has changed so that I have to accommodate probably another like 30 minutes per episode to be able to, to accommodate that. And there are things that I've done like, I paid for, like I got a license to otter finally. And so I'm slowly starting to, to grab those transcripts, which seems to be edited. And then I am putting them on the website as I post videos. So so that's one thing. I also bought a license to a new video platform called called a dillo, which I believe is out of South Africa. And they're really really nice, interesting platform, unfortunately, and has a way of generating transcripts as for each video, but the video platform itself isn't really compatible with with web flow, which is my the platform for the website. And we're trying to work on that together. I really like the platform. But you know, I'm making a commitment to seeing if I could find a better solution for that. Oh, and thanks, Lisa, Lisa saying if you need help in any way, Louise, I'm happy to help with transcripts or whatever. Thanks, Lisa. I appreciate that. And and so a dillo is one solution I'm looking at if you guys want to, I should put links, links to all this stuff. I'm finding some of it on App Sumo and in different places. But a dillo is an interesting one. And and the licensing is nice. But we'll see whether or not it's going to work. The other one is there's an app or program called spoke spoke dot app, which generates transcripts. That one is really interesting. It's from France. Yeah, there you go. Thanks, Kara. But spoke dot app, you guys, you should check it out. It's a really, really cool one. It's still kind of beta ish. But

so far, I've been kind of loving the ability to clip things from that. It if if they can just make some improvements on the interface. I think it'll be something that I'll use on our on a regular basis. But check that out spoke dot app. That's a nice one. So, you know, I'm building new processes. I'm trying to like innovate, create test new systems. That's something that I'm that I like doing and that I think I'm pretty good at, but it takes so much time, but I'm doing that right now. So you'll see a lot of those changes happening and one of the things that I'm committing to as well is I want to document this stuff so that other people can do it. And over the last couple years, I've sort of been seeing other communities show up that that that are that you know, are kind of coming up with a similar to the way that cldc came up. And I want to be able to be a model for some of those other communities or for just for anybody to say, Okay, these guys were able to come up with more accessible and inclusive content doing doing it this way. And so I want to be able to share what I'm doing, how I'm doing it so that anybody else that is building conferences, or building communities out there can like, just duplicate what I'm doing so that everybody can be included. I don't want to, you know, just learn all this stuff and hold it to myself, I think that it's important that everybody be able to understand how to do this stuff. So that is, is what AI dc 21 did to me, and I'm having to kind of navigate, like how I'm dealing with archive things. And, and but still make it so that I understand how, as as, as we move forward, how it all is going to scale, there's a lot to consider. So if you message me and you haven't gotten anything back, it's probably because I've been head down trying to do this stuff. And then my work at O'Reilly, I the last couple of weeks have been crazy busy. So haven't had a ton of ton of time to to do TL DC stuff, but I'm working on it. Okay, and so here's some other things. Oh, thanks, Kara, for posting spoke on there two other things I'm doing, I'm gonna be updating the website, I'm gonna make it more useful. I sort of just had everything put together there. And it's just grouped how it's been grouped. Since I'm built that was in 2019, maybe. So it's been a couple years, I need to, I mean, it, there's some things that are dynamic, but most of it is static, I need to I need to update it, I could use some help with that if anybody has any, you know, any any ideas, I want to keep stuff grouped, there is so much content, we have so many incredible conversations available for people to get into. And you can't really, you can't really find it on the website. And so I got to fix that. So that's one of the things and I also want to build more events, I just, you know, I'm going to continue to use air meat, I talking to some of their developers and even their founder or their CEO, that he's interested in making sure that it's as accessible and inclusive as possible. But that remains to be seen, I think that there's gonna be a cost associated with that, and hope, I mean, and that's, I totally get it, you know, I'm going through the same stuff, it's, it just cost money to be able to do these, you know, to make it to make it better. And so, but I'm gonna stick with it, just because I've the platform, I don't have that many complaints about it, it just has been working for me. And, you know, if something new pops up, that is better, I'll jump on that. But right now air meat is good. And I'd like to build more events, it's just being able to find the time to to generate the resources to, to come up with something of quality. I'm also planning on reaching out more to the vendor community, I'm going to find some sponsors and advertisers. So I am able to fund more, you know, improvements to what I'm doing.

And I also think that they're kind of a missing piece in what this community is about. I just, you know, when I was at the Guild, I loved talking to vendors, I probably learned more from those guys than anybody else. I don't know, they're just good. I have a lot of friends in that space. And it wasn't always, you know, I, to be honest, when I first started there, the vendor community was really sort of frowned upon because of how much marketing and sales and stuff that they they do. I mean, that's what they do. And there are some people that just their audit can can be out of control with that stuff. But then there are other people that are absolutely just, you know, they're there because they're passionate, they want to they love instructional design so much they built a tool, and they want to be able to share that tool with people and they have to sell it. You know, and those people are amazing. I mean, gosh, nobody's coming to my eye there are names that I'm sure that I can if I if I sit down and think about it long enough that I can come up with but there are really really some great people out there and I would love to be able to introduce the community to them just to to give people more of a variety of what of tools that thing go to and then I'm going to work on getting more discussion generated in slack. Honestly, for me, I am not somebody that that is good at reaching out and starting to Discussions like, I don't, I can't, I just don't do it that much on social media and I can't, I'm not great at it and Slack, it's just not my thing. So but I'm trying to work on that. And yeah, if you if anybody wants to, to, you know, feel free to get in there and slack and do it, I love the fact that these, you know, when the conversations exists, I am totally excited about it. I wish I was better at it, but I just don't have the time to, to really. I think that I'm an introvert enough that whenever I do do that, it does feel like I you know, like, I have to take a break after I start a conversation on slack. That's how, that's how bad it is for me, but I am I am going to try to make it more active and find strategies to to keep that place of destination that is that is that is worth going to. Um, let's see. And let's see, yeah, Kara's saying that she thinks of Dunkin Dunkin. Well, they're at risk. Yeah, he is such a cool guy. Yeah, incredible. And, and there are so many I mean, who did I have? I had suddenly smart I had Rob Penn on a while ago. And Rob has been around forever. It doesn't feel like he gets enough like attention. And but Rob was on and did it and showed off like the software that he built. I had him on I think it was a couple years ago. And Gosh, there are so many of them, I can think of their faces right now. There's a guy Chris Ayres, and, and his company that love that guy, there's just so many of them that I used to hang out with and, and, and who have really, really, they're just big hearted and wonderful people. So vendor community, I'm definitely going to start reaching out and hopefully generate some revenue that way help them you know, make some money as well as help support what TL DC is trying to do. Alright, so how you can help. If you're not already join as a member, please like that. That just helps just being able to, to keep the lights on and all that stuff. We did have a little bit of a member bump after AI dc 21, which is so great. So thank you for everybody that did that the join then. So yeah, consider that if you're not already. And then also, you can donate on that AI dc 21 page. I did create a donate, donate, pay pal sort of link I couldn't find I'm not a big fan of PayPal, but you can donate. And I'm going to say right now Nick fluoro. From co works. He donated a really, really like a good like he donated, he donated. I mean, if you guys can get support neck, please do because he is such an incredible guy. I mean, even the first cldc conference, you know, he bought like one of the premium sponsorships to help out and what what a guy really, really helps. I mean, honestly, funding for otter and some of these other things that I've had to pick up. That's you know, that's basically going to be kind of Nick. And then let's see, Tati also donated a good amount Tati, norham. So, you guys, if you can just and you have any time feel free to do that I seriously, I'm using it all just to, to, to,

to find new processes and see if I can get new systems going to make this to make this community a better place for everybody. I have a day job. So, you know, I know that I fund most of cldc myself, but all this other stuff really, really helps. And it was my wife that told me that I needed to get donation. So there's that.

Um, if you guys

are interested in hosting a broadcast on to DC that really helps do I know, Lisa, you are interested in in doing that series. If you guys as soon as you want to do that, I would love it. And really my My dream is to actually have a platform where it lets a variety of people just host broadcasts, and I would post them they would just function you know, as curated items and and people can share them that's really sort of My dream is to have a community where everyone is kind of sharing knowledge with one another. And and yeah, doing it that way. So if you want anybody you're interested in hosting broadcast, let me know. We can talk about it, see what you've got. And there's some that I've already got a few like that are kind of brewing out there would love to have as many as possible. And then other than that help build some of these virtual events, not just not just the virtual either next year. I am hoping to put together a live event I'm probably going to be doing a call to see if there are folks that want to help me build the program. Because although I know how to do it, I'm definitely not Somebody that is even an instructional designer or anything like that. I know who the people are. And I, you know, and I and I usually just ask questions. You know, so especially like, right now with the virtual events, I could use some help. I'm trying to figure out what the next community day is going to be about. I have like, three or four things on my list that I'd like to build the next community day on, but it's kind of changed after AI dc 21. So, you know, if you have any feedback at all, let me know. Let's see. And oh, Craig, you said East Coast? Are you talking about event and event on the East Coast? I would love to. If, if that's possible, at some point. And so you guys, if you want to reach out to me, just email me. I'd put my phone number on there. But I forgot to Well, actually, I probably shouldn't put my phone number on there. But yeah, I would, I would love it. If, if, if you guys just keep in contact with me. I mean, most of you know me, I am just by myself in this crazy room. I mean, it's just like, this is it. This is my little office, I'm just in here all the time. And a lot of times I feel completely lost about like, What am I supposed to do with this whole with with with TL DC is, and especially the last year and a half because so much change, and, you know, just had to make so many adjustments, but I am so glad that, um, that it is evolving the way that it is. And I feel like as long as I stick to those, those three things, you know, where I make sure that people can come in and that this is place, you can you can you can, you can trust on this place, you know, being a safe and safe place. And, and that, that we value integrity here and that we are just trying to be generous and, and you know, highlight the greatness of others. And our agenda is completely transparent, that people will come back. Alright, and I'm going to turn off my screen share here. So I can I see that there's one question in there. Craig smells a song being written about that struggle. Yeah. All right. So Kara is asking how long did it take for you to do the new to DC website in web flow, looking into using it for my portfolio didn't take long. I had to do two things. One, I needed to sit through a lot of web flow videos, which wasn't that bad. They're actually really, really entertaining. They're worth checking out your web flow University, and they're all free. They are kind of like little sitcom videos, but learn web flow. You know, I probably in total spent, you know, no more than two hours sitting through webflow videos, and learn web flow. And it's great. I love the platform. I don't want to go to anything else ever. I love using web flow. Now the no code thing. I mean, I know HTML really, really well and CSS. But I would rather just stick with with webflow it's all you really need. It does cost money. You know, it's like 20 bucks a month. But if you want something solid, it's worth it. So I did do that I did hire somebody that I found off of Upwork I can't remember his name. He was a really, really, really cool kid from India, and we just chatted, he was he actually has an Instagram where he he's a singer, but he helped

me a little bit with webflow helped me with the databases and help me figure out how how the relationships on the databases work. So it might be worth you know, spending a couple 100 bucks with somebody to kind of give you to guide you a little bit on web flow and and get you started. Oh, and I use the template in webflow. It's called the tele t l Li template. If you go to web flow and search for that template, you'll find it It costs $79 I ended up buying two copies of it to use one for t LDC and then one. Right when the pandemic started, I started building a website that was focused on all the businesses that were open in my little town I built and I, me and my wife and my son just drove around to different businesses and collected their hours and stuff and did videos of of all the businesses to and posted them to show people like you can go here you know, this ice cream place is open from you know 10:10am to 3pm. You know this, we just wanted to show people that there were businesses open and Mostly just we wanted to feel like we're doing something. But, um, yeah. And it was a good exercise for me to, to learn webflow. So, I would jump into it if if you can care, I don't think webflow is going anywhere. In fact, the whole no code thing is, is, I think, the future of the web. So, so can you know, if you want to get into it, and I'm happy to show you personally like, the way some of it works, and I am still learning of, you know, all kinds. And WordPress, yeah, totally care. And, you know, WordPress is good, but it's just like, oh, man, you know, you got to find your web host, you got to find, you know, you're constantly updating plugins, there's just like too much to it really, when it comes down to it. I think about like Devlin pack, and he uses web flow as well. You know, I think, yeah, I mean, I may using webflow, a completely independent from from Devlin, I was I just did webflow on my own. But you know, there are only certain things that you need on a website. And you don't need to have like all these other plugins and stuff that you know that WordPress, or word WordPress template builders might recommend you have, you just, it actually seems to be like, too much like just to make a simple website here. webflow just has great tools for it. And it's similar to Squarespace, but I think web flows more powerful. Yeah, WordPress is nothing except updating plugins. And then I was getting out, people were hacking, trying to get into the old to the C website all the time. And, you know, I lost, I got hacked once, which was terrible, like, horrible experience. So web flows great. 20 bucks a month, I just, that's the way that it works. And, you know, I don't know, the traffic that I experiences is so much that I have to, you know, increase the account anytime soon. So it works good for me. Let's see. So that is kind of what my presentation is that, that covers all of it. And what I'm hoping for is that, you know, when it comes to building events, and, and just overall with the community, I would love it, if there are other people that help guide it, too, you know, as you guys know, when I started out, it was me and Brent doing this. And Brent was kind of the spokesperson, he was the guy up front, and I did everything behind the scenes. And that's because I'm good. I've always been good at doing stuff behind the scenes. And, and that I'm just more comfortable behind the scenes, you know, building processes and systems. So I don't mind at all, if there are other people that want to dig, are interested in helping and doing this stuff. I'm in fact, I'm pretty uncomfortable in front of the camera. But this is where I'm at. And so talking to you now. So if anybody else is interested in just taking time and doing this stuff, I'd love it. You could if you want to build some experience, you know, doing virtual broadcasts, here's this is an opportunity to do it. I think I'm gonna always want to, you know, do this every once in a while, but it's not my, my thing my primary. I'm more, I really have always loved being behind the scenes and being a little more strategic and, and, and, and focused on systems. Um, Thanks, you guys. I really appreciate it. Lisa saying you're doing great. Louise wouldn't know you're uncomfortable at all. It's taking time. And that's the other thing too. I mean, I would love to share this with anybody. If, when I started out, I was so uncomfortable. But then you kind of get used to it, and you get better at it. I mean, I mean, Kara.

You know, when you start out, you were just being really, really authentic. But now you are kind of a master at this stuff. Whenever I see you on camera, I'm like, Wow, she's just amazing at this. Yeah. And and thanks, Lisa, about you know, being authentic. It's, you know, when it comes Nowadays, there isn't any time to do otherwise. I sort of came up in a variety of business disciplines where authenticity wasn't really the priority. And with this, I feel like I need to, to be honest about the vulnerability, that that I feel and, and it's just, you know, I want it to be something that is that remains like upfront, just, you know, sort of the way that I'm managing stuff. There was a time where that definitely wasn't the way that I would do things that I would create, you know, like we used to say smoke embarrassed to make it look like you know, I'm working in a high rise office or something somewhere not in a little shack in my backyard. So, but it's I actually like that I'm in a little shack in my backyard with all my guitars behind me. Yeah. All right. Well, let's see. Thanks, Kara. I, you know, you have been really incredibly important to TL DC. I really, you know, thanks for thanks for that comment. And, yes, Lisa, recovering HR professional. Yeah, I, you know, my last stint working for a big organization, I work for a credit union. And, you know, it was that was definitely the field was like, we, you know, you wanted to, to, to kind of show everybody that you were like the big fish in that space. And that's not really what I'm interested in, I'm really focused on on people and just generating more impact, getting people to get better at what they do. You know, this world I've been, you know, I'm just constantly stressed about the future of, of this planet and the world that my son has to live in. So really, it's just, it's, I'm focused on trying to do good. Ah, okay. So I think that's it if you guys have any other questions, anything, Craig, thanks for joining us today. And I'm going to get this one up. It's I knew that it was going to be kind of more of a podcast II thing I wanted. I wanted folks to be able to listen in and just get a little bit of news about what I'm up to. But that is really it is I'm from the ground up, I'm having to adjust how, how I'm doing things at TL DC to accommodate more people. And and, and we'll just go from there, but more events. If you guys have any ideas at all, let me know. How do you top a IDC 21? I'm not sure. And it was really, really just got me. So that's it. Thanks, everyone. Um, so we got Monique St. Paul on Thursday. I'm really looking forward to talking to her such an interesting person show for that member showcase. Other than that, we're going to keep on going and hopefully be I'll be announcing what the next community day is about soon. And I'll probably post on slack on a call for folks to kind of discuss it because I need some help trying to decide what topic to go with. All right, so thanks, everyone, and we'll see you next time.

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