My brother and sister-in-law have recently tried, not very successfully, to raise a little batch of Sea Monkey's. Quite disappointed in the short-lived pets, I was asked how long they typically live for… so I decided to do a bit of research looking into this little species.
For many people, their first pet as a child was a little packet of Sea Monkey's; lovingly hatched from the eggs received in the packet, after following all the instructions to prepare the little tank for their home… what most people don't know is, what Sea Monkey's actually are. Whilst doing some research into this post, I have also come to realise that a lot of people (I'm unsure why…) did not even know that Sea Monkey's were living creatures!
Sea Monkey's are an invertebrate species, meaning they do not have a backbone. They are arthropods, meaning they have jointed legs. They are a crustacean; related to crabs, shrimp, water fleas, lobsters; with an exoskeleton, an outer shell. When growing, they shed their exoskeleton and regrow a new one to fit their larger size. Until the new exoskeleton hardens, they are more vulnerable.
They are also known as, Brine Shrimp. If you have followed any previous posts you may have come across this little titbit of information before, in Something Fishy! (1) – as they are a form of live and frozen fish food.
Size wise – females are smaller than males; females growing between 8-12 mm in length, and males growing between 10-15 mm in length.
Females have a "lump" at the base of their tail (which is where the eggs are stored), the males do not. Females have small antennae, whilst the males have large, distinct antennae (see image, below).
My sister-in-law told me that the packet informed her, that Sea Monkey's can live up to 6 months! That surprised me a bit, as from what I have witnessed and been taught through my studies, is that they typically live 3-5 weeks in the right conditions. The longest I have discovered for the claimed lifespan of the Brine Shrimp is 12 weeks; the average being about 6 weeks.
They last about a week in the fridge, in a bag of water for fish food (less if they are not refrigerated)… and approximately 48 hours in freshwater (provided they are not eaten first), as they are not designed to live in freshwater habitats.
Basically, don't be too disheartened your Sea Monkey's die before they have reached half of the lifespan given in the information booklet you got with your new pet.
Being kept in tiny tanks means that the water needs changing more often, as in such a small space, the water deteriorates quickly. Roughly a 20% water change should be done bi-weekly, to ensure clean water and enough oxygen for survival; so that your Sea Monkey's do not die from suffocation. Adding an aerator into the tank will also keep up oxygen levels, making breathing easier.
Doing a water change with such a small animal can be difficult; ensure you do not accidentally throw away any Sea Monkey's with the dirty, discarded water! The shedding of the exoskeleton during growth makes up a lot of the dirtiness of the water, with so many of them shedding around the same time!
Deteriorated, dirty water and lack of oxygen, are common causes of premature Sea Monkey death.The tank being knocked over, and therefore spilling your Sea Monkey's everywhere, is a big stress to the little creatures, and ultimately will result in the death of the little guys (and girls)! The stress, combined with not being able to breathe out of water… so ensure your Sea Monkey's are in a safe, secure place where they are unlikely to be knocked over.
Other common causes are the tank being in too warm a location; by a window in summer, in a very warm room/ next to a radiator in winter… or being in a location that makes them too cold; in a room not warm enough in winter, in the fridge because they will be fed to my Comet Goldfish within the week. Of course, being used as food is a cause of death, although this does not apply to Brine Shrimp being kept as pet Sea Monkey's!
Even though Sea Monkey's are just simple Brine Shrimp, feel free to imagine them how they were advertised in the 60's and 70's (see image, below). – as a cute little family… it may be anthropomorphic, but who doesn't treat their pet a bit human at times?!
Have anyone thought of, why sea-monkeys swim this way and not like other shrimps, legs down?


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Youth Speaks Rochdale District Heat at Falinge Park High School on 25.01.2018
March 3, 2018 · Rochdale Rotary Club in collaboration with Falinge Park HS organised a very successful public speaking competition for secondary school students from Falinge Park HS, Oldham Hulme Grammar, Beechwood...
March 3, 2018 · On Sunday 28th January, members of the Interact Club, Sandbach bag-packed in Tesco, Crewe, to raise money for a young boy called Blaize. It had been a fabulous day and with the kind support and...
Stars Drama and Rotary help the Seashell Trust
March 3, 2018 · On 10th February, the infants/junior class of the Stars Drama Academy performed a production of Alice in Wonderland at the Parish Hall, Cheadle Hulme. The play was directed by the Principal, Cathy...
Biddulph Rotary donates to Christies
March 3, 2018 · At a recent meeting of Rotary Biddulph a representative, Nichola Doran, from Christie's hospital, Manchester, was welcomed to the club, where a cheque for One Thousand Pounds was presented to...
Lamplighter Youth Speaks
March 3, 2018 · The Rotary Club of Stockport Lamplighter recently held their annual Youth Speaks competition where six local schools took to the podium to speak about matters as various as "Graffiti—art or...
Runcorn football coach recognised with award for cerebral palsy charity football team
March 2, 2018 · Sean Bailey is being given a prestigious Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland's Community Champion award for his work in creating the Cerebral Palsy Football Club in the North West...
Manchester hero rewarded for life-saving surgery in Ethiopia
March 2, 2018 · Local hero Tony Clayson, an active member of Worsley Rotary, is being honoured with the prestigious Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland's Champions of Change award for his...
Rotary Helps the NHS
March 2, 2018 · An initiative by Rotary Clubs in the "Wigan 7" Group has been declared a roaring success! Many people have been astonished that they have not been able to return Hospital Equipment...
Wigan Rotary hold a successful collection Day for surplus NHS Equipment
March 2, 2018 · Members of Wigan Rotary Club were at Sunshine House collecting surplus medical equipment from local people who no longer had use for them. They will be returned to the NHS for refurbishment and...
Rotary Shoeboxes
February 26, 2018 · 92 Rotary Shoe Boxes were delivered to the International Aid Trust by The Rotary Club of Macclesfield Castle who wish to express thanks to the mums and children from Bollington Praise and Play Group...
Rotary Donation To Help Manx Citizen Advice Service Expand Into Castletown
February 26, 2018 · The Rotary Club of Rushen & Western Mann recently donated £250 to pay for publicity materials that will be used by the Manx Citizen Advice Service Southern Branch, when it extends its services...
Computers for Jamaica
February 26, 2018 · Bolton Daybreak Rotary joined with several Rotary clubs to supply five computers to a primary school in Montego Bay, Jamaica, at a total cost of £2,150.00 Five brand new desktop...
A Royal Announcement
February 26, 2018 · It is with great pleasure we can announce that Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal will be joining us at the 93rd annual conference in Torquay, on the afternoon of Saturday 7th...
Unsung hero of the year
February 26, 2018 · Astley Rotarian Mike Hack was fortunate enough to win both the Wigan and Gt. Manchester Unsung Hero in Sport awards recently. Click
Youth Speaks 2018
February 26, 2018 · Wigan President Gwyneth Millard made the following comments after the recent Youth Speaks heats, "The Wigan Heat of the District 1285 Youth Speaks Contest was held on Tuesday Feb 6th at St...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


On our last family road trip to Washington we stumbled on the remote town of Forks, the vampire and werewolf capitol of the world (or at least according to Hollywood). So when we packed up for a weekend of clamming near Long Beach I wasn't expecting our trip to rival the freakiness of our previous sojourn. Enter Alligator Man.
After harvesting a bounty of four razor clams near Cape Disappointment and freezing our a***es off all night in a tent, we decided to warm our spirits with a visit to a little museum a friend told us about that held Alligator Man - a disturbing mummified half-man half-alligator that may or may not be real. After driving through a few abandoned looking towns with "For Sale" signs up everywhere we arrived in Long Beach and to Marsh's Free Museum which was bustling compared with the rest of town, with a full parking lot and people milling around outside. Marsh's itself is more of a store than anything else selling tacky tourist magnets, stickers, seashells and knickknacks. The actual museum is crammed at the back and at first glance looks like a bunch of garage sale fodder.
But we'd heard about Alligator Man and by golly we were going to find him. Past the automated 50s style fortune telling machine and a few taxidermy stuffed animals we found him. He's in a big glass display case, is about four and a half feet long from head to tail and is all black and shriveled like an un-bandaged mummy. The head and upper body probably is from a real human - it's too realistic and well done to be a fake - and the bottom half is obviously from a real alligator. There's no obvious area where you can see that the two have been stuck together - it's a brilliant work of taxidermy if anything else and honestly, it's one of those things that you can't really gauge your emotions on. Did the top human half come from a mummy bought in Egypt way back when? Was someone killed or dug up to make this thing? None of these questions are answered, and Alligator Man just sits there baring his spiky teeth with a half-petrified half-aggressive gape.
The funniest part was that even though the museum was packed and Alligator Man was the star attraction, no one seemed to take any notice of him. People casually walked by, stopped to look then moved on. What was going through these people's heads I can hardly imagine: "oh there's a dead human body sewn together with an alligator," or "oh a real-life mutant alien horror movie creature, how nice." And yet, no one gave him a second glance or seemed to register that they were looking at anything odd.
Elsewhere in the museum is an even less fawned upon but very real shrunken human head and an utterly ignored taxidermy stuffed six-legged calf. Most visitors seemed to be there to shop, stocking up on "Beer, it's what's for breakfast" bumper stickers and candy. The freakish stuff was just a sideshow at the back of a room.
I studied primatology at University so it had been a long-time dream of mine to see proboscis monkeys in the wild. Bako National Park in Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia, did not disappoint. A proboscis family was out foraging in the mangroves near park headquarters every morning and there was a plethora of other fascinating critters to be seen as well.
Note: I have a larger article on Bako in the works and I'll post a link once it's been published.


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AI War 2 is out now! Get it on Steam today!
Arcen Forums »
AI War II »
Fog of war... too foggy ?
Pages: 1 [2] 3 Go Down
Author Topic: Fog of war... too foggy ? (Read 2135 times)
I-KP
Caveat Pactor
Re: Fog of war... too foggy ?
Putting Intelligence capabilities, i.e., Watching, on a Flagship, particularly a Flagship that needs a buff, risks relegating an essential capability to gimmick status. You can't rely on it being available but when you do get it the game difficulty suddenly drops significantly.
Having it on a cloakable turret, as mentioned in the post above, makes it awkward and somewhat similar to the old Scouting mechanic - only more annoying.
Capturable buildings sound good, on paper, but then it'll only be useful if said capturable just happens to be in a spot that you want to Watch. Once again, this risks relegating a very handy feature to two layers of RNG (spawn chance and spawn location).
Whatever, if ever, form this Intelligence mechanic takes the Logistics station seems to be the neatest fit.
In terms of what form the mechanic takes, being able to Watch one planet per Logistics station perhaps? Limit that to a range of not more than two hops from the station and you end up with something similar to the blanket effect of being able to Watch all neighbouring planets by default, except not as good and without it being as hands-off for the player as that. Generally, Logistics aren't front line stations, hence the ability to Watch a planet up to two hops away thus still allowing for Military stations on your front door. Maybe the hop distance could be a factor of Tech.
« Last Edit: October 06, 2019, 06:33:06 AM by I-KP »
Atmospheric & Lithospheric Reticulator,
Post-accretion Protoplanet Aesthetic Seeding Team,
Celestial Body Design & Procurement Division,
Magrathea Pan-Galactic Planets Corp.,
Magrathea.
kasnavada
Hero Member Mark II
Quote from: I-KP on October 06, 2019, 06:29:00 AM
In terms of what form the mechanic takes, being able to Watch one planet per Logistics station perhaps?
Umm... I see 1 as more annoying than 2.
Thing is:
- if I want to see a station 2 hops away, I can spend 10 hacking point on it. That causes me no issues. To be honest, I'm fine with "I SHOULD spend" because it's 2 hops away.
- Giving a "number" of watchable planets per station means you have to track stations, track target, and code stuff and mechanics. It's not a complex mechanic but it's something that distracts from what the game is, and would need to be really intuitive. You'd have to code something to make it visible on the UI, add buttons, add icons and so on.
- I'd have to redo the mapping when I capture some planets, eventually.
- I may have to retarget when rebuilding a station.
- Also, the "BEST" way to use this vision ability would be to NOT watch 1 planet with a station, but to switch, every 20-30 seconds or so, where you're looking so you can get the "highest" value of the station. That means a lot or micro, or some game mechanics to block players from switching targets every 20 seconds.
That's a lot of potential complexity for... next to no gain at all, IMO, in term of gameplay. If you created "10 scout hack points", usable only on scouting, that were given to you in addition of the current scouting points, and if you got a refund when you build a station where you watched before... you'd have nearly the same results, just, way simpler. But, in essence, going to a planet, click on "scout", is as annoying as going to a planet, and clicking on "build scout post". It's solution 2.
I like the "command station gives neighbour visibility idea" because it's very, very simple. And I think scouting should be as simple as that, no matter what mechanic is used.
I don't want to be faffing about popping in, dropping a cloaked turret, then popping out of a planet each time. If I was prepared to put up with that kind of nonsense I'd just detach a single cloaked ship and send that through and tell it to hide at the planet boundary each time instead - which is what AIW did.
The simplest solution is to grant vision on all neighbouring planets, but that feels too strong.
Maybe keep it the way it is now but scale the Hack cost based on distance from the nearest station, with the cost to Watch a neighbouring planet being nominal but not so insignificant to the point of making it a trivial, thus arguably automatic, task.
« Last Edit: October 06, 2019, 01:39:59 PM by I-KP »
The discussion is kind of confused right now because people don't distinguish between:
- Knowledge of current strength on planet (we used to have that for the whole galaxy)
- Watch i.e. see everything going on on that planet in real-time.
It would really help if you could precise which one you're referring to.
Quote from: I-KP on October 06, 2019, 01:25:06 PM
I think that's a very elegant solution, best proposed so far.
We could actually have two different hacks, let's say Survey to get knowledge of overall strength, and Watch to get full real-time vision. Survey would obviously be way cheaper, but both would scale with distance from the nearest station. Watch could additionally be discounted if you already paid for Survey for that system.
« Last Edit: October 06, 2019, 06:15:35 PM by Asteroid »
How about keeping the scaling Hack cost the same for both types but Survey doesn't provoke an AI response whereas Watch will.
I put the whole idea on Mantis. https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view.php?id=21752
Quote from: Asteroid on October 06, 2019, 04:41:45 PM
Far from it.
It means that everytime you want vision around a planet, on your borders, which, is, ALWAYS, you have to manually click all planets to be able to see them. It's basically the EXACT same as putting a scout there like in AI war I. It's also the same as the proposal that's "unliked", placing a cloaked stuff (check my post above for the explanation).
I'm not even going into the deep implications of such a move. Let's say you want to see planet "currently 4 hops away". It's going to cost a lot. If you're placing a station near it, it's cheaper. How many players, seeing this, will not watch the "currently 4 hops away" planet because they feel like they waste hacking points ?
Is it even useful to introduce a mechanic that will create such train of thoughts in the first place ? I don't think so. That also means that you can't introduce a game mechanic to which the player answer's is supposed to be "watch a planet far away". Finally, those hacking points then compete with whatever hacking points could be useful for at the moment. And, let's be honest, scouting is quite low on the list. Do we want a player losing a game, not scouting "far" objectives, or near objectives, because he thinks hackables are worth more ? I don't want that.
The reason I don't want that is... what is the value of such a mechanic ? I can't find any behind "the player has to manually click to be see behind his door". I can't find any value behind "the player should spend precious hacking points" so he doesn't get jumped. It's not an interesting choice. It's not an interesting decision. It's micro for the sake of micro.
I proposed this thread because, I thought that people would try to find a simple & elegant solution to scouting that's simpler than what is currently in, and that helped alleviate the issue I'm whining about. Currently, none surpass "giving watch to neighbour for free", except "limiting it by type of stations that make sense".
Everything that has been proposed is basically a variation of the scouting mechanic with no upside over the scouting mechanic, and sometimes great downsides. AI WAR II has made the move to simplify scouting for a reason.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2019, 01:02:55 PM by kasnavada »
If you don't think that giving full vision to all neighbouring planets is too strong (which it is - much too strong) then fine, go with the Station thing. It's easy. It's simple. It requires no thought or action on the part of the player. ...All entirely aside from the issue of it being way too strong, of course.
If you want to finesse how vision works, without the solution being too powerful, then you're going to have to ask the player to interact and make a choice. That means clicking on something.
You keep saying that, but there is no argument at all about why it's "too strong", or why you call a choice. What I see in the "stations give vision" idea is a weak capacity which leaves room for AI ambushes (explained before in the thread), and how I see in most other idea is "creating chores".
About the "too strong part", if neighboring stations gave vision, the average number of planets seen in my games at late game stage seems to be about 35 to 40.
At the same point in time in AI War I, I'd have COMPLETE vision on the map. Or in any "node based" (like sins of a solar empire) or grand strategy games (endless series, all moo clones...), for that matter. In a lot of them, I'd have either complete or near complete vision on the map near mid-game, with little to no actions on my part, just by playing. The only strategy games where I typically don't have that level of coverage would be starcraft-clones or or warcraft-clones. In those, however, early to mid game, I know what is on chokepoints and bases. When I don't have vision, it's because the enemy is on this particular point and the game strategy IS about hiding what the enemy does and making the player do as many actions in a minute as possible. Resending stuff in this kind of game is ok, because the game lasts for 20 minutes or so. That ain't AI War's style, so I'm going to base the first types of games as standard.
In conclusion, what you call "too strong" (free vision on stations) would still requires 300 to 700 hacking point to reach what I see being the "standard". Complete or near complete vision on the map is strong. Less than half of that ? Nope. And, I'm ok with having bigger FoW in AI War. Just not to the point of gambling when moving to neighbour planets.
Another point is, you're competing with "going back to your fleets to send one ship on a neighbour planet" or "sending your transport back and forth, again and again", for vision. That is in the game, and ain't going to move. So, let's compare the propositions with what you call "with choices" with that.
Basically there is 2 main criterias in what is proposed. Either you can switch where you're looking or not, and they can have hacking point, or not.
If they enable switching, the BEST use of the system consist in going back to whatever causes the vision to be active every X amount of time (with X as small as possible) and switch it again, and again, and again. That's whether it has a hack cost or not. That's a chore when you have to do it for dozen of hours (typical length of a game)
If you don't enable the player to switch, first, it's going to piss some players of because of misclicks and specific situations like "but what if I conquer planets where I had vision, shouldn't I be refunded ?". Which ain't that awesome in the first place, but then you have to consider something else. Its costs.
If, for example, you make the hacking cost low enough, like 1 for neighbouring stations, that's giving the player a choice between wasting hacking points (the NOOB way) OR sending a ship from his fleet every 30 seconds to die for vision (the "PRO", but insanely repetitive, way). Or sending a transport back and forth. You're back to the chore part.
If you don't add an hacking cost, but limit the number of places you can look at, then, you're basically forcing the player to send ships from their fleets every X time for vision where you "chose" not to look. And back to the chore part.
In a game like AI War... There is absolutely no "finesse" in any of this. To me, those ain't choices, they're chores. Because it's brute-force and repetitive. Currently, my late games have all past 8-10 hours. Doing repetitive actions for that long is making me dislike the game. The worst thing is that proposed actions mechanics often LOSE to "sending ships from your troops to die" in term of how interesting they are. And this mechanic makes sense in a game that lasts for 20 minutes like starcraft. Not in long games.
Last point, the number of things that a player can keep track of is limited. Scouting for regular stuff is BORING. I've got nothing against adding new mechanics into the game, but, at least make them interesting ones. If you add this to the game, you reduce the "brain space" available for a new mechanic, for something more interesting.
The reason I like "neighboring vision on stations" is because it's "brain dead" level of complexity. And, as far as I know, most similar games to AI War have this built-in - it's like the standard FoW in all games with nodes, at least 1 node of vision, and usually 3-4 at end-game. I don't remember people calling it OP. What I do remember, however, are threads about people making the scout mechanic from AI War less grindy (and similar threads about similar mechanics in other games, like scouting in the dominions series...).
Quote from: kasnavada on October 07, 2019, 12:22:23 PM
C'mon, it's not the same at all. In AI War 1 you had to find your scouts first of all, either through the unweildly specialty ships selection bar at the lower-left, or using a filter on the galaxy map, or trying to remember where your new builds currently ended up, open planet, hunt in sidebar for tiny icon (or zoom/scroll), double-click scouts, hit key to split selection until you get the right amount, tab out to galaxy map, right-click target planet. Optionally, micro scouts around so they can dodge some decloaking stuff and survive longer.
What's proposed here is 1. Open Hack tab. 2. Click planet + click button, for each planet you wanna watch.
Are you sure it's the exact (in capital letters no less) same?
What Asteroid said.
...I kinda like the way FoW works in AIW2. It makes me feel squeezed into a tiny pocket of space at the sufferance of a cruel Landlord. The reason I say that giving vision on all neighbouring worlds is 'too strong' is because it completely removes that sense of constriction - for nothing. Granting vision like that is brain dead, you're right, and it would be a shame if that part, the most important part, of the FoW were to be lifted in such a blunt fashion.
When you say "And, as far as I know, most similar games to AI War have this built-in - it's like the standard FoW in all games with nodes, at least 1 node of vision, and usually 3-4 at end-game", you're likely thinking of Stellaris as one such example, yes? And you'd be right, the Stellaris map does do that. But here's the rub: there's no such thing as a surprise attack in Stellaris; you can _always_ see whatever's heading your way. To my mind, this isn't a characteristic that AIW2 should be seeking to emulate.
I like surprise attacks being a thing in AIW2. I like having monsters jump out from the darkness. I also like being able to shine a torch in a direction of my choice.
The only issue I do have with FoW in the game as it stands now is the cost to lift a portion of it is too high. Or at least, it's too high for a neighbouring world (which are the locations of greatest immediate importance).
Quote from: Asteroid on October 08, 2019, 02:11:09 AM
Yes... You'd know if you had read my post. Especially the section where I speak of what players would do if there was an hacking cost.
This is an issue IMO. I'm trying to have a constructive discussion here, not having you tell me your opinion over and over again while not reading what I write. While stellaris is another example of it, the games I spoke of were, I quote: "(like sins of a solar empire) or grand strategy games (endless series, all moo clones...),". So I got no clue why you think I'm thinking of Stellaris here. No clue why you look down on Stellaris though.
And, if you'd read my post, monsters can still that still works if you got vision of your neighbours. And I actually advocate FOR being able to shine light on directions of your choices. So no clue why you seem to think I don't want that. What exactly you think I'm telling, I have no clue, but it seems to be, correct me if I'm wrong, that you understand that I want to completely remove FoW. If so, please, read my posts. I don't advocate this at all. I measured the impact of the change. Have you ?
Even if I did, which I don't, cloaking, waves, CPA, and other mechanics are a thing. You can still be jumped on, surprised, and your fleets can't be everywhere at once.
Last, and again, if you had read my post, you've have seen that, with the current FoW, if you actually had done your "chores" properly as a player, you'd have vision where I propose "free vision". The way you can do so is just mind-bogglingly boring that it has, in my humble opinion, no place in a game. This is quite an important point - which I'd like to be adressed, not ignored, as is being able to go out of your doors without being wiped out. Especially in a game like AI WAR 2 where losing fleet can mean minutes of netflix time.
If you don't do an effort to actually read and answer what I'm writing, I'm out.
BadgerBadger
Arcen Volunteer
Hero Member Mark III
BadgerBadgerBadgerBadger
I've set Logistical Command Stations to Watch adjacent planets. Lets see what people think.
Logistics stations on the front line?
The ability applies to all Logistical Stations everywhere. If the station is next to planets that are all already Watched then it just won't do anything.
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It's always nice when someone mentions our research on their websites or on the news. Sean regularly gets called up for TV slots but today we're very happy to draw attention to Sean's work alongside Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo on the Substantive Research Website.
Sean's recent work has been attributed as 'Best of the broker notes' in relation to the recent fall in the pound and that old Brexit chestnut that's been kicking about for a while now.
Read the full article HERE and thanks for the recognition to Substantive Research – a top notch website and one you should certainly have an eye on.


For more than 70 years, the Lighthouse Camp on the Barnegat Bay was a summer retreat for the blind and multiply-handicapped. When the camp was closed, owner Lighthouse International worked with TPL to protect the 90-acre site and to find an alternative use for the camp's 27 buildings in August 2000. The land is now owned by the New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife, which will lease the buildings to a local environmental non-profit for conferences and natural resource education.


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September 20 & 21, 2023, Cologne
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DMEXCO motto for 2019 is "Trust in you"
Trust plays an important role for the digital economy. Both for the industry as well as for each individual. That's why DMEXCO's motto this year is "Trust in you". A completely new app with matchmaking functions will be launched in July. The two-day ticket for DMEXCO will be available by the end of June and will cost 129 euros.
"Trust in you" is the central motto of this year's DMEXCO. In 2019 EMEA's leading tech summit with focus on marketing and digital business will emphasize the importance of trust in the further development of the digital economy. Companies need the trust of users in order to offer successful products and services. Users must be able to trust that companies treat their data respectfully and responsibly. In addition the industry needs the confidence of society that digitisation will bring more advantages than disadvantages.
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This year the DMEXCO online ticket shop will open by the end of June. The two-day ticket with unlimited access to the trade fair and conference will cost 129 euros. Trade visitors who only book the second day of the fair will pay only 79 euros. The combined ticket for both days, including admission to the popular DMEXCO Party, will cost 209 euros. Young agency employees up to the age of 25 will pay 69 euros with the Young Leaders Ticket, students only 29 euros.
Anyone who wants to exchange ideas with the community, enjoy additional exciting events and discounts should definitely install the new DMEXCO app on their smartphone starting in July. It not only serves as a means of identification on site, but also offers users a range of interesting networking and matchmaking functions, not only during the trade fair. The app provides useful features throughout the year, such as pre-planning or scanning people and stands as integrated lead products during the trade fair visit. In addition, users regularly receive current content, exciting deals, people news and event content.
Who's who of the exhibitors
From AdAlliance and Adobe to Facebook, FreeWheel, Hybris, Microsoft, Outbrain, SevenOne Media, Spotify, Spryker, Taboola, Teads to Verizon Media and Xing, many prominent national and international exhibitors will again be represented at DMEXCO this year. Around 1,000 exhibitors are expected in total. "This year we are also looking forward to many new exhibitors who will be represented at DMEXCO for the first time or again. These includes companies such as Asana, AT&T, About You, Baidu, Intelligent Apps/MyTaxi and Slack," adds Christoph Menke, Director Sales & Operations at DMEXCO.
New format for corporate venture capital
Also new in 2019 is the CVC Side Conference: for the first time DMEXCO invites managers of corporate venture capital companies to a half-day conference. Limited, concentrated and with a clear focus on strategic investments, this new format should not only inform and inspire the participants. The focus will also be on networking with each other and actively connecting with the more than 150 national and international DMEXCO start-ups.
Matthias Wahl, President of the German Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW e.V.) adds: "Trust is the indispensable basis for the success of the digital industry, because we are breaking 'new territory' every day. Confidence in the implementation of promising ideas, confidence in the regulatory framework and the support of politicians, confidence in the success of one's own performance. With this year's motto 'Trust in You', this claim finds a home at DMEXCO. We will be presenting everything that can strengthen confidence in the digital future".
Impressions of DMEXCO are available online at https://go.dmexco.com/de/presse-downloads
About DMEXCO
DMEXCO is the meeting place and a community for key players in digital business, marketing, and innovation. We bring together industry leaders, marketing and media professionals, and tech pioneers to set the digital agenda. Both globally informed and locally focused, DMEXCO offers an ecosystem with seminars, debates, and expositions outlining the future of the digital economy and driving market value.
Bringing together 41,000 visitors, about 1,000 exhibitors, and more than 550 speakers from around the world for a one-of-a-kind event each year in Cologne, DMEXCO has set the standard as the place for business minds to learn and inspire, build connections, and for ideas to become actions. DMEXCO — where tomorrow's digital business happens today.
The German Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW e.V.) — with special participation from the Circle of Online Marketers (OVK) — is the ideational and professional partner of DMEXCO and the owner of the DMEXCO brand. DMEXCO is organized by Koelnmesse.
DMEXCO 2019 will be held in Cologne on September 11 & 12, 2019. You can find all the information about DMEXCO 2018, as well as photos, stories, events and the podcast, at https://dmexco.com, www.facebook.com/dmexco, http://twitter.com/dmexco, and www.youtube.com/dmexcovideo.
DMEXCO will be kicking off 2022 with its Digital Spring Summit on May 3 DMEXCO 2018: Digital economy puts people front and center Audi, Booking.com, Facebook, and Nestlé: the first set of top speakers for DMEXCO @home have been announced Take C.A.R.E.: DMEXCO 2018 launches debate on the future of the digital economy DMEXCO partners with Unilever Foundry to launch start-up innovation showcase DMEXCO trend survey indicates that German users are highly critical of advertising on streaming services
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text:
The Dunwich Horror (br.: Caçadas de bruxas) é um filme norte-americano de 2009 do gênero "Horror" produzido para a TV, escrito e dirigido por Leigh Scott. O diretor adaptou o conto de mesmo nome de H.P. Lovecraft, que já havia sido transposta para o cinema em 1970, a qual contou também em seu elenco com o ator Dean Stockwell, que participa dessa nova adaptação em um papel diferente.

Elenco
 Griff Furst...Professor Walter Rice
 Sarah Lieving...Professora Fay Morgan
 Dean Stockwell...Dr. Henry Armitage
 Jeffrey Combs...Wilbur
 Natacha Itzel...Caitlin
 Lauren Michele...Lavina

Sinopse

Na Nova Inglaterra, uma família de descendentes de antigos seguidores do culto de Cthulhu prepara rituais para que uma passagem mística seja aberta e com isso, poderosos seres maléficos possam retornar ao mundo e trazerem o apocalipse ao resto da humanidade. O ritual consiste em fazer com que uma das seguidoras dê a luz a um par de gêmeos. Os bebês que nascem são o aparentemente humano Wilbur e o monstruoso e faminto Yog Sothoth, um demônio com tentáculos que ao crescer, manterá o portal aberto para a passagem dos demais de sua espécie.

Dez anos depois do nascimento dos gêmeos, ao realizarem um exorcismo, o doutor Henry Armitage e sua assistente professora Fay Morgan, descobrem sobre o portal e percebem que devem agir rapidamente para impedirem o seu surgimento. Para isso, precisam encontrar o livro Necronomicon original, pois só ali acharão a página 751 que falta em todas as cópias conhecidas em mãos dos estudiosos. E para ajudar na busca do livro e traduzir a página desaparecida, pedem o auxílio ao cético professor Walter Rice, antigo amante de Fay.

Filmes dos Estados Unidos de 2009
Filmes em língua inglesa
Filmes de terror dos Estados Unidos
Filmes de terror da década de 2000
Filmes baseados em contos

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


"Bedroom Lovers" Lyric Video. 17 Apr PERFECT PLACE PRESENTS; Lovers in Bed. 7 Jan Lovers Recreate Davido's Famous Bedroom Photo And It's Beyond Hilarious! This photo of Davido sleeping with his mouth open by a lady was taken some years back and two lovers have decided to recreate the infamous photo of the musician. It really is hilarious as the lovers perfectly recreate the photo. 3 Jun "Bedroom Lovers (Sneak Peek)" The new single off Andre Mieux (A.M.X.)'s Debut Album "All I Really Want" Available on iTunes and everywhere music is sold onli.. .


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E126 – Navigating The Complexities of People Ops During COVID-19 (Brad Touesnard, Delicious Brains)
In today's episode, Joe and Christie talk with Brad Touesnard, Founder and CEO of Delicious Brains Inc and SpinupWP. As founder of Delicious Brains Inc, Brad has worn many hats. He now spends most of his time managing the product teams and growing the business. Before starting this company, Brad was a freelance web developer, specializing in front-end development.
Joe, Christie, and Brad discuss the challenges of finding good people when competition for remote job posting is high, what it's like for entry level people in companies with limited resources, traditional and unconventional hiring process, and making dependable employees stay.
Tune in and learn about the best hiring practices in the open source environment.
What to Listen For:
00:35 Let's welcome Brad Touesnard of Delicious Brains Inc
02:24 Rebranding concepts for different company products
07:12 How's 2020 job hiring been for you?
10:12 Challenges competing with more remote companies in finding new hires
17:00 On people switching careers and learning new skill sets
22:55 Hiring entry level person with limited resources
25:16 Vetting candidates before going through a trial project
30:27 Finding the right people is super difficult
32:36 Keeping people for years
37:31 Promotion and position changes
40:22 Active recruitment won't go away
Episode Resources
Delicious Brains – "We make super awesome products for WordPress."
SpinupWP – Your Own Extremely Fast WordPress Server
Brad is on Twitter
Leave an iTunes review or binge watch past episodes
Send questions to yo@wpmrr.com for the next Q&A pod
Visit the WPMRR website
Tweet Joe
Tweet Christie
Joe Howard: All right. We are live this week on the pod. Christie, what's up? How's it going?
Christie Chirin…: Hey, nothing much is up. It is the last month of 2020. So we'll see what surprises it brings.
Joe Howard: Yeah, right. What's left in 2020 to bring? It's like, please no nothing else. Can we just get to 2021 already?
Christie Chirin…: Yeah. Murder hornets, revolution, who knows?
Joe Howard: I know. Some good things. There you go. Cool. And we've also got Brad on the podcast this week, as our guest. We get to have three people on the podcast this week, which is always a treat. Brad, tell people how to pronounce your last name, and then also some of the stuff you do with WordPress.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah, sure thing. Thanks for having me guys. So, yeah. My last name is to Touesnard, but a lot of people say Touesnard because it has a D at the end that's silent. So that usually trips people up pretty good. So my company is Delicious Brains Inc. And we do several WordPress plugins. WP Migrate DB Pro, WP Offload Media, WP Offload SES, Better Search Replace Pro, and we also have a SAS app called SpinupWP, which is our new shiny product that we are putting a lot of effort into at the moment.
Joe Howard: Yep. So folks these are pretty familiar, at least in the WordPress space with your company, Delicious Brains. And yeah. I'm also very familiar because I remember reading your blog posts about how you did your rebranding for all your plugins. And I was like, oh, that company looks pretty cool. And then here a couple years later, we've done our rebrand for WP Buffs and went with the same guys, and they did a great job for us as well. So.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah. Your site's looking great, man. So the branding that Tim and his partner at DOS Media did. They just did an amazing job on you guys stuff. And I'm still pumped about our branding, to be honest that they did years ago. So yeah. They're really good.
Joe Howard: Yeah.
Christie Chirin…: I remember we read through your blog post on the podcast, so it was intense. Yeah.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah, we've had since then… That first round of rebranding went really well. It was easy. But then when we were doing the branding for WP Offload SES, Tim and his partner they came up with this pigeon concept. Right? And I don't know about you guys, but a pigeon is not the most majestic bird in the bird kingdom.
Joe Howard: We're not talking of a pig or a falcon.
Brad Touesnard: No. We're talking about, yeah. Exactly. We're talking about a flying rat. It's what we're talking about. And so we were so against it right out from the outset. We even said in the initial brief, that we didn't want a pigeon. Even though we knew that carrier pigeons and messaging are very closely linked, and it would make for a good thing. We were just like, we don't want to pigeon. And then one of the first things that came back with was this pigeon. And we were just like anti pigeon.
But then we went through a bunch of other things. We went through like a St. Bernard dog thing that didn't work. There was just a bunch of other things. And it was just this lengthy exhaustive process. And I think Tim and his partner were just getting really bummed and exhausted by us. And then eventually we just capitulated the end, and we really started to embrace the pigeon, the branding that they had done for us. And so we now have a pigeon. We've got a pigeon in our branding.
Joe Howard: And this is for WP Migrate DB pro, right?
Brad Touesnard: No, no, no. That's the migrating geese which are more majestic.
Joe Howard: I knew [crosstalk 00:04:17] that's why I was trying to.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah. And that's another reason we quoted why we didn't want another bird. Because it was going to be confusing. But no, we really like the pigeon. The pigeon that they came up with looks really slick, the brand, and so we love it. Yeah. We came around on it even though we were determined for it not to be a pigeon.
Joe Howard: I think that's one thing that I would definitely rely on that team at DOS for. Is they can go from a concept that sounds like, hmm, I don't know about that, and they can take it to like, whoa, this is actually really cool. And they have the design chops. And honestly kind of the creative chops I think to help you take that step, help us take that step. We were totally like lost and they totally let us on. Pretty much how to move forward with everything.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah. I think the next time we do branding, we're going to just go in with a completely open mind and not put any kind of kibosh on any ideas out of the gate. At the same time, even if we hadn't done that, I definitely would have been opening that pitch deck with like, don't be a pigeon, don't be a pigeon, don't be a pigeon, in my mind. So sometimes you just go in with preconceived notions, right? You just can't help it.
Joe Howard: Yep, totally, man. Cool. We talked a little bit before we got started here. We were just chatting offline and talking about some of the stuff you're working on this year, you personally. And it sounds like you're pretty active in the hiring process, for I don't know, a few different positions, just that's where you're spending a lot of time on right now. How's that going? How's 2020 been for you?
Brad Touesnard: Not great. It kind of fits with everything else that's been going on in 2020. And I think that actually, the pandemic has actually maybe thrown us a curve ball in hiring as well. Because, one of our biggest differentiators before the pandemic, was that we were a remote company, right? That you can work from home. And all of a sudden, that is no longer a differentiation. Everyone's working from home, everyone's remote. I mean, I shouldn't say everyone, because obviously there's people out there doing difficult work during this pandemic.
But everyone in IT pretty much, right? Except for the people at the data centers that have to keep the server's running. Everyone else is kind of good to work from home. And so, yeah. I think that's been a big challenge. So our typical process involves posting a job to weworkremotely.com. And we just get tons of applicants from there. And we just pick from them. And this year, we've gotten way less applicants because there's way more companies hiring on that job board. SO-
Joe Howard: Interesting. Total applications went down a lot this year.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah. Way down, way down. We used to get close to 300 applicants for developer jobs, we would post on there. And we're getting like 20 to 30 now.
Christie Chirin…: What, that's a huge change.
Joe Howard: I know it's like 90%.
Brad Touesnard: It's incredible. It's staggering.
Christie Chirin…: I'm surprised because at least in the U.S., we're hearing a lot about just our astronomical unemployment rate because of the pandemic. Right? And granted that is mostly across non-IT, but I still heard there's plenty of people. Right? Exactly. It's a lot of surface work. But even then, I've heard of plenty of people in IT who have lost their jobs. Some company's revenues that are… At least client pipeline has gone down. So I'm shocked, what?
Brad Touesnard: Yeah. I think the thing is, there's an imbalance there, though. Most people in IT haven't been affected. But most companies have stopped working in offices, right? Not most, all IT companies have stopped working in offices. So I think there's a huge disparity there. Right? And so you've got way more companies competing for job postings that are not local anymore.
And you've got just a handful, relatively speaking, of people who have lost their jobs that were kind of linked to the service sector or something, right? So yeah, I am staggered too. I feel like there might be another part of the story that I'm missing. I keep double guessing myself, second guessing myself. Like, what? Did we change something? Is our job postings repelling people now? What is going on?
Joe Howard: Yeah, it's funny because you're competing against a lot of other companies right now. So maybe not as easy for individual companies who are remote hire anymore, but definitely a good time for the remote job boards. I'm sure we working remotely is happening up here, right? There have a ton of people posting on, oh, we got to find more remote workers. Brad, do you feel like this is a temporary thing? Or do you feel like people, I don't know are starting to… I mean, everyone's working remotely this year. So I'm sure a lot of people are like, this pandemic sucks.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah.
Joe Howard: But working remotely, I could see myself doing this. Maybe I want to do this more. Do you think that you're going to probably have ongoing challenges competing with more remote companies in 2021 and moving forward?
Brad Touesnard: Yeah, I think so. I think a lot of companies are not going back to offices. Especially in IT where a lot of the workers are introverts anyway, right? Now, if you're an extrovert and you thrive off of, you get energy from other people, and you're sitting in your office by yourself at home, that's going to be a problem long term. Right? It's going to be difficult. And so I feel like there's certainly some companies like an agency, for example, right? An agency with Client Services people, that thrive off that, I don't think they're going to be able to-
Christie Chirin…: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know about that one. I mean, it's probably true, honestly. But at the same time, right? I'm a pretty extroverted person. And so a lot of the nature of work from home is a sacrifice to me. But the sacrifice is still totally worth the benefit, right? I just have to work really hard to fill that other part of what I need to be happy and thriving. So I think even then, we're going to see those people be like working from home is great.
Brad Touesnard: Have you taken a personality test though? Do you know that you rank as extrovert? You do?
Christie Chirin…: I have taken a personality test. And the shocking thing is that, depending on how I'm feeling that day, I get introverted or extroverted. So I'm right in the middle, I'm right in the middle, right? So I might not be the super extroverts. I definitely know people who are extremely extroverted, right? Who coordinate everything, and love to put events together and stuff like that. And I can definitely see those folks really struggling in a fully remote environment.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah. I had my whole team take a… it wasn't Myers-Briggs, I don't think. It was some variation or something. Anyway, I don't think one person in my team ranked as extrovert.
Joe Howard: Wow.
Brad Touesnard: And that sort of, I work 12, 13 people, right? So it's not surprising that… Especially the way we hire, we hire, we try not to do video interviews till the very end. And we don't use that as a decision. So we don't. The video interview at the end, it's really just a meet and greet. Just for fun. We've already made a decision by that point, one way or another. And the reason for that is a bunch of… There's a bunch of reasons for that.
But the primary reason is we don't do a lot of video calls as a team, right? We primarily, we do one once a week video calls for updates. And we don't really need to do that. We just do it because we want to get some face time and so that we don't turn into complete social idiots.
Joe Howard: So just to clarify for your hiring process. So you only do one video meet with the person you're hiring at that point, you've already decided if you're going to hire them or not? And the rest is
Brad Touesnard: That's right.
Joe Howard: … communications emails or slack right or something?
Christie Chirin…: That's mostly your job anyway, right?
Brad Touesnard: Exactly. Exactly. Writing clearly, and concisely is a big ranking factor for us. And, yeah. So yeah, we actually have been doing text-based chat interviews over Google Docs. So the interesting thing with Google Docs is that you can actually see them, every letter they type you can see as they type it, whereas typically with like a slack chat or something like that, they have to hit enter after they've typed their whole message and then you see it all. But you can see their thought process and they're backspacing and everything as part of the chat when you use Google Docs to do the interview.
And so it's a little nerve wracking, I think for the candidates. But we haven't had any serious complaints about it, and I feel like we glean a lot. We know we really get the cadence of their thought processes and just how quickly they type. And there's a bunch of information that comes from doing it that way. So yeah, we found that pretty effective way of doing things. It's really bizarre.
Joe Howard: Did your team come up with that? Or is that something you've [crosstalk 00:14:32]
Brad Touesnard: I think I came up with that idea myself as part when I was developing the hiring process. Yeah.
Joe Howard: Yeah. That's a cool idea. I like that a lot. I like the idea of not doing a lot of video through the interview process, especially if your job is based on written communication. It also is a nice way to take pressure off of people who may be more of introverted maybe not as much video people, and want to showcase their skills in a different way.
Brad Touesnard: Exactly. Exactly.
Joe Howard: Also, that means there's always going to be some kind of pressure in a job interview. I mean, it's a job interview. So it's, it can't be, no pressure. And there probably should be some pressure because, working a job to get some kind of results has some kind of pressure too, right? The Google Doc sounds like a nice happy medium, because it's, you can write, and someone can be there hanging out with you and chatting with you.
But you get to glean a little bit into that process. And I totally get the backspacing, or the speed of typing, and looking into people's thought process. I bet you see people like, oh, I really liked that he or she deleted that little part and rewrote it, because I think that how they rewrote it was better. That glean in those little things are, a lot of times can be helpful. Is this the right candidate or not?
Brad Touesnard: Yeah, totally.
Joe Howard: I mean, still[crosstalk 00:15:54]
Christie Chirin…: I would find [crosstalk 00:15:54]
Brad Touesnard: What do you do? Do you guys, yeah, do you do interviews over video early on or?
Christie Chirin…: I can talk about Caldera, because Liquid Web has a very traditional hiring process, right? But we used to do slack interview. We'd bring them on as guests, and they would have a time and things like that. But we would do a slack interview, right? Because, again, we're testing for your skills about what you're actually going to do here, not your interviewing skills, right? So we're going to be talking over slack a whole lot more than we're ever going to be talking on video. Right? So that was how we started. Yeah. And then the rest of it was pretty traditional. But we started with a slack interview, because that's the basic skill, right?
Almost anything else, depending on the role, of course, but almost anything else we can teach you when it comes to tooling. And that's the one thing I can't teach you, or at least don't have the resources to. What just can you effectively communicate asynchronously in short messages? And I don't know, I'm kind of curious. And I want to come back to this thought, right? But I'm really curious about what both of you think about how the current moment presents an opportunity to teach people stuff. To bring on the people who maybe aren't currently IT workers, but could reasonably switch now that we're going to be focused more on online work from home and things like that. So I'm kind of curious.
Joe Howard: Yeah. I think that's super challenging. I've had a couple WordPress friends reach out to me, like, hey, I have a friend, or someone I know who's looking for a job, they're looking to get into a tech job, or technology job, or WordPress job. And they have been the manager of a clothing store for three years. And I've had reservations about potentially hiring those people. And I think my reservations stem from having to do a ton of teaching and education. And that's a big commitment. I don't know if we have the systems built out to… We can teach people how to do basics of most things, but around the WordPress community.
How does the WordPress community work? How does WordPress work? How does open source software work? That takes a lot of experience. I think, took me a lot of time to figure that stuff out. And to bring someone who's like, what's WordPress? Or WordPress with a lowercase p? It's like, okay, there's a lot to dig into here. So I've been hesitant actually to hire people from outside of kind of at least some experience in working in a technology coming or working in here. But Brad, I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts are there too.
Christie Chirin…: Yeah.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah. My biggest reservation there would just be digital communication. I mean, I see this on a daily basis, with the other people, non-IT people that I interact with. Is they're just, they can't even do email right. They're replying all saying, thanks. And just breaking all the rules of like digital etiquette, right?
Brad Touesnard: And I'm just like, oh, man, this would be so painful to try onboard someone like this, and to just train them up on basic things like, how to email properly. I'm not saying-
Joe Howard: I think [crosstalk 00:19:37] when someone posts a new post and doesn't reply to the other post about the same topic, don't start a new post reply to that. And that's even another level. Yeah.
Brad Touesnard: Right. Right. But I mean, they wouldn't even… Potentially they would have a hard time even getting their head around slack. Right? If they're having a hard time with email, right? And the etiquette there. So everything would be new to them, or a lot would be new to them at a basic level. And I think that would be very difficult for a small company to absorb someone and have to train them up at that very basic level. I could see larger organizations being able to do that, and having the processes in place to handle that. Because larger organizations tend to take on more junior people anyway, as part of their whole growth strategy and hiring strategy.
For us, we don't even take on intermediate and junior people, because we felt like we would be spending so much of our resources, the little resources that we have, just training those people up and getting them to a point where they're going to be a valuable member of the team. And then they might leave. Right? Is the other thing. And we've only got 13 people. So yeah, I feel like you need to be a much bigger company to take on some of the basics. I would say at least 50 people you would have to be… I think that's kind of the number I have in my head anyway.
Joe Howard: Yeah. I feel like I want an academy or a training section of my company, right? It's you see a bunch of big Fortune 500 companies doing a ton of technology education for youth around the world. A lot of that is they want to be a good company, and maybe make the world a better place. But there's also the advantage of, hey, in 10 years, that person could be an employee here, because we helped bring them up. Right?
Brad Touesnard: Exactly.
Joe Howard: There's that thought process. So yeah, Christie, I'd be interested to hear it Liquid Web, like you said, you have a more traditional approach. Do you all have, or have you this year, you may not be super privy to all the hiring stuff, but have you seen folks come into Liquid Web who have not had traditional backgrounds? Or is it mostly people who have had some experience?
Christie Chirin…: It goes either way. With Liquid Web in particular, I mean, we're 1000 person company. So-
Joe Howard: You don't know every single person [crosstalk 00:21:54]
Christie Chirin…: Well, the thing is I probably know more people on the average part of that 1000 person company, right.? And that just has to do with my role and my personality.
Joe Howard: Extroverted, yeah.
Christie Chirin…: But in the middle, right in the middle. But it depends, right? I think that even a company like Liquid Web isn't going to hire someone with absolutely zero tech skills, right? And I also think that today in particular, there really aren't that many people with zero tech skills. I mean, there's a lot of people with zero tech skills. But a lot of the technology skills that you need to come in with are now things that more of us are practicing. Right? Just for daily life, especially now that we're living in this weird, topsy turvy post apocalyptic pandemic world, a lot of people have had to learn how to communicate online.
Have had to learn how to use Zoom, right? Have had to learn how to write. So I think the tides are changing a little tiny bit, right? And I don't want to be discouraging to anybody in that position. For the most part, though, Liquid Web is traditional in it's hiring. And so part of that means that you don't see a whole lot of sort of career switchers, right? You see, roles being posted, and people with experience coming in. Some of the roles are deliberately posted as entry level roles, right? And the company is still looking for the relevant credentials for an entry level role, right?
And so with Liquid Web, it's more in the traditional. And I definitely agree with you both that for a small company, the amount of resources that training requires, is massive. And training is a skill, right? I don't think that everyone who is a CEO, or an owner, or a technology lead is necessarily going to be the best teacher. And that alone brings on a level of complexity that is not going to be easily approachable to most small companies. The other thing too, is it's not the best thing for the entry level person, right?
You mentioned that they might leave. But it's really hard to start out in a position in which you don't have mentorship. And you don't have a lead in whatever you're trying to do to learn from and grow from. Right? And I think that that can also be a disadvantage, but is that disadvantage heavier than the disadvantage of getting your foot in the door? I don't really know.
Joe Howard: Yeah, interesting. Also this kind of transitions into something else that Brad you put as maybe a potential topic we could talk about today, which is, when you're rating potential candidates for a position, there's this intuition versus scorecard, I don't know, conversation. Some people may do more of a formal scorecard. We used to do pretty formal scorecards around what we thought about answers to certain questions. Was this a 7 out of 10 answer?
This seemed like a 7 out of 10 answer. Actually, I remember we specifically didn't do 7 out of 10, we weren't allowed to give 7 of 10s because 7 of 10 is like a total awful answer. It's not good and not bad. But it's just in the middle. So we were like either six or eight, or any other number out of 10 besides seven.
Christie Chirin…: No 7s.
Joe Howard: But anyway, you could give… Yeah, no sevenS. But we'd like go into a Google Doc, or a sheet. And we'd like go and average the numbers and, okay, this person got like, an 8.2. And this person got like an eight. So was one person better than the other? And don't really do that anymore.
Brad Touesnard: My point too. Clearly he's better.
Joe Howard: Yeah, exactly. But we've kind of transitioned to more, I think, intuition based. And we think you're going to be good. We've done some qualifications on you. Let's do a trial period. But and see how this actually works. And that's, I think, worked out better for us. But I'd be interested to hear Brad what, your thoughts on there? Because you had this as a point you want to chat about it? I don't know what you guys do over there.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah, man, I feel like our hiring process has gone from, so the approach was just throw them in the deep end and sink or swim, we would literally just take several candidates that we barely even vetted and just throw them at the project, and just add them to GitHub and everything and just say, here you go pick up some issues, start contributing to this project, right? Kind of almost an open source kind of mentality, right? And the problem with that is, super disruptive to our team, right? Because you've got all these other people in there just fiddling around and trying to learn on the fly, and they're asking questions, it was a mess. So we do a lot more vetting now before we get to the stage where we bring them on into a trial.
But our trial now is still based on our product. So it's like a fork, we just make a copy of our product repo. And we just copy some issues into there that we feel like this person, or that the role would be revealing for the role. And things we want to see. And then they just do that. They open a pull request for that stuff and commit some code, and we review it, and we give them feedback and they fix it. And we just go through the process that we normally would. And that's been the best trial project. We've in the past also come up with these conceived trial projects for people. And that's been a really false positive signal in the past. Because we could try this project, and it was too simple for the person to get their head around.
And so they did great on that project, but then they get into our actual plugin, and they can't get their head around it, the concepts are eluding them. And so yeah, we've really kind of gone back to the old way of like throwing them in the deep end in a way, but just in a way that's less disruptive to our team. And that's been pretty good. One other problem we've had, though, is that so what part of our process is to review sample code upfront, as part of kind of the application process we ask in your in the application.
Can you provide some sample code that we could quickly review to see if you're in the same arena as what we're looking for here? Right? And a lot of people especially when we're hiring Laravel developers for spin up, a lot of people say they don't have any code to share. Everything's under NDA or whatever, right? And I think that's just the difference between Laravel world and the WordPress world, whatever WordPress world is GPL everything right? So it's kind of all open source if you're working on WordPress stuff. So you should be able to share pretty much anything you work on there. Whereas Laravel is much more private and protected stuff. So now with Laravel developers, we have to have this kind of code challenge project that is contrived, that allows them to do something that can show us, can you cut it?
Will you be able to cut it when you get into our application? Right? So we have to contrive something there just for those people. But then we still bring them into our app and try them out sometimes, right? If we're still not sure. So our process is really fluid. And it really if we're not feeling sure about something, we'll figure out a way to squash that uncertainty before we make a commitment, especially if someone is employed full time and has to leave their job to come and work for us. Right? In those situations, you don't want to say, yes, you're hired and then find out two weeks in that they're not a fit. And then they're out at sea. You just let them go. Right? It's tricky, man. It's so tricky.
Joe Howard: It's tricky is like the number one word I use for hiring stuff. Because it's a huge challenge. It's no matter how good or bad, I feel that someone's almost it's like anything could happen, right? As someone who's hired a good amount of people successfully, but also had a lot of issues hiring in the past, over the past three years, like I've probably had, we've had, I'll say we, I have personally had like three or four people who I've hired who just didn't work out very well. And usually I can look back, in the moment it's hard to say I need to let this person go. It can be difficult to say that.
Brad Touesnard: Sure.
Joe Howard: But then after it's done, I can always look back even to the application process, even to their first week. Obviously, there's more stuff we could always do for onboarding and helping people get better at that. But there's usually something I can look back at to say, hmm that was maybe a red flag for something that could have turned into something bigger. Brad, I don't want to call you out. Maybe you've had some hiring that's worked out. Maybe some it hasn't worked out. Any arounds hiring it hasn't worked out where you've seen something like that? Anything specifically you've seen that you look back and like, oh, that wasn't, I should have listened to myself more and notice that, that might have been an issue?
Brad Touesnard: Yeah, I feel like in the past I've given up that is the hiring decision to my team without guidance. I mean, that was a huge mistake. That was probably the biggest mistake I've made hiring in the past where it's just I said, you guys hire this person. And just like, you're on your own, you've never hired anybody before, but I'm sure it'll work out. Is basically the approach I took, which is terrible in retrospect, right? Everything that doesn't work out is always terrible and retrospect. But at the time, it didn't seem like that big of an ask that they would just figure it out. But in retrospect, the hiring is super difficult. Of course, I'm not very good at it still. And I've been doing it for years.
Joe Howard: That's my thing. I was like, I'm not very good at it. Someone else should probably help him please.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that that was probably the biggest thing. And then, like I said earlier, we contrived of a project that didn't actually test their skills very well to test kind of all the important parts. And so in retrospect, we look and say, oh, yeah, that project is a bad project to actually use as bedding. So yeah, that's true. I'm sure there's a dozens of others if I… I'd rather not sit down and make that list though.
Joe Howard: Yeah. Exactly. It's a stressful list to put together.
Brad Touesnard: And I feel it's kind of whack-a-mole too. I feel like there's going to be something new next year that's never happened that someone gets in through the cracks. And then we find out, oh, shoot. Yeah, we got to-
Joe Howard: Another thing.
Brad Touesnard: … watch out for that in the future.
Joe Howard: Yeah. How about well, maybe we could talk about the other side of the coin? The positives people who have worked there for a long time. Anybody or your best team members, people who've been there, and you can really lean on and trust in a really core members of the team, maybe some positives from some of their, I don't know, because there's kind of hard skills and soft skills. There's obviously technical chops that your developers need. But then there's also soft skills around communication.
How do you use slack? Like, okay, they can just do it. Anything specifically that comes out to you as things that… I usually think about it, the people I manage directly, if they can make my life easier as a manager, I don't have to sit over their shoulder, they get their stuff done, they're good team members. To me if they can do that they're 80% of the way they are, right? So anything from your perspective, though, where you're like, this is what tells me this person is the bomb.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah. Well, I mean, our retention has been excellent. We just had our first team member leave that's been with us for a long time, which is sad. But he was moving On to new exciting things. And so we kind of celebrated it. But there was a somber mood to it too, right?
Joe Howard: Once you get to 10 plus people statistically speaking at some point.[crosstalk 00:35:11]
Brad Touesnard: Yeah. So he had been with us since 2015, so five years. We still have five people that have been with us for at least that long. And we got two more that have been with us, I think, for three or four years. And then the rest are newer ones, been with us for two, and the others are much newer. So yeah, retention rates are really good. We had one person stay for two years and leave, our marketing manager. That happened.
But I think largely what happened there is that she hired someone under her to help her with a bunch of tasks, and it kind of replaced a lot of the work that she was doing. It kind of filled her role a little bit too much, if you know what I mean. So she kind of made herself obsolete.
Joe Howard: She was stuck between manager and individual contributors. She was just kind of like, [crosstalk 00:36:24]
Brad Touesnard: Yeah, yeah. I think that's a bit what happened there. And I mean, the idea there was to grow. For her to become more of a high level person. Right? But she was having difficulty doing that, I think. And so she ended up leaving the company. Which is fine. We've been fine ever since. So it wasn't like, oh, this is devastating. We're not going to be able to keep going here. That would be bad. Right? If you lost that key person.
Joe Howard: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like honestly, at this point most people on our team, if they quit or had to leave, things would be okay. But there are definitely probably two or three people who I would be stressed if they left. Because they're really core to the team, which is good, right? They're really core contributors. But if they left, that would be a challenge for us. Which is, that's a challenge too. So you want to have people it's like, where do you want people? You want people to be dependent on but not too dependent on? Yeah.
Brad Touesnard: Right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I feel the same way. I just promoted, I mean, promoted it's a weird word. Change the role is probably a better word. He went from being a developer primarily to be a manager. So he's managing a development team. He's doing almost no coding, actually. Yeah, he's doing little tiny bit of coding still, here and there. And doing some PR reviews. But other than that, he's just managing the projects, and the products, and eventually going to be doing some UX work and stuff like that, product managers stuff. And then we have another person, again, this person's been with us for over five years. And he's kind of taken on a lead developer role within one of the teams.
And so yeah, if for one of these… The whole reason for this was to take a bunch of stuff off my plate, right? There kind of stepping into a new role and taking away a bunch of stuff that I've been doing, right? So yeah, if they were to leave, it would really, really suck because I would have to inherit all those things again, until I could find a replacement. And one of the only reasons that I felt confident in giving up these responsibilities to these people, because they've been with me for so long. They know everything so well. And I trust them. Right? And so yeah, if they were to leave, it would be really difficult, so.
Joe Howard: Yeah. Totally. The one other other thing I wanted to chat about here, in this podcast actually is based on what we all started talking about, which was how you're seeing fewer leads come in for new hiring prospects. So top of the funnel. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that, because as someone… I personally, I've adjusted my hiring structures somewhat from just basing it on these websites where I post a job, and I get candidates, to actually doing more, "recruitment."
That sounds really formal, but it's more just using my network to reach out to people. Allie Nimmons is on our team now. That started from a Twitter DM where I DMed her a project I think she was helping her coworker Michelle raise money for a laptop. And I Dmed her and was like, this is a really cool project, super cool. And that eventually turned into now she's our community person and rocking it.
Brad Touesnard: Nice.
Joe Howard: And I'd be interested to hear also from you Christie around… I mean, Liquid Web is 1000 person company, right? So you probably have an HR department that does outreach and has a certain candidate quota every month. But Brad is a smaller company, wondering if you do any outreach for people like Slack, DMs, and the making WordPress channel, reaching out to some educators in the space, we have a collection of like 100 freelancers they work with, hey, anybody, you know who could do this? Yeah, and thinking about that as kind of to support your process of getting candidates on the top of the funnel.
Christie Chirin…: Out button real quick. I want to hear Brad's answer. but I will let you know that, that recruitment process never really goes away. Yes. Liquid Web has an entire HR department. And they do all the HR things. Like wellness programs, and paperwork, and onboarding, and all this stuff that you associate with a larger company. But, my job still came from a Twitter DM from Chris. So it never goes away. Right? [crosstalk 00:41:19]. I don't think that, that process ever becomes like hiring is completely disassociated, and 100% outsourced to HR. It's always going to be about networks. And that's true for people looking for jobs, too, right?
You have a better chance when you know someone who works in the company, even if it's not someone who works in hiring, why? Because they could talk to a hiring manager, because they can make your name relevant in a stack of resumes, blah, blah, blah, all the regular sort of employment advice. Right? So that's a bit about Liquid Web. I can definitely talk to how things were at Caldera. I mean, a lot of the things that you all are talking about are different for me. And that was because we did bring on entry level people. And that was because it wasn't difficult for me to teach. Right?
And that just sort of comes with again, it's a skill and people are different levels of knowledgeable and also interested in it, right? Because it does take a lot of patience. And it does take a lot of effort and investment, right? But for me, I mean, a ton of my job responsibilities now is to teach the product catalog to sales, to the partner team, to new support people to things like that, right? So this is just sort of, I hate these words, too. But kind of a natural competency, right? And so when you're looking at entry level roles, that funnel is just going to be bigger, it's just going to be bigger.
And that sometimes helps if you have the structures or the time to put into bringing someone on and then documenting all that stuff, and then reusing all that stuff for the next person, which is more of what I have been doing here at Liquid Web. But outside of taking on that strategy, it's hard to get qualified people. When we were looking for roles that were intermediate to senior, it was really hard to find people. A lot of recruitment was required. A lot of people didn't make it through even if they weren't entry level, just because there were key pieces of information that we just couldn't teach. And I don't have a great answer. But I do want to add that at no point does active recruitment go away.
Brad Touesnard: Yeah. Totally, totally. I mean, so my second hire Ian Polson, who's still on the team, and he's actually the product manager I was talking about earlier. He was hired because he replied to a tweet. I had posted that I was hiring. So we already had a relationship because he had bought WP app store from me. And he still runs WP app store today, which is now it's just a deal site, right? And that's what it was when he bought it from me. It's kind of like, app Sumo, but for WordPress products, right? And he still runs that today. And anyway, yeah. He reached out to me on Twitter, and he said, hey, I might be interested in this.
I think it was around the post that I'd written where it's like, come work for me, and I'll teach you how to launch your own product. Or something like that. It was kind of an apprenticeship kind of thing except paid. You actually get paid for your time. So he reached out to me for that. And then I think I reached out to Matt Shaw, who's also with us still and had a conversation with him. And then it turned into an acquisition. So he had his own product, Better Search Replace. And it was basically turned into an aqua hire. And so Matt came to work for us. And that product rolled into our catalog.
And the rest is history. So I agree. And I have been talking to people who know us from our content and our products. Some of the best candidates that we get applying, by far actually are people who know us already, right? Know our products and want to work for us. And are very enthusiastic about it. And they demonstrate that in their application. Right? I would say active recruitment has never been a thing for us. And we've only really been considering it lately, because it's been so difficult to hire lately, but yeah.
Joe Howard: Those are all interesting anecdotal stories. Very interesting we've all had Twitter experience of a hiring process. I'd second what you said about people who know your product or good potential hires. I've talked to the team at Beaver Builder, and Anthony is their marketer over there. He was just a Beaver Builder power user. And they hired him because he just knew Beaver Builder so well and had marketing chops. Like boom, easy hire, right?
Brad Touesnard: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joe Howard: And then for us, I hired Alec who's our head of growth. And he was a WP Buffs' white label partner before we hired him. And so he knew the white label process. He was a white label partner, he was using it to grow his business. So he knew the benefits of it. He knew the ins and outs of it and obviously had learned from our side, but. He talked about Christie listening to us on podcast episodes during when he was applying. And it's a small thing, but it's an impactful thing. You know about the company, you know about us. And he's been fantastic so far. So I think these little gold nuggets are important. Yeah, cool.
Brad Touesnard: [crosstalk 00:47:42] Yeah. Speaking of HR, oh, sorry.
Christie Chirin…: Oh, no, no. It's okay. I was just shining in that what Joe just described with Alec happens a good amount at Liquid Web too. Especially when it comes to sales posts.
Joe Howard: Sales post, a lot of Liquid Web. Totally.
Brad Touesnard: Oh, yeah. I would imagine. Yeah. Speaking of HR, though, we are now, after this year of, basically, I spent so much time hiring this year, I'm starting to consider a part time HR person to really do some of the heavy lifting around hiring. Because I feel like we've probably hit the point now where we are just going to be hiring kind of perpetually. And if I don't have help with that, then I'm just going to be the one doing it perpetually.
So a recruiter or someone to like filter applications, and maybe do initial contact with applicants. I've been doing all of that myself this year. And I really need to give that up. I need to get over the idea that I'm some kind of special evaluator of these applications. I don't think I am. I know I am not. But yet when I'm doing it, I'm feeling like, oh, I'm so good at this.
Joe Howard: Brad after we wrap up here, we'll do some [inaudible 00:49:04]. Because we just hired a People Ops manager, part time People Ops manager.
Brad Touesnard: Okay.
Joe Howard: It's changed a lot of what we do and made things a lot easier for Nick and I in terms of hiring process. So I will help to push to help you find someone, if you could connect me, this is a nice trade here, right? For HR stuff. I would love to talk to quid pro quo.
Brad Touesnard: It's a quid pro quo.
Joe Howard: It's a quid pro quo, here we go. I would love to talk to your designer, because I would be interested in not hiring that person. But I would love to maybe cook into their network, and to find help them help me find a designer because, I see all the stuff you guys put out at Delicious Brains. And everything is… beautiful, impeccably designed, and you can tell that you have an in house designer, and not just a design firm helping you out. I can tell it's all works together really well. So yes, quid pro quo. Sorry. But like I want to[inaudible 00:50:01].
Brad Touesnard: I don't know how much Louis is going to be able to help you. I mean, first of all, Louis is an incredible designer, and I'm so fortunate to have him on the team. And it was a pretty difficult hiring process to find him, though it was only one round. I feel like how good Louis is, it should have taken three rounds to find someone like him, right? So I don't know how a day he was working at an agency. He saw our job posting and he applied. It was really that simple. I don't know how much he's going to be able to help you there. It's probably going to be luck, Joe, I'm afraid to say.
Joe Howard: Turns out usually that's the case. And so, yeah. I'm with you there. But cool. Well, let's wrap it up. We've been doing like 50 minutes or so. So yeah, appreciate you being on Brad. Why don't you tell folks websites, Twitter handle,-
Joe Howard: … places they can find you online?
Brad Touesnard: Yeah, @bradt on Twitter, and you can find our products at deliciousbrains.com and spinupwp.com.
Joe Howard: Yes. Cool. And last thing Brad, we ask guests to do, on the show is ask our listeners, for a little iTunes review. So if you wouldn't mind asking our listeners right now for a little five stars here, we'd appreciate it.
Brad Touesnard: All right, folks. It's time to do a little work. Not really, though, is it? It takes like than five minutes to do this, right? You go to iTunes and… Actually do you have to go into the iTunes app to do this? Or can you go to the website? Or where do you go?
Joe Howard: You can go to the website. My computer has a little pop up window when I go to the website. It says, do you want to open this in iTunes? So then I just opened it in iTunes but we also have a redirect so people couldn't just go to wpmrr.com/itunes and whatever your devices does with that, it'll take you to that view area. Yep. Super easy.
Brad Touesnard: So wpmrr.com/itunes. That's easy. Just do that. And then two minutes later, you're done. And you've done a really nice thing, for Joe and Christie. I mean, that should make you feel good. Right?
Joe Howard: Oh. There you go. So, as always, we appreciate those. Leave a little comments with something you learned from this episode, and then we can shoot the screenshot to Brad's Twitter. Thanks, Brad, appreciate you getting helping us get a review. And will also help us choose what other episodes to do if we get a bunch of reviews about a hiring episode. Hey, we'll talk more about it in the future and bring other folks on to talk about it too. So cool. If folks are new listeners, we got a few older episodes. Right Christie?
Christie Chirin…: We have hundreds of older episodes. Is it hundreds? I think it's 100, and then some 10s.
Joe Howard: 100 with maybe a super small, s or something. 120 or so. Maybe not multiple 100's, but 100 plus 10's. Yeah, there we go.
Christie Chirin…: There we go.
Joe Howard: … of episodes in the bank. So go and check out some older content specific to challenged. We have a search on the website. So hey, you're having trouble with pricing, search pricing, we got a bunch of episodes on that kind of stuff and everything else under the sun. If you have questions for us at the show, Christine I always want to do more Q and A episodes. So shoot your questions into where? Christie.
Christie Chirin…: Into joe@wpmrr.com.
Joe Howard: I just had that inbox redirected to my team to help me handle that because I'm not very good at checking email. So they'll be checked even better now that inbox. So that's another reason to send those in. Or you can just hit us up on Twitter @JosephHHoward, @xtiechirinos.
Christie Chirin…: Yeah. X-T-I-E Chirinos. That's C-H-I-R-I-N-O-S. Yeah. I got an email from joe@wpmr.com. Allie forwarded it to me. It was very exciting.
Joe Howard: There you go. Perfect. Makes it easy. All right, that's it for this week. We'll be in your podcast players again next Tuesday. Brad, thanks again for being on man. It's been real.
Brad Touesnard: Thanks, folks. Appreciate it.
Joe Howard: See you everybody. Bye.
E127 – Making the Internet 100% Accessible by 2025 (Rafi Glantz, accessiBe)
E125 – Finding Success at the Intersection of Design and Development (David Yarde, Sevenality)