#now my driving purpose is across the continent in a different country….

[prophetofthemuse]

You are NOT alone in your suffering!!! Do not fall into that trap!!!!! You always have someone you can talk to trust!!!! You are a person!!! You are not your source!!! You are fine! You can be better! Do not fall into traps of thinking you arr horrible! Because you are not!!!

Oh!! Oh, you misunderstand, dear follower!! This isn’t only about source actions, I am still a horrible person!! Why do you think I kin this fucker in the first place???

I’ve burned bridges and somehow make even new people immediately uncomfortable for some unknowable reason, so I’m always alone, and when I do try to talk to people out of necessity, I’m stared at in some kind of fucked up mild disgust like an animal and ignored!!!

But that’s okay, I’m doing alright!!! Everything is fine!!!! EVERYTHING IS FINE!!!!!

[niseamstories]

10 Lessons on Realistic Worldbuilding and Mapmaking I Learned Working With a Professional Cartographer and Geodesist

Hi, fellow writers and worldbuilders,

It’s been over a year since my post on realistic swordfighting, and I figured it’s time for another one. I’m guessing the topic is a little less “sexy”, but I’d find this useful as a writer, so here goes: 10 things I learned about realistic worldbuilding and mapmaking while writing my novel.

I’ve always been a sucker for pretty maps, so when I started on my novel, I hired an artist quite early to create a map for me. It was beautiful, but a few things always bothered me, even though I couldn’t put a finger on it. A year later, I met an old friend of mine, who currently does his Ph.D. in cartography and geodesy, the science of measuring the earth. When the conversation shifted to the novel, I showed him the map and asked for his opinion, and he (respectfully) pointed out that it has an awful lot of issues from a realism perspective.

First off, I’m aware that fiction is fiction, and it’s not always about realism; there are plenty of beautiful maps out there (and my old one was one of them) that are a bit fantastical and unrealistic, and that’s all right. Still, considering the lengths I went to ensure realism for other aspects of my worldbuilding, it felt weird to me to simply ignore these discrepancies. With a heavy heart, I scrapped the old map and started over, this time working in tandem with a professional artist, my cartographer friend, and a linguist. Six months later, I’m not only very happy with the new map, but I also learned a lot of things about geography and coherent worldbuilding, which made my universe a lot more realistic.

1)  Realism Has an Effect: While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with creating an unrealistic world, realism does affect the plausibility of a world. Even if the vast majority of us probably know little about geography, our brains subconsciously notice discrepancies; we simply get this sense that something isn’t quite right, even if we don’t notice or can’t put our finger on it. In other words, if, for some miraculous reason, an evergreen forest borders on a desert in your novel, it will probably help immersion if you at least explain why this is, no matter how simple.

2)  Climate Zones: According to my friend, a cardinal sin in fantasy maps are nonsensical climate zones. A single continent contains hot deserts, forests, and glaciers, and you can get through it all in a single day. This is particularly noticeable in video games, where this is often done to offer visual variety (Enderal, the game I wrote, is very guilty of this). If you aim for realism, run your worldbuilding by someone with a basic grasp of geography and geology, or at least try to match it to real-life examples.

3)  Avoid Island Continent Worlds: Another issue that is quite common in fictional worlds is what I would call the “island continents”: a world that is made up of island-like continents surrounded by vast bodies of water. As lovely and romantic as the idea of those distant and secluded worlds may be, it’s deeply unrealistic. Unless your world was shaped by geological forces that differ substantially from Earth’s, it was probably at one point a single landmass that split up into fragmented landmasses separated by waters. Take a look at a proper map of our world: the vast majority of continents could theoretically be reached by foot and relatively manageable sea passages. If it weren’t so, countries such as Australia could have never been colonized – you can’t cross an entire ocean on a raft.

4)  Logical City Placement: My novel is set in a Polynesian-inspired tropical archipelago; in the early drafts of the book and on my first map, Uunili, the nation’s capital, stretched along the entire western coast of the main island. This is absurd. Not only because this city would have been laughably big, but also because building a settlement along an unprotected coastline is the dumbest thing you could do considering it directly exposes it to storms, floods, and, in my case, monsoons. Unless there’s a logical reason to do otherwise, always place your coastal settlements in bays or fjords.

 Naturally, this extends to city placement in general. If you want realism and coherence, don’t place a city in the middle of a godforsaken wasteland or a swamp just because it’s cool. There needs to be a reason. For example, the wasteland city could have started out as a mining town around a vast mineral deposit, and the swamp town might have a trading post along a vital trade route connecting two nations.

 5)  Realistic Settlement Sizes: As I’ve mentioned before, my capital Uunili originally extended across the entire western coast. Considering Uunili is roughly two thirds the size of Hawaii  the old visuals would have made it twice the size of Mexico City. An easy way to avoid this is to draw the map using a scale and stick to it religiously. For my map, we decided to represent cities and townships with symbols alone.

 6)  Realistic Megacities: Uunili has a population of about 450,000 people. For a city in a Middle Ages-inspired era, this is humongous. While this isn’t an issue, per se (at its height, ancient Alexandria had a population of about 300,000), a city of that size creates its own set of challenges: you’ll need a complex sewage system (to minimize disease spreading like wildfire) and strong agriculture in the surrounding areas to keep the population fed. Also, only a small part of such a megacity would be enclosed within fantasy’s ever-so-present colossal city walls; the majority of citizens would probably concentrate in an enormous urban sprawl in the surrounding areas. To give you a pointer, with a population of about 50,000, Cologne was Germany’s biggest metropolis for most of the Middle Ages. I’ll say it again: it’s fine to disregard realism for coolness in this case, but at least taking these things into consideration will not only give your world more texture but might even provide you with some interesting plot points.

 7)  World Origin: This point can be summed up in a single question: why is your world the way it is? If your novel is set in an archipelago like mine is, are the islands of volcanic origin? Did they use to be a single landmass that got flooded with the years? Do the inhabitants of your country know about this? Were there any natural disasters to speak of? Yes, not all of this may be relevant to the story, and the story should take priority over lore, but just like with my previous point, it will make your world more immersive.

 8)  Maps: Think Purpose! Every map in history had a purpose. Before you start on your map, think about what yours might have been. Was it a map people actually used for navigation? If so, clarity should be paramount. This means little to no distracting ornamentation, a legible font, and a strict focus on relevant information. For example, a map used chiefly for military purposes would naturally highlight different information than a trade map. For my novel, we ultimately decided on a “show-off map” drawn for the Blue Island Coalition, a powerful political entity in the archipelago (depending on your world’s technology level, maps were actually scarce and valuable). Also, think about which technique your in-universe cartographer used to draw your in-universe map. Has copperplate engraving already been invented in your fictional universe? If not, your map shouldn’t use that aesthetic.

9)  Maps: Less Is More. If a spot or an area on a map contains no relevant information, it can (and should) stay blank so that the reader’s attention naturally shifts to the critical information. Think of it this way: if your nav system tells you to follow a highway for 500 miles, that’s the information you’ll get, and not “in 100 meters, you’ll drive past a little petrol station on the left, and, oh, did I tell you about that accident that took place here ten years ago?” Traditional maps follow the same principle: if there’s a road leading a two day’s march through a desolate desert, a black line over a blank white ground is entirely sufficient to convey that information.

10) Settlement and Landmark Names: This point will be a bit of a tangent, but it’s still relevant. I worked with a linguist to create a fully functional language for my novel, and one of the things he criticized about my early drafts were the names of my cities. It’s embarrassing when I think about it now, but I really didn’t pay that much attention to how I named my cities; I wanted it to sound good, and that was it. Again: if realism is your goal, that’s a big mistake. Like Point 5, we went back to the drawing board and dove into the archipelago’s history and established naming conventions. In my novel, for example, the islands were inhabited by indigenes called the Makehu before the colonization four hundred years before the events of the story; as it’s usually the case, all settlements and islands had purely descriptive names back then. For example, the main island was called Uni e Li, which translates as “Mighty Hill,” a reference to the vast mountain ranges in the south and north; townships followed the same example (e.g., Tamakaha meaning “Coarse Sands”). When the colonizers arrived, they adopted the Makehu names and adapted them into their own language, changing the accented, long vowels to double vowels: Uni e Li became “Uunili,” Lehō e Āhe became “Lehowai.” Makehu townships kept their names; colonial cities got “English” monikers named after their geographical location, economic significance, or some other original story. Examples of this are Southport, a—you guessed it—port on the southernmost tip of Uunili, or Cale’s Hope, a settlement named after a businessman’s mining venture. It’s all details, and chances are that most readers won’t even pay attention, but I personally found that this added a lot of plausibility and immersion.

I could cover a lot more, but this post is already way too long, so I’ll leave it at that—if there’s enough interest, I’d be happy to make a part two. If not, well, maybe at least a couple of you got something useful out of this. If you’re looking for inspiration/references to show to your illustrator/cartographer, the David Rumsey archive is a treasure trove. Finally, for anyone who doesn’t know and might be interested, my novel is called Dreams of the Dying, and is a blends fantasy, mystery, and psychological horror set in the universe of Enderal, an indie RPG for which I wrote the story. It’s set in a Polynesian-inspired medieval world and has been described as Inception in a fantasy setting by reviewers.

Credit for the map belongs to Dominik Derow, who did the ornamentation, and my friend Fabian Müller, who created the map in QGIS and answered all my questions with divine patience. The linguist’s name is David Müller (no, they’re not related, and, yes, we Germans all have the same last names.)

[those70scomics]

“Jackie, I checked. No one can see us doing it from the parking lot.” -- Kelso in “Till the Next Goodbye” (7x25).

Can not will.

Can not could.

The line is purposely ambiguous. It might mean Kelso and Jackie have already had sex and she wanted him to makes sure no saw them. Or that she planned on having sex with Kelso and wanted him to make sure no one would see them.

Either way, it’s the line that led to Jackie and Hyde’s end on-screen.

I sometimes think about what I would’ve done had I been hired as the showrunner for season 8. How I would salvage write Jackie and Hyde’s relationship out of the situation season 7 left them from. I’ve come up with different scenarios in fanfic, but I recently thought how I would handle the material if I were a TV show writer, not an author of prose.

Here’s what I came up with.

Season 8, Episode 1

We’re at the Formans’ house. Not only has Hyde been gone for two weeks but Jackie, too. Kelso has remained mum on what happened.

Whenever Kitty, Red, Donna, and Fez try to get Kelso to tell them where Hyde and Jackie are. Kelso just mumbles, “I don’t know,” and changes the subject or leaves.

But with Kitty missing Eric terribly, Red is done letting the kettlehead hide info about the one person who might be able to cheer Kitty up: Hyde. In a callback to “Cat Fight Club” (2x25), Red traps Kelso in the garage, makes him sit on a stool, and interrogates/threatens him in his humorous, veiled fashion.

Kelso, scared for his life, says, “Hyde caught me!”

Red: Caught you doing what?

Kelso: Caught me naked in the motel parking lot! He punched me until I told him me and Jackie weren’t doing it--

Red [growing more annoyed by the breath]: Doing what?

Kelso [panicking]: It! You know, sex.

Red: For Pete’s sake, Kelso! Why the hell would Steven think you and his girlfriend were ... doing that?

Kelso: It. And they were broken up!

Red [threateningly]: Kelso ...

Kelso: Okay, okay! I might’ve been wrapped in only a towel when I went into Jackie’s motel room and said no one could see us doing it from the parking lot, and Hyde might’ve been there when I said it. And he might’ve grabbed my towel and chased me across that parking lot while I was nude. And he kicked my ass really hard, Red! My butt still has bruises.

Red: If you don’t get to the point, I’m gonna shove my foot so hard up your ass until those bruises cry blood.

Kelso: I told Hyde Jackie kept shooting me down. But she was single, and I was naked, and we had a room, so I figured, “Why not keep trying?” I also figured making sure no one could see us doing it from the parking lot would sweeten the deal, but Hyde was there, and--

Red: Where is he now?

Kelso: I keep telling you, I don’t know! He went back to Jackie’s room and locked me out. I had to drive back to Point Place in the nude! I was pulled over and arrested, but the officer took pity on a fellow cop, gave me some pants and a shirt, and I was able to come home.

Red: You ... jeez. What am I gonna tell Kitty?

Kelso: That I’m a hero? I drove across state lines in the nude!

Red: Go home, Kelso.

In the Formans’ living room, Kitty and Donna sit on the couch. They’re making a tape-recording for Eric, who’s in Africa. Donna says into the mic that Hyde’s still missing, and Kitty stops the tape.

Kitty: You can’t tell him that. You’ll only worry him.

Donna: But he already knows Hyde’s missing. I told him in the tape we sent last week.

Kitty: Oh, sweetie, I recorded over that part.

Donna [annoyed]: You listened to my private tape to Eric? You censored it?!

Kitty: A mother does what she must to protect her children. Eric has enough to deal with, adjusting to a new country and food he probably can’t digest. You know how sensitive his stomach is. God knows what they use for toilet paper over there.

Donna: Mrs. Forman, Hyde is Eric’s best friend. He needs to know.

Kitty: And I am Eric’s mother, and I say we tell him nothing about Steven until--

They hear the faint sound of a door slamming. It’s the basement door. Kitty and Donna stare at each other.

Kitty: Do you think?

Familiar laughter reaches them from the basement.

Donna: That’s Jackie’s cackle!

Kitty and Donna rush downstairs. Hyde and Jackie are in the basement, holding hands and being generally lovey-dovey.

Kitty: Oh, my God -- Steven’s come home!

Kitty shoves Jackie aside and thrusts herself into Hyde’s arms. Jackie stumbles but catches herself on the couch. Kitty holds onto Hyde for dear life, like she did Eric in the season 7 finale, but Donna focuses on Jackie.

Donna: Where the hell have you been? I called your number in Chicago two weeks ago, and the motel clerk told me you’d checked out! I even looked up the TV studio where you got that job and called that up, and they said you declined the job.

Jackie: I’m sorry, Donna. I’m sorry. Steven and I--

Hyde [who’s being choked by Kitty’s love]: Jackie -- little help here?

Jackie tries to prise Mrs. Forman’s arm off Hyde but fails. Donna doesn’t act right away, thinking Hyde deserves a little mangling for making them all worry so long. But she eventually helps free him.

Kitty: Where have you two been?

Hyde: Vegas.

Kitty and Donna: Vegas?

Jackie: Steven, give them their gifts.

From his backpack, Hyde hands both Kitty and Donna a mini slot machine. Kitty is momentarily enamored by the gift, but Donna is pissed.

Donna: They don’t have phones in Vegas?

Jackie: We were a little busy, okay?

Donna: Doing what?

Hyde and Jackie look at each other and burst out laughing. Kitty laughs, too, but ...

Kitty: Wait, what’s so funny? What am I missing?

Jackie and Hyde: Nothing.

Hyde: Say, uh ... me and Jackie are kind of tired from the drive. Do you think we could take a nap before we continue the interrogation?

Donna: No! You and Jackie owe us an explanation!

Jackie: We’re fine! See? [She waves her hand over herself and Hyde.] There’s nothing to worry about.

Kitty: They’re fine, Donna. And Steven’s never leaving this house again.

Jackie and Hyde both appear uncomfortable at this statement. Donna catches it. Kitty doesn’t.

Donna: All right, but once you’re up from snooze-land, expect one hell of a questioning.

Kitty: And delicious food. What would you two like for your welcome-home feast?

Hyde: Anything you cook is fine with me, Mrs. Forman. Always has been.

Kitty [touched]: Oh, you are such a sweetheart! And a good eater. [To Donna]: You know, when Mr. Forman was out of a job, the cheapest meat I could find was cow tongue, and Steven ate that as happily as he would filet mignon.

Jackie [to Hyde]: You ate tongue?

Hyde: Yeah. And so have you--

Jackie: I have not!

Hyde quirks up an eyebrow, and Jackie gets his double-meaning; She swats his chest.

Jackie: Okay, whatever. I’m really tired, and I’m taking a nap.

She heads for Hyde’s room, and Hyde hands Mrs. Forman a Vegas-themed beer stein.

Hyde: That’s for Red. Could you tell him I’m back? Not exactly ready for my beating.

Kitty [laughing uncomfortably]: He won’t won’t beat you up. He’s already scared one son off to Africa. I won’t let him scare our other to a different continent.

Hyde: Thanks.

He follows Jackie into his room.

Inside Hyde’s room.

Jackie: Steven, I was so close to telling!

Hyde: But you didn’t. I’m proud of you, grasshopper. [Note: Yes, we’d finally learn Hyde’s pet name for Jackie here.]

Jackie removes a necklace from around her neck. Attached to the chain is an engagement ring and wedding ring. She frees both rings from the chain and puts them on her finger.

Hyde: You sure wearin’ those now is such a good idea?

Jackie: Every second I can’t wear them feels like a year.

Hyde pulls his own wedding ring from under the collar of his shirt. It’s also attached to a chain.

Hyde: I get that. [He grasps Jackie’s left hand.] But at least we’re hitched, right? 

He sits on his cot, and Jackie plunks down on his lap.

Jackie: And we had an amazing honeymoon.

They kiss.

Jackie: How long are we gonna keep our marriage a secret?

Hyde: As long as it takes to save up for the wedding you want. Gettin’ married by an Elvis impersonator in the Hunk of Burning Love Chapel wasn’t exactly your dream.

Jackie: No, but marrying you is.

She caresses his hair, and he gazes at her the way he does during their first scene in “Magic Bus” (6x03). This is a happy man in love.

Hyde: I got an idea. Red’s gonna wanna kill me, right? So how’s about when everyone’s upstairs -- him, Mrs. Forman, Donna, probably Fez; maybe even freakin’ Kelso -- I propose to you like it’s the first time. I’ll make it all story-book and sickening, and that’ll diffuse most of the tension. Red’ll still be pissed, but Mrs. Forman’ll be so damn ecstatic he won’t get a chance to shove his foot up my ass.

Jackie: I love it! [She kisses him again.] And I love you! Oh, Steven, I didn’t think I’d ever be happy.

Hyde: Don’t you mean this happy?

Jackie: No. Happy. Losing you ... it was awful.

Hyde: It was no picnic for me, either.

Jackie: Are you happy?

Hyde [smiling]: Yeah. I am.

They make out. Then, in a slight panic, Jackie pulls away.

Jackie: How are we gonna tell Mrs. Forman we’re gonna move into our own apartment?

Hyde: One problem at a time, baby. One problem at a time.

They continue to make out. The scene fades to black.

The first half of the season follows Jackie and Hyde’s attempts to keep their marriage a secret. To save money, they end up becoming Fez’s roommate. Fez thinks this is great, at first, until he grows more and more suspicious of Jackie and Hyde’s engagement.

As I’ve written about previously, Eric should’ve been kept part of the show, despite Topher Grace’s absence. Episode storylines could involve Kitty, Donna, and others narrating letters Eric sent while we see Eric from the neck down acting out his adventures in Africa. Another story could involve Red, Kitty, Donna, Hyde, Jackie, and Fez figuring out how to celebrate Eric’s birthday in his absence and what gifts to send him.

Donna and Jackie commute to a university in Kenosha. Doesn’t matter that it doesn’t exist in real life. Neither does Point Place.

Fez enters culinary school to become a dessert and candy maker. His and Donna’s friendship develops in ways it never got to in the previous seasons. Fez evolves back to pre-”Everybody Loves Casey” (4x26) Fez, in large part due to his friendship with Donna. He might even become a feminist, having realized the error of his ways. This allows him to find a fulfilling romantic relationship of his own -- with a new character introduced early on at the culinary school.

Hyde continues to work at Grooves and on his relationship with W.B.

Kelso moved to Chicago, as he does in the season 8 we got, since Ashton Kutcher left the show.

The first half of the season concludes with Fez discovering Jackie and Hyde’s wedding rings. He steals borrows them and brings them to Donna, who freaks out with him.

Fez: We have to tell Miss Kitty!

Donna: No, Fez. If Hyde and Jackie got secretly married while they were in Vegas, then we better damn well make sure they did. Mr. and Mrs. Forman were maniacs when they found out about Eric’s and my secret engagement. Hyde being married? And Mrs. Forman not being part of the wedding -- oh, it’s gonna kill her.

Fez: Ai. You’re right. We’ll confront Hyde and Jackie. And if they won’t talk, I’ll threaten to stop making that chocolate souffle they’ve both fallen in love with.

Donna: That souffle really is good.

Fez: Thank you. I add a little coffee powder to give it a mocha kick.

Donna: Wow, you’re really learning a lot in culinary school.

Fez: Yes. Oh! I have an even better idea.

Fez holds up Jackie and Hyde’s wedding rings, nods at them, and laughs.

At Jackie, Hyde, and Fez’s apartment, meanwhile, Jackie is panicking. She can’t find her wedding ring. Hyde tells her to relax. That she probably just left it under a shirt. But he can’t find his either, and he starts to panic.

Jackie: Do you think we’ve been robbed?

Hyde: Nothin’ else seems to have been swiped.

Jackie: Who would take our wedding rings?

Hyde: Who do you think, man? Remember when Forman couldn’t find that man-ring Donna gave him? Fez had it.

Jackie: That little thief! Do you think he’s doing something perverted with them?

Hyde: Considering he’s been dragging Donna to feminist rallies, I doubt it. But whatever he’s doing with ‘em, it can’t be good.

The front door opens then, and Fez and Donna walk in, each carrying a metal cloche.

Fez: Hello.

Jackie rushes him and grasps his shirt collar.

Jackie: Where are they?

Fez: Where are what?

Jackie: You know what!

Donna: Jackie, back off. Fez and I are carrying something very delicate for his culinary school.

Hyde: For? Not from?

Jackie backs off. Fez and Donna pull off the covers of their cloches, revealing two chocolate souffles.

Fez and Donna: Tah-dah!

Hyde: Are those...?

Fez: Yes, your new favorite dessert. And inside is a surprise you and Jackie might not want to eat.

Jackie [catching on]: You didn’t...

Donna [goading]: Like you and Hyde didn’t?

Hyde [trying to be aloof]: Didn’t what?

Donna: You know what you did.

Fez: And I know what I did.

Jackie: Screw this!

She grabs Fez’s cloche, puts it on the coffee table, and she digs through the souffle with her hands, a callback to “The Promise Ring” (3x25). She pulls out her wedding ring.

Jackie: You baked my wedding ring in a souffle?

Donna: Ah-hah! So you and Hyde did get married!

Hyde: All that proves is she bought herself a wedding ring.

Jackie [who’s started licking souffle off her fingers]: Damn , that’s good.

Donna: Nice try, Hyde.

She moves her souffle under his nose. He can’t help himself and grabs it. He tears into it like Jackie did hers, licks his fingers in the process, and finds his wedding ring. Knowing the jig is up, he and Jackie put their chocolate-coated rings on their fingers.

Jackie: Fine. So you know. What do you want?

Donna: To know why!

Fez: Yes! I was supposed to be a best man or maid of honor -- your pick!

Hyde [continuing to eat the souffle]: Look, me and Jackie had a hell of a rough time before Forman left. We just needed to pull the trigger and get hitched so we could quit worrying about that crap.

Jackie: Yes. Now Steven and I can live our lives without all the drama.

Fez: Without drama? [To Donna, hurt, and gesturing to the souffles] Was this not dramatic?

Donna: It was, Fez. Very dramatic [To Hyde and Jackie.] But you’re in for a Shakespearean tragedy when Mrs. Forman finds out you got married without her.

Jackie: No, we’re not because she’s not going to find out. As far as she and Mr. Forman and the rest of the world are concerned, Steven and I are engaged and saving money for our wedding. Which isn’t completely untrue.

Hyde: Yup. We’re savin’ up for wedding number two, where everyone’s invited and Jackie gets her doves.

Donna: Where did you two get married anyway?

Hyde: The--

Jackie: Steven, don’t.

Donna and Fez: “Steven,” do. 

Hyde: How’s about I just show ‘em the picture?

Jackie: Oh, God. It’s a Polaroid!

Donna: This I have to see.

Jackie [to Hyde]: Wash your hands first!

Hyde heads to the kitchen sink as the scene fades to black.

Next scene essentially continues where the last one left off. Fez and Donna are studying the framed Polaroid of Jackie and Hyde kissing after being pronounced husband and wife.

Donna [laughing]: The Hunk of Burning Love Chapel?

Fez [angry]: Elvis married you, and I wasn’t’ invited?

Jackie: Fez, I didn’t even get to wear a wedding dress.

Hyde: I wanted Zeppelin, but "Elvis” sang freakin’ “Love Me Tender”.

Jackie: It was either that or “Jailhouse Rock,” and that wasn’t gonna happen.

Donna: Okay, so you had a cheesy wedding. ... Man, I wish someone had video taped it. [Refocusing.] Anyway, so you’re gonna have a big second wedding, right?

Jackie: My dream wedding. Steven promised.

Hyde: And our first dance is gonna be to one of the mushier Zeppelin songs. That’s our compromise.

Fez: And I will be your best man ... [looks at Jackie] or your maid of honor.

Jackie: Actually, I wanted Donna to be my maid of honor.

Donna [touched]: Me?

Jackie: Who else? You’re my best friend. Plus, I’ll look even more stunning standing next to a giant lumberjack wearing a bright purple taffeta gown.

Donna: I won’t wear that.

Jackie: Then you’ll be naked.

Hyde: As naked as Kelso was driving home from Chicago.

Donna and Fez: What?!

Hyde: That’s a story for another time. Fez, it’d be cool if you’d be one of my groomsmen, man. Forman’s the best man ‘cause he’s my best bud.

Donna: So you’re going to wait until Eric comes home from Africa?

Hyde: He’s only got eight months left to go. We can wait.

Fez: Well, I can’t. Every time Miss Kitty looks at me, your secret will knock on my teeth, and I’m afraid I’ll answer.

Jackie: Then avoid Mrs. Forman the next eight months.

Fez: But Miss Kitty and I have become very close.

Jackie: Okay, how about this. If you keep your big mouth shut, I’ll let you be a bride’s man. That means you can help me with wedding stuff and help Donna plan the wedding shower.

Fez: I can? Okay, maybe I can keep this secret.

Jackie: Good. Now ... if you ever bake Steven’s and my wedding rings into a dessert again,  [smiles threateningly] I’ll bake your ‘nads into a pie. Understand?

Fez [voice squeaky]: Understood, understood.

The second half of season 8 finds Jackie, Hyde, Donna, Fez, and Kitty planning Jackie and Hyde’s second wedding -- which Kitty thinks is the first wedding. Both Fez and Donna make slip-ups they have to cover, but Kitty doesn’t catch on.

All this wedding planning, though, makes Donna miss Eric even more. Kitty shares all of this with Eric via the cassette tapes she records for him.

Fez’s relationship with his culinary school sweetheart develops.

Kitty, inspired by Jackie and Hyde’s wedding plans, suggests to Red they renew their vows. He vetoes this, reminding him how “well” that worked out for Bob and Midge. But he’s been saving up money for a second honeymoon, which he will reveal later in the season.

Eric writes Hyde a letter, telling him that he’s coming home for a New Year’s Eve visit. He can’t stand being away from Donna any longer. He asks Hyde to keep this a secret, but Hyde tells Jackie their wedding date has just moved up by a few months.

The hour-long season finale consists of Jackie and Hyde’s second wedding. Eric comes home in time to be Hyde’s best man, and the wedding is as romantic and funny as it should be. W.B. and Angie are there, of course, too.

But as Jackie and Hyde kiss as in, “You may now kiss the bride,” Eric says beside Red, “Wow, I bet this wedding was a whole lot nicer than than their first.”

Red: Their first?

Eric: Yeah, when they got married at the Hunk of Burning Love Chapel in Vegas.

Red [shouting as Steven and Jackie pass him by, stopping Hyde by the arm]: You got married in Las Vegas?

Kitty: What? [She grabs Jackie’s arm.] You two were married already? For almost a year?

Jackie: Kind of?

Hyde [pissed]: Nice job, Forman! The one time I ask you to keep a secret.

Jackie [to Hyde]: You told Eric? How could you?

Hyde: I wrote him a letter. Hey, it was hard keepin’ this to myself. I figured he was in Africa. Who the hell was he gonna tell?

Jackie: Apparently everyone!

Red: Well, it doesn’t matter now. Either way, you’re both married, and you had a nice wedding. Let’s go have a nice reception.

Kitty: Wait just one minute. What I’m about to say goes not just to Steven and Jackie but to you, Eric, and you, Donna, and you, Fez. When any of you get pregnant, you’re not to keep the baby a secret until she’s already graduating from college. You will tell me the second you know. Do you hear me?

Hyde, Jackie, Donna, and Fez: Yes, ma’am.

Eric: Technically, men can’t get pregnant, so this doesn’t apply--

Kitty: The second you’re with child, Eric!

Eric: Yes, ma’am.

Jackie and Hyde laugh and kiss. Donna kisses Eric. Red and Kitty also kiss. Fez and his girlfriend are kissing, too. It’s a kiss-party before everyone heads to the reception.

The series ends, but the characters’ adventures in life continue.

[thosewhoharvest]

Self-Sufficiency in the Time of Pandemic

With the current path that we as a planet are on, the facts are becoming increasingly obvious: times are going to get tough, in many ways. Climate Change warning flags, such as rising temperatures, more numerous and intense natural disasters and struggling ecosystems; and problems particular to the human population, such as resource depletion and the current COVID-19 outbreak we are currently facing; make it pretty clear that from here on out, humankind needs to be resourceful in order to survive.

We are busy going through something unprecedented in human history – there have been pandemics and widespread outbreaks before, but never has the world seen such a huge human population, nevermind one which is so interlinked across the globe. When you think about it, getting anxious during these times is only a natural and somewhat necessary response. But once one’s head begins to clear and the reality of the global situation sets in, the important questions begin to emerge: How am I going to look after myself and those I care about?

The measures we should all be taking to “flatten the curve” and slow the spread of the virus in time for healthcare systems to cope – physical distancing, washing our hands, and isolation, are all symptomatic responses to the current crisis. Don’t get me wrong, they are extremely important to how the pandemic unfolds, but I believe we should also be looking further down the line into the future. The world as we know it is changing before our very eyes, at a pace which is frighteningly tangible, and this pandemic is showing us a few key points, which can now no longer be denied:

We live in a global society – whether we like it, or not. This means that we ultimately need to work together, and respect our place in the collective human species, taking the rights of others to heart.

We are painfully dependent on ageing systems which are designed with profit as the key component, not necessarily human or planet welfare. Capitalism has engulfed all spheres of our society, to the point where the very things we need in order to survive – food, water, shelter and medicine, are turned into mechanisms through which we, as “consumers” can be drained for financial gain.

Our international leadership is largely inadequate and, whether on purpose or due to bureaucratic red tape, slow to act and respond in our time of need. Many countries have seen their governments refuse to react to the pandemic sufficiently, meaning that it wasn’t contained when it should and could have been, and as a result things have gotten much worse.

There are good (as in, really really good) everyday people out there who are willing to put their lives at risk to help others. Cashiers, paramedics, janitors, farmers, teachers, doctors, nurses, and many other overlooked professions are in fact the real heroes in this situation – and not the CEOs, directors or owners of companies. Without those who keep our society running through the day-to-day necessities, things would begin to crumble real fast.

Pandemics can affect everyone, regardless of their demographic. whether directly or indirectly, when something like this happens, it affects you – regardless of who you are. Stock markets and currencies are beginning to crash, companies are closing down, borders have been shut, and lockdowns are taking place. Things like these have far-reaching effects, which can be felt everywhere.

That being said, the planet can feel them too – just a few weeks of decreased human activity can lead to huge environmental improvements such as less pollution, returning wildlife and cleaner waters. This is just a little “sneak peak” at what is possible if we change our ways and try to live more harmoniously with nature.

Once this particular chapter of history subsides, how do we protect ourselves – personally, and on communal and global levels from similar things in the future? Ultimately, they are unavoidable and bound to happen again, be it in a different way or form. Once we accept that there are elements we cannot control, we can begin to look at what can be done to minimise our own suffering, and that of those in the same boat as us, at the hands of such disasters.

Look After Yourself: Strengthen That Immune System

This virus might subside, but chances are that it will be back, or another will take its place soon enough. So you need to fortify your body’s natural defences in order to give them the best chance of fending off such things. This boils down to one thing: keep healthy. Organic fruit and vegetables bring none of the poisons or chemicals that conventional produce carry with them, and often contain more vitamins and antioxidants. In particular, things like garlic, chillies, ginger, broccoli and citrus fruit are great turbo-chargers of the immune system. The fresher your food, the more nutrients it contains, and the better it is for you – so avoid canned or prepackaged produce where possible.

Local is Lekker

In South Africa, we have a saying that “Local is Lekker” – it essentially means that what comes from nearby is great; and it couldn’t be more on point or relevant than right now. By choosing things from local suppliers, businesses, farms, and organisations, you are not only decreasing reliance on the transportation system, but also “voting” with your coin against multinational corporations. Of course, the more local you can get, the better – ultimately, you should aim to be growing as much of your own food as possible. For some, this may mean growing a basil plant on their balcony, for others, perhaps a bed of tomatoes and garlic in their garden. Do what you can, with what you have. We recently began offering food garden design, consultation and establishing services, so if you are interested, please do contact us. Otherwise, support your local farmer and get to know where your food is coming from – it is a great step in not only learning how it’s grown, but also in becoming aware of what you are eating and how it reaches you. We deliver weekly boxes of our fresh organic produce to people nearby every week. Read more about or boxes, or order here.

Water is Life

Without water, we’re in trouble – just ask any Capetonian about the struggle. Having narrowly missed day zero, we can all attest to the importance of this liquid in our lives. Ensuring that you have a good supply or reserve of clean, drinkable water is of utmost importance. Setting up rainwater and dew harvesting can be done extremely easily and fairly cheaply – whether using small tanks to catch rainwater from gutters, catching your bathing water to water your garden.

Take Shelter

If you are among the lucky who have a good roof over their heads, take a moment to appreciate it, and consider how you can improve your dwelling. If there were to be a nearby disaster such as a flood or fire, how would it hold up, or perhaps instead, what is the contingency plan? If you are looking to set up a home somewhere, how can you construct it in such a way that it requires as little new resources as possible, and makes use of what is around? Small changes, such as using natural building materials, simple designs or even just taking note of the prevailing wind can have rather big impacts on a home, and are often overlooked.

Avoid Blackout

Technology plays a huge role in our lives – beyond communication and business, we rely on it to keep our food cold, light up our homes, drive our vehicles and make our stuff. All it takes is a little “Stage 2 Load-shedding” from your friendly neighbourhood power supplier to remind you how dependent we are on it. Although going entirely off-grid is becoming cheaper at a rapid rate, it is still largely out of the financial question for most people. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t take certain smaller measures in order to reduce your reliance on the grid. Depending on your financial position, you can take various steps – install a solar geyser to get electricity-free hot water on tap, buy or make simple solar lamps to light up your house (it’s really easy – look it up), sell your fridge and replace it with a gas alternative, or even just put together a little solar oven (we made one out of an old window and some planks – it cooks brownies like a charm!).

Wash Your Hands

Keeping things clean is a must. But don’t let that fool you into thinking that stockpiling toilet paper and hand sanitiser is necessary. Firstly, that just creates a shortage (do you see the self-fulfilling prophecy here?) and secondly, if worst came to worst and all the toilet paper in the world were to run out, you could use water like the entire continent of Asia is still largely doing after centuries). What is important is finding a way to maintain good hygiene and prevent illnesses from coming into your home and body. The good news is that soap, hand sanitiser, shampoo, and even general house cleaners are really easy to make with very simple, cheap and biodegradable ingredients. Good friends of ours, Guerrilla House, hold frequent soap-making workshops in Cape Town, and there is a plethora of online resources which can teach you how it’s done.

All these steps, however small they may be, add up and create a ripple effect, which although may seem immeasurable, can grow into a huge wave, given the right tide. So my advice is this: prepare yourself. Don’t freak out about the toilet paper, and don’t panic in general. But take time to think about how you can reduce not only your financial and environmental footprints, but also your reliance and dependence on the systems that surround you. And when you do need to depend on them, do it consciously and with full understanding and awareness of the implications it has. Be selective about how you “vote” with your spending – support those near to you, both geographically and socially speaking, and in so doing help build the network of interdependence we all need in order to survive. Because if the governments of the world aren’t going to look after all of us, then we will do it ourselves.

– Nevau, one of those who harvest

[spanishschoolbarcelona7-blog]

Becoming fluent in spanish Quickly: Why You Ought to instructions 5 Ways to be able to Consider

spanish school barcelona

Mejores dias. My family llama Roberto. ¿ tu¡

If you appreciate this as well as are able to supply a response in Spanish, likelihood are that you may have by now thought about learning Romance language. Associated with given up. Might be you have succeeded. Then, hasta luego! If definitely not, read more. Because if anyone want to learn Spanish language quickly and easily, you actually can.

spanish school barcelona

Why understand Speaking spanish?

Basically there are a couple major reasons to discover The spanish language

1. It may enhance your societal practical experience

2. It will guide a person move on within your career

Studying to summit a second language is undoubtedly an enormous asset. Not merely should it help you using your career if your current corporation does anything inside unusual trade or hireing Romance language people workers, although it offers you an enhanced experience of people customs. Imagine being able for you to examine novels or observe movies originating from a culture in which is different from your individual. It will help an individual understand not only this various other culture, but by comparability, also your unique.

But perhaps for simple purposes, becoming fluent in spanish is the great idea. Languages are often a great asset about almost any resume because glowbal growth is a vital force in often the world today. A know-how regarding Spanish is in particular helpful to individuals hunting for a job mainly because Spanish language is spoken throughout all day and countries around the actual world.

The world has developed into a global market place just where a lot more to interact having others by distant sites. There are more in comparison with 400 million people with the world who have chat Spanish as their initially language. Those people doing work with some others in this kind of global village can increase their understanding of a great many others if they understand the particular language and also cultures involving other people. You will discover a number of hundred million reasons to help find out Spanish.

How in order to learn Speaking spanish?

The finest way to learn The spanish language will be through immersion. Chute shows that you hear along with read Romance language all typically the time and are obligated to be able to speak the dialect since there is no alternative. If you are chucked in the language, somehow your body and mind picks up the vocabulary considerably better. It has for you to! Basically there are some ways to achieve that:

1. Start using a language plan that provides a web-based professor to simulate the expertise of staying immersed in the terminology.

2. Live in just one of the per day places in the world exactly where Spanish language is the key language.

3. Cigarettes your own personal day job and get started observing Spanish movies in addition to television system and read solely Speaking spanish books.

4. Have a training in The spanish language at School or different educational capability.

5. Opt for up Spanish together with the cost-free resources available on often the Internet

Professionals and con's

*Using any language software like Drive Spanish as well as Crazy Romance language is some sort of great idea. The value is rather of the time frame fair and if that you are watchful in picking out the actual product, the web based resources and also teachers assist you to study with your own schedule.

*Of course in any words program the immersion inside language can only end up being artificial. Nothing can whip dealing with the country everywhere the language is usually talked and where you pick up and use it with daily time frame. Not all people however offers the opportunity to help live in a unknown land for an extensive period of time. Summer months courses will help nevertheless.

*If you cannot cigarettes your day employment, anyone can still watch Spanish language television and read Speaking spanish books. Especially Spanish mouvement of English books that you are already familiar with feels to be recommended. You actually pick up the dialect little by little, and that's the particular only drawback: it is incredibly slow process, and you actually can certainly not be guaranteed that you got that until you practice the idea along with a teacher or man university student.

*Taking a The spanish language training course in University is definitely great, nevertheless it has a number of drawbacks too. In whose sale benefits, typically the pace is determined in order to you by the program course. You start performing for your qualifications on the other hand of working to strengthen your vocabulary abilities.

*The Internet along with the worldwide online have greater the prospects for people worldwide. Persons can now do small business readily with a big number of people existing to the far 4 corners around the globe. People can study from other individuals who could live countless miles at a distance on a different continent. Just one of the great rewards that the Internet features brought to opportunity seekers is often the chance to access educative programs in the relaxation that belongs to them home. Many include taken selling point of the likelihood to learn to converse Romance language Online because at this time there are some great courses available.

Programs

Often the packages available to learn to be able to talk and read Spanish language On the net are designed by means of experts who experience a confident understanding of the terminology. If you want for you to learn to speak Speaking spanish Online, the courses are operated with interactive activities, tests along with quizzes that help each one student make steady advance. Those people who wish to learn to communicate Spanish online will always be able to get classes for all levels connected with talents. Beginners will come across courses for getting them commenced while tough one students will probably find courses targeted at people with some experience.

You can find out to speak Spanish for the own pace and on your best time. Those learners who all learn to chat Spanish on-line can easy access the lessons when the actual time is right your kids. The place will possibly be perfect for the reason that can decide on to do the on the web training wherever their laptop or computer is fine.

How to pick out a course?

If a person want to be able to converse Spanish quickly it is best to search carefully at all with the available courses before doing a consignment. There are many lessons that are readily available price tag, but others fee some bucks. Watching YouTube video's can certainly help to get a new first idea of the particular language, but soon you stuck. You do have to have a teacher - experience to face as well as on the net - and ready examine program to succeed!

What exactly program to choose? The following are all 5 points to help consider:

*Does the study course provide demonstration lessons? If that's the case, try it out in addition to see how the item 'feels' to you.

*Is typically the presentation of the words apparent and precise?

*Does often the course show an individual exactly where experts your personal learning process?

*Can anyone step into the training at the precise amount as? Presuming that you actually already have some no cost courses web watched Dailymotion video's to secure a first perception of the language?

[sentofighta]

The Theocracy of Plegia Headcanon post

In this post, I will try to write some headcanons for Plegia, kind of world-building to be a reference for myself and anyone who is interested to read it.

Please remember, these are mere headcanons, they are my own interpretation. If you disagree with something then I don’t mind discussing the points you don’t find accurate. There is no harm in checking other views, but please be polite or keep it to yourself. Suggestions and feedbacks are highly appreciated.

Special shout out to Jee @/stratesia for giving her opinion on some points~

Please don’t Reblog.

Etymology:

Plegia ペレジア, Perezia

I thought at first it might be a play on word (spelling i think) Plegia> Persia

Perezia is the name of a flower just like Iris (Ylisse)

I tried to look for the flower meaning but there is nothing. The only link is stated below in the headcanon of Religion.

--

Origin and History

Plegia is originally part of Ylisse, the content before the Schism event when The First Exalt with Naga’s help fought Grima and because of the immense power, the content was divided and thus having the awakening world continent.

After the schism, three counties were formed, Ragna Ferox to the north, Halidom of Ylisse in the middle and the Theocracy of Plegia to the west.

Some of the content here is shared with my previous ylisse headcanon so copy pasting some info here to connect the two posts together.

With the separation of the three counties, each country took a different path from the others. Ferox being in a harsh climate, was more of active of the two countries in terms of manpower and parties. Plegia to the south with its scorching desert life, the development was steadily but not very fast like Ferox and Ylisse in terms of trading business due to the lack of earthly materials like in Ylisse (farm yields and animals), Ferox (Ore, and furs.) Though, there are things that only found in Plegia like certain food spices, herbs, unique clothes textiles and dyes, exquisite make-up, etc.

The Grimleal in Plegia are a minority in Plegia and only grew with time especially in the game events. King Gangrel and his men were not Grimleal but they had to follow the cult for their own safety and the services they will gain from the cult.

After the separation, it was hard for the Plegian to fully operate with how harsh the weather is especially after they became independent from Ferox and Ylisse. Their livelihood was in a tie with Ylisse’s agriculture and meat products. and Ferox’s ore, manpower, and fur. They worked tirelessly to be a fully functional nation on its own that does not rely on its neighboring countries. Being a nation that is known for its dark magic, this enabled this to advance despite the harsh circumstances.

Plegia prospered during the time between their separation until the great war against Ylisse which Plegia suffered a lot. The truth that normal citizens of Plegia were the true victim of the war meanwhile any Grimleal were plotting from the back and escaped the war’s damage. The Grimleal played with its nation’s emotions saying that Ylissean wants them to become their slaves so they can enjoy their lives as their masters. Naga told them to take over Plegia and make it their own as it was once before. People were agitated with these false claims and sought to stop the Ylisseans--Chrom’s Father from invading Plegia. The cost of war was Ylisse’s almost destruction and Plegia while the Grimleal watched in the background this war. The Grimleal used their people to act as a human shield to protect their experiments and projects to revive their fell dragon god.

Reviving Grima was the Grimleal’s wish. As Validar said in the game that his Grandfather and father were failures to be the host of Grima even himself until he had Robin (Avatar) who was of pure blood to host Grima in them. The process of creating a suitable vessel was an ugly and disgusting one. A lot of experiments on subjects, children were torn from their parents. Subject after the other to create the right formula for the final product which was Robin. Whether Validar or Robin’s mother was a close being to Homoncluos (Grima in a way) that made Robin with a high success rate of being able to host Grima. Going by the events of SOV, Grima was made by Forneus and by the description, Grima resembles a homunculus in the way he was created and Forneus is an Alchemist so that kind of allude to that. Wouldn’t be surprised if Robin’s mother was a created being, homunculus to be able to give birth to Robin. Alchemy was lost because there was no mention to it in Awakening world. But surely the knowledge remains in the hidden abodes of the Grimleals.

After the Great war, Gangrel assumed his role as a King to the nation, a plan woven by Validar to dart everyone’s eyes away from the Grimleal as they plot their scheme to revive Grima from the shadows. When Emmeryn died, a lot of people who were affected by her sacrifice stopped fighting but sadly some were killed by true Grimleals or during the battle against the Ylissean army. Whoever could escape hid away and decided to start a new life.

When Gangrel was defeated, Validar took over as regnant King, making sure that the Grimleals are now the controlling force of the country; making it clear that the Grimleals are in power now. There was no need to hide their motives after finding Robin is still alive so the plan B they had, using the future Robin to assume the role. Validar aided Chrom’s army to defeat Walhart because he knew that Walhart if he reached Plegian, no one will be saved, not even the weakened Future Robin (Grima) from his wrath.

Once Walhart was out of the picture, Validar ought to steal the Fire Emblem and then fuel the Future Robin with power to regain the lost power they lose during their travel (and i assume reviving Validar as well?) even though the plan was to use the current Robin’s body but when they refused time was of essence so they had to move to use the future body (which is odd because they are not older even after they said that they did came with lucina so??? Maybe their aging stopped when they killed chrom or something idk man this game got a lot of ??? for me to think of answers im but i weak moogle.) Validar used the strong faith of the Grimleals to call them over to the Dragon Table to be Grima’s lunch. When confronted by Chrom and the company, these people were brainwashed, only speaking in gibberish

...the appointed...time...

...to the Dragon's...Table...

...our prayers...Grima…

Using these people so Grima can feed on them to be resurrected to its true form, however, the future robin mortal body remained as well. This could mean that the true form is mindless while the mind and conscience remain in the human body thus why Robin could kill Grima and end it. If Grima chose to get rid of the human body, I only assume that Robin would not be able to kill Grima and severe the ties between because his power is not equal to the current Grima so perhaps Robin should accept this current Grima’s powers if they want to destroy the future grima?? 👀

With the defeat of Grima, Plegia was left in shambles with the Grimleals are out of the picture as well. There is no information to what happened to Plegia next but I imagine with Ylisse’s help and Ferox, the people slowly regained the control of their country. Either Robin (Avatar) take their role as King/Queen but i kind of doubt that the people would just ‘yes we accept’ knowing that Avatar is Validar’s kid--the man who killed half of their people for a big ass dragon. This could require a lot on Avatar’s part to reassure the people that they can grant them the peace they want or surprisingly the people will accept avatar after knowing that they are the one who fell the dragon. Or it will be a democracy, they will elect someone to be their leader.

--

Geography

Plegia comes between Halidom of Ylisse to the east and Ferox to the north. Plegia is a country in the Ylisse continent that was once one country with its neighbor.

--

Topography

Plegia is known to be a desert country evident with a map up there. There are little to no forest areas like its neighbor country, Ylisse. A lot of mountains and sand dunes. Plegia as any desert country, it is bound to have dangerous areas of quicksands often used by bandits to lure helpless merchants and villagers towards them so they can trap them. Unlike Ylisse, Plegia’s bodies of water are more active because the Plegian made a lot of ports to make the trades between them and the Valmesean easier.

--

Climate

Because unlike Ylisse, Plegia is pretty much has the same climate all over its land. Very hot humid, even scorching at summer, and slightly cold at winter. In summer, the days are humid and hot while at night, it can get a little chilly and even freezing at certain times. In winter, the days are sometimes cloudy little chances of rain depends on the circumstances and at night extremely cold due to the desert winds and being exposed to the sea. Nearby the sea, the air can be salty and suffocating for newcomers.  

--

Flora & Fauna

Since the climate is the same, the flora and fuana are pretty much the same across the land as well. Short plants in the desert area, different types of reptiles, a lot of wild birds like falcon and hawks, wild rabbits, coyotes and gazelles which often found near the border pass between Plegia and ylisse. Between Ferox and Plegia at the border wastes, some giraffes and elephants might be around.

--

Government

As the name of the country suggests, it is religion based country, more like a forced one. The government is hereditary from one leader of the Grimleal to another, most likely as Validar said, his grandfather, father then him and possibly Robin (Avatar).

Gangrel, as stated before he was placed to fuel the war between plegia and ylisse because he had the charisma and the drive to get people around him for that purpose--the revenge on the ylissean.

After the battle with Grima, the line of Validar--the Grimleals is over. The people either pick their own leader or accept Robin (Avatar) as their King/Queen if they wanted to serve their country alongside their friend Chrom being the Exalt of Ylisse.

--

The Law

The Law in Plegia is simple, Worship Grima, and hate Naga. The same rules that the previous Exalt had to not trade with Plegian or marry into them applied in Plegia as well. Who is caught to be trading with a Ylissean was immediately killed on the spot.

This to be changed slightly when Gangrel ruled because he wanted to use Ylisse for his revenge to he allowed some sort of trading to happen but with a lot of restrictions.

After the end of Grima, the laws are loose to let both trading and wedding from both countries without any sort of restrictions following after Chrom’s Laws.

--

Hierarchy

The Hierarchy is simpler than Ylisse because it is simply:

The Hierophant (Grima)

The Grimleal leader and the country Leader, the King (Validar)

Right hand and trusted advisor (Aversa)

The Grimleals is definitely set to ranks but for my sake, they are three levels according to what the enemies we have seen.

High ranked Grimleal: Priests & Dark Mages & Scholars (Chalard & Algol)

Middle ranked Grimleal: Loyal Military Soldiers & Spies (Campari)

Lowest ranked Grimleal: Believers and worshipers of Grima

Military Commander (Mustafa etc)

The commoners

After the Grimleals ranks, who comes next kind of does not have any authority nor power except on those who are around them. Mustafa being the commander of the army that fought Chrom, it should be apparent that his loyalty to his people not the religion should be known by the Grimleal so I doubt he has any power except on the men around him.

--

Religion

The forced religion is worshiping the fell dragon Grima even though there are many around Plegia who do not worship Grima at all. The Religion was founded when the first fathers saw the destruction that Grima caused in his first war with the First Exalt. They sought his power for their own misguided ends. They wanted to obtain that power knowing that Grima had a pact with a human, they thought they could control this ‘God’ to do what they want. When Plegia was founded, I imagine it was their goal; to revive Grima so they can use him. Naga helped humans on her own, they wanted their God to be same; to help them realize their dreams and wishes; their own God that they don’t have to share with anyone else. These wishes developed and reshaped to be wanting destruction about everyone so no one can be better than them; total damnation to all even if the in the process they died at least their selfish wishes that no one be happy happen. Validar was revered among the Grimleal because in a way he was the host or almost was going to for their God. If Robin remained in Plegia, they would be worshipped as the Human that has the pact with Grima, their own God, their messenger for their God.

Note to Grima’s design, which is just my own opinion again but look at the picture

The true form of Grima resembles Perezia, the flower that the nation is called after in the Japanese release. I don’t know if this was intentional or just me diving deep where it is not necessary. The right images are from here if you like to look at the other Perezia’s types because they are A LOT, i picked these two because they looked close enough to grima’s design imo. Just like Ylisse (Iris) the symbol is the flower itself, I think Plegia is the same. Ferox (Felia) on the other hand, their symbol is two wolves(?) animal motif instead of plant perhaps to represent the fierce nature of Ferox.

Holidays & Celebratory Days

The day when Grima was fell the first time, is a day that all Grimleal spend it mourning their God’s long slumber and prepare a lot of sacrifices in hope for the day Grima is revived come closer.

If Robin remained in Plegia, I am sure their birthday would be a day to be celebrated because the messenger of their God, his vessel was born on this day.

With how Plegia is under the Grimleal, there are a lot fo celebratory events unlike Ylisse and Ferox but common folks do enjoy summer festival and such in their cast away villages.

Customs

Grimleal’s customs

To get into the Grimleal is not an easy as it sounds like. Test of loyalty and such would be asked for the recruiters to do. Often raiding and killing people, offer sacrifices, be ready for any job whatever it is to be done. Who can’t fight, must assist in a way or another. Scholars and Scientists were expected to keep experimenting on different projects, more strong Risens and whatnot.

Commoner’s customs

Plegians are like the Ylissean in terms of upbringing. Respect is a must to teach their children, they might be little more strict with that than the Ylissean. The family may hold the Grandparents, the parents, their kids, and their kids. The extended family may live in the same house with how the living in Plegia in the years are getting harder with previous war and the current one, it is hard to save up money to live in your own.

It is not a custom but perhaps an explanation to why most Plegian are seen devoted of emotions or if they had them they are considered cold and distant. Basing the information on the real world, desert people are affected by the heat and being constantly under the sun thus they are more hot-tempered and emotionally distant (of course this does not apply to ALL desert living.) The heat damped their emotions but they are there but only visible to really close knit of people, for example, Mustafa and his company. They were moved by Emmeryn which does not necessarily they are cold but to the outsiders they seem like it.

First Grima war

  The Events of the [First Grima war] against the First Exalt with Naga VS. Grima and the human he pact with was the first war in ages the people faced their first trial. There are no records of the war but a point to note that the whole continent was against Grima unlike the 2000 years later where The Halidom of Ylisse was against Grima alone, mostly. Another thing to note, that the human that had a pact with Grima was known, however, these little details ‘human pact’ was not known for anyone outside the Grimleal in the game (during Awakening) timeline. Evidence that everyone was shocked to hear of Avatar’s relationship to Grima and the whole plot to use them as a vessel. A lot of Grima’s secret was swept away when the three nations were made, means that the Grimleal in their early days, made sure to cover up Grima’s tracks to make sure that his next revival would be the last and no one can interrupt him.

The Grimleals made sure only to keep who will hold their tongue from blurting any information that could threaten their plan to revive Grima. Who was suspected to leak anything was murdered on the spot. It might have shaken them in numbers but that made the new generation even more stronger and loyal to the cause.

Ylisse-Plegian situation

  It is no secret that these two countries have always had troubles and skirmishes. Ylisse worshiping the divine dragon and Plegia worshiping the Fell Dragon. Both contrasting counties of faith and beliefs. Ylisse wished for more peaceful negotiations, but Plegia saw it as a way to silence them--it agitated them because they thought Ylissean are simply provoking them due to their past.

  Pre the previous Exalt’s time, the relationships were already on a thin ice. The Grimleal experimenting with everything they got to get the results they hope for-- a perfect vessel for their master. What kept the relationship at bay was on both sides, Ylisse’s Exalt was still going for the peaceful route and the Grimleal trying to maintain a low profile until they finish their experiments.  

  In the previous Exalt’s time, the situation got worse when Validar who had hopes that he will be the perfect vessel for Grima, was provoked by the Exalt who got a whiff of the situation tried to pursuit Validar to explain what is he doing but Validar did his best to conceal it that until Validar had Avatar who was, by all means, THE perfect vessel then it all hells went loose. With Avatar’s mother escaping, all spies who were around Plegia and the borders reported back of the scheme that plegia is making which made the first Exalt more determined to wage war against Plegia in name of Naga and peace. Thus the war 15 years pre awakening happened. It was a mean to stop Validar from making the vessel but it failed. The only success was that the vessel, Avatar was lost and their whereabouts were unknown. Sadly, this information was only shared by the Exalt and the Clergy and his personal knights so the news of vessel and Validar’s scheme died when the Exalt fell in battle.

  During the game situation was the follow up of the previous war. Plegia did not forget the war even though 15 years have passed. The wounds did not heal and the people wanted a revenge, an end to their pain, a closure that no more of that cruel war is going to happen. With Emmeryn’s sacrifice, it showed that even Plegian were not sure of their emotions and deep down they want an end to all the fighting and when Gangrel was defeated, the situation calmed a little bit until Validar came back into the scene. Fueling the people against Ylisse and using every possible opening to rekindle the hatred. Who followed him were mostly long rooted Grimleal who would gladly give up their lives for Grima. Anyone else was fighting for other reasons, some because they fear for their families who were captured, some for glory, some for money, etc.

A lot of problems emerged after the first war, a lot of dead plegian, poverty, lack of funding. These were somehow fixed by the Grimleal in order to shut the people up and use that anger and direct it at the Ylissean. Some of course, knew that the Grimleal at fault too but couldn’t speak about it or death will be their end. People were living in horror from the Grimleal and from the Ylissean to strike again.

Plegia and Valm situation

Validar understood that Walhart was smart for his own good and decided to do something about Plegia when Ylisse failed to act, he used Chrom and his company to take Walhart down so there will be fewer people at his doorstep asking him to stop resurrecting Grima. If Walhart was not stopped, all what Validar planned with Future Robin (Grima) would have been under threat.

The Last Grima war, Avatar’s ending

  In the second Grima war in game, there are three outcomes for the battle. 1) the shepherds lose to grima, 2) chrom’s ending where he delivers the last strike sending grima into another 1000 of slumber, 3) or avatar’s ending where they sacrifice their life. Since this is the true ending of the game, it is the best outcome of the three endings. The world was saved from Grima and history wrote about its savior. Naga did tell Avatar that if they have strong bonds they are to fight and come back to this world. During the time the avatar went missing, everyone continued to grow and develop in their name. The scars of the last battle did not heal quickly but they are surely coming along. There is no set of time to when Avatar came back but it is not that long taking that from the game ending where there are no visible changes on both Chrom nor Lissa; between a year and two max. The duration is a controversial topic so it is not that of important at this point. Meanwhile, Plegia is gathering itself after losing so many of its citizen for being Grima’s food and in the war itself.

Chrom’s ending

Avatar has the choice to return to Plegia and rule it as King/Queen.

Ruined Future ending (Future Kids timeline)

Plegia prospered even further to become the land of the Fell Dragon, the land of the risens. A lot of plegian escaped to Valm or Ferox leaving the country in fear for their lives. Who remained were the loyal Grimleals and commanders.

  In Fate, Anakos asks Owain, Severa, and Inigo if they had a request after helping him and they asked to revive their families and friends but he could not do that so they asked to make revive their original world that was tainted by Grima and in the process make graves for their fallen families and friends. I assume that fixed Plegia too.

Ruined Present ending

If The Shepherds failed to take down Grima, an ending close to the future that the kids escaped from will happen. However, this time, Falchion and the Fire Emblem might be either lost or be confiscated by Grima’s puppets. A worse ending than the future they escaped from. The Grimleals will take over command of everything and the new place people will start pilgrim to is Plegia’s castle to worship their new God, Grima.

Military

Plegia units are [Barbarians, Dark Mages, Wyvern Riders, Myrmidons and Thieve] a balanced army. Plegian considers having a better strategic approach to battle so they can be hard to deal with especially with the wyvern riders who can travel a long distance and have a decent defense to close ranged and magical attacks. Though, with proper planning and using the archers they can be an easy target. Their advantage is only if they are fighting on their land where the movement is quite restricted to everyone but the mages and riders.

Education

Same with Ylisse, education was for people who could afford it. Priests, Dark Mages, and scholars are the highest people in rank of education, of course after the Grimleal leader themself.

Because of how the Grimleal is, a lot of experiments and projects are involved, thus why scholars are important in the country for their continuous experiments and researches.  

Unlike Ylisse, we did not get to see official letters for Plegian nor any other nation (correct if im wrong please). Looking at the in-game sprites, you can see the spells are identical so I couldn’t get anything out of them to link to plegia.

All the spells have the same writing so it did not give away anything special. Weak spells and the powerful spells; all alike.

One could headcanon that the writing is the same what is different is how each nation pronounce them? Because of all magic stem from one place??? Idk.

The warp spell pattern is different

The letters are kind of, slightly, different to the above one. Maybe because they are skewed they look different. But for me, they kind of resemble the arabic script because it looks cursive at the first part to me and we saw that ylissean counts on the symbol and they are not cursive. I will bite the bullet and say that Plegian script resembles the Arabic script, written from right to left to be just different from the ylissean. Out of spite lolololol

Health & Services

Due to the aftermath of the first way, poverty struck the country and famine. People died because of the heat and lack of food and clean water. It was a lot of work to provide food and water across the country and health services. Healers are not common around plegia that is why scholars work on more effective medicines to replace the lack of the able arms to cure and heal with items that can be used by the laymen. Of course, it is not because they ‘care’ because every soul is important in order to revive Grima. Plus, they are the human shield that the Grimleal will use to provoke the new war to happen. War can’t happen if there is no one to fight back.

Art & Entertainment

Architecture

The overlook looks similar to how Persian castle looked like, no color a lot of castle towers. I imagine that small villagers only have somewhat colors in their building because they are further away from the Plegian Castle and the Grimleal.

The inner design, however, has dark colors. The windows are above only assuming because to avoid having the heat of the sun come through them so they are strategically built to only let cool air in during the day and night and only enough of the sunlight depending on the position of each window and the sun circle.

Music

I imagine the music would be, all poetry of praising Grima and the soon fated hour of his return. Commoners might sing about their daily life struggle and whatnot, somehow melancholy fill all their songs. little when you find happy songs.

Painting / Statues

I looked all over the castle for any hint of painting like in Ylisse’s castle but nope. Nothing. I think Plegia is more famed for statues more than painting with how they build their houses from stones.

Writings

The same as their music, all written art is based on imaginary days of Grima’s arrival. Recording the feat of the Grimleal, and the history against the Naga worshipers.

[marlutterianae]

The Hellequin Cult.

- Extracted from the Magal Archives -

The majestic metropolis of Murgul is the impenetrable jewel of our country. The beating heart of the realm that supplies our people with the resources to survive. The most protected safest place in all of Dorok, where no demon has spilled the blood of a single citizen. A city that hasn’t experienced true destruction from the adversaries. And yet, a serious threat is lurking from the shadows of the city. Always observant. From beneath in the suburban underworld sectors, and even known to be causing trouble in the highest layer of the metropolis. This is a threat different to that of demons, but more similar to witches. And maybe even more deadly, knowing that they operate from the inside of our own social system. This threat is well known by the royalty, the guilds and specially the Wizards as the Hellequin Cult.

To understand this malignant group, we need to address how they came to be in the first place. It became obvious how after countless generations of humans and their derivatives trying to adapt to Viorg’s deadly conditions, the struggle wouldn’t be as simple as to be regarded exclusively physical. At the very least, the people in charge of studying the effects of the dimensional distortion and the Orrnox won’t hesitate on telling that the people of Viorg are suffering some serious psychological distress and cognitive dissonance because of forces greater than us meddling with reality. To put it simply, it all starts with nightmares. Specifically, the horrific night visions that torment the minds of every sentient creature across the entire continent. Almost like spectral demons coming to infect the minds of our population, driving many to complete madness and despair.

The closest we had come to a cure for this supernatural affliction is by the consumption of strong medicinal elixirs to calm the nerves and block the traumatizing night terrors. But this is far from a complete solution. While true, these sedatives will silence the nightmares, it is only through regular consumption that the effect persists. Doesn’t help either that one may develop an addiction to the medicine, resulting in its own share of negative side effects. But no one suffers more from the night terrors than those whose job is to delve into the arcane mysteries of the world. Those gifted with magic are prone to fall into serious madness because of them. So the regular consumption of this temporary relief is part of their daily routines. 

However, some decades ago, one Wizard denied the medicine. And instead, went through the psychological agony of the nightmares and somehow eldritch secrets were revealed to him. Something no one with such power over the arcane should’ve ever witness. The demons had spoken to him, and he was able to understand.

The details regarding this treason within the Wizards Guild are still shady and unclear, but around this time the heretical Wizard was discovered in his attempt to corrupt his peers into embracing the nightmares and follow the path he had found. Somehow he managed to avoid getting caught, fleeing with a good portion of followers and disappeared into the streets of the capital. From that point on, he was officially declared a heretic and a danger to humanity. A Witch. This was the first instance where a Wizard was turned into the enemy’s side in such a drastic way. What followed was the excruciating hunt for this Wizard gone rogue and the scholars he took with him. But time passed, and things just got worse.

It quickly came to the knowledge of the high commands of the Guild how a mysterious gang was causing tumults around the various sectors of the city. And this was no ordinary turf war between ruffians and outlaws. This were massacres caused by powerful sorcerers, leaving paths of destruction yet no other trace. Rumors spread like wildfire. People started to fear about the presence of demons in the city. They felt fearful and betrayed, as if their trust in their government built of generations of safety were suddenly vanished by this unseen threat. The lords knew that these was not the doing of demons, but the fugitive Wizards gone mad by the nightmares. They used all in their power to prevent any public chaos and panic. While the Witch Hunter guilds and the Wizards got to work in search for the madmen.

Time went on, and little progress was achieved in the capture of the heretics. If anything, their tactics started to change. There were not only massive attacks against certain zones of the city with magic, but people started to disappear. And these weren’t not ordinary people. They were humans highly sensitive to magic. Potential Wizards, in the eyes of the Guild.

Why is this extremely worrisome? Well, The Magal will occasionally go out into the city, and even those beyond the capital in search of different people capable of channeling magic, in order to recruit them for their ranks. Wizards are known to have a strict reproduction control in order to keep their numbers at a decent, manageable amount. If there were too many magic wielders, things could get pretty complicated regarding their organization. Such is why the majority lies under the service of the realm, hidden deep in their laboratories, working with technologies and alchemical inventions, only being deployed in the field when summoned for special missions.

Now knowing that the heretics were doing something similar, for unknown but most likely sinister purposes, changed the gravity of the situation. It was speculated that their numbers grew. Yet their attacks and abductions didn’t show any sort of rational patter to them. The civilian population, meanwhile, were at this point paranoid but calmed enough to still hold some trust in their leaders. But that changed completely when a message from the heretics was explicitly shown for all to see. In one of their attacks to a popular building that belonged to the Rojyu Guild, they engraved the entire edifice with the following sentenced repeated over and over:

“The Hellequins will join the Dance of the Devils and guide their march into our world for our salvation”.

The event was distressing to the public, but the message was clear for the rulers  and the Magal. They had set a plan in motion to bring down Dorok and aid the demons in their mission to end us all. And they now had a name. The Hellequins. It’s been a decade ever since the Hellequins showed themselves to the public, and the government has made some progress in capturing some of their members. A good clue to locate them is the gruesome in their bodies scars produced by magic. Only two kinds of people can bear those kind of scars. The people who had suffered the effects of a spell, and those who cast spells. Murgul, being a place of safety and top security, were little harm comes to its population, makes it a perfect place to separate the suspicious from the innocent. It isn’t common for non members of the Magal to bear those kind of scars, unless they were potential sorcerers that haven’t being recruited by them or abducted by the heretics, said Heretics, the Wizards, or visitors from others cities doing some business in the capital. The Witch Hunters that are active in the streets of Murgul are in charge of apprehending any suspects marked with magic, and make sure they aren’t part of the Hellequins. It can get pretty difficult for those who have nothing to do with the group, but it is the most viable way so far.

Finally, another important discovery in the search for the Hellequins has been the findings of clearly demonic idols set upon altars hidden in the darkest corners of the capital. These idols depict what is certainly some kind of worshiped Devil, that probably speaks to them through the nightmares. The worshipping of this being is considered a heretical crime in the city, and all idols found, after being closely analyzed are destroyed by any means possible. There have been found idols made of all sorts of materials. Wood, marble, stone, metal, etc. In order to dispose them for good, te Witch Hunters use fire to burn them, acid to melt them or simply crushing them to pieces.  

Overall, their machinations and form of organization is still a mystery to us. From the cryptic answers we had got out from interrogations of possible members, it seems that the Hellequins force their members into something way beyond mortal comprehension. They seem fearful of what they have grasp across realities from their nightmares, and what their blasphemous Idol has whispered to them. But they definitely not fear pain nor death. The investigations around this sinister cult will continue until their true intentions are discovered.

- - - 

After going on with some friends, a night out that took most of my time of the evening before finishing my entry for Day 12, I managed to finished the entry with the prompt “Villainous” just this morning. I struggled a little with this one at first because I don’t really picture very villainous figures in this story, more like people with their own goals and agendas (with the exception of demons of course but that is a whole different topic) but then I remembered and idea I had floating around regarding a “gang” that causes troubles in the safest city of the entire country and are quite dangerous. The Hellequin Cult. I had a lot of fun fleshing them out. 

[worldticketsandhospitality]

FIFA World Cup 2022- Heung-Min How the joy of football drives the to live his Premier League Football dream

Heung-min Son is enjoying life beneath new Tottenham coach Nuno Espirito Santo, who contracted a new four-year contract in July and talks about his recent form. As one of the Premier League's Football most thrilling and pleasant players, it's easy to forget that Heung-Min Son displays a purpose that many of us would crave. Let's not forget that his journey to England began at the age of 16 when he made the brave decision to travel halfway around the world to Germany to join Hamburg's youth team.

Fans from all over the world are called to book Football world Cup tickets from our online platforms WorldWideTicketsandHospitality.com. Football World Cup fans can book South Korea Football World Cup Tickets on our website at exclusively discounted prices.

                        This was a long way from his home in Korea. He had to adjust to a completely different language, culture, and landform as Son chased his dream of playing in the Premier League Football. It was a tough time, but if I were 16 again, I would have doubts, but I would do the same. I am very proud of this choice and this decision. Of course, it was hard and scary. 16 years old, leaving parents, moving to another country, another language, another culture.

But in my skull there was only one thing, to train in Europe and work in the direction of my dream. My dream was to play in Premier League Football. When I moved to Germany, I thought it would be difficult, but I had to get through it because my dream was getting closer. I thought the same thing when I was 16 years old. Even in the difficult times, there were good times. I learned German and English and I am very happy with that.

There were many things, different cultures, and different people, but it was a great experience. Soccer fans living in Europe are obsessed with the best players and club teams in the world, including the hype that surrounds them. But that passion is also felt half a world away, and Son is a great representative of Asians in soccer.

The Tottenham winger is the first Asian player in history to score more than 50 goals in Premier League Football. He was nominated for the 2019 Ballon d'Or and finished 22nd out of 30 nominees the highest achievement by an Asian player. He was also the most expensive Asian player in history when he joined Tottenham Hotspur for £22 million in 2015. For more details about Football World Cup Tickets.

Life beneath Nuno and signing a new Spurs deal

Tottenham Hotspur has had a turbulent few months. Mourinho was sacked in April and former Tottenham midfielder Ryan Mason took over the team, which finished seventh in the Premier League Football. The search for Mourinho's successor saw him switch back and forth between managers across the continent, almost coming up empty a few times before finally settling on former Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo. Nuno has enjoyed an unbeaten pre-season, including Sunday's north London derby in which Son scored the winning goal, as well as some solid transfer business.

Sun said of his new coach Nuno, I'm enjoying it. It's only been a couple of weeks with the manager, but there's been some really good, positive training. I'm looking forward to working with him this season and hopefully, we can help the manager and he can help us, so both sides benefit. We look positive, and he looks positive. So I think having a positive mentality in the locker room and on the field is very important. I think right now we have that positive attitude, and it's good to see that.

We've been focusing on the preseason. Everyone knows what they have to do, and we're working hard to improve. Pre-season is a time of work, and that's why everyone is doing very well, working hard and playing games. The guys look very positive and happy, and that's the most important thing. By signing a new four-year contract at Tottenham, Son has certainly added to his positive outlook. If he can stay until 2025, his tenth year with Spurs, it is clear that Son has found a good home in North London.

I am very grateful to be here and it is an honor to play for this club. I believe we can achieve great things in another four years. Yes, if I can stay another four years, but soccer never promises that, so let's see. That's why I contracted because I don't want to move somewhere else. I could stay here for ten years or more, you never know what the future holds, but I try to focus every day and improve every day and every season. I think the attitude is more important than the credentials ten years from now.

In the 2020/21 season, despite all his quirks, Son had the most goals and the second most assists one less than the previous season. He also set a new record along with Harry Kane: The two scored the most goals together in a single Premier League Football season (14). But despite these numbers, the 29-year-old is always looking to improve.

We are offering tickets for Qatar Football World Cup admirers can get Qatar Football World Cup Tickets through our trusted online ticketing marketplace. Worldwideticketsandhospitality.com is the most reliable source to book Qatar Football World Cup Hospitality tickets and Football World Cup Packages & Sign Up for the latest Tickets alerts.

[sageglobalresponse]

Tony Elumelu @58: The Man, impacting the world positively through Entrepreneur, and Philanthropist

Charles Ajunwa writes that Tony Elumelu who lately attained 58 Decades, is affecting the world positively through his philanthropic activities

If you partake in entrepreneurial discussions in Nigeria or around the continent, sooner or later, the name Tony O. Elumelu will come up.

Obviously, other titles will pop up as well, however, you’re going to find that none is handled with as much respect and esteem as the title Tony Elumelu is.

Maybe it stems from the collective remembering of his famous dogged entrepreneurial conclusion of turning a hugely failing Nigerian bank about within a rather short time, a move that took the country and market analysts.

Or perhaps it is the fact when you look around you, you are bound to encounter people and businesses which have been grazed by the lush generosity of Elumelu’s philanthropic pursuits.

And those by no means satisfactorily explain the extent of his influence. As he turned 58, taking a look at his life, functions, and achievement is rewarding to set out on.

The man

Born on March 22, 1963, in Jos, Plateau State — a town that’s interestingly the birthplace of some of Nigeria’s brightest minds across sectors like politics, sports, literature, music, broadcasting, and business — Elumelu is a native of Onicha-Ukwu in Delta State. He is also a homegrown achievement.

He gained two Economics degrees from Ambrose Alli University and the University of Lagos and kicked off his career in banking in 1985 as a helping Youth Corps member in Union Bank.

Just over a decade later, he required that much-lauded step of leading a small group of investors to acquire the failing Standard Trust Bank he grew and merged in 2005 to become United Bank for Africa with dozens of subsidiaries in Africa, Paris, London, and New York.

Married to medical physician Awele Vivien Elumelu, and blessed with seven children together, a great deal has been mentioned of Elumelu by a lot of men about his jovial and kind demeanour towards his peers and non-peers alike.

The Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is the very best way to establish true prosperity.” — Tony O. Elumelu, CON

It had been the inherent entrepreneurial drive that led him to do the unthinkable: obtaining a failing bank and turning it around into a massive success story.

The same drive led him to establish Heirs Holdings in 2010 upon his retirement as Group Managing Director from the United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc.

Heirs Holdings (HH) is an investment firm owned and mostly run by the Elumelu household. HH intends to enhance lives and change Africa and can so through investment in businesses in the financial services, power, oil & gas, property & hospitality and health care industries.

Heirs Holdings’ operations are based on an economic philosophy regarded as’Africapitalism’, a concept first introduced by Tony Elumelu in 2011 and was formally launched in 2014 at Abuja at the World Economic Forum in Africa.

Africapitalism suggests private sector-led long-term investment in Africa by Africans throughout the promotion of entrepreneurship social venture and local value creation.

It’s on the idea of Africapitalism that the tenets of the philanthropic activities through The Tony Elumelu Foundation are primarily based.

The company version of Heirs Holdings could be traced straight back to Elumelu’s famous rejuvenation of Standard Trust Bank Plc and the eventual merger with UBA.

The company primarily undertakes three kinds of clients/projects: underperforming assets with the aim of preventing growth and endurance, entrepreneurial start-ups, and Joint Venture Partnerships.

The Philanthropist

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to describe Elumelu as Africa’s most prominent philanthropist, a description lately made by members of the base on his birthday in March.

For how else could you describe a man whose efforts in dressing and funding Africa’s youthful and smartest entrepreneurs has directly impacted 9,000 young people around 54 African countries?

Launched in 2010 as a part of his devotion to the Africapitalism thought, Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) is a subsidiary of Heirs Holdings which intends to create new generations of entrepreneurs in Africa. Since its inception, the Foundation has been active in all 54 African nations.

The aims of the organisation tend to be chased through different avenues like research, policy advocacy, communities, and convenings developed to nurture, promote, or finance creation among young Africans.

Examples of these programmes include the annually-organised TEF Forum, a large gathering of entrepreneurs in Africa, in addition to TEFConnect, an electronic hub for entrepreneurs in Africa.

Tony Elumelu, through the TEF, employs his access and massive network in private and public sector circle as resources with which doors are opened and chances for wealth creation are all made available for everybody.

From 2015, Elumelu’s Foundation had introduced that the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme, on which he committed $100 million to finance and build the capacity of 10,000 African marketers over in a decade.

Perhaps among the most common compliments, the programme has received is about unique quality for and dedication for identifying, mentoring and financing entrepreneurs around Africa.

The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme currently partners together and shares its strong advanced platform with international organisations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The African Development Bank (AfDB), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and GIZ, in generating and sustaining valuable rise and effect on the country.

In addition to TEF Elumelu participates in additional non-profit ventures like the Bretton Woods Committee, the Nigeria Leadership Initiative (NLI), Africa Energy Leaders’ Group (AELG), the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI) with Tony Blair, also Called the Blair-Elumelu Fellowship Programme.

In the end, the spread and level of effect that Elumelu has had on the lives of individuals on the continent are unrivalled, and his attempts continue to propagate with every passing year.

Though wealthy, Elumelu’s net worth does not now rank among the top 50 on the continent, yet it can be contended that his prosperity has offered the most value.

As he recently turned 58, possibly his selfless support and dogged attempts will satisfactorily pass the lesson to everyone who fails to find out them: a wealthy man is just as wealthy as the level to which his wealth betters his instant society.

For his contributions, he’s received many awards and honours including two federal honours — Member of the Order of the Federal Republic (MFR) in 2003, and Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON).

In 2012. Back in 2009, he was asked to serve on the Presidential Committee on the Global Financial Crisis by the then President of Nigeria, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

He has received several Lifetime Achievement Awards in the organisation across the world and appeared on several prominent lists on publications and publications.

But maybe what he is most deserving of all would be the kind words, gratitude, and testimonies his direct heirs give him, some of which are quoted below:

“Dear Tony and the Foundation team, we’re humbled by your INSPIRING course towards enabling entrepreneurs. Many times, in the journey of an entrepreneur, we often overlook ourselves.

However, you believed in us. You re-ignited that fire in our gut to make certain that failure isn’t possible! We wish you good health and long life to keep on touching lives for that’s the sole purpose in life”

Commercial/Retail

“They could have given us some cash and left us to do anything we pleased, however, the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme is past the capital.

They’ve taken me from where I was with my small business and are, slowly but surely, moulding me and my company to a fortified powerhouse that can stand strong and be a pioneer in vogue in Africa.”

“Due to Tony Elumelu and TEF, I have achieved major milestones using the first half of 10,000.

My firm was able to partner with two big chemical companies, commenced manufacturing of my packaging, bought a vending machine, employed more staff and started market testing of my merchandise JO-JO powdered detergent, JO-JO liquid laundry, Diamond shampoo and shampoo is also set in motion.

All this I’ve attained with just the first half, and together with the second half, the merchandise will be mass-produced and advertised nationally.

I am quite grateful to Mr Tony Elumelu for thinking in my dreams rather than simply thinking, but also giving me the training and funding to make it a reality”

#sage response #tony elumelu #uba #entrepreneur #tef #jo-jo #aelg #nli #nigeria #birthday #undp

[wineanddinosaur]

Anchor Union, One Year In: Lessons Learned at the Legendary Brewery

“Yes… yes… yes… yes…”

On Dec. 20, 2019, workers at Anchor Brewing Company, a venerable Bay Area icon that brewed its first beer for thirsty San Franciscans nearly four decades before the Golden Gate Bridge was built, gathered in the brewery to ratify their first-ever collective bargaining agreement. It was a union contract years in the making — the product of methodical organizing that began in 2018, followed by a contentious public drive and negotiations that spanned the entire 2019 calendar.

Now, it was up to the rest of the workforce — about 70 employees across the brewery’s production facilities, taproom, and tour guide corps — to sign off on the deal. A worker in white coveralls pulled ballots from a cardboard box jerry-rigged to purpose.

“Yes… yes… yes…”

All told, 94 percent of eligible Anchor workers voted in favor of the contract that day. The deal was done; Anchor Union had its first contract. It was a monumental moment for the American brewing industry, and particularly the craft beer business within it. After all, though Anchor had been acquired by the Japanese conglomerate Sapporo in 2017, it still holds a revered place in hagiographies of the American craft beer movement. That workers at Anchor had successfully organized a union, won their drive and election, and ratified a contract — and did it all without getting summarily laid off or unceremoniously abandoned for a cheaper labor market elsewhere — was a signal that it could be done in other craft-oriented businesses.

As one Anchor worker told me in the early stages of the 2019 drive: “Young working people will be able to see us and be like, ‘if these fucking drunk guys can do it, like anybody can.”

Can they? To be sure, in the year-plus since Anchor workers gathered in Potrero Hill to ink their inaugural deal, the craft food and beverage industries have seen a spate of organizing. Just a couple months later, in February 2020, 140 workers at San Francisco’s Tartine Bakery & Manufactory went public with their own union drive. As the pandemic took hold, organizing efforts popped up at craft food-service and -production shops across the continent: at Southern California’s Augie’s Coffee locations in June; in Colectivo Coffee’s Chicago locations in August; and at Vancouver’s Turning Point Brewery, owned by Labatt Brewing Company and better known for its Stanley Park brand, in October; and so on.

But while organized labor has made inroads this year with the baristas, distillers, and cheesemongers (et al) that produce the food and drink we love, it has stumbled on the path, too. For a showcase of labor organizing highs and lows in the craft F&B space, look no further than Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

Union drives at Minneapolis distilleries Tattersall (announced July 2020), and Stilheart and Lawless (September) yielded recognition from owners of those shops; as did the push at the city’s Fair State Brewing Cooperative that same month. But drives at Spyhouse Coffee Roasters and the Beer Hall at Surly Brewing Company (both organized with United HERE’s Local 17, which handled the other Twin Cities efforts mentioned here) came up short, victims of the turnover, apathy, and management pressure tactics that so often stop union campaigns in their tracks.

“I think I needed more knowledge,” lamented Taylor Roth, a former Spyhouse barista, speaking with me in November 2020, a few weeks after the drive at the twee chain had been defeated. “I knew what good the union would do, but I think if I had more specifics on what our jobs would look like after the vote, then maybe it would have been easier to talk to people about the benefits of the union.”

As Roth and other pro-union workers have discovered, that ambiguity can make it difficult to get buy-in from skeptical colleagues, most of whom have joined the workforce in a period of almost unmitigated decline in union density in America. In the hospitality sector, where language barriers, wage theft, and on-the-job harassment (from both customers and colleagues) have fostered a culture of transience, getting coworkers to see upside worth organizing for is especially challenging, with few positive examples to point to.

In December 2020, Anchor Brewing workers celebrated the one-year anniversary of their ratified contract. It’ll remain in force for another two, during which time they’ll begin bargaining for the one that’ll replace it. It’s an ideal moment for Anchor Union members to reflect on how the past year of unionized work went, strategize on what the future holds for organized labor at the storied San Francisco brewery, and evaluate what their union has done for them.

“I probably would be out of a job right now if we didn’t have our union contract,” Blake Dahlstrom, a brewery lab technician and one of Anchor Union’s four shop stewards, says. (Shop stewards are employees who have volunteered to represent the broader workforce to management when issues arise.)

VinePair asked Dahlstrom and her fellow stewards to share their experiences from Year One of Contract One, to learn what unions can — and just as importantly, can’t — do for the production and hospitality workers that produce consumable “craft culture” in this country.

Below are excerpted phone interviews with all four Anchor Union shop stewards. They have been edited, condensed, and organized thematically. Anchor Brewing Company did not respond to repeated requests for interviews with management to provide the company’s perspective for this piece.

1. What has your relationship with the company been like since ratifying the contract last December [2019]?

Blake Dahlstrom, lab technician, 2.5 years at Anchor: The company sees value in the unionization effort. Every single can and bottle that is being produced in 2021 says “Union-made in San Francisco.” Our job as shop stewards is to hold their feet to the fire. If they’re going to brag about the fact that they’re union-made, our job is to make sure that our workers are being treated [with as much care] as the marketing is.

At the end of the day, all I want is for workers to get compensated and treated fairly. I know it’s a hard balancing act on management’s part. … The people who are making decisions are not necessarily on the floor seeing what’s happening. So as shop stewards we have an opportunity to explain to them … that there are tangible solutions.

I’m proud of the fact that we have a positive working relationship with management. It’s not perfect, but it could be worse. But I’m not trying to sugarcoat it; I’m not trying to be friendly with management. I will bring out my fists when I need to bring out my fists. … It’s not there yet. We’re going down every single avenue we possibly can before we get to that option.

Alex Wilson, filtration worker, 5.5 years: As someone who has been at Anchor for a number of years and has seen the situations that led to the push to unionize, I thought that getting everyone voting in favor of the union, making it happen, and negotiating our contracts, was kind of going to be a clean break, and that moving forward, things would be different. Everyone would be able to express the issues we were facing as a workforce, and then we were going to move past that. So the fact that we’re not really past those issues at this point is surprising to me.

This upcoming year, it’s going to be really interesting to see where this relationship between management at Anchor and the union at Anchor goes. With Covid, everything got sidelined and crazy. It’s going to be really interesting to see how much our contract does for us this year.

2. Pay was an issue that you organized around at Anchor. How did you handle pay in the contract, and how has it played out since?

Patrick Machel, packager and bartender, 3 years: When we started [negotiating] the contract, we saw people getting paid really weird rates. So we were like, “Nah, we’re going to have something completely new, a tiered system.” The first tier is the entry tier, like packaging, tour guides, receptionists. … Second tier is a little more in-depth roles, like lab technicians, shift supervisors, specific machine operators. … Tier three is the lead brewers … and tier four is usually the warehouse [workers], like forklift drivers [and] maintenance workers.

There’s a minimum amount [of pay] that everybody in each tier is getting. That way, no one is getting less than that specific number. We wanted to make [pay] more uniform, because before there was no real way to show why [one worker was] getting paid this amount of money, compared to somebody right next to [them.]

Wilson: The raise structure in the contract is staggered, so we got part of our raise this year [2020], and part of it at the beginning of next year [2021]. Then it [will] continue to go up. So I think starting January, [average pay] will have gone up 20 to 25 percent [since the contract went into effect.]

[In a follow-up message, Machel provided more specific figures: The contract provides Anchor’s brewery workers with an across-the-board average raise of 21 percent over three years. For workers at the Public Taps, the bump is 28 percent.]

Robert Salgado, taproom supervisor, 3 years: In my position, I don’t receive tips. So I just get paid an hourly wage. Sometimes, that would be a little discouraging, watching [tipped employees] do less work and make more money. So for me it was more beneficial, because I got a pay raise. … I think it helped out a lot of my coworkers too, because a lot of them were making $15 to 16 an hour. [San Francisco’s minimum wage is $15.] Now they actually have a little bit more money in their pockets. I was making $22 [per hour, before the contract], and then it got raised to $23, and it will be ending at $25 by the end of the contract.

I think it helps. It’s on its way to being enough, With future contracts in the years to come, it will get to being enough. I can say [the pay increase] has made life easier, and more and more attainable.

3. What happened when the pandemic hit? Did the contract’s provisions have an affect on your day-to-day work at Anchor?

Machel: None of us would have a job, I’ll tell you that. We actually did layoffs, but way later [than many other companies in pandemic]. And we bargained with management over that, and actually [won] a pretty decent severance package for everybody [who’d been laid off]. Just having that kind of protection in there [allows us to say], “We’re not gonna back down, we’re gonna get our workers paid.”

Also, half of those people that [were] laid off are working there now because we have something called callback rights, where if you lose a job, and you’re in good standing, you have about two years to get back into that same position before they hire anybody else [if that worker wants to return]. So whenever things started opening back up again and more production was happening, they brought back people based on company seniority through those callback rights.

Dahlstrom: I probably would be out of a job right now if we didn’t have our union contract. It’s been a rough battle because, you know, nobody has a pandemic clause in their contracts. So we’ve had to roll with the punches, work with management, and push where we can push. Our No. 1 thing is we want to make sure our workers are safe, and that they don’t have an onerous workload.

I think the most fascinating news that can be reported is the fact that we had our first and only [pandemic-related] layoff in August: We laid off eight people, almost all of which have either been brought back, or have been offered to be brought back.

Wilson: I continued to work at reduced hours through most of the last number of months, and I recently returned to work full time. There are people who got laid off, for example, and for them, the union contract was a much, much bigger deal, because that situation was [governed] by the contract.

But I mean, there’s no question in my mind that having our contract has been a benefit in every way. There’s no drawback.

4. A typical critique of unions is that they’ll implement a layer of bureaucracy that will hamper innovation and communication. Have you seen that happen at Anchor?

Wilson: Management is now acknowledging that they are bound by the contract in certain ways so they can’t just do anything they want at any time. So in a sense that has improved communication. Now if there is something that’s not going the way it should be, [workers] have a venue to actually express that to management and expect to get a reply. Whereas before, you could complain, but that was gonna fall on deaf ears. That being said, I don’t think that communication has improved to the extent that I had expected that it would.

Having that third party [the ILWU] has only improved things. The company can say “that’s going to make it harder for us to get stuff done, we won’t be able to just come to agreement between the two sides because there’s going to have to be this extra barrier.” But if they were interested in fixing the problems that led to this situation they would have.

Dahlstrom: I think if you asked management, they would say [the union has hindered communication]. But I think the union has offered more solutions than problems for management. The reason why we unionized is because we had X amount of problems for X amount of years, and now with the union, we have a seat at the table. We meet with management every two weeks. There’s been a long-term disconnect between the fourth floor [management], and the first, second, and third floors [production]. That’s been an ongoing issue, and one of the reasons why we unionized. At the end of the day it’s all about communication. And that’s something that we’re fighting for every single day.

5. How much of the gains you’ve made this year do you attribute to your contract, as opposed to the company just being decent?

Machel: We were gearing up to actually open up the bar [when restrictions were lifted in San Francisco], and one of the questions I was bringing up to my manager was, “Are guys going to give us a little bit of backup if we get people that don’t want to wear masks and stuff like that?” She basically was like, “we would much rather our workplace be as strict as possible, so that nobody gets Covid and everybody’s safe, versus getting money from people.”

I want to say that [this] was out of the goodness of their hearts. But in my mind, the contract solidified that — [especially] because we also had a lot of vocal interactions with management. If I worked at another restaurant or another bar that wasn’t unionized, I highly doubt that they would [take those concerns seriously]. They’d be like, “Eh, this is how it is.”

Wilson: The “bureaucracy” that I’m involved in right now is trying to resolve an issue that, if we didn’t have this system in place, wouldn’t get resolved. So [the contract] is just an overall good thing from my perspective.

Salgado: Because we worked hard [on management], we were able to get hazard pay. Anchor wasn’t going to do that naturally, but because we were able to bring it up [to management through the union], we were able to get this because it was in our contract.

We still had to fight with them to get them to [re]hire people. They would try to have a skeleton crew do production on stuff that a normal crew [would be] doing. So because of that, we fought with them: “Look, you need to hire people back, we’re getting complaints from people who are getting way too much of a workload.”

It’s one of those things where they [might] have done it anyway, but we were able to bring it up several times, so they did it before it was too little, too late.

6. What would you tell workers at other craft breweries who are thinking about unionizing?

Dahlstrom: Open up your mind, and be imaginative. You can break the status quo, that’s what that’s what did it for me. If you imagine a world where you can solidify the benefits that you like from your job, whether it’s meal periods, shift beers, “safety doughnuts …” whatever you like about your job you can solidify, and whatever you don’t like you can bargain over and change.

Would you like healthcare? Would you like higher wages? Would you like paid holidays? I mean, when you’re bargaining, you’re gonna have to give up some of those things, but just imagine a world where you could potentially have some of these things.

Salgado: People need to believe in the power of the contract. Believe in the power. For those who believe in it, it does change. If people work hard and they talk to each other, you know, things will change. I think it does work for people who are willing to give a union a shot.

Wilson: It was an unfamiliar situation and we went for it. It’s a learning experience for everyone. But, I mean, frankly, we’re better off now than we were before. I think it was worth it, for sure.

Machel: For a lot of people, this is their first-ever experience with the union, and with this specific union [ILWU Local 6], it’s a little bit hands-off. … It’s mostly based on the workers figuring out what to do next. That can be scary, and it was scary for a lot of us. But we’ve learned through mistakes and victories, and we’re getting better and better at this. And it’s created an even more prideful place of work. It’s created relationships with [coworkers] that would have never happened before. If we have an issue, let’s bring it up. Now, we can actually say something. Instead of just coming to work at a dope company, we’re coming to work at a dope company at a union that we created ourselves.

The article Anchor Union, One Year In: Lessons Learned at the Legendary Brewery appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/anchor-brewing-company-union/

[johnboothus]

Anchor Union One Year In: Lessons Learned at the Legendary Brewery

“Yes… yes… yes… yes…”

On Dec. 20, 2019, workers at Anchor Brewing Company, a venerable Bay Area icon that brewed its first beer for thirsty San Franciscans nearly four decades before the Golden Gate Bridge was built, gathered in the brewery to ratify their first-ever collective bargaining agreement. It was a union contract years in the making — the product of methodical organizing that began in 2018, followed by a contentious public drive and negotiations that spanned the entire 2019 calendar.

Now, it was up to the rest of the workforce — about 70 employees across the brewery’s production facilities, taproom, and tour guide corps — to sign off on the deal. A worker in white coveralls pulled ballots from a cardboard box jerry-rigged to purpose.

“Yes… yes… yes…”

All told, 94 percent of eligible Anchor workers voted in favor of the contract that day. The deal was done; Anchor Union had its first contract. It was a monumental moment for the American brewing industry, and particularly the craft beer business within it. After all, though Anchor had been acquired by the Japanese conglomerate Sapporo in 2017, it still holds a revered place in hagiographies of the American craft beer movement. That workers at Anchor had successfully organized a union, won their drive and election, and ratified a contract — and did it all without getting summarily laid off or unceremoniously abandoned for a cheaper labor market elsewhere — was a signal that it could be done in other craft-oriented businesses.

As one Anchor worker told me in the early stages of the 2019 drive: “Young working people will be able to see us and be like, ‘if these fucking drunk guys can do it, like anybody can.”

Can they? To be sure, in the year-plus since Anchor workers gathered in Potrero Hill to ink their inaugural deal, the craft food and beverage industries have seen a spate of organizing. Just a couple months later, in February 2020, 140 workers at San Francisco’s Tartine Bakery & Manufactory went public with their own union drive. As the pandemic took hold, organizing efforts popped up at craft food-service and -production shops across the continent: at Southern California’s Augie’s Coffee locations in June; in Colectivo Coffee’s Chicago locations in August; and at Vancouver’s Turning Point Brewery, owned by Labatt Brewing Company and better known for its Stanley Park brand, in October; and so on.

But while organized labor has made inroads this year with the baristas, distillers, and cheesemongers (et al) that produce the food and drink we love, it has stumbled on the path, too. For a showcase of labor organizing highs and lows in the craft F&B space, look no further than Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

Union drives at Minneapolis distilleries Tattersall (announced July 2020), and Stilheart and Lawless (September) yielded recognition from owners of those shops; as did the push at the city’s Fair State Brewing Cooperative that same month. But drives at Spyhouse Coffee Roasters and the Beer Hall at Surly Brewing Company (both organized with United HERE’s Local 17, which handled the other Twin Cities efforts mentioned here) came up short, victims of the turnover, apathy, and management pressure tactics that so often stop union campaigns in their tracks.

“I think I needed more knowledge,” lamented Taylor Roth, a former Spyhouse barista, speaking with me in November 2020, a few weeks after the drive at the twee chain had been defeated. “I knew what good the union would do, but I think if I had more specifics on what our jobs would look like after the vote, then maybe it would have been easier to talk to people about the benefits of the union.”

As Roth and other pro-union workers have discovered, that ambiguity can make it difficult to get buy-in from skeptical colleagues, most of whom have joined the workforce in a period of almost unmitigated decline in union density in America. In the hospitality sector, where language barriers, wage theft, and on-the-job harassment (from both customers and colleagues) have fostered a culture of transience, getting coworkers to see upside worth organizing for is especially challenging, with few positive examples to point to.

In December 2020, Anchor Brewing workers celebrated the one-year anniversary of their ratified contract. It’ll remain in force for another two, during which time they’ll begin bargaining for the one that’ll replace it. It’s an ideal moment for Anchor Union members to reflect on how the past year of unionized work went, strategize on what the future holds for organized labor at the storied San Francisco brewery, and evaluate what their union has done for them.

“I probably would be out of a job right now if we didn’t have our union contract,” Blake Dahlstrom, a brewery lab technician and one of Anchor Union’s four shop stewards, says. (Shop stewards are employees who have volunteered to represent the broader workforce to management when issues arise.)

VinePair asked Dahlstrom and her fellow stewards to share their experiences from Year One of Contract One, to learn what unions can — and just as importantly, can’t — do for the production and hospitality workers that produce consumable “craft culture” in this country.

Below are excerpted phone interviews with all four Anchor Union shop stewards. They have been edited, condensed, and organized thematically. Anchor Brewing Company did not respond to repeated requests for interviews with management to provide the company’s perspective for this piece.

1. What has your relationship with the company been like since ratifying the contract last December [2019]?

Blake Dahlstrom, lab technician, 2.5 years at Anchor: The company sees value in the unionization effort. Every single can and bottle that is being produced in 2021 says “Union-made in San Francisco.” Our job as shop stewards is to hold their feet to the fire. If they’re going to brag about the fact that they’re union-made, our job is to make sure that our workers are being treated [with as much care] as the marketing is.

At the end of the day, all I want is for workers to get compensated and treated fairly. I know it’s a hard balancing act on management’s part. … The people who are making decisions are not necessarily on the floor seeing what’s happening. So as shop stewards we have an opportunity to explain to them … that there are tangible solutions.

I’m proud of the fact that we have a positive working relationship with management. It’s not perfect, but it could be worse. But I’m not trying to sugarcoat it; I’m not trying to be friendly with management. I will bring out my fists when I need to bring out my fists. … It’s not there yet. We’re going down every single avenue we possibly can before we get to that option.

Alex Wilson, filtration worker, 5.5 years: As someone who has been at Anchor for a number of years and has seen the situations that led to the push to unionize, I thought that getting everyone voting in favor of the union, making it happen, and negotiating our contracts, was kind of going to be a clean break, and that moving forward, things would be different. Everyone would be able to express the issues we were facing as a workforce, and then we were going to move past that. So the fact that we’re not really past those issues at this point is surprising to me.

This upcoming year, it’s going to be really interesting to see where this relationship between management at Anchor and the union at Anchor goes. With Covid, everything got sidelined and crazy. It’s going to be really interesting to see how much our contract does for us this year.

2. Pay was an issue that you organized around at Anchor. How did you handle pay in the contract, and how has it played out since?

Patrick Machel, packager and bartender, 3 years: When we started [negotiating] the contract, we saw people getting paid really weird rates. So we were like, “Nah, we’re going to have something completely new, a tiered system.” The first tier is the entry tier, like packaging, tour guides, receptionists. … Second tier is a little more in-depth roles, like lab technicians, shift supervisors, specific machine operators. … Tier three is the lead brewers … and tier four is usually the warehouse [workers], like forklift drivers [and] maintenance workers.

There’s a minimum amount [of pay] that everybody in each tier is getting. That way, no one is getting less than that specific number. We wanted to make [pay] more uniform, because before there was no real way to show why [one worker was] getting paid this amount of money, compared to somebody right next to [them.]

Wilson: The raise structure in the contract is staggered, so we got part of our raise this year [2020], and part of it at the beginning of next year [2021]. Then it [will] continue to go up. So I think starting January, [average pay] will have gone up 20 to 25 percent [since the contract went into effect.]

[In a follow-up message, Machel provided more specific figures: The contract provides Anchor’s brewery workers with an across-the-board average raise of 21 percent over three years. For workers at the Public Taps, the bump is 28 percent.]

Robert Salgado, taproom supervisor, 3 years: In my position, I don’t receive tips. So I just get paid an hourly wage. Sometimes, that would be a little discouraging, watching [tipped employees] do less work and make more money. So for me it was more beneficial, because I got a pay raise. … I think it helped out a lot of my coworkers too, because a lot of them were making $15 to 16 an hour. [San Francisco’s minimum wage is $15.] Now they actually have a little bit more money in their pockets. I was making $22 [per hour, before the contract], and then it got raised to $23, and it will be ending at $25 by the end of the contract.

I think it helps. It’s on its way to being enough, With future contracts in the years to come, it will get to being enough. I can say [the pay increase] has made life easier, and more and more attainable.

3. What happened when the pandemic hit? Did the contract’s provisions have an affect on your day-to-day work at Anchor?

Machel: None of us would have a job, I’ll tell you that. We actually did layoffs, but way later [than many other companies in pandemic]. And we bargained with management over that, and actually [won] a pretty decent severance package for everybody [who’d been laid off]. Just having that kind of protection in there [allows us to say], “We’re not gonna back down, we’re gonna get our workers paid.”

Also, half of those people that [were] laid off are working there now because we have something called callback rights, where if you lose a job, and you’re in good standing, you have about two years to get back into that same position before they hire anybody else [if that worker wants to return]. So whenever things started opening back up again and more production was happening, they brought back people based on company seniority through those callback rights.

Dahlstrom: I probably would be out of a job right now if we didn’t have our union contract. It’s been a rough battle because, you know, nobody has a pandemic clause in their contracts. So we’ve had to roll with the punches, work with management, and push where we can push. Our No. 1 thing is we want to make sure our workers are safe, and that they don’t have an onerous workload.

I think the most fascinating news that can be reported is the fact that we had our first and only [pandemic-related] layoff in August: We laid off eight people, almost all of which have either been brought back, or have been offered to be brought back.

Wilson: I continued to work at reduced hours through most of the last number of months, and I recently returned to work full time. There are people who got laid off, for example, and for them, the union contract was a much, much bigger deal, because that situation was [governed] by the contract.

But I mean, there’s no question in my mind that having our contract has been a benefit in every way. There’s no drawback.

4. A typical critique of unions is that they’ll implement a layer of bureaucracy that will hamper innovation and communication. Have you seen that happen at Anchor?

Wilson: Management is now acknowledging that they are bound by the contract in certain ways so they can’t just do anything they want at any time. So in a sense that has improved communication. Now if there is something that’s not going the way it should be, [workers] have a venue to actually express that to management and expect to get a reply. Whereas before, you could complain, but that was gonna fall on deaf ears. That being said, I don’t think that communication has improved to the extent that I had expected that it would.

Having that third party [the ILWU] has only improved things. The company can say “that’s going to make it harder for us to get stuff done, we won’t be able to just come to agreement between the two sides because there’s going to have to be this extra barrier.” But if they were interested in fixing the problems that led to this situation they would have.

Dahlstrom: I think if you asked management, they would say [the union has hindered communication]. But I think the union has offered more solutions than problems for management. The reason why we unionized is because we had X amount of problems for X amount of years, and now with the union, we have a seat at the table. We meet with management every two weeks. There’s been a long-term disconnect between the fourth floor [management], and the first, second, and third floors [production]. That’s been an ongoing issue, and one of the reasons why we unionized. At the end of the day it’s all about communication. And that’s something that we’re fighting for every single day.

5. How much of the gains you’ve made this year do you attribute to your contract, as opposed to the company just being decent?

Machel: We were gearing up to actually open up the bar [when restrictions were lifted in San Francisco], and one of the questions I was bringing up to my manager was, “Are guys going to give us a little bit of backup if we get people that don’t want to wear masks and stuff like that?” She basically was like, “we would much rather our workplace be as strict as possible, so that nobody gets Covid and everybody’s safe, versus getting money from people.”

I want to say that [this] was out of the goodness of their hearts. But in my mind, the contract solidified that — [especially] because we also had a lot of vocal interactions with management. If I worked at another restaurant or another bar that wasn’t unionized, I highly doubt that they would [take those concerns seriously]. They’d be like, “Eh, this is how it is.”

Wilson: The “bureaucracy” that I’m involved in right now is trying to resolve an issue that, if we didn’t have this system in place, wouldn’t get resolved. So [the contract] is just an overall good thing from my perspective.

Salgado: Because we worked hard [on management], we were able to get hazard pay. Anchor wasn’t going to do that naturally, but because we were able to bring it up [to management through the union], we were able to get this because it was in our contract.

We still had to fight with them to get them to [re]hire people. They would try to have a skeleton crew do production on stuff that a normal crew [would be] doing. So because of that, we fought with them: “Look, you need to hire people back, we’re getting complaints from people who are getting way too much of a workload.”

It’s one of those things where they [might] have done it anyway, but we were able to bring it up several times, so they did it before it was too little, too late.

6. What would you tell workers at other craft breweries who are thinking about unionizing?

Dahlstrom: Open up your mind, and be imaginative. You can break the status quo, that’s what that’s what did it for me. If you imagine a world where you can solidify the benefits that you like from your job, whether it’s meal periods, shift beers, “safety doughnuts …” whatever you like about your job you can solidify, and whatever you don’t like you can bargain over and change.

Would you like healthcare? Would you like higher wages? Would you like paid holidays? I mean, when you’re bargaining, you’re gonna have to give up some of those things, but just imagine a world where you could potentially have some of these things.

Salgado: People need to believe in the power of the contract. Believe in the power. For those who believe in it, it does change. If people work hard and they talk to each other, you know, things will change. I think it does work for people who are willing to give a union a shot.

Wilson: It was an unfamiliar situation and we went for it. It’s a learning experience for everyone. But, I mean, frankly, we’re better off now than we were before. I think it was worth it, for sure.

Machel: For a lot of people, this is their first-ever experience with the union, and with this specific union [ILWU Local 6], it’s a little bit hands-off. … It’s mostly based on the workers figuring out what to do next. That can be scary, and it was scary for a lot of us. But we’ve learned through mistakes and victories, and we’re getting better and better at this. And it’s created an even more prideful place of work. It’s created relationships with [coworkers] that would have never happened before. If we have an issue, let’s bring it up. Now, we can actually say something. Instead of just coming to work at a dope company, we’re coming to work at a dope company at a union that we created ourselves.

The article Anchor Union, One Year In: Lessons Learned at the Legendary Brewery appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/anchor-brewing-company-union/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/anchor-union-one-year-in-lessons-learned-at-the-legendary-brewery

[readyaiminquire]

Blood for the Blood God.

The year of our Lord two-thousand and twenty, or 20-20 in common vernacular, has been a wild ride. It’s been the kind of year when time compresses and six months simultaneously feels like six weeks and six years. The year started with an almost-war, a continent almost burning to the ground, then a pandemic, and now we’re almost back where we started: a(nother) continent is on fire, the pandemic is coming back for its own electric boogaloo, and perhaps this year will include a war after all. To misquote the LEGO Movie: everything is awful. What may be at the top of most of our shit-lists at the moment is the growth of the COVID-19 infections, despite what has felt like a constant bombardment of information, PSAs, commentary, and debate surrounding this global pandemic.

 Most countries had a time-out over the summer, but now we’re headed back into the ring, so to speak, to see how this next round plays out. This long and rather mixed metaphor is, in effect, to say that across the globe people are deeply aware of not only the COVID-19 virus, but the risks associated with it, and the threat it poses to society. Which in my mind raises one question: what brought people to swarm shops once lockdown was eased? What caused such a quick return, and willingness to return, to business-as-usual: to offices, to pubs, to shops, to restaurants? With everybody being aware of the risks that still hover above us, surely one would expect to see much more caution? Here, I will argue that under capitalism shopping – and consumption more generally – functions as a cultural equivalent to sacrificial rites, and under late-capitalism more specifically, this form of sacrifice becomes more closely tied to the individual subject. With the uncertainty hanging above us all at the moment, sacrificial rites as a means to pacify a Divine Other becomes a completely rational thing to do – despite the apparent risks of breaking social distancing measures, individual action becomes key to managing the uncertainty of the present future.

We’re all aware of the general functioning of a capitalist economy, specifically how it is prone to crises when there isn’t enough growth, and therefore keeping the machinery going through spending in one form or another is key. I am not going to comment or analyse this because, frankly, I am not qualified for that particular discussion. If you want to read a critique of capitalism, growth, and crises, I might suggest turning to someone like David Harvey and his work on the ‘spatial fix’.

  Indeed, as much as our current economic-political system maintains its economic imperative through spending and the flow of capital, so, too, does it create sociocultural imperatives. Though these imperatives have emerged to support and work in concert with the broader economic imperatives, they exist in a separate arena, of course. While the economic arena is driven by the cold, harsh economic calculus of PNLs, the social and cultural have a different currency: meaning. Anthropologist Danny Miller makes the case for shopping – that is, the leisure activity of spending hard-earned cash on ‘frivolous’ or luxury items – being the equivalent to a rite for sacrifice in contemporary capitalist societies.

  This is a bold statement, you might think, but Miller’s argument is rather convincing. Sacrifice, firstly, shouldn’t be understood by its action, but rather its purpose. Therefore, the equivalent of ‘sacrifice’ across cultures may look wildly different, but they fulfil the same function. What Miller argues is that through shopping, “the labour of production is turned into the process of consumption”. In other words, shopping is done specifically to spend the money we have made in order to consume. The purpose of sacrifice is to establish or maintain a link with a divine entity or otherwise larger-than-human forces. This connection exists to elicit protection, pacification, or otherwise positive outcomes for the society which engages in said sacrificial rites. In the case of contemporary capitalism, what is sacrificed is money, that we earn with our bodies (labour), to maintain the economy as a near-divine force. In turn, The Economy takes care of our future income: through economic booms. Viewed from this perspective, shopping doesn’t function so differently from a farmer sacrificing some of his harvests to ensure larger harvests down the line.

  This consumption, Miller notes, shouldn’t be read as “mere” consumption, or as consumption born from pure pragmatism (indeed, not all buying of goods constitutes shopping). The shopping/sacrifice that he discusses is one that from its very inception is understood as either an improvement or at the very least, a maintenance of society at large. The object of consumption is used to constitute a material connection to the divine force. This material connection is indeed key, as we must understand the sacrifice to be both in the material object being consumed, and the act of consumption itself. In other words, the performance of shopping is equally important. This might explain why online shopping doesn’t quite scratch the same itch: it lacks performativity. It is, in a sense, closer to “mere” consumption. This sounds far-fetched, without a doubt, and extremely abstracted, but bear with me.

  One of the defining aspects of late capitalism is that everything either has been commodified or is potentially understood as a commodity: from good ol’ resources, to human labour, and more abstract concepts like personal identity. By consuming goods, be they clothes, or where we buy food, the restaurants we frequent and so on, we do not only consume the goods themselves, but we also use this pattern of consumption as a means to establish, re-establish, and reproduce our personal identities. As Jill Fisher notes: “[T]he late capitalist economy has created a structure in which our lives and bodies have been violently commodified”.

  Understanding this degree of commodification through Marilyn Strathern’s seminal work The self in self-decoration, a potentially hidden set of processes begin to emerge. Strathern argues that decorating the body doesn’t necessarily serve to highlight the body itself, but to hide it. Just as “the body hides the inner self […] [Strathern] argue[s] that the physical body is disguised by decorations precisely because the self is one of their messages”. In more straightforward English, decorating the body serves to hide it specifically so that one’s ‘true self’ – what cannot be typically seen  – can emerge; one’s individual subjectivity.

  Applying this to late capitalism, the consumption of goods becomes a means through which we assert our sense of individual subjectivity (and take note of this being individual, it will be important later). The consumption of goods, therefore, establishes a metaphysical connection between ourselves and capital, as it is only through capital that we are capable of asserting our own independent selves. Shopping, thus, becomes the necessary prerequisite to such consumption, the act that sacrifices our hard-earned cash facilitating the consumption that connects us with the Divine Other of Capital.

How does this relate to the COVID-19 experience? As I mentioned at the start, people are, broadly speaking, aware of the risks that such a pandemic poses. However, much of this is undermined by the presence of several uncertainties in how this information is both presented and understood: uncertainties with regards to the virus itself, or of the economic uncertainties, the social impact, and the future itself. Typically, scientific (or specialist) knowledge has existed to legitimise governmental or state action, however, in times of great(er) uncertainty, this paradigm breaks down and such legitimation cannot take place. What we, as subjects, are left with is a sense of uncertainty and that something needs to be done, but without any clear sense of what this ought to be.

  As anthropologist Mary Douglas outlines in her work on risk, the risk calculus has been individualised, like much of society at large, after the emergence of neoliberalism. The doing of the something mentioned above, therefore, falls to the individual, rather than any collective, though what this something is remains unclear. Here, the link between the individual and the Divine Other comes into focus. Much like the uncertainty that surrounds the virus itself, there is also a lot of uncertainty around how capital actually works: most people broadly understand capitalist economic structures, but not beyond the general. Seen from this perspective, the drive to go out and shop: to buy new clothes, go to restaurants or pubs, and in general to spend money, becomes not so much an articulation of ‘Western overconsumption’, but a genuinely sympathetic and rational drive to re-assert some control over a situation marred with feelings of uncertainty and lack of direction for individual action. This latter point is particularly damning in late capitalism given the onus placed on individual choice as being valued above all else; the collective action required to handle a pandemic like this requires the opposite sociocultural responses that many of us have been inculcated to understand as responses at all.

  However, there is without a doubt a hidden dimension to this sacrifice, which is far more implicit and therefore not as clear, particularly as it is a result of circumstance rather than design. By engaging in our ritual shopping, we’re opening the door to additional COVID-19 spread. The culturally driven ‘need’ to maintain our connection with Capital (spurred on and reinforced by politicians, pundits, and indeed capital itself) becomes detrimental to what we, through these individual actions, are attempting to achieve. Instead, we’re entering a stage of meta-sacrifice, whereby we carry out the rites to ritually exchange our hard-earned cash for goods to consume, but due to the sheer scale of shopping and consumption taking place we are also indirectly sacrificing the weakest in society: the elderly, those with underlying conditions, and so on. This individually-driven response in dealing with our collective uncertainties appears, then, to come with the implicit acceptance that some individuals will simply be lost in the process.

  At the end of the day, we neither understand the intricate processes of economics nor epidemiology, and alas we find ourselves in a moment where the economists and epidemiologists themselves do not have clear ideas of what will happen next. We’re stuck in a quagmire of uncertainty, with a need for individual action. Shopping, despite the continued threat of COVID-19 and a second wave emerging as I write it, is not merely an outlet of individualistic greed or rabid hyper-consumerism. Instead, with shopping and consumption understood through the framework of sacrifice, as a rite to pacify a Divine Other and, through an all-important individualisation of such action, re-establish not only our own connection with this Other, it emerges as a response to the uncertainty that hangs over us all. Haven’t we been told that shopping and spending money might keep the (alas, inevitable) economic crisis at bay? But at what additional cost, specifically a cost we might not see directly? If blood is for the blood god, capital is without a doubt for Capital.

Selected bibliography

Douglas, M. 1994 Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural. Theory Milton Park: Routledge.

Fisher, J. 2002 “Tattooing the Body, Marking Culture”. in: Body & Society 8(4) pp. 91-107.

Miller, D. 2013 A Theory of Shopping. Hoboken: Wiley.

Strathern, M. 1979 “The Self in Self-Decoration”. in: Oceania 49(4) pp. 241-257.

[asfeedin]

How This Supermom Leveraged Branding To Quit Corporate, Travel The World, And Build A 7-Figure Business

Meet Rhonda Swan, the CEO & Founder of the Unstoppable Branding Agency, international speaker, and … [+] bestselling author dedicated to helping her clients create “sexy” brands that are profitable, credible, and PR-worthy.

Mirza Nurman

Your brand is your business birthmark: it’s how you can differentiate yourself over anyone else, build deep connections with your audience, grow your community, and quickly become a credible authority figure in your space. The problem is, there’s a lot of noise saturating the market right now… and very few people are doing branding right.

Enter Rhonda Swan, the CEO & Founder of the Unstoppable Branding Agency, international speaker, and bestselling author dedicated to helping her clients create “sexy” brands that are profitable, credible, and PR-worthy.

Swan has built several multi 7-figure businesses, and has spent the last 12 years traveling the world full-time with her daughter and husband.

What’s most impressive about Swan is her tenacity to help women step into their power and go after their dreams. All of this started with a vision she had to raise her daughter and never put her in daycare.

As far as powerful momma’s go, Swan takes the cake. In this exclusive interview, she shares her insights on what it takes to build multiple 7-figure empires, turn your knowledge into an online business, and rise past your struggles to create a dream life you’re proud of.

Celinne Da Costa: Tell us about your background.

Swan: I was born in Detroit, Michigan to a naive 19-year-old mom and an unreliable 20-year-old father who used me and my mom as decoys to steal and cover up his drug addiction and derelict ways. My turbulent childhood was peppered with moving houses, car accidents, and jail visits.

Although today I attribute a large part of my drive to my chaotic upbringing, growing up I was plagued by a deep-rooted fear that I would turn out like my father unless I maintained absolute control over every area of my life.

I channeled my insecurities into becoming a gifted athlete so I could excel and get noticed. I got a full ride scholarship to college, played for the USA Women’s National Softball Team, and competed as a bodybuilder. I was obsessed with staying in peak performance and controlling others’ perception of me. 

From the outside I looked perfect, composed, and like I had it all together; but deep inside I was angry, scared, doubting myself, and struggling with an eating disorder for nearly 10 years. I yearned to feel supported and acknowledged by my parents and not have to be the “adult” making decisions all the time. It took years for me to break free from all the stories I was telling myself and realize that I was born into my circumstances for a reason: to help women struggling with self-worth step into their power.

I was born into my circumstances for a reason: to help women struggling with self-worth step into … [+] their power.

Mirza Nurman & Ryerson Anselmo

Da Costa: What was your journey from corporate executive to multi seven-figure online business owner?

Swan: I used to lay in bed at night and visualize being hired by a big corporation, with a corner office and a high profile position, in search of the “American Dream” that I had been programmed to want. I didn’t know it then, but this was another thing I wanted to win so I could prove that I was worthy.

My first job post-MBA was at one of the largest Pharma corporations in the world, where I was responsible for over ½ a million in advertising and sales campaigns each quarter. I thought it was a dream come true, until one Monday morning when a meeting with my boss Jane turned my life around. 

Jane was the impeccably groomed top executive that I dreamed of becoming one day. We all know this woman: her hair and nails were always done, and her bag matched her shoes perfectly.

Ten minutes into the meeting, an employee tried to quietly enter through the back. “You’re LATE”, Jane startled us as she yelled across the room.

“I’m sorry Jane, but I just returned from maternity leave and had to drop my 6-week-old baby off at daycare, it was a difficult morning.” The woman apologized, but Jane wanted nothing to do with it.

“If you want to keep your job, you’ll never be late again.”

Something inside me snapped — I realized that if I wanted to be a mother one day, I couldn’t have someone else raise my child just so I could fulfill my need for success. 

That day, I made a vow to replace my income and never put my child in daycare. 

Three months later, I’d left my 6-figure corporate position with a vision to build a business. I maxed out every credit card and poured $24,700 into a direct sales company where I could license and sell personal development programs and build my brand along the way.

I thought this was my ticket out. 

I went hard with my vision to create a new life that would allow me to work from home and raise a child. I called 3,000 leads in those first 3 months and never made a sale. I was devastated and started to second guess my decision to leave corporate. After experiencing so much success, I didn’t expect running my own company would be so difficult.

One day, my mentor told me to stop putting dollar signs on people’s foreheads and see them as people with lives that I could help. I broke through, closed that month with $37,000, replaced my income, and retired my husband within the first year. We grossed over 1 million in sales for the next three years.

“I realized that if I wanted to be a mother one day, I couldn’t have someone else raise my child … [+] just so I could fulfill my need for success.”

Mirza Nurman & Ryerson Anselmo

Da Costa: What were the biggest challenges you faced?

Swan: I’d love to say it was all sunshine and roses after that, but three years into building our company, we decided to invest all our savings into a large golf course development project and lost everything the day that my daughter was born.

At the time, we were living in a ritzy California community of high-profile people like Deepak Chopra and Frank Kern, with two Mercedes in the driveway and not enough in our bank account to buy a $5 burrito. I was heartbroken and distraught: bringing a child into this world without having worries and fear around money was everything we’d worked for.

It took this huge loss for us to realize that our bank accounts didn’t make us better parents. Having nothing got us very clear on who we were and the values we held. We could have easily gone back to corporate to rebuild but instead, we stayed true to our desire to give our child the best quality of love and support.

We made the decision to sell everything and leave the USA to travel. We left with exactly $12,682.62 to our names with a vision and a vow to show the world that you don’t need to have a lot of money in the bank to be good parents, make a difference, and rebuild your life. 

It’s been 12 years since we left San Diego, and we’ve lived in 50+ countries and 6 continents while building multiple 7-figure empires. My company, The Unstoppable Branding Agency, is my way to live out my purpose by being the best role model to my daughter and showing other women that when they unleash their voice, they can build a 6 & 7 figure legacy brand. We’ve helped companies, small business owners, executives, and CEOs develop a clear, strong, and “sexy” brand image, message, and media strategy to amplify their brand.

“Get real with your values and what truly matters to you. Your story is the foundation for your … [+] brand.”

Mirza Nurman & Ryerson Anselmo

Da Costa: What advice would you give to women who are looking to grow their own successful online businesses?

Don’t try to make it as hard as I did! I grinded so hard and put pressure on myself to prove my worth, which was exhausting. There’s better ways to reach similar levels of success.

First, connect with who you are and identify what part of your past may be holding you back from greatness. Look in the mirror and tell yourself how valuable you are. If the person in the mirror doesn’t agree with what you say, then work on those parts. Personal development changed who I was from the inside out. 

Second, get real with your values and what truly matters to you. Your story is the foundation for your brand: so get clear on what your bigger “why” is (mine was to be a present mother for my daughter), and how you can use your gifts to make someone’s life easier.

Third, turn your knowledge into products and services you can sell. The world has changed so much and social media allows us to connect and touch others’ lives with our gifts through content. Today, you can productize your knowledge by creating a course and sell it to anyone in the world.

My mission is to show women that if they have a dream or vision, they can make it happen. You just have to create a plan, believe in yourself, and take the first step. If you’re going to create a brand, create a sexy brand, and if you’re going to be anything… be unstoppable!

Source link

Tags: 7Figure, Branding, Build, Business, corporate, Leveraged, Quit, Supermom, Travel, World

from WordPress https://ift.tt/3eHvIOa via IFTTT

[hysterialyywrites]

The Badlands

(This is where I started.)

“Len?” “Yeah, Dad?” “Can you come over here for a sec?”

I closed my book for the first time that day and walked over to where Dad was standing. It took a while, since our library was unbelievably huge; endless rows of bookshelves filled more than half of the hall, stacked with everything from classics to modern literature. Works as old as Marlowe lay in heaps on the marble floor on one side of the room, facing the novels of Green's generation on the opposite wall. I guess we have too much books and not enough bookshelves. Looking up, ornate chandeliers of the finest Murano glass hang from the ceiling, illuminating the library like a ballroom in the Millenium Hotel. The great oak study table at the far end of the room, where Dad was currently pacing, is covered with maps and history books, with a dozen compasses strewn about on the floor and around the table. “Have you seen the second volume of Lord Craigline's journals? They’re not in their place,” Dad said, scanning the shelf in front of him. I reached under the mess on his table and waved the book in my hand. “You really ought to clean up your desk sometimes,” I said, grinning. He laughed and snatched the book from me, giving me a warm smile. I could see the exhaustion in his eyes. “You're right. I don't even remember the last time we got this place scrubbed clean.” “You thinking of getting a cleaning bot?” “Not a chance. Timothy is the only bot for me. Right, Tim?” A whir of machinery and Tim peeked out from behind a bookshelf. “You're very flattering, Sir Stephen.” I chuckled, “You got that right.” Under our roof, getting a cleaning bot meant giving up responsibilities, which our society basically lacks these days. Cleaning bots do all the chores for everyone. I wouldn't be surprised if a girl my age told me she's never picked up a broom in her life. Tim is different though. He's not a cleaning bot, but rather, he archives all the books in the library and all the books we receive from various Wanderers. He stores them in the little chip drive inside his head. He was a gift from Marty from the next town over. Marty is a robotics engineer and a good friend. He says Tim is for the sole purpose of becoming a portable archive should the books in our library be discovered and burned. He modeled Tim after C-3PO from Star Wars, since Marty was—and still is—a huge fan of Star Wars. The Wanderers, on the other hand, come from everywhere, going everywhere, as swift as night, and they’ve never been caught. They're the companions of Aros, journeying far and wide across the globe, leaving parcels of gifts under porches that Aros has yet to set foot. These gifts are the classics, the novels that no one reads. Most people don’t want these gifts, so they burn them instead. We’re the lot that decided to keep them. Dad went back to the shelf, grabbed two more books, and sat at his desk. I looked around the hall. Dad was skilled at reading maps, and he had lots of them tacked on the walls other than the ones on his desk. If you walked around the sides of the hall, above the shelfless books you'd see maps of France, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Italy, basically every country in Europe, three of them marked in red with dots and squiggles, showing multiple paths branching out from small random towns. In addition to that, somewhere in the library was a gigantic world map, with three red X's on the continent of interest. Dad would focus on one area at a time, drawing and marking like his life depended on it. He's done with Portugal, Spain, and France. The Crowned. Aros was successful. As of the moment, Dad had his eyes on Switzerland, the current Revive. That's where Aros is right now. “12 years,” I blurted out. “Sorry?” Dad said. “You've been doing all this—,” I gestured to the maps on the wall, “—for 12 years now. Aren't you tired?” “Hmm. Never thought about it. I guess I'm tired, but I enjoy what I do. Plus, Aros is a revolutionary hero. How can I not take note of his mission routes?” “Good point.” He says it's for Aros. But I can't help but think he's doing this for something else. Someone else, for that matter. “Come to think of it, Aros is almost finished with Switzerland, isn’t he?” I asked, “it’s close to becoming a Crowned.” He thought about it. “You’re right. The next Revive will either be Italy, Austria, or Germany. He’s moving pretty quickly.” I began thinking. “Do you think I’ll be able to do it?” “Do what?” Dad asked. “What Aros is doing. Reviving.” He looked at me with wide eyes for what felt like forever, then his features softened. He stood up, ruffling my hair and kissing it. “You make me proud in a lot of weird ways.” He didn't exactly answer my question, but I guess that was a yes. “Tim?” Dad called out. “Yes, Sir?” Tim replied. His voice was scratchy and metallic, hollow and whole. “How long until you finish archiving Macbeth?” “Just 45 more minutes Sir. Your Shakespeare collection is insane; it took me three whole days to finish only half of his works!” Dad gave a heartful laugh. “It's okay, Timothy. I know you enjoyed reading his sonnets.” Tim huffed, but gave a small smile. Are bots even capable? “Only you would give Tim such a hard time, Dad.” “He's archiving works of art! Literature of the finest quality! He should feel honored!” I shook my head at my dad's enthusiasm. I was about to turn and leave the hall when my dad called out. “Len, before you leave, can you set the view for me please?” “Anything in particular today?” “Your choice.” I walked towards the entryway where the stairs leading up to the storage room were, and adjusted the dial beside the entrance. The large window screen behind Dad's desk switched views, from an open, calm meadow to a quiet dusk view of New Arcadia, leaves falling at an easy speed, to match the mood of October. Our library was underground, so we didn't have any windows. “Hey, Dad,” I called. “Yes, Len?” “The only thing you're missing from Shakespeare is The Tempest, right?” Dad frowned at this. “Yes that's right. Out of all the salvageable works of the authors back in the Elizabethan era, Shakespeare's is the closest collection we have of completing. The only work missing is The Tempest. It would be a shame if Aros couldn't find a surviving copy to reprint and distribute.” “Where does he get all the copies anyway? And how does he reprint them while running from the government at the same time? And on top of all that, how does he manage to revive individual thought and rebuild human connections?” “No one knows, Len. Other than the Crowned countries and the current Revive, the rest of the world, our town included, know nothing. That's why we're called the Badlands.”                                                             * * * “Selene!” I turned my head towards the sound of my name. Our school's guidance counselor, Ms. Bulkins, was jogging in my direction. “Ms. Bulkins, is something wrong?” I asked. “No no, nothing's wrong,” she replied when she came to a stop in front of me. Blonde hair, blue eyes, fit body, elegant poise; she was a beauty in her early 20s. She had her iPad tucked under one arm, and I thought it polite of her to do so when she spoke to me. “I was just wondering if you've reconsidered accepting the scholarship offer?” “The one in New Washington?” “Yes,” she replied calmly. I gave her a small smile. “I'm sorry Ms. Bulkins, but I won't be changing my mind any time soon. I have other plans for the future.” “Are you sure? It's such a waste! With your excellent grades and outstanding performance in school, you're more than qualified for this offer,” she replied excitedly. “Yes I'm sure, Ms. Bulkins. Thank you for the offer, though. But there are also other students in school who are more than qualified for such an honor.” “Exactly. That's why other universities are pinning for them too.” “Ah, is that so?” “Please reconsider. This would be best for you.” I smiled once again. “Have a nice day, Ms. Bulkins.” I turned to walk past the school gates before she could press me any further.                                                            * * * I was about 5 meters away when the motion sensor above our front door beeped, scanning me as I walked towards the house. I was about one meter away when the front door opened and greeted me. “Welcome home, Miss Selene Pyrrha Gallagher.” I took my shoes off and checked my reflection in the mirror in the hallway. My eyes, warm brown in color, traced the sleek contour of my face, and saw the fiery red of my hair. It would have been a subject of ridicule if not for the population's preoccupied schedules. I stood in the hallway, thinking, that's the thing though; everybody's so busy with work or school that nobody has the time to greet each other in the subway or slap high-fives when they meet in the school hallways. I don't even think we say good morning anymore. It's always straight to work; never a time to stop. I'll even bet that no one in school would know what color my eyes were. They've got their heads down, glued to their iPads or their PDA's 24/7, and if neither of those, they’ve got their eyes on their school books. The informative books. The books that tell only of facts and statistics and not of stories. No one looks up anymore; it's rare. That's been the system for centuries now. The government insists that if we stop, we can never get back to work. “We are a tireless nation, one in a tireless world. We leave no room for triviality, indolence, nor incompetence, for we only seek to become a force to be reckoned with, an unstoppable human race,” the president would say, and it's the same thing everywhere else. The novels became of less significance as time passed, until eventually the government decided to get rid of them, partly because no one reads them anymore, mainly because they’re seen as a hindrance to the government’s system. “Hey, Dad,” I greeted as I walked into the kitchen. “Hi, Len. Anything new in school today?” “Same old things everyday.” He sighed. “How I wish things would change in this place.” “Ms. Bulkins asked me about that scholarship offer again though.” “And what did you say?” “I declined her offer, as I did before. But you know what, Dad? I think she’s trying to get rid of us. Get us to leave this house so she can check out the library and burn it right after. I think she knows who we really are, and that we have a massive library right underneath our feet. Ever since she met me during the opening ceremony, she’s had her eyes peeled.” “I think so too. Every time I come to your school, I always catch her gaze, and it’s not very welcoming. Plus, universities always send emails to the families of the students whom they offer scholarships to. We haven’t received a single one. We don’t even know which university Ms. Bulkins is talking about.” “Exactly. It makes me nervous having her around me.” “Well, don’t worry about that for now. Nothing’s happened yet.” “Yeah… Oh, and Dad?” “Yes, Len?” “I think I understand Aros a bit better now.” Dad raised his eyebrows, urging me to continue. “His Wanderers leave books under porches to initiate the people right? To spark their curiosity from within, to awaken the true nature of humans. Aros himself, on the other hand, works from within the Revive. I don’t know what they do exactly, but I like to think that Aros and his closest companions teach about life in novels to people who are willing to listen. They tell people of the things that novels can give and what informative books can’t, and they open the eyes of the people to what life is like outside of scholarships and jobs. This is the process of revival, of reawakening the human mind. This is what Aros wanted to achieve… and what Mom wanted as well, right?” Dad looked crestfallen when I turned to him. He never liked talking about Mom. “You say those maps down at the library were for tracking Aros’ movements, but you were concerned about Mom weren’t you? When she left us 12 years ago, I heard her say something, something about her needing to change this society, about how they’ve gone too far. You figured that Aros and Mom knew each other somehow, and had the same goals in mind. Mom helped Aros gather a bunch of people and left for Europe 12 years ago, and that’s why you have those maps in the library, to keep track of Aros… and Mom. You never really forgot about Mom, didn’t you?” Dad was silent for a long time. “Sometimes I forget how smart you are,” he smiled. “I didn’t mean to make you mad or anything—” He laughed out loud at that. “Don’t worry about it! You’re absolutely right. It wasn’t exactly a secret anyway; and we have The Hub to thank for those squiggles on the maps.” The Hub is an underground site exclusive only to people like us; it is controlled by Aros’ team, and the government knows nothing about it. Its purpose is to keep the people up-to-date with Aros’ progress. We got the password along with one of the first gifts the Wanderers left us years ago, and we’ve been tracking Aros’ movements using The Hub ever since.

Our conversations drew on as night fell, and Dad suggested heading down to the library. “I feel like Tim’s almost finished with my Shakespeare collection,” Dad added.

“You can go ahead. I’ll go check to see if we have a new gift.” I walked to the rug laid out in the hallway and rolled it up to reveal a trap door. Opening the door revealed the grass under our house, and I jumped down and started crawling to the front, where our porch was. In the dark, I found a parcel. I grabbed the gift and was surprised at what I saw. “Aros E. Dian” in bold script written on the parcel. Aros never signs the gifts. What made this one different? Curious and unable to wait until I got back up to the house, I unwrapped the parcel. In the darkness, I found it difficult to read the title of the book, but I saw it anyway, and it made me want to squeal. The Tempest.                                                            * * * Suddenly, I felt something was wrong. I climbed back up to see Dad slowly, quietly, making his way towards the back door in the kitchen. I made the decision to follow his lead, since that bad feeling in my gut is still there. While moving quietly, I heard voices coming from the library; a lot of male voices I assumed to be police officers, but one distinct voice caught me off-guard. It shouldn’t have though, because I should’ve known.

“I knew they had a library, but I never would’ve thought it was this huge.” “What do we do, Ms. Bulkins?” a man asked. “You have the flamethrowers I requested you to bring?” “Yes, Ma’am.” “Len!” Dad hissed from outside. “Burn everything.” I sprinted towards the door in the kitchen just as the first few police offers made their way upstairs. I cursed myself for being too slow; the officers saw me and called for a chase. I was relieved to see I still had The Tempest in my grip, and I joined my father outside and started running as fast as we could towards the road. I could hear Ms. Bulkins shouting at the officers, telling them to get moving, to not let us get away. I looked back briefly, and my heart fell, seeing our house in flames under a moonlit sky. There were no stars tonight. Gunshots were fired, but we managed to make it to the curb unscathed. That didn’t discourage the officers from chasing us though. We ran for what felt like an eternity, until Dad saw a chance to hide. We ducked into a dark alleyway and waited until we felt it was safe to come out. I could hear the blood pumping in my ears and my eyes threatened to black out, but I forced myself to focus. A few minutes later and a bunch of police officers whizzed by, and we waited another few minutes before we resumed our run, this time in the opposite direction.                                                            * * * The crack of dawn enhanced my senses, and I silently took note of my peaceful surroundings; the leaves were all pleasant mixes of yellow and apricot, and the grass was light with morning dewdrops. The asphalt beneath my feet was glistening under the morning sun, and the songs of nightingales found their way to my weary ears. It didn’t feel like we’ve been walking the whole night, after leaving the town of New Arcadia for New Pasadena, where Marty lives. Dad walked in front of me the whole time, and it was only when the sun came up that I noticed the gray that was creeping in his hair. I also vaguely remembered the wrinkles on his face when he smiles. Well, Dad was getting old. The constant enthusiasm in his voice and his unwavering human spirit always made me forget he’s already passed his twenties. He was a vigorous one, a winner against age.

The missing presence of a certain robot heightened my awareness. How could I have not noticed this last night? “Dad, where’s Tim?” Dad turned his head to look at me and saw my panicked eyes. Then he turned his whole body around to face me, and a gold pin twinkled on his gray vest. “Is that him?” Dad nodded. “Marty never told us he could reduce to the size of a pin. That’s incredible.” “Right? I never knew either, so when a gold spider crawled up my chest when I made my way downstairs to the library, I almost swatted him away.” The pin glimmered. “It’s a good thing I spoke up,” I heard Tim say, “I finished archiving, Sir Stephen. Everything. It took a few years, but my database is updated, and every single book in that library is accessible from my drive.” “You’re amazing, Tim. I could never thank you enough,” Dad said. I could see the grief etched on his face, and I know his heart yearned for the comfort of our library. I know, because I do too. “Can you archive one more work, Tim?” Dad looked up, his eyes questioning and curious. I guess he didn’t know I was carrying something the whole night. I held The Tempest out in front of them, and Dad looked absolutely ecstatic. “That’s the newest gift?” Tim asked. “Yes, and the weird thing was, the parcel was personally signed by Aros,” I explained. Dad was about to say something when a car beeped and cut him off. “Stephen! Len! Are you guys okay?” Marty yelled when he parked his car on the side of the road, right in front of us. “I heard of the fire from the radio last night. Figured you guys were heading this way, so I came over.” “Thanks a bunch, Marty,” Dad greeted in response. “Listen, I need to tell you something.” They walked away from me and began talking. Hands flew up, moving with gestures, and the discussion looked pretty serious. A few minutes later and Marty called me over, telling me to get into the car. The minute I sat down I managed to fall asleep.                                                            * * * I woke up to the bustle of NLAX, and it was there I found out that Marty owned a jet plane. Well, he and Dad owned the jet plane. They built it together when they were in college, Marty told me. I also noticed that Marty bore a striking resemblance to Dad; had I not known any better, I would’ve thought they were brothers. I read it in a book somewhere that friends who stay together for a long time tend to look like each other; Marty and Dad were living proof. 

We got onboard the plane and buckled up. Marty piloted the craft. Both Dad and Marty refused to tell me where we were going. I was skeptic, but I trusted Marty, and the sleep I got in the car was certainly not enough. Dad gave me the gold pin before we took off, so now Tim was fastened to my sweater, begging me to revert him to his original size so he could archive the final work to Dad’s collection. I told him he could do that later, when we landed on our destination, wherever that was. I spent my time looking out the window, over unfamiliar lands, unable to tell which boundaries we were crossing. I absent-mindedly flipped through the pages of The Tempest afterwards, and later became deeply lost in thought. I thought about our house, our library, our books, all reduced to ashes. I thought about Ms. Bulkins, sitting contently in her office, rewarding herself with a cup of coffee for successfully kicking us out of New Arcadia, and leaving herself with one less “novel-loving” family to deal with. I thought about Mom and Aros, about how they do what they do, how they love what they do, how they risk everything for the sake of everyone. I looked down at my hair and thought about Pyrrha, daughter of Pandora in Greek mythology, named for her red hair. I thought about how if I was the Pyrrha of this era’s mythology, my mom would be Pandora. I remembered Anesidora, Pandora’s other name, and how it means “she who sends up gifts”. I thought about how Aros’ full name vaguely resembles Anesidora, how their purposes are vaguely similar. I wondered if Aros E. Dian was an anagram for Anesidora, and suddenly everything clicked. Aros E. Dian. Anesidora. Pandora, mother of Pyrrha. If my mother was Pandora, she was Anesidora as well. Anesidora is Aros E. Dian. My mother is not with Aros; my mother is Aros. “We’re here!” I felt the plane land on a runway. I felt it move and shift and park into place. I felt how it didn’t stop there, how it shifted some more, but it wasn’t the plane that shifted; it was the ground. I heard the ground beneath the plane clicking, whirring, gearing, and finally I felt myself descending, the view of the unfamiliar airport disappearing as we sink into the ground. A few minutes later and a large hall comes into view, and I see hundreds of other planes of different varieties. Our plane settles down, and we disembark from the craft. This is a hangar, I thought, and in the hangar there were thousands of people, all who seemed to be expecting us. Among the crowd a woman stood out, her hair a fiery red. We made eye contact and she smiled at me. And then she spoke. “Welcome to Switzerland, the fourth Crowned in Europe, and in the world.”

Written: November 25, 2015

Big thanks to Ms. Katherine for seeing my potential xx

[tristanleggett]

How Netguru, a Software Consulting Agency In Poland, Became a World Class Marketing Machine

How Netguru, a software consulting agency in Poland wants to prove that there’s nothing fabulous about Silicon Valley?

With the right moves, skills and company culture you can get 3 times awarded by Deloitte in its Tech Fast 50 in CEE. Ranking as we speak for one of the best software consulting agencies in Poland.

That's how they increased their revenue by 644% in the last 3 years.

Today's blog post is about a company that never ceased to amaze Deloitte, Fortune500, Clutch, Financial Times.

I mean, really?

3 times awarded by Deloitte in its Tech Fast 50 in CEE?

We definitely have to find out what triggered this growth.

So, we'll be telling you employer branding and marketing stories.

Stories like this one:

So, amazing organic growth. But is that all?

Follow me in my quest to see how Netguru is fulfilling its own prophecy of becoming the “Internet guru”.

TABLE OF CONTENT

Netguru Poznan Software Consulting Agency - Short Overview

Netguru's Marketing Strategies Reversed Engineered

Netguru's Brand Awareness

Netguru's Website and Conversion Rate Optimization

Netguru's Traffic Acquisition

Marketing Automation

Summing Up

Netguru has a big mission: building software for world changers. How is Netguru living by its mission? Just follow me.

Netguru Poznan Software Consulting Agency - Short Overview

A glimpse into Netguru's growth and processes

Founded in 2008, Netguru went from 3 to 500 employees in 10 years, making it all the way to Fortune500 companies and Financial Times 1000 list.

Netguru’s clients include major corporations and early stage startups from Western Europe, Asia, North America and across the Middle East.

In 2018 Netguru acquired Bitcraft, a software house in Białystok, Poland, that has completed around 40 projects in 9 different time zones, including projects for more than 40 hospitals in Poland.

Former clients say Netguru's main strengths are:

professional environment and high-quality deliverables

smooth project management, delivery ahead of estimates, ability to stay on budget

in-depth technical knowledge, up-to-date technology and coding

trustworthiness, transparency and commitment, proactivity

creative problem-solving

Thumbs up, guys!

Next on Baywatch: how does Netguru grow? Did it manage to find the Holy Grail of Marketing and that’s why they deliver projects to clients on all continents?

In the following section we’ll dig deeper intro Netguru’s marketing approach. I will make you understand:

How building a great website with stunning visual hierarchy can show off your product design skills and increase your conversion rates

How a strategic approach for content writing can make you lovable by Google...and potential clients

How building a community around you, you’ll get access to a pool of talent and future clients

How using tools, marketing automation and conversion rate optimization can get you good qualified leads and customers

But we don’t want to spoil it all for you, just read and learn.

Netguru’s Marketing Strategies Reverse Engineered

Eat or be eaten. That's how things work in the IT business. Companies rise, others fall, meanwhile, Netguru keeps growing.

If you want to know the secrets behind these numbers:

you'll have to come with me and peep into Netguru's strategic marketing approach and branding.

Brand Awareness at Netguru

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently”: Warren Buffet

For Netguru it's been 10 years of building.

Do you want to find out why Netguru keeps popping up on Deloitte's Tech Fast 50 list?

Let's dissect how Netguru is designing a great brand.

Netguru being awarded by Deloitte. Source: Netguru's Twitter

Netguru’s Awards

Netguru seems to be a constant presence in Clutch’s tops.

Netguru ranks first in the Top NodeJS Development companies in the World (2018).

Also, Netguru holds an honorable 5 rank in the Top Polish App Developers.

Netguru was featured in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 Central Europe, three times already, ranking 46 in 2017.

Netguru’s Website and Conversion Rate Optimization

I am not a designer, not even near to the field. Nevertheless one can spot beauty. With a friendly UI and smart UX, Netguru’s website is simple and sending the right message to the user.

What does Netguru do?

Web and mobile development, product design.

How can I get a quote? - Call to Action with Estimate Project.

As Unbounce Co-Founder Oli Gardner puts it "Have a F***** CTA" .

Need more info about web development?

There you go:

With a clear menu, navigation, whitespace used cleverly, the Netguru website really shows off good design and UX.

Good readability, no clutter, balanced contrast, everything used to highlight what’s important and not to overwhelm the user with too much data.

Social proof is everywhere, from testimonials, PR featuring to awards.

They designed ebooks that tackle programming languages, project management and UX, they are downloadable via form.

Case studies are considered really powerful pieces content and Netguru really understands that and puts this to practice.

They feature lots of case studies per different verticals on their website.

They also have some open source Git projects for sharing and some freebie resources:

Netguru boarded the machine learning hype train so they’re even having a by-weekly newsletter on it, there’s a pop-up that invites you in signing up.

Also they use the chat bot for newsletter signup:

In December they rolled over an IoT only newsletter:

Type caption (optional)

Conversion Rate Optimization

Netguru is going to the next level. According to Similartech, they’ve just made a big move for CRO, with Visual Website Optimizer. Big thumbs up.

On the other hand, they’ve been using Hotjar for a while.

In a few months of using Hotjar and analyzing the users’ path (both leads and potential employees), Netguru managed to:

Decrease the bounce rate by more than 50%

Drive up the “services” page traffic by 30%

Drive up the “career” page traffic by more than 50%

Increase the number of users going further in the services marketing funnel by 17%

I haven’t found any evidence for A/B testing, but they seem to know the theory, as they prove it in this blog post.

Personalization is another strategy that leads to increasing conversion rates.

What stroke my eyes is that on the blog they have customized sticky CTAs. From the inbound consultant’s point of view, they nailed it!

Another thing that stroke me is that the homepage above the fold slider differs from country to country!

For example, in Poland, the purpose of the homepage is around employer branding and hiring. That makes sense, because the Polish market is not their focus in terms of customers.

When not in Poland, well, the story changes and it looks like this:

Lead generation and client focus all the way.

Smart.

Next, also for the purpose of improving the website conversion rate, and for starting conversation with possible leads, a Drift chat bot is active on the website.

Netguru’s Traffic Acquisition

Direct traffic and links account for more than 90% of Netguru's website traffic.

Just like in the case of Poznan software house STX Next, I'm suspecting direct traffic might be due to:

branding efforts within offline events

referral traffic not tagged

sales reps activities (7+ sales reps found on Linkedin)

So, the sales team is on the move! Make way! Emailing, outreaching, they know the drill.

70%+ search traffic? That requires some investigation.

The growth is phenomenal.

From an estimated 6K organic search visitors per month in January 2017 to 57K/month in January 2019 ( as per Ahrefs )

That is approx 850% increase in 2 years. That is pretty impressive for a software consulting agency in Poland.

Ahrefs might not be 100% accurate, as they explain here, but still, the percentage increase is impressive.

Ahrefs estimated data on search

What I can see is that they rank on a bunch of technical keywords.

In the next chapter, I'll go more in-depth on how they achieved this growth with content marketing.

Content Marketing

The main topics on Netguru's blog are about:

Guides, strategies and tips for designers and developers

Best practices in software development, hacks for different technologies and programming languages

Advice on technology for product owners, startups

Project management content

Trends and predictions in the tech scene

Also, Netguru accepts guest posts and has clear guidelines for this.

Now, let’s make a blog posts top 5:

Seems that Python related posts are making a statement here, just like in the case of STX Next.

Many blog posts are technical, making comparisons between different technologies and frameworks.

My “aha moment”: the developers are involved in content creation.

This shouldn’t be in fact surprising, a content writer does not have the knowledge a developer has.

Time to go more granular now, let's analyse some first page ranking keywords.

Seems that keywords relating to technologies/frameworks comparisons are making a statement here. Lots of traffic, great ranking.

Aaand, gotcha: featured snippets! Good work, Netguru.

Looking at Netguru's top pages, there's one lonely page that's not a blog post and it's not the homepage either.

Overlog, who the f**k is overlog? Well, as Netguru puts it: the simplest app debugger for iOS. Here is the overlog story.

Overlog is an open source tool built by the mobile dev team at Netguru and it seems it gets lots of traction.

Revenons à nos moutons, without the blog traffic, there would be almost no traffic on Netguru's website.

So, definitely content marketing is what makes Netguru stand out. And they're really good at it.

Backlinks to Support Content Marketing

What do Neil Patel, Wordpress, The Next Web, Stackoverflow have in common?

They all link to Netguru's blog or website. And we're talking about high domain rating do-follow links!

Do-follow high quality links

Looking at the organic traffic Netguru has right now, SEO and content marketing are at the core of Netguru's marketing strategy.

This means they combine efficiently original content creation with quality link building.

Netguru Paid Traffic Acquisition

In terms of Adwords search ads, they focus on pushing forward the mobile app development and Python outsourcing.

The estimated budget for PPC advertising is $4k+.

This is one landing page example, it’s filled with social proof, project examples, industries.

There are more CTA’s on the page, one for those who are ready to move on in the funnel and get an estimation, others for those who are more in the research mode.

Beside Google search ads, Netguru is experimenting also with Facebook ads.

Netguru Facebook Ads Example

Three topics arise from Netguru’s Facebook ads:

Product promotion

Hiring

Events promotion

The copy tries to be engaging, it often includes social proof.

They are doing also brilliant work with remarketing using Lead Ads to subscribe to their newsletter or direct us to more brand awareness content.

Netguru Facebook Lead Ads Example

Netguru Facebook Messenger Ads

From my assumptions they are having the following remarketing funnel:

Netguru Awareness Stage Funnel Assumption

On Twitter they promote similar content, even though I didn't see any Twitter Ads ( maybe because they don't advertise on Twitter in Poland as it is not very popular here ).

Social Selling

Meet Radek, he’s Netguru’s Head of Growth and he’s active on Quora. He has a total of 53 answers with topics ranging from React Native (a lot of focus here), startup advice, to comparing different programming languages, SaaS talks and more.

Also, their Senior Content Marketing Specialist, Natalia, has a very active presence on Quora, covering topics like: web development, startups, business, marketing, project management and more.

Netguru’s Social Presence

Would you say this is a B2B business?

16k+ Facebook followers

8k+ Linkedin followers

65k+ Dribble followers

20k+ Behance followers

Yeah, me neither.

But these are the numbers behind Netguru's social media presence.

These numbers are not the result of only having the right social media strategy.

All of the other marketing efforts are mirrored by the social media accounts.

From offline events, to content marketing, from clients to employees, or employees wanna be, Netguru can acquire followers.

Next we'll take a peek at Netguru's profile on various social media channels.

Netguru's Facebook page

Around 16.000 Facebook followers are updated on a daily basis about the latest events Netguru participated in, their latest blog content, their team members.

The number of engagements varies (with an average of 16), but there are some really popular posts, most of which relate to team members.

This makes me conclude that Facebook is merely used for employer branding, a strategy used also by STX Next.

Main events promoted on Facebook refer to one-day workshops for college students in the Netguru College series. The main topics feature programming languages and project management.

Instagram

The Instagram profile is all about the team spirit, Netguru’s culture, events. Clearly the messages are directed to employer branding.

LinkedIn

The Linkedin posts relate to the latest events Netguru participated in, their latest blog posts, they’re introducing team members and products and projects they’ve designed.

The profile has reached 8k+ followers. Usually this number correlates with the number of employees on Linkedin.

We can see the content is very strategic and posting enterprise, B2B type of content rather than technical,( i.e. digital transformation)

The bigger the company or the brand, the bigger the number of followers, unless you’re some startup unicorn.

Twitter

Besides sharing almost the same content that’s being posted on Facebook, on the Twitter profile Netguru also shares news and interesting facts from the industry.

So, the Twitter feed is merely used as a broadcasting platform, where they push out company messages and promote products.

They have some very good copywriters, as their tweets are top-notch. Here are some of the posts promoting mainly content and not services ( an Inbound approach, rather than Outreach ).

#Chatbots are all the rage right now, and they're not going anywhere. Mateusz, one of our #ML specialists, explains how your business can start implementing #AI chatbots and improve the overall customer of your service.https://t.co/iF7TGhbONy

— Netguru (@netguru) January 2, 2019

More often than not, #Python is the programming language of choice for #MachineLearning projects. See our overview of the most popular frameworks that one can use for #NLP (natural language processing) in the Python environment 👉https://t.co/KKF489vv5y #AI #ML #appdevelopment

— Netguru (@netguru) January 4, 2019

Youtube

The Youtube channel features 21 videos, some of them are part of a webinar series called Digital Forum, some of them are recordings from the events they hosted or participated in.

They publish their videos rarely and the video views range from about 50 to 660.

Dribbble

The Netguru Dribbble profile rocks. 65k+ followers? Hard to beat that. They feature 48 projects: apps they’ve worked on, websites and other designs and concepts.

They are the industry’s benchmarks because they found the way to create an engaging profile, with 50+ members onboard.

Behance

And their Behance profile is top-notch too: 94k+ appreciations. They are really managing to inspire their worldwide followers with their product designs.

Compared to the competition, Netguru clearly has the most engaging Behance account.

Netguru Is Building Communities

Netguru has been coaching Ruby on Rails around Poland for 5 years now. Netguru also offers Level Up workshops for more advanced developers.

Since 2015, Netguru has been hosting hackathons at their Poznan HQ and managers have been organizing regular free project management workshops.

Netguru has also cooperated with universities, through delivering workshops and presentations, involving in academic life and during monthly webinars for technology enthusiasts.

Together with Brinc Accelerator and Indiegogo, they partner with the Poznan Hardware Hub, a hardware house specialized in designing for mass production (industrial design, prototyping), so, innovation all the way for these guys.

Netguru also has a thing for meetups, from regular Dribble Meetups for designers, to meetups for Ruby and Swift developers.

In 2017 Netguru hosted in Poznan the Disruption Forum. Speakers from around the world had talks ranging from strategy and management, to emerging trends in developers’ community.

2018 was a year of celebration for Netguru. Turning 10, they remembered how they grew from a small software shop to an international software consulting agency:

The birthday party was held at Lisbon Web Summit, where they also hosted a panel, named “Building Growth: Industry Leaders on Lessons They Learned”.

A big Happy Birthday from us too!

Employer Branding

Now let’s peep a bit at what former employees have to say about Netguru.

Glassdoor comments reveal that the atmosphere is great, everything is transparent, keeping employees happy is a priority, remote working is definitely a plus, there are lots of career opportunities, experienced teams.

Some reviewers argue that the perks and salaries aren’t good enough, that some projects are really stressful and not handled well by the team leaders, that transparency and feedback are just some buzzwords, because they’re not happening.

For almost all the negative reviews Netguru tries to answer and explain what improvements have been made.

Netguru is looking to expand its developer, QA and product design teams.

On their website they’re really transparent about the employee perks, the correlation between expertise and salary level.

Marketing and Process Automation at Netguru

It seems that implementing Salesforce was the right choice at the right time for Netguru, according to the case study they did and published on Salesforce’s own website.

They're also explaining how Salesforce helped them with project management in this video:

Marek Talarczyk, Netguru's Chief Operations Officer discussing the innovative processes that Netguru introduced into Salesforce to to grow project predictability by 102%.

Using Salesforce, Netguru managed to improve customer satisfaction (with a Net Promoter Score averaging above 9) and to increase predictability, meaning being able to accurately estimate how long it will take to complete a project and the risk involved.

From the marketing automation side, Netguru also uses Hubspot.

So, Netguru doesn't stay away from tools that may increase productivity, planning, projects delivery. They're stubborn about efficiency.

This stubbornness helped Netguru become a benchmark in CEE’s IT Outsourcing market.

Summing Up

Now, what seem to be Netguru’s golden nuggets?

My top 5 would be the following:

Designing a dream team and a great company culture

Seamless client delivery through smooth project management

Building a community, forging partnerships and building awareness around the brand for two main purposes: landing quality projects and hiring the right talent

Becoming the “guru” of content strategy, being SEO focused and involving developers in content writing

On the other hand, a big picture of the industry wouldn’t hurt also. Care to find out how three ex-soviet union countries are making a statement in IT outsourcing? Check out our Ultimate Guide To IT Outsourcing Companies in Central Eastern Europe.

hbspt.cta.load(1969772, 'ed2ea238-46fe-4f76-b31a-7dcc258a79c7', {});

if(window.strchfSettings === undefined) window.strchfSettings = {}; window.strchfSettings.stats = {url: "https://man-digital.storychief.io/software-consulting?id=902554904&type=12",title: "How Netguru, a Software Consulting Agency In Poland, Became a World Class Marketing Machine",id: "4f08255c-5e51-436c-99aa-71482a308009"}; (function(d, s, id) { var js, sjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {window.strchf.update(); return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "https://d37oebn0w9ir6a.cloudfront.net/scripts/v0/strchf.js"; js.async = true; sjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, sjs); }(document, 'script', 'storychief-jssdk')) from Digital Marketing Automation Consulting | MAN Digital https://mandigitalblog.blogspot.com/2019/03/how-netguru-software-consulting-agency.html via https://mandigitalblog.blogspot.com/ Read more on our blog MAN Digital MAN Digital Blogger

[thegodthief]

The “new” rock sings when I hold it. It makes the nerves in my hand and arm vibrate gently.

It looks sexy as hell with aerodynamic edges last seen on a sports car and sloping curves last seen on dat ass. It is a pleasure to the eye as the light slips over the creases where the slow moving lava kneaded itself in mythic time and teases an orange creme color from the uncountable miniscule cavities that gives the stone the semblance of petrified skin.

When cold, the rock feels of the water that shaped it and placed where my proxy would find it by mere chance once upon a vacation. The rock slides over the cupped palm the way water slid over the fracture that led to its release into the stream that would tumble the surgical edges into deceptively safe contours and polish the impudent rough surface into unyielding softness.

When cold, it repels warmth. As I roll it between fingers, it tries to slip away from them. It does not try to chill the hand that holds it, but it does not accept being held either. As if it remembers the stream and the constant cool temperature that nurtured its final form and seeks to return to the watch of time as the water that mastered it finally erodes it into sand that flows to join the sea.

But if you are persistent, and you warm the stone to your hands, then a different character emerges. It clings even as it slips faster in your grip. Not to escape, but to play. It demands motion, constant motion that reminds it of the time (the mythic time) when it was the blood of the earth and the quickening that moved continents like game pieces.

The light moves faster across the surface when it is warmed. The pores reflect brighter as if the core of the rock remembers the heat that loved and nurtured it in the depths. The ends of the oblong rock develop a strange heat to them. They should be the first to cool when released, but they feel hotter than the body of the rock itself, as if these are the poles of a magnet.

Which it well may be, though to an extent that would require precise tools to measure. The ancient lava rock, now considered basalt by those who like making distinctions, is very heavy for its size. The color of the pores’ interior and the kneaded seams smell like rust and degraded olivine, after all. So it would be a safe assumption that the rock contains a substantial amount of iron.

Which explains the other sensation I feel when I have warmed the rock to my body’s temperature. Blood. Here I have been careful because the stone starts to tap into sensations and responses that can be overwhelming if not explored in proper context. The stone becomes hungry for more warmth, and more attention, and more focus. It becomes a conduit and connector to something and with not even twenty-fours hours having passed since receiving the ordained gift, I know I need to step carefully.

He said he was more concerned about angering whatever was watching him than my proscription against taking lava rocks or rocks from obvious lava tubes. As he is indifferent to religions as a whole, and attends [Christian] church only for the familial bonds (and the food), to hear him speak any reverence or actual fear about a spirit of place should have warned me that this indulgence of my “back country woman hobby” was going to be a lot more than having an enduring token from a place I once lived in.

The rock’s song ceases when I place it on the table. I can feel the cooling of the substance even though I’m not holding it anymore. It fits my hand as if it were carved for the purpose. I close my eyes and see it singing itself back into a lithic slumber.

It was in Hawai'i that I saw and accepted spirits that weren’t angels and weren’t demons as the fundamental Christianity I was involved in at the time defined such things. The things I saw driving through the pineapple fields in the middle of the night kept their distance, but sometimes would wave back in greeting. I could feel them brushing against the edges of my mind, but after the vision that truthfully foretold a devastating series of actions at the church I attended then, I tried to shut down my sight completely. I tried to forget.

It would appear something in Hawai'i hasn’t forgotten me.