Create a halo of chocolate curls on top of your favorite sweet treat. Or, top cups of coffee with dollops of whipped cream and chocolate curls. Make brownies extra special by frosting them with vanilla buttercream frosting. Then, top each one of the brownies with a chocolate curl.
Place square or bar of semisweet chocolate on cutting board; shave it into small pieces with paring knife.
Shave chocolate into small pieces.
Place measuring cup in water to melt chocolate, stirring frequently with rubber spatula until smooth. Be careful not to get any water into chocolate.
Remove measuring from saucepan. Let chocolate cool slightly.
Pour melted chocolate onto back of baking pan. Quickly spread chocolate into a thin layer (about 1/4 inch thick) with metal spatula.
Spread chocolate onto back of baking pan.
Let stand in cool, dry place until chocolate is firm. Do not chill in refrigerator. When chocolate is just firm, use small straight-edge metal spatula to form curls. Holding spatula at a 45-degree angle, push spatula firmly along baking pan, under chocolate, so chocolate curls as it is pushed. If chocolate is too firm to curl, let stand a few minutes at room temperature. Refrigerate again if it becomes too soft.
Scrape chocolate into a curl.
Using small skewer or toothpick, transfer curls to waxed paper. Store curls in a cool, dry place until ready to use.
Transfer curls to waxed paper.
Baker's Tip! For ease in cutting chocolate, slightly warm cookie cutters with hands before cutting out shapes.


text:
Intravenous immunoglobulin for the treatment of childhood encephalitis
Overview of attention for article published in Cochrane database of systematic reviews, October 2017
High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (87th percentile)
Above-average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (58th percentile)
1 policy source
18 tweeters
2 Facebook pages
Summary Policy documents Twitter Facebook Wikipedia Dimensions citations
Cochrane database of systematic reviews, October 2017
Mildred A Iro, Natalie G Martin, Michael Absoud, Andrew J Pollard
Encephalitis is a syndrome of neurological dysfunction due to inflammation of the brain parenchyma, caused by an infection or an exaggerated host immune response, or both. Attenuation of brain inflammation through modulation of the immune response could improve patient outcomes. Biological agents such as immunoglobulin that have both anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory properties may therefore be useful as adjunctive therapies for people with encephalitis. To assess the efficacy and safety of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) as add-on treatment for children with encephalitis. The Cochrane Multiple Sclerosis and Rare Diseases of the CNS group's Information Specialist searched the following databases up to 30 September 2016: CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, ClinicalTrials.gov, and the WHO ICTRP Search Portal. In addition, two review authors searched Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) & Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science (CPCI-S) (Web of Science Core Collection, Thomson Reuters) (1945 to January 2016), Global Health Library (Virtual Health Library), and Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE). Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) comparing IVIG in addition to standard care versus standard care alone or placebo. Two review authors independently selected articles for inclusion, extracted relevant data, and assessed quality of trials. We resolved disagreements by discussion among the review authors. Where possible, we contacted authors of included studies for additional information. We presented results as risk ratios (RR) or mean differences (MD) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). The search identified three RCTs with 138 participants. All three trials included only children with viral encephalitis, one of these included only children with Japanese encephalitis, a specific form of viral encephalitis. Only the trial of Japanese encephalitis (22 children) contributed to the primary outcome of this review and follow-up in that study was for three to six months after hospital discharge. There was no follow-up of participants in the other two studies. We identified one ongoing trial.For the primary outcomes, the results showed no significant difference between IVIG and placebo when used in the treatment of children with Japanese encephalitis: significant disability (RR 0.75, 95% CI 0.22 to 2.60; P = 0.65) and serious adverse events (RR 1.00, 95% CI 0.07 to 14.05; P = 1.00).For the secondary outcomes, the study of Japanese encephalitis showed no significant difference between IVIG and placebo when assessing significant disability at hospital discharge (RR 1.00, 95% CI 0.60 to 1.67). There was no significant difference (P = 0.53) in Glasgow Coma Score at discharge between IVIG (median score 14; range 3 to 15) and placebo (median 14 score; range 7 to 15) in the Japanese encephalitis study. The median length of hospital stay in the Japanese encephalitis study was similar for IVIG-treated (median 13 days; range 9 to 21) and placebo-treated (median 12 days; range 6 to 18) children (P = 0.59).Pooled analysis of the results of the other two studies resulted in a significantly lower mean length of hospital stay (MD -4.54 days, 95% CI -7.47 to -1.61; P = 0.002), time to resolution of fever (MD -0.97 days, 95% CI -1.25 to -0.69; P < 0.00001), time to stop spasms (MD -1.49 days, 95% CI -1.97 to -1.01; P < 0.00001), time to regain consciousness (MD -1.10 days, 95% CI -1.48 to -0.72; P < 0.00001), and time to resolution of neuropathic symptoms (MD -3.20 days, 95% CI -3.34 to -3.06; P < 0.00001) in favour of IVIG when compared with standard care.None of the included studies reported other outcomes of interest in this review including need for invasive ventilation, duration of invasive ventilation, cognitive impairment, poor adaptive functioning, quality of life, number of seizures, and new diagnosis of epilepsy.The quality of evidence was very low for all outcomes of this review. The findings suggest a clinical benefit of adjunctive IVIG treatment for children with viral encephalitis for some clinical measures (i.e. mean length of hospital stay, time (days) to stop spasms, time to regain consciousness, and time to resolution of neuropathic symptoms and fever. For children with Japanese encephalitis, IVIG had a similar effect to placebo when assessing significant disability and serious adverse events.Despite these findings, the risk of bias in the included studies and quality of the evidence make it impossible to reach any firm conclusions on the efficacy and safety of IVIG as add-on treatment for children with encephalitis. Furthermore, the included studies involved only children with viral encephalitis, therefore findings of this review cannot be generalised to all forms of encephalitis. Future well-designed RCTs are needed to assess the efficacy and safety of IVIG in the management of children with all forms of encephalitis. There is a need for internationally agreed core outcome measures for clinical trials in childhood encephalitis.
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 18 tweeters who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Canada 2 11%
Spain 2 11%
United States 1 6%
Mexico 1 6%
Members of the public 15 83%
Researcher 29 11%
Other 17 7%
Psychology 14 5%
Social Sciences 13 5%
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science 10 4%
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 16. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 17 October 2022.
Altmetric has tracked 22,953,506 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 91st percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 12,333 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 30.6. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 65% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 322,692 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 87% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 271 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 58% of its contemporaries.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Senate Judiciary Committee has released transcripts of interviews with Donald Trump Jr. and others regarding his meeting in 2016 with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower.
The documents cover more than 1,800 pages of transcripts of interviews with those connected to the controversial meeting that, when it was revealed, fueled allegations of Trump campaign coordination with Russia.
"Americans rightly have many questions about this meeting, and today, we are releasing the transcripts and exhibits from interviews we've conducted to allow the public to know what we know," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement.


Nothing good, they say, comes easy. With Determination, Perseverance, Endurance and Hard Work, Odunlade Adekola Film Production (OAFP) honorably grants Independence to her nine (9) apprentices after diligent service and accomplishment.
Dejimanaire King Entertainment & Aridunu.com's representatives were present to ensure photo glimpse of the event were captured.
The Host of the ceremony Odunlade Adekola was at his peak to lead the proceedings in a usual manner of appreciation to GOD and all supporters and lovers of greatness, development and good things.
A little girl gave a fresh start, trilling the congregate by professionally playing the saxophone.
Cyro (Tunde Shobayo) an actor and musical artiste was not left out to hit the spot light with his musical uniqueness as he performed his hit tracks, one which was 'Spend my Money'.
A drama teaching hard work, Patience, perseverance, commitment and seriousness was also performed by the OAFP member. It was indeed a 'drama in drama of drama' depicting professionalism of OAFP.
Honor and award was given to Ibrahim Jimoh (Sanjeh) the Apprentice governor for excellent performance and unbeatable coordination among his colleagues.
Families and friends of the apprentices were filled with excitement as they heartily rejoiced with them all. Certificate of Apprenticeship were handed to them all.
With tears of joy, they humbly received and pledge to continue in the hard work in the movie industry.


Metal-Temple review of Hyperactivity Disorder | Violent Divine Louder Than Love OUT NOW!
…with their fourth album, "Hyperactivity Disorder", VIOLENT DIVINE are dropping another bomb of sheer streetwise Metal, puncturing hearts in every turn.
A late heart warming review of Hyperactivity Disorder. Thank You to Metal-Temple! We love you too!


More: Is King Stephen under Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School playing fields in Faversham?
What a tumultuous reign Stephen had! Never able to reign with full confidence after 1138. It must have been a ghastly time to be alive. Life was hard enough without a civil war raging.
Have you read The Brother Cadfael Books, by Ellis Peters? They take place during King Stephen's reign and the Civil War.
And, I agree. Seems like a hard time to live in so many ways.
The Children of King Stephen – History… the interesting bits!
Sharon Kay Penman has a whole series covering this era and beyond. It's fiction however the historical content is accurate from what I understand/have read.
It starts when Matilda was only a girl and covers everything from that point to thru/during the reign of King John (her grandson).
I like Stephan...I don't know why but I can't help to Like him...I also like Henry II.
I too like Stephen - sure he wasn't all that good a monarch but I still like him (but then I prefer John to his brother as well).
Something about them appeals to me somehow.
I like Stephan and dislike both John and Richard, both were wastes too me. I'm also a staunch lover of Henry VII who also doesn't happen to hate Richard III.
Stephen and Matilda founded a monastery at Faversham as a thanks for peace and sponsored the Order of the Temple through the donation of a number of Matilda's properties in Boulogne and England.
Mary was the youngest daughter of King Stephen. She was the suo jure Countess of Boulogne from 1159 to 1170. Why was she abducted?
Stephen's wife Mathilda was Countess of Bologne in her own right. Mathilda died in 1152. Marie's eldest brother Eustace died in 1153 and her brother William in 1159. They were both childless. That left Marie as the only living heir to her mother's estate. By abducting and marrying her, Mathew became joint ruler. Even when their marriage was annulled, and she returned to the abbey, he remained ruling until his death. Her daughter and heir Ida didn't become countess until her father's death. Mathew was a younger son, power was a huge drive.
Why did the English Church refuse to recognize King Stephen's son, Prince Eustace as Stephen's heir?


text:
Las lenguas basaa son un grupo filogenético de las lenguas bantúes codificadas como subgrupo A40 en la clasificación de Guthrie. Según Nurse y Philippson (2003), las de este subgrupo que no forman parte de las lenguas mbam forman juntas el grupo filogenético de las lenguas basaa:

Basaa–Kogo (Bakoko), Rombi (barombi)–Bankon.

El hijuk queda como no lengua no-clasificada del subgrupo A50 en Guthrie, aunque Ethnologue conisdera que es muy similar al basaa.

Comparación léxica
Los numerales para diferentes grupos de lenguas basaa son:

{|class=wikitable style=text-align:center;
|-
! GLOSA
! Bakoko !! Bankon !! Barombi !! Basaa
! PROTO-BASAA
|-
| '1' || já || (i)yǎ || tʃǎ || -ádá || *i-ʣǎ (?)
|-
| '2' || bíɓàà || (bi)ɓá || ɓáà || -ɓáà || * bi-ɓâː
|-
| '3' || bíhàà || (bi)íyâ || bjáá || -áâ || *bi-hâː
|-
| '4' || bínáà || (bi)nân || bínâɲ || -nâ || *bi-ɲâɲ
|-
| '5' || bítáàn || (bi)tán || bítán || -tân || *tâːn
|-
| '6' || bísámáà || (bi)sámà || bísámà || -sámàl || *bí-sámà
|-
| '7' || ǹzàmúwá || (bi)sámbɔ̀k / ndʒààmbwɛ́ || nʤàmbwɛ́ || -sâmbɔ́k || *n-ʣâmbɔ́k
|-
| '8' || ŋ̀mwààm || (bi)ɟwɛ̂m || ŋwàmb || ʤʷɛ̀m || *n-ɟwàm
|-
| '9' || èbùù || (bi)nâm || kìɓòó || ɓǒ || *ɓǒː
|-
| '10' || ʤòóm || iɓǒm || ǹlǒŋ || ʤǒm || *ʤǒm
|}

Las vocales dobles representan voclaes largas, mientras que los acentos indican tonos.

Referencias

Bibliografía
Nurse & Philippson (2003), The Bantu Languages.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
← Announcing Second Life Views
NASA Needs You! →
Volunteers Working Together
Posted on May 16, 2006	by Robin Linden
Given the accelerated growth recently experienced within Second Life, it's needless to say that the Linden Lab Community Team has been thinking a lot about scaling. I've been especially focused on ways to scale and improve the Resident volunteer programs in particular, many of which started as loosely knit grassroots style groups, created to help other Residents, new and old alike, learn Second Life.
It seems clear the Second Life Mentors and other volunteer groups within Second Life are important to the fabric of the Second Life community; as such I wanted to share some exciting plans currently in progress which should help with some of the current growing pains.
Our plan for the short term is as follows:
1. Additional Linden Support – Liaison Kenny Linden is now assisting with managerial tasks to help scale the volunteer programs.
2. Clarified Direction – Immediate creation of Mentor Principles in collaboration with the Mentor community, proposed principles below to be refined and distributed to all current and incoming Mentors.
3. Improved Orientation – Design and creation of a volunteer orientation program to help introduce the volunteer program to interested Residents when they are accepted to the program.
4. Quality Maintenance – Currently all volunteer members need to keep and maintain a clean Linden Rapsheet, which has previously been maintained in a quarterly review of volunteers. As we grow, we will monitor this more closely and frequently to allow for higher quality volunteer experience.
Longer term thoughts and plans:
1. Education – Implementation of an ongoing educational training program for all volunteers
2.Knowledge Sharing – Creation of a knowledge sharing/ information gathering location in-world for all volunteers to add to and use.
Several members of the Mentor group have already created a fabulousVolunteers HQ in Tenera.
3. Volunteer Community – creation and implementation of further community building within the volunteer community, including but not limited to more social and team-building interactions
When these new plans are combined with useful features and tools currently in progress, the Second Life volunteer experience becomes even better. For example, the new group tools greatly ameliorates large-scale social networking and transitioning Second Life's support documentation from the clunky current wiki to a future knowledge management system makes it a lot easier to find the answers you're looking for.
Throughout the history of Second Life, the excellence and success of the volunteer program has endured because the volunteers have always been community-driven. I'm excited about helping the volunteers continue to grow and flourish as Second Life does.
– Jeska Linden
Proposed Mentor Principles
We believe this important first connection can make all the difference in the early SL experience. By hanging out on Help Island, the Welcome Areas and other spaces in-world answering questions and handing out information, you provide a crucial step in weaving the Second Life community together.
When you put your Mentor title on, you are representing the Second Life volunteers as a whole and the Mentor group in particular. Mentors embody all of the best things available in the Second Life community; keeping the following Principles in mind will empower you and your fellow Mentors to continue creating an even better Second Life for all.
Be inclusive, active, and encouraging. Demonstrate and communicate tolerance, respect and civility to all Residents. Promote a sense of community and foster the formation and growth of communities in Second Life, and with your fellow volunteers.
Be helpful, answer questions. Communicate with your fellow Residents. Turn data into useful, relevant information. Provide information, not misinformation. Show other Residents how and when to report abuse. Learn from each other!
Be informed and informative. Keep up with in-world bulletins and forum announcements. Maintain good communication with your fellow volunteers and don't be afraid to share information. This includes using the mentor group channel for good, not evil.
Be positive, courteous, professional and pleasant. Smile. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Be welcoming, fun, and helpful.
Be reliable. Do your best to represent the community in a positive way. Maintain PG standards of appearance and manners when wearing the Mentor tag. Live your Second Life by the Community Standards as a shining example to others.
Be accepting of other nationalities, cultures and subcultures. Inspire curiosity, open-mindedness, and let the diversity of Second Life be your guide as you help fellow Residents.
About Robin Linden
Be the Change. You must be the change you wish to see in the world. ---Mahatma Gandhi
View all posts by Robin Linden →
This entry was posted in -Miscellaneous. Bookmark the permalink.
10 Responses to Volunteers Working Together
Prokofy Neva says:
Recently I had 2 high contrasting experiences with Live Help. In one encounter, a newbie who was frustrated with being unable to get FIND GROUPS to produce a list of named parcels using a search term began to insist nothing was working and was urged to contact Live Help. Instead of gently setting her straight on how to type in a search term and note that any parcel with that description in its description box, not necessarily it's name/title, will turn up in a list, this Live Helper also began to chime in with her, in error, that it was "not working". Soon, a chorus of newbies, helpers, and even a mentor were chanting that "this isn't working" when the problem was merely the failure to grasp the basic principle of Google — that it turns up exact cites along with inexact.
In another experience a busy Linden liaision who could have been working on more serious things and could have merely answered me in an IM or 2 said he'd personally tp out to see me in a "house call".
I cite these as how the system can lurch from the sublime to the ridiculous precisely beause when you create a system where people are asked to work for free, you get what you pay for: 0.
The vast, unwieldy, untransparent, inefficient, and unaccountable mentors/live helpers/greeters/resmods system is already seriously flawed, that to amplify it and scale it and replicate it in this fashion will create many long term problems for SL for years to come.
The chief tragedy here is that it utterly ruins for now the possiblities of authentic grassroots government by residents, or even any kind of group governance. Instead of governance — which should include among its functions the aid of immigrants/newbies — we have a phalanx of Linden-filtered and caste-filtered mentors/helpers/greeters who take on the functions of world governance illegitimately, without even acclaim, let alone democratic vote. Having a mentor become a cult leader among newbies with their own named group of 77 isn't a substitute for being *elected by peers* or even *acclaimed by a wider cross section of the diverse community*.
Unelected, unaccountable, appointed by the strong executive government branch with no checks or balances, ineffective, the resmods are a placebo for an authentic resident government that should have sprung from work on sims or neighbourhoods or interest communities or themed/affinity groups that could have themselves created the necessary representation to larger umbrella groups concerned with newbie orientation.
First, membership criteria. Posting on the webs that a "relatively clean rapsheet" is required opens the door for wildly different application of criteria. Before, it was simply said that you had to have a clean rapsheet — and that meant no offenses for the last three months. But now, the door is open for somebody with a worse rapsheet, if they are a friend of the Lindens and have credentials as a major content-creator, to come and get a pass.
Others who could be making a very valuable contribution are kept sequestered away, unable even to physically fly into the hallowed realm of Help Island, merely because, say, a mentor may have once colluded with a Linden to get a person banned for 3 days for swearing in PG or some other fabricated offense.
Second, principles. These principles don't read like principles, they read like a pep talk given by a patriotic youth group to its members. A phrase like "promote a sense of community" breaks down immediately in SL because there are many communities, there is no mass media (yet anyway) to really establish any kind of shared sense of the world, and there is no way to first debate what kind of community or communities we should have in the first place — it's all imposed from on high.
We don't need mentors to be "shining examples to humanity". We need them to lower the frustration level of newbies by organizing massive help to newcomers.
I personally think this entire system should be recast with professional Lindens as well as consciously bid-out services, contracts tendered to businesses and non-profits to take care of newbies, like a social service in a RL community. The job should be posted, the bids taken, the social contract awarded and monitored, and the contracts diversified across time and various communities.
Taking care of newbies is hard work. I do a lot of it. Most newbies are ready to learn when they have a goal to accomplish, i.e. finding a rental. Until then, they might tune out the news about how prims return off autoreturn, or never bother to look in FIND GROUPS. They learn skills best when attempting to accomplish their menu of needs and wants and goals. Accordingly, while it's good to have centralized, basic helpers and professiional Lindens, various interest/theme/service groups might also be supplying this service and work without being enmeshed in this vast and unwieldly and ineffective army of helpers.
Third, quality control. This oversight can't come within the Lab or from within the mentors groups themselves only. It simply has to come from the customers service — the newbies — through after-action reports and customer surveys, and it would also be good if independent outside needs assessment and performation evaluation were made.
The entire mentor project is premised on the notion that what a newbie needs to do when he comes into Second Life is learn to use the build and creation tools.
Yet only a tiny percentage of players every really want or need to access these features in any kind of serious way. People need more orientation in survival skills and strategies, and they have more basic questions like "where are all the people" or "how do I make money?" or "where can I buy land". If anything, the system discourages them from accelerating their curiosity and exploration of these types of topics, and doesn't reward them for seeking an end goal rleated to finding the answers to these questions.
Fourth, transparency. There's a well to be created for knowledge-sharing. There's special new training classes to be held. There is a quarterly review to be had and even more intensive monitoring to be done. All of this speaks of a growing insular, more highly-trained and elitist crack troop of Uber Second Lifers who are in a special class above the rest of us who aren't ushered into this New Class.
This specialness, extra training, and extra watching also leads to a problem of "who will watch the watchers". Why is all the training and quality-control coming from within the system itself?
This sort of activity, "creation and implementation of further
community building within the volunteer community, including but not
limited to more social and team-building interactions" would be good if you had a church youth group being instilled in a religion's special values.
But this is a diverse and constantly changing world. It's not just for one New Class of people to become more secretive, overdeveloped, "scaled-up," privileged, and then further cohered through various rituals and bonding exercises. Mentors already do far too much exclusive socializing among themselves, including on their special channel, to be encouraged further in this elitist activity.
Newbies are just people like ourselves, with fast DSL lines, high-end graphic cards, and disposable income. Let's not get too precious here about them. They need to be given options and services like any new immigrants. But we're not leading them to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion from the priests.
The knowledge here is constantly being shared, reposited, and fussed over like it's the secrets of the ages. It's just stuff like how to keep a box off your head. Make it more self-service, self-paced, self-discovered by newbies who have lots of RL and SL distractions and can't always go to formal training by approved helpers.
All in all, I find this bulging and ineffective class of helpers/resmods/mentors/greeters to be a terribly discouraging phenomena. It doesn't really help newbies — I see this in spades with the literally hundreds of newbies that drop on me out of the sky whom I try to help. It doesn't help the world to mature and acquire the features of self-governance needed.
Oz Spade says:
I'm not in any of these groups, but I think the general ideas laid out are a great progression.
The only changes/additions I'd make to the principles is for the mentor title to make it more clear that its not just a vanity title but that it should be worn when you're actualy open to helping people, and also to add that the group IM sessions should only be used for mentor business, I know some of the other help groups still get alot of club spam and such from members of the group.
Other than that, it's great. Training and clear definitions of what the program is about is definitly needed, so I'm glad to see that being added. 🙂
Gwyneth Llewelyn says:
There is a question that is nagging my mind. In a sense, people volunteering for help exist all over the place; from TeaZers to Bob in Slade, from Prokofy to Anshe. Some are paid; some do it for fun; some do it to pass their time. They do it on their own, without "supervision" (except the one they set up themselves), and no need of encouragement.
And then there are the Linden Liaisons, who are a "de jure" technical support team.
Somewhere in the middle are the "Second Life Volunteers". They volunteer themselves using a LL-provided tool (currently web-based). They get invited to the group by LL. They get coordination from Linden Lab (in the sense of some documentation, guidelines, meetings). They use an island with private access for their work with new users, without fear of getting griefed by others. They have a Volunteer HQ on Linden land. So, in a sense, even if indirectly, they have at least Linden sanctioning, if not their blessing.
But the fact is that the proposed guidelines say: "When you put your Mentor title on, you are representing the Second Life
volunteers as a whole and the Mentor group in particular." So, they represent a group of individuals, but nothing else. A rather specific group, for all purposes; but just another group, like many others. The guidelines for a "Mentor" are set by Linden Lab, but Mentors do not represent neither Linden Lab nor other Second Life residents.
There is a bit of confusion in that area. If Mentors only represent "themselves", why do they need any Linden Lab involvement in the process? It could be just a resident-based group, like any other. On the other hand, if there is effective Linden interest in the SL Volunteers as such, to the point that they are set up by Linden employees, why the lack of trust in them to represent more than the group they're currently in?
I'd say this is like volunteering for the Red Cross but not getting anything more than a tap in the back — and being forbidden to tell the world that they do volunteering work for the Red Cross, the institution.
Beyond that, there is some doubt that the group of volunteers can be functional if the examples Prokofy quotes are not simply anedoctal evidence, but what happened to a large majority of users. To put it bluntly: being ethical has not been a requirement of participating in the group; there is no validation, overseeing, or quality control. Admittedly, it would be hard to provide those without guidelines. We have them now (good or bad, I'd say, let's try them out, and see if they work out successfully!). Who will actively enforce them?
I'm all for taking a step at the time, though. These are perhaps the first two steps: one, which I personally view as less critical — although I do love Mera Pixel's excellent work on the buildings — is Volunteer HQ. A meeting place is important, but not crucial; there are lots of Linden facilities around SL (Oak Grove is the historical place for that since we lost the old Stage 4…). But it's nice to have something, sure. It's also nice that this is a volunteer-created building.
The second, naturally, are the volunteer guidelines. While each bit of it can be discussed, I think they're a good starting point. We now need the 1600+ volunteers to get used to them — and someone to verify that these guidelines are indeed being enforced. That is, I believe, crucial.
Prokofy's suggestion on increasing the number of Liaisons and outsourcing the volunteering duty is a very interesting one (his ideas always are!). I know that incrfeasing the number of Liaisions is impossible; estimates based on the average number of new users requiring help just at the usual spots — the 4-sim Welcome Area, Waterhead, and Help Island, requires a constant group of around 10 people around the clock. Working in 4-hour-shifts, that would be 60 new Liaisons — increasing LL's payroll by 50%. This does not take into account the 10+ Greeters that are taking the additional duty (24/7) to do one-to-one tours through SL, plus the Live Helpers… so you could probably add another 60 Liaisons for doing that. That's hardly an option, and I understand the way LL prefers much more to rely upon volunteer duty instead.
Outsourcing is interesting, but it provides a complex, ethical approach. Without overseeing, supervision, and quality control, getting paid for a work that is critical (even in L$) is dangerous, and, at the limit, irresponsible. Although written and signed contracts would be much easier to oversee, the point would remain: who would do the overseeing? The current Liaison structure is far too overworked for doing that; and since this outsourced team would need to work 24/7, it would mean an overseeing structure that works during that time as well. While certainly cheaper than an all-Liaison team, it would mean incresing LL's staff anyway, and for a rather boring duty: making sure that the outsourced team worked as contracted…
Still, I think that these are good ideas to be considered. For now, volunteering duty is cheap, but it has enormous pitfalls if they are not overseen in any way. Hopefully the Guidelines will be a first step towards improving the overall coherence and efficiency of these volunteer group; I eagerly await some more 🙂
Gwyn, I don't know where you pulled out of my long post a single line that called on the Lindens to increase their staff and budget. I did no such thing. I'm well aware that they aren't going to do that, although even one half of a telecommuter's time (they're cheaper remember) might make a dramatic difference).
Rather, I'm for reconfiguring and repurposing the entire thing. Currently the titles "Mentor" are status icons that people seek for their enhancement of reputation necessary for social and economic advancement in SL. Therefore I'd dump that title, concept, and group completely as an unjustified hold-over of wizardy MMORPG culture. In RL, I don't get a mentor assigned to me normally, I find one and go and attend his tutorials in university or seek him out for meetings in organizations in RL. As you rightly say, it could be a resident-based organization in which self-policing is done by the group and maybe even several types of groups emerging in competition.
There are already plenty of affinity groups in SL, whether furries or elves or vampires or family RPs. These societies have their natural leaders or willing volunteers. Let them develop their own services and let the Lindens deployed on the managing of the unwieldy 1500 be deployed rather on the meta job of coordinaging and keeping quality control on these community leaders. Aside from RP societies, there are affinities like live music, machinima, book clubs or whatever where some of these outposts could develop their own volunteers.
I also think a physical helpdesk inworld, with efficient looking liaisions in preppie Lacoste shirts with alligators and chinos with clean crewcuts could really project a feeling of "we're here to help you stop your game from lagging and crashing". If you physically had to go to this location, you wouldn't just reach for Live Help every time you had to find out how to make a prim snap into place but maybe read some manuals or forums.
I'm bewildered on what people find to DO with newbies on these help islands, in part, because I deal with very fresh newbies who are basically helped, as I said, when they have a goal and I help them reach their goal. Why make them sit through endless orientation about prims and appearance mode when they're just here to buy a skin and find a club?
I think outsourcing newbie services by accepting bids from companies that provide these services, either as loss-leaders, or as a low-cost service, would help siphon off the overload that might happen on a helpdesk island.
And frankly, people are willing to pay for orientation. I remember as a newbie putting up a post frankly stating I would simply pay someone to teach me how to make yellow pages. I got nothing but lectures about how I was setting myself to be ripped off because all these help cards and free scripts were either in my library or easily available if I would only be willing to sit in this or that prim university.
But I didn't want to. I wanted to get ahead, pay $500 *today* and have a private tutorial. It was astounding to me how I couldn't get that accomplished, finally I got some lackadaisical oldbie who partly explained things then got distracted and logged off, never to be hear from again. My newbie orientation considered of Ingrid taking me shopping and Barnes giving me one or two build lessons and the rest I hacked out myself through blunderings — you do burn it in better that way.
I wonder if infantilizing newbies, as LL and this entire overfed and overlarge helping New Class does, is really a service to newbies or the world.
The range of newbies is so different coming to SL that it is impossible to have a standard newbie orientation be relevant to all throughout the spectrum. I have tenants who arrive with $20,000 grand and already know how to script within a day and merely need to know how to keep stuff from returning to lost and found, and I have tenants who spend an hour trying to learn how to right-click and select teleport from a pie menu to get up to their apartments. Why not make the businesses, non-profits, affinity groups, theme groups, RP groups provide that experience for people at their own pace?
That would reduce the load of people that a more slenderized orientation team could handle.
The other obvious thing about this system is that there is too many titles. Sure, they do different functions, but it's all kind of at one level. Make it seem less exciting (and therefore less about enhancement for one's economic position)
If you think I'm exaggerating about the awful extent to which these helping-class people help themselves as they help newbies, I can tell you many stories, but some from direct experience. I have had former tenants, recently becoming helpers or mentors, who usher newbies to my rentals. Why? They bring them *right there* from the help island immediately, merely because they think, well, I liked this rental, let me bring this newbie here. I actually find myself giving these newbies a card I've developed "General Renting Faqs" or "Differences Between Islands and Mainland" just so they have a bit more consumer awareness — I don't think it's fair to be pushed into my arms nor do I think anyone should be getting them into their arms.
(That's why this awful idea to let only 5 or so selected island barons to put up "neighbourhoods" for newbies to spawn right into and purchase island rentals or deeds is so unfair.)
There is such an allergy to advertising in SL, that no normal business activity seems to take place, i.e. normal billboards advertising the various options for newbies landing, whether free housing, islands, mainland, buy your own 512, whatever. And this is just one field of activity — many don't care about land or householding and want to cut to the chase to buy a vehicle or go hear live music. So I don't see why we couldn't be leveraging *self-organized communities* of affinity or merely good will to help out.
What's odd to me, Gwyn, is that you throw up as an obstacle the contracting and quality control issues involved in outsourcing contracts to businesses or nonprofits (the Lindens could pay a nonprofit self-organized group of residents probably half what they'd pay a telecommuter, and pay in Lindens).
Yet you don't see these *same* quality-control issues cropping up for the oversight of this really fantastically huge army of 1,500 that is growing by the minute. You're worried about corruption or failure to perform in a private company or a self-organized professional non-profit, but you're not worried about corrupition or failure in a disorganized, unwieldy mass of volunteers who have nothing in common, about whom little is known, other than that they "have a clean Linden rapsheet" (!).
Why isn't it dangerous, or even irresponsible, to expose all these decent and innocent and hopefully well-meaning newbies to this mass of only lightly supervised helpers, some of whom are hardly older than the newbies they are helping? Why is it ok to handle their training in a a very superficial and light way, with a few courses here and there and a few morale building special picnics with the Lindens, and then turn them loose?
I had a really unpleasant encounter with one of these helpers who was using their Live Help title as an instrument of coercion, a tenant that was reprimanded about a rule they were breaking sicced this mafia-like Live Helper on me who wielded their Live Help status to try to intimidate me, and frankly stated that they were wielding this on behalf of their buddy, as if they were thugs in a mafia type situation. Bad, bad stuff. THIS is what we have going on, Gwyn. And you're worried about a known group — take your Thinkers or take my Doers or take gallery-walkers or photographers — who are in a public group with a forums presence and accountability, helping newbise? Please. You have *got* to see that this *army* is not manageable, and not possible to properly supervise. 1,500 of *anything* in SL that merely has these very lightly identified titles like "helper" is not by its very nature accountable or supervisable — except in the most fannish, sychophantish, uneven and even corrupt way.
*at this location, these alligator-shirted guys and gals (ok, put the SL hand in the place of the alligator!) could provide live help like it was really meant to be — live! — and many things would go faster in terms of being able to provide visual displays. While waiting, newbies could browse through help stands.
Prokofy, I think that you're still fixed with this obsession of my being a terrible communist and anti-capitalist, when I've actually written this:
"Beyond that, there is some doubt that the group of volunteers can be functional […] To put it bluntly: being ethical has not been a requirement of participating in the group; there is no validation, overseeing, or quality control. Admittedly, it would be hard to provide those without guidelines. We have them now (good or bad, I'd say, let's try them out, and see if they work out successfully!). Who will actively enforce them?"
"Without overseeing, supervision, and quality control, getting paid for a work that is critical (even in L$) is dangerous, and, at the limit, irresponsible. Although written and signed contracts would be much easier to oversee, the point would remain: who would do the overseeing? […] While certainly cheaper than an all-Liaison team, it would mean incresing LL's staff anyway, and for a rather boring duty: making sure that the outsourced team worked as contracted…"
Now you opted to consider those two statements of mine as being AGAINST an outsourced group, and that I trust outsourced groups LESS than strict volunteers. If I was ambiguous in my words, let me restate again:
*In both cases, the issue is about enforcing an agreement*
On the case of volunteering duty, it means having guidelines, and oversee/supervise/enforce them.
On the case of outsourcing the job, it means having contracts, and oversee/supervise/enforce them.
In my mind, both solutions are valid.
In terms of expenses, both have costs — they are both tied to overseeing/supervising/enforcement. An efficient team (at Linden Lab) doing that work would cost about the same.
I'm sorry if I didn't understand your words correctly. You said: "I personally think this entire system should be recast with professional Lindens […]" and I assumed (apparently wrongly) that this was a suggestion to increase the Linden Liasion team to cover the current ground that the volunteers are covering. I apologise for understanding that wrongly. In any case, I don't disagree with that concept in principle; it might just not be cost-effective.
You then proceed to suggest a method of tying in the professional Lindens into an outsourced structure. Let me restate my opinion again, this time (hopefully not vaguely): in my opinion, this is a GOOD suggestion. It could be a FEASIBLE one. Provided that it gets mechanisms of enforcement. The same ones that are sadly lacking on the volunteer system.
I don't see any difference between both systems except one of *cost*. That's for LL to evaluate and make a choice on what they prefer. In any case, higher or lower costs are one thing; proper guidelines, management, quality control, and enforcement of guidelines or contracts is needed in *either case*.
And I'll finish quoting your last paragraph and totally subscribing it:
"[…] this *army* is not manageable, and not possible to properly supervise. 1,500 of *anything* in SL that merely has these very lightly identified titles like "helper" is not by its very nature accountable or supervisable — except in the most fannish, sychophantish, uneven and even corrupt way."
and perhaps even reinforce: *not even* in the most fannish, sychophantish, uneven and corrupt way!
So, unlike what you read in my words, I do NOT trust the "community" (as I stated elsewhere… not in this thread) and I do NOT *MIS*trust corporate agreements. Rather the opposite. I trust a community that has guidelines, planning, organisation, a delegation of responsabilities, overview, supervising, quality control, and enforcement of Linden-established rules. I trust to the same degree a binding contract that basically covers the same thing. I agree that the cost of supervising is the same one; the only difference in costs is that volunteers are cheap, while contracts will cost a few L$. The option is LL's.
Gwyn, you appear determined to catch me in some sort of contradiction or lack of foresight rather than focusing on the topic, which is: the Lindens are appointing a resident government, are we going to sit back and let them do that? Not I.
When I said I'd prefer more Linden professionals, I don't mean hiring a truckload of new Lindens. But geez, they *are* hiring more people and existing Lindens are getting taken up with various tasks that maybe aren't serving the population as a whole in the best way. Example: do the forums *really* need such heavy moderation as to have all thse Lindens and resmods who require supervision? Of course they don't. Could we all state the obvious — that they now take up MORE Linden time due to all these ridiculous thread-holding pens and hair-splitting solutions sought from Lindens over stuff that should just be left alone to push under the fold when other posts rise to the top. Either shut most of them down or make them free — this is a modern virtual world, not a medieval guild game.
Do all these educational projects whose product still seems extremely thin on the ground *really* need full-time dedication from Pathfinder? Arguably they don't, and they get a lot of special attention perhaps not justified given their level of presence and investment by contrast with others. Do the Suicide Girls, who logged on like once, need to get a full-time office Linden working their issues 24/7? Well, maybe not.
This is known as *repurposing* the Lindens you've got, not hiring a lot of new ones. Sometimes, when you have a very slender work force, you can make them appear larger and more engaged just by showing up. When was the last time you saw a Linden sitting in their houses in world taking callers with issues to handle? Couldn't this be formalized, so that instead of telling everyone on their profiles to "go contact Live Help and go away" they printed "I'm available to solve problems related to lag, as defined by X, Y, and Z, for you from the hours of 9-10 a.m. SLT"?
Sure, we can argue that whether they supervise volunteers, or supervise contracted employees, they still have labour, but you know, in RL, I'd much rather have a part-time paid employee than a summer intern who constantly needs to be "given stuff to do" or who goes off on a tangent.
The fact is, the Lindens will do *neither* of these elaborate things you suggest or I suggest. They don't even seem to have a very rigorous code of ethics for their own employees, with the blurring of distinctions between the role Lindenized residents play on their resident accounts, running often high-profile or even lucrative businesses for example. To put it rather bluntly: if they don't have an evident quality control system for their own paid staff, how can we expect them to extend this to volunteers?
I don't think the Lindens are going to give up their army of helpers and their appointed beloved "leaders" they control (through processes like this "Second Life Views" program) — but what we can try to do is wrest back *some* of this power from them to groups with various stakes in newbies and stakes in building communities and affinity groups. The Lindens once tried a ridiculously short-lived experiment to see if newbies faced with choices of where they could go spawn, i.e. Cubey Terra's or the Furest or a night club, could teleport there immediately. I was opposed to them having such a chute for newbies because they picked the same old FIC, and didn't have a plan for rotating it, and it was also demanding on those who signed up for it — they'd have to agree to be available 24/7 (a simple solution to this would simply show on the portal whether a person was live online at that venue or not, then the newbie could judge).
But what if they made these experiments last longer, what if they made them rotate more, and see if they do help in orientation? The Elves have always pointed out that they "invented the greeting system". I gather Anshe is merely bypassing all this Linden stuff and organizing her own greeting system. What if they had portals like that to chose from *in addition to going through the official Help Island*? Or what if — gasp! — you could *buy* a portal place on OI or HI like you buy classifieds to advertise to newbies a service which involves orientation for them?
Why is it ok to land in RL JFK or Grand Central, as Philip is fond of comparing the SL experience to, and be faced with throngs of taxi drivers and guides and concession stands vying for your business, willing to take you to a hotel or take you on a tour of New York or sell you a souvenir or a t-shirt, but in SL, all that sort of thing has to be scrubbed *clean* out of the orientation to be replaced by…the Feted One's doing the taxi driving and t-shirt selling, that's all! I'm for normalizing it, and making it like a concession license.
I frequently get people who tell me they quit the game 90 days ago in frustration, but then they got a new computer, or got a friend to help them, and they come back. Now they are barred from HI and out of the loop and don't feel like sitting in a class, so I try to just give them newbie boot camp with my own cards I've developed. I think one of the big flaws of all the help stuff is that it is not self-paced and self-timed.
Re: "I trust a community that has guidelines, planning, organisation, a delegation of responsabilities, overview, supervising, quality control, and enforcement of Linden-established rules."
Gwyn, this sort of thing is precisely that sort of socialist-style endless planned economy I'm often criticizing in Neualtenberg. You're going to be waiting a *very long time* for people in "the community" (whatever the hell *that* is) much less the Lindens, to sit around endlessly *planning* this sort of thing instead of *doing it on the fly* as they are *forced to do* because this game they made became a world heading towards one million people. So honestly, some other lighter, more flexible approaches have to be developed than all this planning, delegation, and supervision as if this is grave issue of national security instead of just getting people to learn and participate in a virtual world they log into and log out of at will. I'm suggesting that by getting existing self-organized groups more involved and giving newbies at least that choice it would be more fair and grounded.
I'm realling hoping that when they get the group tools working better that groups themselves will become involved in SL that will make everything I'm saying self-evident and the Lindens will simply adjust to the fact on the ground of groups taking over responsibility for themselves. I think there are many problems inherent in the coming revolution of groups, ones I warn about all the time like forums group-think, but I still think that they represent a more democratic and effective solution than bureaucratic administration from the top with selected advisors.
Anna Grant says:
I totally agree with the need to establish a system that offers a friendly, timely and … hmm.. professional assistance to the newcomers to SL. Reading through the posts, thou, my feeling is that there needs to be more more division between the help resources available and what is usually understood as "ask a question to anyone and expect a friendly response".
My assumption is tht the later is largely available in-world. From personal experience, I ever hardly had to resort to live ghelp, when I was a newbie, and even now, as usually a network of friends and being at the right place (god bless sandboxes!) is enough to be in the company of people who are more than willing to share their knowledge.
Any redesign of the help system, which I personally strongly encourage, has to start with a clear division between those 2 types of assistance that a newbie can rely on to learn =)
Just my 2C (3 Swedish cronor)
Psyra Extraordinaire says:
I think having a mentor in each 'station' of Orientation Island would almost be spot on… But that's just me…. maybe. 😉
games says:


The XFC will be holding fighter tryouts in the Chicago area next March, according to sources close to the promotion.
Sources say that FLO MMA in Palatine is a likely destination for the event, which will feature open tryouts for the Tampa-based organization.
"The plans are to host them in the Chicago area, but nothing has been set in stone," said XFC rep TJ Alcock.
The XFC has several local fighters on their roster. Gabe Salinas-Jones and Felice Herrig have fought multiple times for the XFC, and Daniel Vizcaya recently secured a contract with the promotion after attending their open tryouts in Springfield, Mass.
Bob Stewart, Vizcaya's coach at Full Mount MMA, told Chicago's MMA in June that it was a long process.
"After a 10-hour tryout versus 100 of the top up-and-coming fighters from the US, Canada and Europe, we were offered a deal to fight live on a main card," Stewart said.
Vizcaya's first XFC bout has not been announced, but on Facebook he told fans that he was told he will be fighting in the first quarter of 2013.
FLO MMA is the official training center for the 2013 XFC Open Fighter Tryouts on Saturday, March 9, 2013.


I have for sale a beautiful early 20th Century Bedroom Set. In the Arts and Crafts Style it consists of a triple door wardrobe, a matching mirror back kneehole dressing table and a matching Tallboy. All 3 are in excellent condition for the age. The mirror has some age related tarnishing. Sizes of each item are as follows.
Wardrobe: 60" wide x 20" deep. Tallboy: 36" wide x 18" deep. Dressing Table: 45" wide x 21" deep. Collection from Liverpool L3 7DL. WE DO NOT haul the items upstairs.
We are a couple in our 50's and can make no exceptions. Please note we do not deliver outside the Liverpool / Chester area's but will certainly help your courier to load from our unit if you arrange your own courier. The item "Antique Arts & Crafts Oak Bedroom Set Large Wardrobe, Tallboy and Dressing Table" is in sale since Saturday, March 10, 2018.
This item is in the category "Antiques\Antique Furniture\Armoires/Wardrobes\20th Century". The seller is "libertyantiques2013" and is located in Wallasey. This item can't be shipped, the buyer must pick up the item.


End-to-End: The End-to-End option requires an access code to view and sign a document within a signers web browser, as well as, to view the final signed document.
Required to Open Signed: The Required to Open Signed option requires an access code to be able to view the final signed document.
In the SEND tab under OPTIONS, there is a drop down menu that lets the sender select the type of Access Authentication to be set on the envelope.
On the Send tab, the password is shown as ***** for added security.
There are no minimum requirements for the access authentication password.
After selecting the access authentication type from the dropdown menu, if the password textbox is left blank, an automatically created 8-character alpha-numeric password will be assigned automatically and emailed to you and all recipients of this envelope. If you choose to this option an email with the access code will always be sent to all recipients whether or not the checkbox is checked.
If Email Access Code is checked, your custom access code will be sent to the signer(s) by email prior to the signature request email.
If, Email Access Code is not checked, you will have to communicate the entered custom access code to the recipients through your own means. For example, you can send the access code to people who need to open the document as a text or communicate it verbally. The way you provide this information will be the only way the signer will be able to receive it.
In the SETTINGS tab, under GENERAL SETTINGS, you will have an the option to enable or disable Access Authentication as well as set an authentication method as a default.
The Email Access Code dropdown will be greyed-out until an Access Authentication method is selected.
Options: This column lists the available settings.
Enable?: This column controls if the setting will be available in the Send tab.
Checked: Will make Access Authentication available in the SEND tab.
Unchecked: Will disable Access Authentication in the SEND tab.
Default Value: This column lists the default values for all available settings. These default values will be displayed when the SEND tab is selected to prepare a new document for signature.
When a user sends an envelope with the Access Authentication feature enabled, the recipient will be required to enter the access code depending on which method is selected to access the document.
An Access Code, is required to view and sign the document and to view the final signed document. If the checkbox, Email Access Code, is checked or the access code is left blank, the recipient will receive an email containing a password, that is required to open the document for signature. The password will be highlighted on the email in yellow. If the Email Access Code is not checked, your custom password must be disseminated to the recipient by another means for example, verbally, text message, prearranged agreement, etc. Once the document is signed and the recipient will also need the password to view the final document.
Signer receives an email with the access code to open an RSign document.
Signer is prompted to enter the Access Code.
The signer enters the Access Code in the password field and clicks the green check box.
The signer is then sent to the document to fill out and sign. The signer then clicks the green submit button.
Once the document is submitted the signer will be guided to a page informing him or her that signing has been completed.
Once the document is fully signed and completed the signer will then receive another email informing him or her that the document is now complete. The email will also provide the access code again for the signer to open the document.
The signer will receive another email with instructions on how to access the signed document.
The signer then accesses the PDF and will be prompted to enter the access code.
The signer types in the access code which opens the document.
An Access Code, or password, is required to view the final signed contract. If the checkbox, Email Access Code, is selected or the access code is left blank, in which a randomly generated password to be created, the recipient will receive an email containing the password, highlighted in yellow, to view the signed document. If Email Access Code is not checked and a custom password is entered, that password must be disseminated to the recipient by you through any means you choose (telephone, text, prearranged, etc).
Signer receives an email from RSign to view and sign a document.
Signer proceeds to click the View & Sign Document and then signs and submits the document as normal.
Email Access Code checkbox is not checked.
You did not create a custom access code.
The signer will also receive an email with instructions on how to access the password protected signed document.
The signer follows the instructions to open the PDF and enters the access code.
The signer is now able to open and view the PDF.


Denver, CO – During the third and fourth quarters of 2013, Rose Community Foundation awarded 454 grants totaling more than $6.2 million. Of this amount, $5,057,676 was awarded for 106 grants from Rose Community Foundation's program areas to nonprofit organizations, government agencies and projects that support the health and well-being of the Greater Denver community. Donor-advised funds housed at the Foundation approved 348 grants totaling $1,233,050. Rose Community Foundation has awarded grants totaling more than $204 million since its inception in 1995.
The Foundation's board of trustees authorized the following grants between July 1, 2013 and December 31, 2013. Program grants are listed by program area and donor-directed grants are listed alphabetically. Locations indicate the organization's headquarters, not necessarily the geographic area served.
Catholic Charities (Denver): $20,000 for low-income case management services to older adults and their families.
The Center (Denver): $5,000 for assessment and planning for Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders of the Rockies programming.
Colorado Center for the Blind (Littleton): $15,000 for the Senior Services Program that provides in-home training and support for older adults who are blind or losing vision and their caregivers.
Colorado Department of Human Services, State of Colorado (Denver): $225,000 to continue support of Senior Source, a multimedia information and education campaign designed to bring resources to older adults and their caregivers.
Colorado Gerontological Society (Denver): $15,000 to support Medicare and Medicaid enrollment activities.
Grantmakers in Aging (Arlington,VA): $5,000 to study how the public, media and opinion leaders currently filter their thoughts and communications about aging.
InnovAge Home Care (Denver): $40,000 to provide supportive services that fosters independent living for older adults.
Jewish Family Service of Colorado (Denver): $180,000 for in-home services for older adults, the Edgewater Naturally Occurring Retirement Community (NORC), and for the launch of a new NORC model in Wheat Ridge and surrounding communities.
Longmont Meals on Wheels (Longmont): $25,500 to provide home-delivered meals to homebound older adults in Longmont and surrounding rural areas.
Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains (Denver): $15,000 for Older Adults and Caregivers Services to provide care management services to low-income older adults.
Project Angel Heart (Denver): $25,000 to provide home-delivered meals to homebound low and moderate income older adults with life-threatening illnesses.
Rebuilding Together Metro Denver (Lakewood): $25,000 to support programs and services to provide crucial home repairs to low-income seniors.
$1,200 for a consultant to facilitate meetings and develop a strategy to identify and screen emerging issues in the field of aging.
$5,000 for the Latino Community Foundation of Colorado and the Colorado Latino Age Wave to support the American Society on Aging Conference.
The Senior Hub (Federal Heights): $160,000 to provide a menu of direct services to low-income older adults living in Adams and Arapahoe counties and surrounding areas.
Volunteers of America, Colorado Branch (Denver): $230,000 to provide home-delivered meals and in-home safety support services for older adults.
Wish of a Lifetime (Denver): $10,000 to support the launch of a new volunteer program at this organization which creates a cultural shift on how aging is viewed.
Aurora Community Connection (Aurora): $10,000 to provide parenting and education programs for families.
Children First of the Rockies (Longmont): $10,000 to support parent education programs.
Colorado Bright Beginnings (Denver): $50,000 to enhance the volunteer and caregiver engagement for a program that educates parents about their children's development from birth through the age of 36 months.
Colorado Children's Campaign (Denver): $75,000 toward a grant totaling $240,000 for advocacy efforts to improve the health, early childhood experiences and K-12 education of Colorado's children. This grant was jointly funded by the Foundation's Child and Family Development, Education and Health program areas.
Colorado Parent & Child Foundation (Denver): $20,000 to promote and support high quality early childhood education programs and family initiatives that build parent involvement and school readiness.
Denver Asset Building Coalition (Denver): $20,000 to provide free tax preparation, financial education, and financial services to the low-income families.
Denver Children's Advocacy Center (Denver): $10,000 to support onsite mental health services for children and child development workshops for low-income parents.
Early Childhood Council of Boulder County (Lafayette): $20,000 to support the efforts to ensure that all young children from birth to five in Boulder County are ready to succeed in school and in life.
Early Excellence Program of Denver (Denver): $15,000 to provide high-quality educational services to young children and job development to needy families.
Escuela Tlatelolco (Denver): $10,000 for the Montessori Dual Language Early Childhood Education Program.
The Family Learning Center (Boulder): $20,000 to provide comprehensive literacy-based programs to children and their families.
Family Star (Denver): $10,000 to provide high-quality early childhood education services.
Florence Crittenton Services of Colorado (Denver): $60,000 for programs and services for teen parents.
Invest in Kids (Denver): $60,000 for The Incredible Years, a program to prevent and treat emotional and behavioral problems in young children.
Jeffco Public Schools (Golden): $30,000 to provide parenting skills training and to promote school readiness to families dealing with mental illness.
Metropolitan State University of Denver Foundation (Denver): $15,000 for the Family Literacy Program which is designed to give at-risk children and their caregivers the life skills and educational tools to be successful.
Mile High Montessori Early Learning Centers (Denver): $38,000 to support continuing education and professional development for staff.
Mount Saint Vincent (Denver): $7,500 to support quality expansion and parent support programs.
OUR Center (Longmont): $5,000 for professional development for the child development center.
Project WISE (Denver): $20,000 to provide counseling and education programs to low-income women making the transition from public assistance to work.
Rocky Mountain MicroFinance Institute (Denver): $10,000 for microloans and business planning to entrepreneurs seeking self-sufficiency.
$10,000 for two grants toward grants totaling $20,000 to support outreach to nonprofits and communications related to Amendment 66, an effort to institute comprehensive education finance reform in Colorado. This grant was jointly funded by the Foundation's Child and Family Development and Education program areas.
$5,000 for a consultant for research and education of community partners about using social impact bonds to fund early childhood education programs.
$5,000 toward a grant totaling $10,000 for consulting support for facilitation of the early childhood mental health funders collaborative. This grant was jointly funded by the Foundation's Child and Family Development and Health program areas.
$20,000 toward a grant totaling $40,000 for the Opportunity Youth initiative. This grant was jointly funded by the Foundation's Child and Family Development and Education program areas.
St. Luke's Ministry (Denver): $5,000 for the Certified Nurse Assistance training program.
Stride (Lakewood): $15,000 to help low-income individuals and families become economically self-sufficient.
Third Sector New England (Boston, MA): $3,000 for the Early Childhood Funders' Collaborative.
University of Colorado Boulder, Child Learning Center (Boulder): $15,000 to support early childhood programs, parent education and outreach.
Women's Bean Project (Denver): $16,000 to provide employment training and life skills programs for women.
Adams County Youth Initiative (Thornton): $15,000 for training to those serving vulnerable youth and their families living in Adams County.
Center for Teaching Quality (Carrboro, NC): $153,000 to promote teacher leadership to advance student learning in Colorado.
Colorado League of Charter Schools (Denver): $25,000 for building teacher leadership capacity in the charter school community.
$75,000 to increase the capacity of the Denver Public Schools Foundation.
$250,552 to develop a student teacher residency program within Denver Public Schools.
Jeffco Public Schools (Golden): $25,000 for the Jeffco Dashboard Parent and Community Outreach Project.
The Partnership for Families & Children (Denver): $20,000 for the Colorado Education Policy Fellowship Program.
RAFT Colorado (Denver): $25,000 to assist Adams 12 School District transition teachers to the Next Generation Science Standards and Colorado Academic Science Standards.
Rights for All People (Aurora): $33,000 to launch a new parent education-organizing and advocacy group that will serve Aurora Public Schools students and their families.
$10,000 for a consultant for literature review and report on education effectiveness research.
$25,000 to evaluate the educator effectiveness project for teacher preparation and alternative licensure programs.
$65,000 for two grants to contract with The Keystone Center to staff and coordinate the Licensing Educators for Academic Development (LEAD) Compact.
Teach for America (Denver): $25,000 to increase the ethnic and racial diversity, and cultural competency of their members.
$10,000 to engage parents of students in near-northeast Denver Public Schools in a campaign to expand opportunities for more and better learning time.
$5,000 for the Higher Education Access Alliance and Colorado ASSET (in-state tuition for immigrant students).
Boulder County Public Health Department (Boulder): $85,000 for a teen pregnancy prevention program for the younger siblings of pregnant and parenting teenagers.
Colorado Center on Law and Policy (Denver): $200,000 for health policy leadership and advocacy on behalf of Colorado's poor, working poor and other vulnerable populations.
Colorado Children's Campaign (Denver): $90,000 toward a grant totaling $240,000 for advocacy efforts to improve the health, early childhood experiences and K-12 education of Colorado's children. This grant was jointly funded by the Foundation's Child and Family Development, Education and Health program areas.
Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved (Denver): $100,000 to support efforts to ensure health care is available to all people.
Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition (Denver): $15,000 for advocacy efforts on behalf of individuals with disabilities.
Colorado Department of Human Services, State of Colorado (Denver): $164,262 to support a new position of director of early childhood mental health in the Office of Early Childhood, Colorado Department of Human Services.
Colorado Regional Health Information Organization (Denver): $195,000 to continue efforts to integrate behavioral health records into Colorado's health information exchange.
Colorado School of Public Health (Denver): $75,000 to support this collaboration of the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, University of Northern Colorado and Colorado State University. University of Colorado Foundation serves as fiscal sponsor.
Colorado Total Smiles (Aurora): $3,000 for an organizational assessment and strategic plan.
Community Health Services (Commerce City): $30,000 to provide health care services to low-income children and youth in Commerce City and Westminster.
Maria Droste Counseling Center (Denver): $10,000 to provide counseling services to low-income, uninsured individuals, children, and families.
Rose Community Foundation (Denver): $5,000 toward a grant totaling $10,000 for consulting support for facilitation of the early childhood mental health funders collaborative. This grant was jointly funded by the Foundation's Child and Family Development and Health program areas.
Women's Health (Boulder): $50,000 for family planning, gynecological services and sexuality education programs.
Denver Jewish Day School (Denver): 188,913 to help this Jewish day school eliminate debt, including fundraising, land use and communications planning.
Hazon (New York, New York) $10,000 to support the Jewish food movement in the Greater Denver/Boulder area. Project partners include 18 Pomegranates and Oreg Foundation.
Live On: Build Your Jewish Legacy (Denver): $219,500 for this Rose Community Foundation initiative to help Jewish organizations and their donors promote a culture of endowment giving through wills and estate plans.
MazelTot.org: Connecting Young Families to Jewish Life (Denver): $410,450 over two years for this grant initiative of Rose Community Foundation that provides information and discounts to prenatal through preschool parents to help them connect to local Jewish life.
Moving Traditions (Jenkintown, Pennsylvania): $25,000 for training and expansion of two teen Jewish education programs: Rosh Hodesh: It's a Girl Thing and Shevet Achim: The Brotherhood.
$5,000 for a gathering of partners, parents and teens to launch the Jewish teen initiative.
$15,000 to create a plan to build a stronger and more effective Jewish Youth Professionals Council, part of a larger initiative to engage teens in Jewish life.
$25,000 for a new mentorship program engaging former camp counselors as mentors for teens, part of a larger initiative to engage teens in Jewish life.
$623,784 for two grants for the design of a training and coaching program for up to nine Jewish early childhood education centers to enhance enrollment, retention, recruitment, customer service, and Jewish family engagement and relationship building.
Clinton Global Initiative (Little Rock, AR): $25,000 for a collaborative sponsorship for Clinton Global Initiative America event in Denver.
Colorado Commits to Kids Campaign (Wheat Ridge): $200,000 to support Amendment 66, an effort to institute comprehensive education finance reform in Colorado.
Colorado Funders Flood Recovery Fund (Denver): $50,000 to support long-term relief efforts related to the 2013 Colorado floods. Rose Community Foundation serves as fiscal sponsor.
Colorado Nonprofit Association (Denver): $30,000 for this organization that serves as the voice for Colorado's nonprofit sector.
Colorado Nonprofit Development Center (Denver): $15,000 to provide accounting and other services to developing nonprofit organizations.
Community Shares of Colorado (Denver): $18,750 for the Nonprofit Sustainability program, strengthening nonprofit organizations' capacity to build and inspire philanthropy in Colorado.
The Denver Foundation (Denver): $25,000 for efforts surrounding transit-oriented development in the Denver region.
Metro Volunteers (Denver): $12,500 to support an organization that connects volunteers to service opportunities in nonprofit organizations.
Donor-advised funds housed at the Foundation made 348 grants totaling $1,233,050.
American Friends of the Tel Aviv University Inc.


The solution is China. ASM teaches its vendors to contact product manufacturers in China, obtain and test product samples and, if satisfied, buy bulk quantities of those products. Such bulk orders may cost a few or even tens of thousands of dollars, so it pays to know a market product market nicely.
How are high profit margins created? By convincing customers that the product has very substantial price and is in limited supply. Hence, the ASM training does not just comprise the 8 week program but additional value-added items such as the Vegas trip and lifestyle forum membership.
Some affiliates have reported being guaranteed up to 50% commission on their own ASM earnings, or about $2K. With such high profits and profit margins promised to prospective affiliates, it's clear to see why ASM has removed as quickly as it has. 1 need only perform a quick search on Google to find reams of affiliate advertising sites touting the advantages of this application.
What this means is that, if you receive the program and buy stock, promote it, and don't earn money after their approaches, ASM will refund you the complete price of this program and they'll refund you for any money you spent on stock up to $10,000.
I have not seen a promise quite enjoy this one as Matt and Jason want you to provide the system a try completely risk free. I don't say this often, but it really does seem that you have got nothing to lose by providing ASM a shot. If ultimately it will not work out after 6 weeks, you are out just the time spent.
Jessica posts training materials online that are very affordably priced. What is more, the training materials are coordinated by company; for example, if you want to test out health and beauty product drop-shipping, Jessica provides an ebook on the subject for only $27. Alternately, you may even buy the total Amazon Boot Camp for $299.
But let's say you are hoping to buy larger lots of wholesale items and really need to discover what is available through overseas nations such as China. Skip McGrath provides a thorough 350-page printed training manual named The total Amazon Marketing System for $127. He also throws in a whole lot of free bonuses such as a 30-minute training call and life membership to his wholesale sourcing website.


On Friday, I debuted my Fall Inspired Party Down ensemble, which included a handmade felt bow tie. Why buy a bow tie, when you can make one out of Classic 9'' x 12'' Craft Felt (which you can find at various place for $0.35)? I used this tutorial, but altered in places to work for me and the supplies I had on hand.
1. I used one of my husband's bow ties to determine the height of my bow tie and cut a strip of felt accordingly. 12" x 2.75"
2. Sew the ends together.
3. Move the seam to the middle (this will be the back of our bow tie).
4. Press the center of the bow tie together (try and finesse / shape the tie in the process) & sewing from top to bottom to set the structure of the tie.
6. Now you have your base and the center section of your tie.
7. Wrap the thin strip around the base (I did a couple of times this until the end was in the back - you could do this shorter if you like. I just erred on the side of caution). Then sew the back edged of the thin strip to keep it in place.
8. I first tried a bobby pin (but I only use mini ones - so it was too short to work), but settled on a small prong hair clip / alligator clip - shown here.
9. You simply slide the clip into place (you could use one clip with multiple bow ties this way by simply swapping them out).


text:
Gallerist Q&A – Katharine and Carl Kostyál
In this series, we talk to the founders and directors of leading galleries from across the Nordics about the personal stories behind them becoming gallerists, and the principles they work by. Meet Carl and Katharine Kostyál, the couple behind the eponymous London, Milan and Stockholm-based gallery whose relationship to contemporary art can be traced back generations.
by David Risley, 30 May 2022
Carl Kostyál
Photo by Luca A. Caizzi. Courtesy of Carl Kostyál
How do you identify? What do you call yourself? (gallerist/dealer/other)
Carl always says he is a dealer. Of the old-school variety. The difference being that as well as having a hunger for the new and for staging great exhibitions, he gives a damn what happens to an artwork if it's re-sold, even if they were originally placed by other galleries.
He makes it his responsibility to ensure the works end up in good homes the second time around. No easy task and requires a different level of understanding of and engagement with the artist's own market as well as the machinations of the broader international art market. I would describe myself as a dealer / curator, though I am aware of the apparent contradiction of that title.
Portrait of Katharine Kostyál, Milan, 2022
Photo by Sandra Semburg. Courtesy of Carl Kostyál
All superheroes have a creation myth, what's yours? What got you started? Not many kids say: "I want to be a gallerist when I grow up." How did you get into it?
Carl was lucky with his art DNA… in 1498 his grandmother's Transylvanian family commissioned Albrecht Dürer to paint what became known as the Haller Madonna, now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
His great aunt, Carmen von Wogau, came from a prominent art collecting family in pre/revolutionary Moscow and fled communism for Fiesole/Florence where she co-founded what was quaintly called The Pictures Department at Sotheby's London with Peter Wilson and other legends of the Old Master world. Her protégés, Old Master dealers like Derek Johns, were Carl's heroes growing up… the living proof you could combine an interest in history with a trade.
He spent his summers in Sweden with his uncle Ulf who had what had been saved from a phenomenal collection of Russian Romantic paintings, Shiskin, Repin et al. Among Carl's family were the af Klints and the von Freytag Loringhovens… he grew up wondering if the world would ever acknowledge the genius of Hilma or Elsa…
Carl Kostyál and his godmother Elisabet Ersman neé af Klint, great niece of Hilma af Klint
Courtesy of Carl Kostyál
I come from an art / dealing family – two of my cousins, Philip and Anthony Mould, are Old Master dealers and my great uncle, Desmond Knox Leet was an artist and aesthete who also founded Diptyque in 1968. I met art historian Crispian Riley-Smith at a party when I was 18 who encouraged me to apply for the internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, which I did, the next day.
The experience was a eureka moment for me: having been stuck in dusty lecture halls looking at endless slides to suddenly living amongst such critically important works from the 20th century, being able to study them and talk about them to visitors daily, determined my course. I went on to work at the Venice Biennale at the British Pavilion in 1995 and then after a stint at EMI Records, joined the South London Gallery as a curator and exhibition organiser.
From there I went to Christies as a Senior Specialist in Contemporary Art, to Simon Lee as a Sales Director and later a partnership with Jay Jopling at White Cube, where I spent six years sourcing and curating exhibitions and placing the works of artists I felt had been overlooked in recent years and whose work was ripe for a re-presentation –from Günther Förg, Park Seo-Bo, Dóra Maurer, Peter Schuyff, Lee Seung Taek, Minjung Kim to Richard Lin.
While Carl and I have always supported each other in myriad ways professionally, two years ago I decided to join forces with him and devote my time to helping him run the gallery.
Buck Ellison, Slip Lead, 2021, Carl Kostyál Stora Sundby Castle, Sweden
You walk into the packed dining room of the restaurant at Kunsthalle Basel the night of the opening of ART Basel. There are two large tables: one full of artists, one full of collectors. You can choose one table for the evening. Where do you sit and why?
That's a polarising question… I think I would have to say we would likely stay at the bar and wait for the mountain to come to Mohamed.
Jess Valice, Missing person, 2021, Carl Kostyál Milan
What is your role? (talk about what you think the most important parts of your job are, what is your function, what is your role in the artworld?) (curator / agent / manager / salesperson / therapist / bank / coach / host / entertainer / accountant / magician… )
We are both, in our different ways, agents for our artists. Meaning all of the above.
Ana Benaroya, The Passenger, installation view, 2021, Carl Kostyál, London
Photo by Prudence Cuming © the artist. Courtesy of Carl Kostyál
What was the first work you ever sold? Do you wish you had bought it rather than selling it?
Regret is a waste of energy.
Szabolcs Bozó, The Explorer, installation view, 2021, Carl Kostyál London
The American comedian Chris Rock said, Michael Jackson is rich, the guy who signs his cheques is wealthy. Anthony D'Offay said, you can get rich selling art but you get wealthy buying art. Do you collect art? From the artists you represent? More widely?
We do. We have always collected the artists we work with and many more besides. There is no greater vote of confidence for both artists and collectors than buying the work of artists you represent and sell. I believe the adage is 'dealers make money, but collectors make a fortune'.
In the end we are dealers, not collectors, so even though we are often tempted to hold on to works we love, we usually end up placing them where we think they will work the hardest for the artist.
Camilla Engstrom, Målningar Till Mamma Och Pappa, installation view, 2021, Carl Kostyál in Stockholm
Photo by Viktor Fordell. Courtesy of Carl Kostyál
"There is no greater vote of confidence for both artists and collectors than buying the work of artists you represent and sell."
Katharine Kostyál
Co-owner of Carl Kostyál
David Risley is an artist. He ran David Risley Gallery, in London (2002-2010) and Copenhagen (2010-2018). He was founding Co-curator of Bloomberg Space, London (2002-2005), Co-founder of Zoo Art Fair, London (2004), and Co-founder and Co-owner of CHART. He continues to write, curate, and develop projects with artists. He is developing a sustainability project for public-facing institutions.
Carl Kostyál opened his eponymous gallery at no. 12A Savile Row, London in 2010. He launched his first Stockholm space, Isbrytaren, at Igeldammsgatan 20 in 2013 and in 2016 moved to the former German Embassy at Artellerigatan. In May 2021 the gallery opened a new exhibition space, Hospitalet in Nacka, Stockholm.
Perspective Mapping the Art World
People Gallerist Q&A – Susanne Ottesen
by David Risley
People Gallerist Q&A – Börkur Arnarson
Perspective From Gallery to Mega-Gallery and Back: A (Short) History
by Christian Viveros-Fauné


Are you an adventurous traveller or a beach bum? Whether you're more interested in a cultural trip or living the ultimate island life, Thailand has it all. With gorgeous mountain landscapes in the north, paradise beaches in the south, and cities brimming with cultural heritage, this country offers you a vacation with endless possibilities. So, when is the best time to visit Thailand?
Your best time to travel to Thailand depends on what kind of vacation you are dreaming of. We have highlighted some of the best things to do in Thailand, including the best weather conditions and top attractions such as islands, hiking, festivals, food markets and, of course, shopping. Since South Africans do not need a visa to enter Thailand, all that's left to do is book your ticket and head east!
Thailand's tropical weather is comprised of warm, cool and monsoon seasons where north and south experience different weather patterns. For the best time to visit Thailand, first decide on which region you want to explore.
The northern parts of Thailand are surrounded by green tropical forests and staggering mountain landscapes. The weather in this area is defined by a rainy season, cool season and warm season.
October to February is the cooler period in the north and definitely the best time to visit Thailand for its incredible hiking and stunning sunrises. In the morning you can wake up to fresh air with temperatures peaking at 20-25 degrees Celsius during the day. This blossoming period is perfect for experiencing the countryside with its picturesque green mountains, rice terraces, and winter flowers.
The months of March to May experience the hottest weather in this area. With this heat, northern Thailand's weather is similar to the south, just a little less humid! Be prepared for sweltering temperatures, so pack in extra sunblock and drink plenty of water.
Monsoon season up north starts from mid-June and stays until October. Keep in mind that rain showers generally occur sporadically, in short bursts, so always have a raincoat on hand and be flexible with your activities. While you'll need to plan your hiking around these rain showers, the upside is you can enjoy much cooler temperatures.
The flat cultivated landscapes of central Thailand experience a tropical climate comprised of a cool season, warm season and rainy season.
The cooler season, from October to January, is the best time to visit the central parts of Thailand. In Bangkok, the temperatures range from 28-30 degrees Celsius and you can enjoy strolling around the vibrant streets of the capital city.
The warm season generally hits central Thailand from February until June, where you may get temperatures up to 40 degrees Celsius in Bangkok. Some areas around central Thailand may be hot but still very humid – a combination which can be challenging if you're doing more physical activities. Feel free to laze by your hotel pool after a full day of shopping and sightseeing!
The months of July to October are affected by central Thailand's monsoon season. If you do want to visit during these months, remember to bring a raincoat for the afternoon showers.
The southern part of Thailand, stretching down past beachy Phuket, is defined by two seasons: the rainy season and the dry season.
The dry season spans from December until May, and temperatures range from around 25 to 32 degrees Celsius. The best time to visit Thailand's southern parts is during the dry season from around November to April. During this time, you get to soak in the tropical heat along the beautiful coastline while cooling off in the sparkling turquoise waters.
The rainy season in the south starts in around June and continues until October. The rains usually come in short spurts so, if you're planning to visit Krabi and the surrounding islands, you'll still get plenty of sunshine. You can also indulge in having the flawless beaches of Phuket and Koh Samui all to yourself!
Between March and April is the best time to visit Thailand's islands of Koh Pha Ngan and Koh Samui for the most incredible diving and snorkelling along the east coast. Enjoy the 26 degree Celsius warm waters and spot magnificent sea animals, including whale sharks!
The southwest coast of Thailand is known for its breathtaking islands and gorgeous beaches. Water temperatures here stay high all year round and the average sea temperature along the Krabi coastline is 29 degrees Celsius. As a diver, December to January is the best time to visit Thailand's west coast. Swim between colourful reefs and spectacular fish species off the islands of Koh Lanta and Koh Phi Phi.
How much are flights to Thailand?
The tourist peak season hits Thailand from December to January and also in April during the Thai New Year. During the festive peak period, prices on flights and accommodation can go up by more than 30% during low season, so this might not be the best time to visit Thailand if you're looking to travel on a budget. However, if you do a little bit of planning and book early enough, you may just score some great deals on cheap flights and accommodation.
Travelling during low season has the advantage of being a lot cheaper, especially if you visit places that aren't busy all year around. Why not explore some off-the-beaten-track places and discover some of Thailand's hidden treasures without the bustling crowds?
Take advantage of fewer crowds, lower prices, emptier hotels and having the beaches all to yourself! Stay updated on our latest flight specials to Thailand.
This New Year's celebration is very festive, especially in the Chinese parts of town! On this day in Bangkok, you'll find people dressed in red, partying in the streets and celebrating this occasion!
This is one of the biggest festivals and is a celebration of the Thai New Year. The celebration is spread over three days, where on the first day people engage in massive water fights in the streets. Bring a water pistol and have some fun!
This is called the Ghost festival and is a 3-day celebration held especially in the town Dan Sai, bordering Laos. During the festival, people bring attention to the spirits of the dead. During the 3 days of celebration, you'll find fireworks, games, and parades held throughout the city where people dress up as dancing spirits. Take a look at the beautifully decorated costumes!
Loy Krathong is a celebration of the river goddess "Mae Nam" and takes place on the night of the 12th full moon every year. People traditionally release decorated krathongs (lanterns) on to the water and glowing paper lanterns into the sky at night. It is an absolutely beautiful sight.
Now that you have a complete guide on Thailand's seasons and attractions, the best time to visit Thailand is generally between the cooler months of November to February, or between June and September if you're looking for the best deals. Since peak season runs from December to January, we recommend you to travel just outside of this period. This will guarantee you both spectacular weather as well as cheap flight tickets for your holiday!
What is your idea of the best time to visit Thailand? Share your thoughts below on your ideal Thailand getaway.
Keep up to date with our latest flight specials by signing up for our newsletter, and you'll soon be on your way to exploring the exotic flavours of Thailand!
This blog post was written by Beatrice Fröjd.
I'm travelling to Thailand at the beginning of May. So excited about it, simply can't stop reading about my next destination. Thank you for your helpful read. I do hope to avoid rainy days during my short visit.
Hi. I am interested for a holiday in the East next year feb 2020. Its me and my wife. 10 to 14 days Thailand. Malaysia.
You can contact our direct sales team, Travelstart Live by calling 021 020 0559 (Monday – Friday) or by sending an email to live@travelstart.com with all details exact dates, routing, budget and number of passengers and one of our agents will get back to you with a quote for that dream holiday.
Really nice to read your complete guide to Thailand. Very helpful even for me who haven't been there.
For travel from SA I've found the fares and accommodation to be the cheapest between May-October. Less rainfall in May though so a really good time to go.
Thanks for a very thorough insight into Thailand travel.