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When Dick Costolo attended the University of Michigan, in the nineteen-eighties, his major was computer science, but he was surprised to find that he also had a knack for improv comedy. After graduation, he moved to Chicago and took classes at the Second City Theatre. Unlike some of his peers there—Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Adam McKay—Costolo was not asked to join the theatre's house company, and his comedy career dried up. He fell back on his skills as a coder and founded a series of tech startups, one of which was eventually acquired by Google, for a hundred million dollars. In 2010, he became the C.E.O. of Twitter, earning about ten million dollars in his first year. At a charity event, he ran into Steve Carell, and they reminisced about their days as bohemian improvisers. "I'm sorry it didn't work out for you," Carell joked.
In June of 2015, with Twitter's stock price languishing, Costolo announced that he would leave the company. (According to the tech press, the board of directors had forced him out; Costolo maintains that leaving was his idea.) Three days later, HBO aired the second-season finale of its half-hour satire "Silicon Valley." The season ended on a cliffhanger: the central character, the founder and C.E.O. of a tech company, was fired by his board. Costolo, a fan of the show, found the situation uncannily familiar. "I could relate to every person in that situation—the founder who's leaving, the C.E.O. who's coming in, the employees who are watching it happen," he said.
Around that time, Costolo had breakfast in San Francisco with Kara Swisher, a tech reporter and power broker who has been called "Silicon Valley's most feared and well-liked journalist." Conversation turned to "Silicon Valley," the show. "People in the Valley—at least, the people I know—talk about the show all the time," Costolo told me. "Most of them love it, oddly. I think there are a lot of people telling themselves, with varying levels of accuracy, 'They're satirizing those annoying tech people—not me.'" Swisher, who knows everyone, was in frequent contact with the showrunners, Mike Judge and Alec Berg. "I'll introduce you," she told Costolo.
The next month, Costolo had lunch with Judge and Berg in Los Angeles. They told him that they had written themselves into a corner. Their show was about an entrepreneur striving to build a company; having separated the entrepreneur from the company, they weren't sure how to proceed. For a show that devotes a good amount of time to slapstick and gross-out sight gags, "Silicon Valley" is deceptively well-researched, and Judge and Berg had decided that the best way out of their bind was to hire a consultant who could give them more information. To their surprise, Costolo expressed interest. "We just need someone who knows how these companies work, not someone who actually ran one of them," Berg said. Despite being overqualified, Costolo got the job.
"Silicon Valley" is mostly filmed on multiple sets, inside a concrete Sony lot in Los Angeles—not in Silicon Valley, but in the same time zone. Every Monday morning for three and a half months, Costolo flew from San Francisco to L.A., took an Uber to Culver City, dropped his overnight bag at a nearby hotel, and spent Monday and Tuesday in the writer's room. Berg, Judge, and ten writers peppered him with questions, both narrow and existential. Where would the most powerful person in a boardroom sit? What would motivate an entrepreneur like Richard, and what would he find most demoralizing? "I would tell them a detail about something I'd observed or someone I'd met, and they would get this sparkle in their eye and go, 'That really happens?'" Costolo said.
Over time, Costolo grew comfortable enough to pitch jokes of his own. "They were generous about letting me down gently," he told me. "It was interesting to go from the C.E.O. to the least experienced guy in the room." Among the tech-journalism books that everyone on staff had read was "Hatching Twitter," Nick Bilton's history of the company. "Once, they were debating what should happen next in a story arc," Costolo told me. "Mike asked the room, 'Didn't they face a problem like this in the Twitter book? What did they decide?' Someone had to point out, 'Mike, one of the people from that book is in the room. Let's just ask him what happened.'"
"Silicon Valley," now in its third season, is one of the funniest shows on television; it is also the first ambitious satire of any form to shed much light on the current socio-cultural moment in Northern California. The show derives its energy from two semi-contradictory attitudes: contempt for grandiose tech oligarchs and sympathy for the entrepreneurs struggling to unseat them. In the pilot episode, Richard Hendricks, a shy but brilliant engineer, designs a compression algorithm—an ingenious way to make big files smaller. He later turns this innovation into a company, which he insists on calling Pied Piper. (Richard: "It's a classic fairy tale." Employee: "It's about a predatory flautist who murders children in a cave.") As his company grows, Richard becomes a nerd David beset by Goliaths: duplicitous board members, corporations trying to steal his intellectual property. Can he succeed without compromising his values? The deep irony of Richard's situation—that his ultimate goal, presumably, is to become a Goliath himself—either has not yet come up in the writer's room or is being tabled for later.
"Real startups go through all the shit you see on the show, as well as even crazier shit," Roger McNamee, a venerable venture capitalist and a consultant to the show, told me. "If anything, the writers might have to leave out true things in order to seem more realistic." Both Judge and Berg have an eye for authenticity. In Judge's movie "Office Space," from 1999, he enlivened his subject—white-collar drudgery—with details he had experienced or observed: a boss's onerous attention to the formatting of T.P.S. reports, a chain restaurant that forces its servers to wear at least fifteen pieces of "flair." Similarly, many of the shows that Berg has written for, notably "Seinfeld," harvested story lines from real life. "On 'Seinfeld,' the same thing happened again and again," Berg told me. "Someone would pitch ten ideas. The first nine would be wacky, silly things, and the tenth would be genuinely funny and interesting. You'd go, 'That tenth thing—where'd that one come from?' and the person would say, 'That one actually happened to a friend of mine.'"
When you're writing a show about nothing, or a movie about cubicle culture, it's easy to collect realistic details. But if you want to know how a non-compete clause would be structured, or what kind of car a typical brogrammer would drive, or whether Richard's firing would trigger an afternoon of malaise or a personal crisis, then you need to do your homework. TV writers have long consulted experts—a doctor to demonstrate how to hold a defibrillator, a military officer to make sure the uniforms are the right color. In the past, these consultants were often akin to fact-checkers, brought in near the end of the writing process to make sure that nothing looked glaringly wrong. These days, TV is taken more seriously, and everyone's a critic with access to Twitter and Wikipedia. "You can't fool audiences with unrealistic schlock anymore," Jay Carson told me. Carson was the press secretary for Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign in 2008; he then served as the Chief Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles. In 2011, his friend Beau Willimon hired him as a political consultant on "House of Cards." "I helped us pass a smell test, both with D.C. insiders and the general audience," he said. "Even during the five years I was there, the audience got more sophisticated every season."
"Silicon Valley" is a reported sitcom. "We do plenty of silly jokes, but we also go to great lengths to make the world feel real," Berg told me. "The hope is that someone in the Valley"—a scrawny coder, a billionaire, or someone who fits both descriptions—"will be able to watch it and go, 'I might not like that they're taking shots at us, but at least it's grounded in truth.'" Richard has now been reinstated as the C.E.O., and, after several episodes devoted to lawsuits and succession crises, Pied Piper has returned to the simple joy of building its platform. "In the writer's room, I talked a lot about how the founder of a company has a moral authority that no other C.E.O., no matter how accomplished, will ever have," Costolo told me.
The show's signature gag, from the first season, was a minute-long montage of startup founders pledging to "make the world a better place through Paxos algorithms for consensus protocols," or to "make the world a better place through canonical data models to communicate between endpoints." This scene was set at TechCrunch Disrupt, a real event where founders take turns pitching their ideas, "American Idol"-style, to an auditorium full of investors. Before writing the episode, Judge and Berg spent a weekend at TechCrunch Disrupt, in San Francisco. "That's the first thing you notice," Judge said. "It's capitalism shrouded in the fake hippie rhetoric of 'We're making the world a better place,' because it's uncool to just say 'Hey, we're crushing it and making money.'" After the scene aired, viewers complained about the lack of diversity in the audience. Berg recalled, "A friend of mine who works in tech called me and said, 'Why aren't there any women? That's bullshit!' I said to her, 'It is bullshit! Unfortunately, we shot that audience footage at the actual TechCrunch Disrupt.'"
Berg and Judge have backgrounds that enable them to understand Silicon Valley culture better than most laypeople, and they tend to hire writers who are similarly equipped. In the late eighties, before the first tech bubble, Judge worked as an electrical engineer in Santa Clara, designing graphics cards. Berg's father is a biophysicist at Harvard; Berg told me that his brother, a coder and entrepreneur, "went to grad school for computer science at Stanford, a few doors down from Sergey and Larry"—Brin and Page, whose graduate work turned into Google. Dan Lyons, a writer on the third season of the show, was a tech reporter who left journalism to work for a startup, then got fired and wrote a memoir, "Disrupted," about the experience. Another "Silicon Valley" writer, Carrie Kemper, graduated from Stanford in 2006 and worked in Google's H.R. department. At Google, Kemper noticed that her boss's morning routine included Googling himself. That joke made its way into a recent episode. ("I started my day, as I always do, by typing my own name into Hooli search. I enjoy the ritual, which is designed to center me," the C.E.O. of Hooli, a Google-like company, says. "Lately, it's been doing the opposite.")
When I was on the Sony lot where the current season of "Silicon Valley" was being filmed, several people encouraged me to talk to Jonathan Dotan, an entrepreneur who is now the show's lead technical consultant. "He's the one who looks like a con man in Havana in 1947," Dan O'Keefe, a writer and producer, told me. This turned out to mean that, in contradistinction to the writers, crew members, and actors, who tend to wear jeans and sneakers both on and off camera, Dotan favors tailored blazers, pocket squares, and colorful dress socks.
I waited for him in the offices of Raviga, the show's fictional venture-capital firm. The décor—exposed brick, burnished steel, geographically ambiguous throw rugs—felt eerily similar to actual V.C. offices I have visited, the way a Hyatt in Toronto might exhibit an aesthetic entanglement with a Hyatt in the Houston airport. To give the show's directors the freedom to point the camera wherever they like, the set designers built a whole floor of office space and covered it with realistic touches, from the plaques on the walls to the issues of MIT Technology Review fanned out on a waiting-room table. Compounding the paramnesiac effect was the fact that many of the rooms actually were being used as offices—production staffers who weren't needed elsewhere sat behind closed glass doors, typing or making phone calls.
Dotan led me to Raviga's boardroom. He tried two fake outlets before finding a real one, then plugged in his laptop, opened it on a blond-wood conference table, and launched a PowerPoint presentation he had prepared about the show's research process. "The first part of the job is making sure we get the specifics right, because our audience won't tolerate any mistakes," he said. "Silicon Valley," a show about computer nerds, has a fan base that is particularly attuned to minutiae, and particularly apt to argue about them on the Internet. If a Post-it, URL, or line of code is legible on the show, it will be screengrabbed and scrutinized. Last year, a few hours after an episode aired, a Reddit user with the handle HeIsMyPossum started a thread called "Why did the writers just obliterate all the good karma they had built up with their core audience?" He made an impassioned argument that a plot point—the accidental deletion of data from Pied Piper's servers—was implausible. "So the files were being converted live while coming through an FTP? And that affects disk deletion speed?... Come the fuck on guys." Rob Fuller, a software engineer and a consultant on the show, logged on to Reddit to defend his work, mostly by displaying his own nerd plumage. "Stuff like this happens," he wrote. "I think even Amazon had an outage because one of the admins fat fingered a DNS or ACL change at one point." Another user responded to Fuller: "Thanks for engaging us here, we really appreciate it." The thread amassed nearly three hundred comments. "Sorry for being a dick," HeIsMyPossum wrote.
Dotan worked part-time for a few weeks, but then came on full-time. At first, he oversaw a staff of four: an expert in file compression; a user-interface engineer, to help write the code on the characters' screens; a C-level tech executive; and a Silicon Valley lawyer, to draft realistic contracts. By the end of the first season, Dotan's staff had grown to twelve. "If someone is holding a document on the show, that document is written out, in full, the way that it would be in real life," Dotan said. "We don't think of it in terms of, 'How little can we get away with showing on camera?' It's more, like, 'Let's go through the process of making the world as complete as possible and see if that process leads us to better stuff.' Which it usually does." He is now one of the show's producers, weighing in on the plot and tone as well as on abstruse technical matters.
The first season ended with a climactic competition: Pied Piper's compression algorithm pitted against that of its rival. "The writers wanted Richard to have an epiphany that would suddenly make his tech an order of magnitude better," Dotan said. "So we had to invent a breakthrough—something that would be huge, but realistic." Dotan called his compression expert, Tsachy Weissman, an engineering professor at Stanford. "He spent hours walking me through the very dense history of lossless compression," Dotan said. "The way I understood it, basically, was that Claude Shannon, in 1948, worked on compressing files from the top down, using coding trees, whereas David Huffman, a few years later, approached it from the bottom up." He made a PowerPoint presentation about this and delivered it to Judge and Berg. "They thought about it for a while, and then they said, 'You mentioned top-down and bottom-up. What about starting in the middle of the data set and working from the middle out?' So I asked Tsachy, 'What about middle-out? Is that a thing?' He didn't say, 'That's ridiculous.' He said, 'That's intriguing, actually. It might work.'"
In the show, Richard's "middle-out" epiphany is inspired not by a Stanford professor but by the most elaborate dick joke in TV history. To distract themselves from work, the Pied Piper engineers debate the quickest way to "jerk off every guy" in a crowd. (It's a long story.) They belabor the point, drawing diagrams on a whiteboard. Eventually, one of them suggests that it might be maximally efficient if he "jerks off four guys at a time," by aligning "two guys on either side, with their dicks tip to tip"—in other words, "from the middle out." Richard's eyes light up, buoyant strings begin to play in the background, and he walks to his computer and starts to code.
In 2015, Weissman convened the Stanford Compression Forum, which resulted in a forty-page white paper outlining what middle-out compression might mean. One of his graduate students, Vinith Misra, worked out the math more explicitly in another paper. "Clearly, middle-out compression doesn't work as well as it does on the show," Dotan told me. "If it did, we'd all be trillionaires. But we do have an arrangement where, if Tsachy and Vinith ever perfect it, Mike and Alec will share the Nobel Prize with them."
Dotan now oversees more than two hundred consultants. Some work on set with him; a majority are available on an ad-hoc basis. Most are unpaid and uncredited. They include academics, investors, entrepreneurs, and employees at Google, Amazon, Netflix, and several other tech firms. "I might ask a quick, specific question, or we might just riff for a few hours," Dotan said. Many of the show's best jokes, if not most, emerge from this ongoing collaborative process. "I send links, tip them off to things I've heard, list the mockable buzzwords of the month," Aileen Lee, a venture capitalist in Palo Alto, told me. "And I'm hardly the only one. For all I know, they have eyes and ears all over the Valley."
"Silicon Valley" is larded with brief appearances by tech-world mini celebrities that most viewers will miss, or will notice only by the incongruously stiff acting. But even careful viewers might not understand the complexity of the invisible web of communication between Silicon Valley and "Silicon Valley." In addition to Dotan's roster of consultants, Judge and Berg maintain informal conversations, both on and off the record, with several Silicon Valley bigwigs, including a few billionaires with either a sense of humor or an axe to grind. This kind of back-channel relationship—satirists texting casually with the satirized—is a departure from much of comedic history. Juvenal, whose "Satires" were published in the second century A.D., did not seem to be chummy with the Roman emperors he mocked, one of whom sentenced him to exile. It's hard to imagine drunks in eighteenth-century London sitting for satirical portraits by William Hogarth, or King George II submitting jokes to Jonathan Swift.
Swisher said that she still introduces Judge and Berg to Silicon Valley insiders such as Dick Costolo, who might prove useful to the show, "and who won't be too full of themselves to take a joke." One such person was Mark Pincus, who founded the gaming company Zynga. "When they said they wanted to meet at our office, I briefly went, 'Are they just trying to collect the ammunition they need to make us into caricatures?' And I cringed a bit when they saw our—we have this programmable tunnel thing that you walk through. It's sort of hard to explain. Later, I did see something similar to the tunnel on their show. But, look, a lot of what happens out here is ridiculous. That's fair game." The relationship is symbiotic: the consultants get a small jolt of non-local fame—both Costolo and Pincus have cameos in an upcoming episode—and a chance to seem self-deprecating; the show's creators can gather material, even when they don't have their notebooks out. "Mike seems quiet and unassuming, but his brain is always clicking away, recording everything," Swisher told me. "Which is a skill I covet, as a reporter." Why, I asked, would it be in the interest of anyone in the tech industry to talk to Judge? Swisher responded with a rhetorical question: "Why do any of them talk to me?"
Every summer, when the previous season has just ended and the next season is about to be written, "Silicon Valley"'s writers and producers take a research trip to Northern California. They spend a few nights in a San Francisco hotel and fill their days with meetings: a morning tour of GitHub's office, where the foyer is a full-size replica of the Oval Office; lunch with Barry Schuler, a former C.E.O. of AOL; an afternoon on Sand Hill Road, in Menlo Park, visiting the world's most valuable venture-capital funds; dinner with Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus at LB Steak. "We've had a few meals where it was me, Alec, and three or four billionaires," Judge told me. "We sit back and observe the dynamic. One of them might be the alpha billionaire. Or one of them will go to the bathroom, and the others will lean in and start talking shit about him while he's gone." In an episode from the first season, two tech titans—former colleagues, now rivals—encounter each other at an LB Steak-like restaurant. A specific kind of awkwardness ensues: these are men who make million-dollar decisions without hesitation, but who struggle mightily with pleasantries. It's the kind of interaction that is difficult to get right unless you've seen a version of it in real life.
"They've asked me questions about Richard's fictional company, like whether it would actually be fundable," Marc Andreessen, a Web pioneer and a prominent venture capitalist, told me. "The technology, as described on the show, would certainly have a major impact if it existed. Could you turn it into a viable business? Unknown. But, in fairness, you could say that about half of the companies we fund."
Between the show's first and second seasons, the writers waited in the lobby of Andreessen's office, where photographs of hydrogen-bomb blasts hang on the walls. ("They're a good way to make sure people are awake," Andreessen's spokesperson told me.) Then the writers were ushered into a conference room, where, for more than an hour, they sat around a blond-wood conference table while Andreessen pitched them jokes. "They weren't terrible, either," one of the writers told me. "I have eight dense pages of notes from that meeting. I have never heard a man speak as fast as Marc Andreessen." None of his jokes appeared on the show in their original form, but a concept he explained—the downside of accepting too much free money from investors—became a scene in season two. In the TV version, the venture capitalist is a young woman, and the conversation begins with her interrupting Richard while he's in the bathroom.
During one visit to Google's headquarters, in Mountain View, about six writers sat in a conference room with Astro Teller, the head of GoogleX, who wore a midi ring and kept his long hair in a ponytail. "Most of our research meetings are fun, but this one was uncomfortable," Kemper told me. GoogleX is the company's "moonshot factory," devoted to projects, such as self-driving cars, that are difficult to build but might have monumental impact. Hooli, a multibillion-dollar company on "Silicon Valley," bears a singular resemblance to Google. (The Google founder Larry Page, in Fortune: "We'd like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things." Hooli's C.E.O., in season two: "I don't want to live in a world where someone makes the world a better place better than we do.") The previous season, Hooli had launched HooliXYZ, its own "moonshot factory," whose experiments were slapstick absurdities: monkeys who use bionic arms to masturbate; powerful cannons for launching potatoes across a room. "He claimed he hadn't seen the show, and then he referred many times to specific things that had happened on the show," Kemper said. "His message was, 'We don't do stupid things here. We do things that actually are going to change the world, whether you choose to make fun of that or not.' " (Teller could not be reached for comment.)
Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He wobbled to the door in silence. "Then there was this awkward moment of him fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open," Kemper said. "It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?" In the end, the joke was deemed "too hacky to use on the show."
In a Paris Review interview in 1991, Tom Wolfe discussed his satirical novel "The Bonfire of the Vanities." He wanted the book to capture a recent historical moment—"New York in an age of money fever," as he put it—and, in his view, the only genre equal to his ambition was Zola-esque realism, grounded in observation. He visited holding pens, and interviewed prosecutors and ex-convicts. "I don't think the unaided imagination of the writer—and I don't care who the writer is—can come up with what is obtainable through research and reporting," he said. Dave Eggers, in the 2013 novel "The Circle," addressed his moment—the South Bay in an age of high-tech fever—using a purely fictional approach. "I've never visited any tech campus, and I don't know anything in particular about how any given company is run," he told the Times Magazine. "I really didn't want to." Whereas Wolfe's book was marked by a superfluity of hyperspecific detail—brass bibelots in a Wall Street office, "the condition of the mint" in a vodka cocktail—Eggers could only guess at the kind of event a tech employee might organize for his peers (a brunch for people interested in Portugal?), which resulted in a dystopian cautionary tale that felt more like a fever dream than a prophecy. Eggers clearly thought that he could use his imagination to critique the Internet. The Internet disagreed. According to Felix Salmon, "Eggers strays so far away from verisimilitude that his book barely even feels like satire"; Jessica Winter wrote that "Eggers has written a nearly 500-page satire of the tech world while appearing to have little interest in the actual tech world."
In 2014, Judge attended Code, a conference organized by Swisher. The following year, a version of the conference appeared on "Silicon Valley." Swisher, playing herself, interviewed Gavin Belson, the C.E.O. of Hooli. Belson, the show's main antagonist, is a composite character—he shares attributes with Marc Benioff, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, and others. In the interview scene with Swisher, he defends tech billionaires against charges of élitism. "Look at history," he says. "Do you know who else vilified a tiny minority of financiers and progressive thinkers called the Jews?" This was satire as near-stenography. In 2014, the Wall Street Journal published a letter by Tom Perkins, a billionaire venture capitalist: "Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich.'" If anything, Belson's outburst looked tasteful by comparison.
Sometimes, transposing a real event into fiction is all that's necessary to convert a news headline to an effective joke. It can also happen the other way around: the writers of "Silicon Valley," like all the best satirists, occasionally try to stretch the truth and end up anticipating it instead. In the pilot, a sexist programmer invents an app called NipAlert, directing users to the nearest "woman with erect nipples." "When I read that, I thought, Does that seem real or is it just a silly joke?" Berg said. Between when the pilot was filmed and when it aired, two actual entrepreneurs released Titstare, "an app where you take photos of yourself staring at tits." In a recent episode, Gavin Belson asks his lawyers to invent novel legal strategies that can silence a blogger who has treated him roughly. Again, given the timing, this couldn't have been a response to the legal actions that the provocative venture capitalist Peter Thiel has taken against Gawker, but it certainly felt like one.
In the first season, in the show's most direct portrayal of a real person, Thiel was lightly fictionalized as Peter Gregory, a smart but socially graceless V.C. "I'm sure he was offended by it, because he's offended by everything," Swisher told me. "It's amazing how thin-skinned some of these people are." However, Thiel later invited some of the show's creators to a party he was hosting in L.A., and he treated them politely. "He said he liked the show, which we were surprised to hear," one of the producers told me. "He was not nearly as awkward in person as we'd been led to believe." Maybe Thiel actually likes the show. Maybe he wants to prove that he can take a joke, even if he can't. Maybe, calculating that it would be difficult to sue HBO out of existence, he prefers to hold his enemy close. Or maybe it's like any other relationship in Silicon Valley: part personal, part business; part genuine, part transactional; part carrot, part stick.
Roger McNamee, who has been a successful tech investor since the late eighties, told me, "When I first met Mike, I asked him, 'What's the gestalt you're going for with this?' His answer was, 'I think Silicon Valley is immersed in a titanic battle between the hippie value system of the Steve Jobs generation and the Ayn Randian libertarian values of the Peter Thiel generation.' I had never articulated it that well myself, and I lived it!" McNamee recently wound down his most recent venture fund, which he co-founded with Bono; he now spends most of his time touring the country with his two jam bands, Moonalice and Doobie Decibel System. He continued, "Some of us actually, as naïve as it sounds, came here to make the world a better place. And we did not succeed. We made some things better, we made some things worse, and in the meantime the libertarians took over, and they do not give a damn about right or wrong. They are here to make money."
In an upcoming episode, McNamee's name appears in a soliloquy about the dopaminergic rush of competitive fund-raising. I was on set while this scene was being filmed, and T. J. Miller, the actor performing the speech, had to stop several times, having mispronounced "McNamee" or "Vinod Khosla." "Are these real people, or are you fucking with me?" Miller asked a script supervisor. By the sixth take, he was inventing proper nouns: "I talked to McMeenan Bartman Associates and let a call from Jim Goebbels go straight to voicemail."
When the scene was finished, Miller walked back to his trailer, where he used a steam inhaler to lubricate his throat. "Because of this role, I now intersect with the tech world in weird ways," Miller said. "You never know how they'll react. By satirizing them, you're holding up a mirror. Some of these guys look in the mirror and go, 'Fuck, we look silly.' Others look in the mirror and go, 'Wow, I am so fucking handsome.'" Miller plays Erlich Bachman, a pot-smoking blowhard with ludicrously sculpted facial hair whose house in the Valley is a tech incubator. Because Richard founded Pied Piper while living in the house, Erlich, without doing much work, is entitled to a minority stake and a seat on the board. "Multiple people have told me, 'I'm the Erlich of my company,'" he continued. "I actually tell them, 'You know that's not a good thing, right?'"
The first public screening of "Silicon Valley" took place in Redwood City in 2014, with dozens of tech luminaries in attendance. At an after-party, while caterers passed trays of hors d'oeuvres, Elon Musk delivered a negative review to a group of people, including a reporter from Recode: "Most startups are a soap opera, but not that kind of soap opera."
A "Silicon Valley" writer later told me, "The more self-important these people are, the more likely they are to elide the difference between a sitcom and a documentary about their lives." But the writers seem to want to have it both ways: when they get something right, they brag about the show's verisimilitude, but when they don't they mock anyone who would mistake a comedy for facts.
"Some Valley big shots have no idea how to react to the show," Miller told me. "They can't decide whether to be offended or flattered. And they're mystified by the fact that actors have a kind of celebrity that they will never have—there's no rhyme or reason to it, but that's the way it is, and it kills them." Miller met Musk at the after-party in Redwood City. "I think he was thrown by the fact that I wasn't being sycophantic—which I couldn't be, because I didn't realize who he was at the time. He said, 'I have some advice for your show,' and I went, 'No thanks, we don't need any advice,' which threw him even more. And then, while we're talking, some woman comes up and says 'Can I have a picture?' and he starts to pose—it was kinda sad, honestly—and instead she hands the camera to him and starts to pose with me. It was, like, Sorry, dude, I know you're a big deal—and, in his case, he actually is a big deal—but I'm the guy from 'Yogi Bear 3-D,' and apparently that's who she wants a picture with."
The three biggest public companies in the world, as measured by market capitalization, are Apple, the Google parent company Alphabet, and Microsoft. Are they enlightened agents of philanthrocapitalism or robber-baron monopolies? "In the real Silicon Valley, as on the show, there is a cohort of people who have a real sense of purpose and actually think they're going to change the world, and then there's a cohort of people who say farcical things about their apps that they clearly don't believe themselves," Sam Altman, who runs the startup incubator Y Combinator, told me. The show accurately reflects this complexity because the people who make it—like all thoughtful people, including the most powerful people in Silicon Valley—can't decide how they feel about Silicon Valley. "I swing back and forth," Clay Tarver, one of the show's writers and producers, told me. "The more I meet these people and learn about them, the more I come away thinking that, despite all the bullshit and greed, there actually is something exciting and hopeful going on up there."
In an upcoming episode, Pied Piper's sales department commissions a pompous, vacuous ad. "Any person can sit at a table," the voice-over goes. "Tables are for people to be together and share. And that is why tables are like Pied Piper."
Around the time this scene was filmed, Uber released an ad in a similar rhetorical register: "Consider the atom. Born 13.8 billion years ago, the atom is responsible for everything from the B.L.T. to moms everywhere to New York City.… Until a few short years ago, atoms and bits existed in entirely different worlds. But then something happened. At Uber, we asked, What if we brought these two worlds together?" Between takes, Thomas Middleditch, who plays Richard Hendricks, and Zach Woods, who plays Pied Piper's tenderhearted chief financial officer, watched the Uber ad on a smartphone, chuckling incredulously. Woods sat down next to Tarver and Dan O'Keefe, who were sitting in canvas director's chairs, watching a set of video monitors. Woods showed them the Uber ad and asked, "Is this what you guys based it on?"
"Actually, this came out after we wrote the episode," Tarver said. "We were thinking of a different one, a Facebook one."
"'Facebook is chairs,'" O'Keefe said.
"No way," Woods said. "Really?"
"All the big companies make these now," Tarver said. "It reminds me of the first Viagra commercials, where they wanted to be as vague as possible because they were embarrassed of what the product actually was."
"I think it's a combination of the pretentiousness of the people involved and their total market penetration," O'Keefe said. "It's no longer necessary to tell you what the product is. Now the goal is just to make you feel better about using it."
Woods and Middleditch were called back to set for another take. Tarver said, "I've been told that, at some of the big companies, the P.R. departments have ordered their employees to stop saying 'We're making the world a better place,' specifically because we have made fun of that phrase so mercilessly. So I guess, at the very least, we're making the world a better place by making these people stop saying they're making the world a better place."


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About Us
Surface supplied air and radio communications are used, but if needed SCUBA gear is available. Underwater burning equipment is ALWAYS carried in my step-van. A unique hot-water wetsuit system is used in the winter for unlimited cold-water diving. This company was established in 1979 in which time over 11,000 Wheel Jobs have been made. I personally have been diving since l985 and was previously a Class I Diver/Welder with Oceaneering for over 8 years specializing in underwater burning and welding. This company is licensed and insured with $2,000,000 general aggregate liability. Wheel Job Diving has NEVER had an insurance claim or a lost time accident!

subset: commoncrawl


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Royal Caribbean's 30% off sale continues but Enjoy Vacationing is able to give you even more! These offers are exclusive to a select few travel agencies and Enjoy Vacationing has you covered!
Book a balcony or above stateroom on any 7 night or longer sailing departing April 1, 2016 - December 31, 2016 and receive Dinner for Two in a Specialty Restaurant! Good through March 31.
BONUS OFFER! Receive Pre-Paid Gratuities for the 1st/2nd guests!! Bookings on any 7 nights or longer sailings departing April1, 2016 - December 31, 2016 made in a balcony and above categories booked between March 1 - March 31, 2016.
This is vacation time redefined. Explore the world and save big with our limited time offer on Royal Caribbean. 30% off every guests and every ship — even on our newest. Discover the Caribbean, Europe, Alaska and more on ships that are packed with adventure. Book today!
Booking Window: February 16 – April 3, 2016
Sailing Window: All sailings departing on or after March 16, 2016. Offer excludes all China departures.


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Melissa Michalak, a dancer and fitness professional based in New York City, has created BellyCore, a combination of Middle Eastern dance and Pilates exercises. Michalak's program, offered in a Cardio Bellydance DVD, starts with a Pilates-based warm-up and then incorporates belly dance moves to provide a cardio workout. The goal is to enjoy the flexibility and spinal mobility of belly dance along with the strengthening and stretching effects of Pilates. Michalak's tag line is "Move like a goddess. Feel like one, too."
To learn more about BellyCore, go to www.bellycore.com.


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GAP Colwyn Bay
GAP Colwyn Bay is located on Mochdre Business Park just off the A55. (Previously called North Wales Building Plastics). The depot has recently undergone a brand new refurbishment and the depot now features an impressive showroom of Rockdoors, Homeframe Windows & Doors and Origin Bi Folds, as well as products from leading trade brands such as Homeline, FloPlast and Klober.
Opening Times:
Monday - Friday 08.00 - 17.00
Depot Manager: Lee Hankey


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Smith's Castle is an award-winning historic site where four centuries of Rhode Island history are preserved and interpreted through tours, historic reenactments, and educational programs for both adults and children.
Guided House Tours
Docents in period clothing provide interpretive tours of the house at noon, 1:00, 2:00, and 3:00 p.m.—
Thursdays through Sundays in June, July, and August;
Fridays through Sundays in May, September, and until Mid-October, however, we are still booking school and group tours through November.
Except for Christmas at the Castle, the first weekend in December, the Castle is closed for public tours until the first weekend in May. The office is open through the winter, please call 401 294-3521 with any questions.
The days we are not open during the week, visitors may walk the grounds up to sunset, but there is no access to the inside of the castle. This is a privately owned Historic House Museum and there must be a designated member with people, inside the Castle, at all times (no self guided tours).
Pets are allowed on leash, but you must pick up after them! No pets are allowed on the grounds during events.


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Essar Ports Limited, one of the largest private sector port companies in India and part of the US$ 27 billion Essar Group, has announced the commissioning of its 16 million metric tons per annum (MMTPA) dry bulk terminal at Paradip, taking the aggregate handling capacity of Essar Ports Limited to 104 MMTPA. The project involved the upgradation and mechanization of the existing 230m long CQ3 berth at Paradip with installation of a fully mechanized ship loading system with a capacity of 5,000 tons per hour. It is an all weather terminal with a capability to handle large size ships. The terminal is connected to the stockyard by a 9km long conveyor system having a capacity of 5,000 tons per hour. The stock yard has been equipped with 2 Reclaimers with a capacity of 2500 tons per hour each. Commenting on the achievement, Mr. Rajiv Agarwal, Managing Director, Essar Ports Limited said "This is our first project on the east coast of India and is a modern facility with best in class capabilities. The terminal will help achieve better handling rates, improve efficiencies with faster turn-around time for ships and would benefit the Paradip Port and its customers." Paradip Port Trust has granted a license to operate the terminal till 2020 with a provision to extend the license period by further five years.
The terminal will handle iron ore pellets for its anchor customer Essar Steel which has commissioned a pellet plant of 6 MMTPA and is in advanced stages of construction of the second unit of 6 MMTPA taking the total Pelletization capacity to 12 MMTPA. The terminal would also be used by other users for the movement of their dry bulk cargos. The terminal enjoys excellent road and rail connectivity. The nearest railhead is 4 kms from the terminal connecting through Rangiagarh and a 2 km 2-lane road connects the terminal to NH 5A.


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SoftServe UGE Develops Innovative Centralized Smart Cloud Climate Control System with Panasonic Europe
02 Sep, 2014, 14:00 BST
- Collaboration with electronics technology giant results in development of a revolutionary solution for climate control
FRANKFURT AM MAIN, Germany, Sept. 2, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- SoftServe, Inc., a leading global software application development and consulting company, partnered with Panasonic Appliance Air-conditioning Europe, the Heating and Cooling solution division of Panasonic, one of the largest global electronic product manufacturers, to develop an innovative Smart Cloud system for climate control inside business premises. The cloud based system enables simultaneous control of the climate in numerous business locations, shops and storage premises from a single device – a smartphone, tablet or computer – which is used as a remote control to connect to the climate control system via either the Internet or 3G. The cloud solution has both physical and software protection with a high level of encryption to secure the data on the servers.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140123/FL51590LOGO
The benefits of this scalable solution include the ability to:
- Monitor and optimize temperature in all premises with just one click
- Monitor breakdowns in order to take quick action
- Significantly reduce electricity consumption and cost
- Compare performance in different facilities to develop a best practices plan
"We needed a sophisticated and innovative team who could meet the challenge of developing both hardware and software for this complex project, and SoftServe UGE fully exceeded our expectations. The resulting Panasonic Smart Cloud Climate Control system paves the way for more innovative solutions as we expand into new markets and work with SoftServe on bringing the future into our customers` everyday lives." Jose Alves, Head of Marketing Heating and Cooling Systems, Panasonic Appliance Air-conditioning Europe.
Read the case study to learn more about the project.
About SoftServe Inc.
SoftServe UGE GmbH is the German entity of SoftServe Inc. SoftServe Inc. a leading global software application development and consulting company, offers robust competencies in software optimization, SaaS/Cloud, Mobile, UI/UX and Big Data/Analytics. SoftServe developed Abiliton, a set of adaptive best practices comprised of people, processes and technology to ensure predictable, repeatable results for faster time to market and scalable growth. SoftServe has over 20 years of industry excellence delivering rich user experiences, intuitive products and solutions for vertical markets such as healthcare, retail and technology. Offices are located in North America, Eastern and Western Europe. For more information please visit www.softserveinc.com.
SOURCE SoftServe Inc.


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Hello, I�ve been following the MathProf signal with the SimpleTrader copier for several months now and am concerned about significant slippage. For example, in April I closed 1700 pips, but had a total of 500 pips slippage, or almost 30% profit decrease! My account is with IC Markets. Any comments or suggestions? Thanks. Edward
new posts
Change the broker
Too much complains in the past few months from icm if the trading strategy depends on fast execution for closing the trades
Check Titan thread also for similar cases
Also you can try decreasing the slippage settings from 3 to 1 or even 0 and see if this will help without dropping too much traded
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
No specific answer
You need to do your homework, study the trading style of the signal you want to follow and then check brokers' reviews on reputable websites to find one that do offer good trading conditions for such strategy
But in general I do recommend global prime and fxpig
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
Hello yshin,
One additional thing to ask the Broker is if they have a restriction on the number of open positions.
I did review MathProf for several weeks now and myfxbook shows that the open position count might go to over 200 open positions at times.
This for example is the maximum allowed with ICM (I spoke to them to get this info.).
So you should clarify this upfront with your broker of choice.
Originally posted by ESG View PostHello yshin,
One additional thing to ask the Broker is if they have a restriction on the number of open positions.
I did review MathProf for several weeks now and myfxbook shows that the open position count might go to over 200 open positions at times.
This for example is the maximum allowed with ICM (I spoke to them to get this info.).
So you should clarify this upfront with your broker of choice.
I'm not quite sure if it's really only a slippage thing to look at.
I have prepared a projection of the closure of the last baskets on 04/29 of the system.
History was taken from myfxbook ( http://www.myfxbook.com/members/math...thprof/1142355 ) onto a 20 tick tick chart with bartime and min/max spread visualized at the bottom. This was done on a live account using a ICM real money account.
This shows that at the time of closure on 04/29 at 09:36 ICM server time there was a max spread of 3.2 pips and a min spread of 1.8 pips.
At the time of closure on the master the signal is delivered via ST to the followers (latency, VPS, location, etc. should be considered).
As the system typically aims for a fix profit in currency, the more trades that have to be closed, the more the actual spread at the exact close time of each position in the basket will influence the outcome more and more.
I would say that if the aimed currency gain by each single basket would be reached within the typical spread of the pair the more likely it will become that the basket might close even in a loss on a followers account.
Any hints or comments appreciated.
Originally posted by chris2Having the same slippage issues here with icm. I spoke to mathprof team, and they recommended priorfx as broker. But if you have a look at average 14-day slippage, priorfx seems to be much worse than icm. There is also not one broker with positive slippage. Aura group seems to be the the best choice regarding slippage, but I have never heard of them, and cannot find any trading conditions on their homepage. Really not easy to choose the right broker for this signal. Someone else here with mathprof ?
Hello all, Got a PM and was asked about this >200 positions situations. Here's my reply: Yes it's true. There were times (the large DD ones visible in myfxbook) when this situation occurred in the past. As a second source they mention a theoretical unlimited number of open positions it on their website ( https://www.developersglobal.com/forex/ ) also. Here is what they say about it: --- snip --- The number of concurrent open trades is in general unlimited but usually does not exceed 200 - 250 concurrent open orders. Although this limit will be not reached very often - if actually sometime - you nevertheless should take this value very seriously. Assuming that just 150 trades are open concurrently and your account is setup with a leverage of 1:400 the calculation is quite telling: 150 (Trades) x0.01 (Lot Size) = 1,5 which means your broker will call a margin of 375 USD (1 Lot = 100.000 USD divided by 400 [your leverage] == is equal to 250 USD multiplied by 1,5 [relevant Lotsize of open trades] results in 375 USD). We memorize 375 USD to be added to the next calculation. Now let�s assume these 150 trades have a profit of minus 10 USD each at a certain point of time. This leads to a sum of 1500 USD plus the 375 USD from above we land at used margin of USD 1875 in this very moment. This shows clearly that the importance of an adequate balance shall never be underestimated. Although this doesn`t mean that you permanently are under risk to loose big amounts of money but you most probably will need a correctly calculated budget to overcome trends which may are working against you. --- snap --- Kind regards, ESG
- 1 like
Originally posted by ESGHmm, looks like the new forum version kills line breaks. So apologize for the less readable format until this issue is solved. Regards, ESG
Sent from my SM-G900H using Tapatalk
Hi Sherif, As I do not provide any service it' not clear to me what exactly the question is. MathProf does provide it's signal service here: https://www.connectforex.com/signal/...Prof.html.html and here: https://www.developersglobal.com/forex/ Regards, ESG
- 1 like
Originally posted by ESGHi Sherif, As I do not provide any service it' not clear to me what exactly the question is. MathProf does provide it's signal service here: https://www.connectforex.com/signal/...Prof.html.html and here: https://www.developersglobal.com/forex/ Regards, ESG
Is it an ea ?? .. i heard they had a mamm .. where can i join if u have any idea or email to contact them i would be thankful.thnx
Sent from my SM-G900H using Tapatalk
Hi All,
I run both the mamm & signal,
The mamm has more advanced features from what i was told:
- MathProf can`t take advantage of our advanced hedge close logic because this is not supported by Simple Trader.
- The precision with which MathProf is working, is not as advanced like our MAM/PAMM variant, because the copier from Simple Trader is not capable of providing the required advanced features.
- If you like you can take MathProf as the �light� variant of our system.
Any Questions:https://www.developersglobal.com/contact/
Join, 10,000 Euro, Prior FX broker, paperwork: https://www.developersglobal.com/for...tware-license/
Hope that helps.
Kind Regards


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Neil Kramer's spoken word exposition of "the construct" brought to life by James Spike.
"Neil Kramer writer, philospher and teacher takes us on a journey in his own unique way through what he describes as 'The Construct'. A matrix of distraction and disinformation which diverts our gaze away from the 'Organic Signal' that encompasses us."
This is a great introduction to what the synthetic reality construct is, how it operates, and how it influences human consciousness. Useful to show to sincere newcomers and a helpful articulation for old timers too. By comprehending the underlying framework of what manufactures 'the normal world', we clarify our perceptions, and thus open our minds to a truer way of being.


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Black Cotton Double Breasted Stylish Outerwear
You'll be sure to dazzle them in this stylish outerwear. Featuring pure color, cotton material, long sleeves, open front, bouble breasted design, pretty outerwear. The irresistible look that's worth every penny!
Suitable for bust: 35 inch, length: 22 inch.
Price: $ 23.99
Shop: modamart.com


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by Becky Huebner, Nebraska Home Sales Realtor.
We stopped for a chat on my front stoop, my new neighbor and I. We both recently built our homes and are settling in to our new neighborhood. We are both enjoying being here beginning this chapter of our lives and having good neighbors to share it with. She was musing about things like…I wonder if we got our moneys worth, I wonder if I paid too much…or if we got a "good deal". I wonder how the value will do over time. Bottom line-was this, will this be a good investment?
As the resident Realtor I get this a lot.
The answer: It doesn't matter. Yes, you heard me right. We have forgotten that we (investment property excluded) buy a house to be our home. The property is a vehicle, the platform to build our home. In an earlier era, 1960's and 1970's or so, real estate was a slam dunk investment and appreciation was a given. Just buy a home, let appreciate and build your wealth. Such a deal!
The economic landscape has changed but the desire for homeownership has not. Why do you suppose that is? We still want a piece of the American dream. We still want to say this is My House. And happily, more often than not, it still is a winning financial deal, or at least not a losing one.
Yes, we try to make a good financial decision. We try to build equity. We don't want to pay "too much" . But then life happens. 2008 happens, a neighborhood goes hot-or cold, our economy changes direction, a company comes to town or leaves town. You get the idea.
So let us help you find a house and let us watch you enjoy building a home. Hopefully, one with some good neighbors to enjoy a chat with on your front stoop.


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Posted by Unknown on 16th May 2011
Black Diamond Expedition Pole review
I go through poles like water!
I either snap them between rocks on the moraine, or break them whacking my crampons to clear the snow.
So it?s with some relief I?ve discovered the Black Diamond ?Expedition? poles. These three section adjustable poles are of all-aluminium construction, and although quite heavy (at 629gms), they are undoubtedly robust. I have even used them as a snow anchor.
The three sections lock together with a plastic ?flick-lock? that has a lever that uses a cam-action to pinch close the lock when the lever is folded into the shaft. These locks are very easy to use, even with gloves on. Occasionally one will come loose, but it?s just a matter of tightening the lock with a Philips screwdriver.
Each section has markings for adjustment, from 85cm to 125cm. The pole as a whole can expand to 125cm (good for stick clipping bolts on sport climbs) and retract down to 57cm (really easy to put inside a pack).
They come with a snow-basket with teeth on the bottom which is good for scraping the snow off the base of your ski boots!
At the end of each pole is a carbide tip which can be pulled out with pliers and replaced. I?ve never had to replace one. These are really sharp and good for poking at hard snow and ice.
The grips are made of two kinds of rubber and are comfortable enough that you never think about them. The straps easily adjusted through a plastic buckle.
The only gripe I have about the ?expedition? poles is their weight- they are rather heavy. I find this especially noticeable when skiing. But if you are after a no-frills, functional, extremely hard wearing set of poles, you can?t go wrong with these.
Choose a currency below to display product prices in the selected currency.


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This is a tale of three brothers who ran a lucrative moonshining and distribution business in Franklin County, Virginia during prohibition. The Bondurant brothers were said to have traces of Native American in their blood and legend had it that they simply could not be killed. As you might suspect, the business that they dealt in brought along with it plenty of danger and opportunities for violence. The Bondurants carried and earned a reputation for being people you did not want to cross.
Their operation becomes threatened when county official brings in a lawman from Chicago to clean up the moonshining problem. Franklin County was said to be the "wettest county in the world" at this time. Guy Pierce, plays the arrogant city-slicker and I thought did a great job. I thoroughly hated this character by the end of the movie. Even his appearance disturbed me. Possibly the worst part ever in his hair and I was having a hard time telling if he even had eyebrows or not.
The two main characters were a pair of the brothers, Forrest and Jack. Tom Hardy (Bane in Dark Knight Rises) played Forrest, the head of the operation and possibly most feared man in the area. Forrest was a man of very few words or emotions until it came time for action. He kind of reminded me of Ryan Gosling's character in Drive. Shia LaBeouf played Jack, the youngest brother who was somewhat disappointingly smaller and weaker than his two older brothers. He did some of the driving for their operation but he aimed to be more included and have more responsibility. Forrest saw him as weak and was reluctant to include him. Throughout the movie Jack yearned for acceptance and approval from his big brothers.
The film did not quite go as far in depth to any of the characters as I think could have made it a little better. I did like the repeated theme of family and how the three brothers would defend each other regardless of their shortcomings. Probably my favorite part of the movie was LeBeouf's hair cut, just perfect. You'll have to see the movie and check it out, I personally hope that it starts a trend, who knows, I may try to do my part in that.
I give Lawless 2 3/4 Beach balls, just above average. Not spectacular but entertaining.


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I recently watched a keynote by Tomer Sharon, UX Researcher on Google Search at the Google I/O 2014 conference entitled 'Perfectly Executing the Wrong Plan'. This talk was so good I have decided to break out the topic and explore it as a framework in this post.
Tomer is at the forefront of what is being called 'Lean User Research', which applies agile methodologies to the existing techniques of User Experience (UX). With connectedness leading to greater and greater complexity, and the need to get products to market rapidly so we can generate insights, it makes sense that we need to start to re-evaluate some of the more traditional UX processes that can often eat up time and resources.
The keynote itself was centred around app development, but this can definitely be applied to any product. It also is more focused on startups, but definitely has applications in all organisations. I'll build the framework around this broader product categorisation.
Perfectly Executing the Wrong Plan
Why do a huge number of products fail in the market? One of the primary reasons can be the fact that the product being built isn't actually solving a problem for the customers, which means that they will ultimately not care about what is on offer.
This leads us to the most important concept - whoever was creating the product failed to fall in love with a problem, which means there was no opportunity.
There are three variables we need to confirm to ensure we don't fall into this trap. This can be expressed in the following diagram:
Some Product Development Traps
One of the issues with the focus on the Lean Startup methodology is that the emphasis is placed on getting something into market as fast as possible. While this has merit, there are some basic elements that can be validated before we get building to reduce the risks of failure.
Tomer outlines a few of these key traps that may be the root cause of these issues:
- The team created a solution when there was no problem
- The team may have listened to users, but they didn't observe their behaviour (i.e asked friends and family). This may have provided red herrings or false responses.
- The team didn't test the riskiest assumptions. There should always be a keystone core idea that will make all other assumptions fall apart if proved wrong.
- The team rushed to make a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) without confirming the previous points.
Again, this ultimately leads to the trap of perfectly executing the wrong plan.
The Solution: Lean User Research
Our solution then is to apply some Lean User Research up front with the product before we jump into execution. By definition, this process provides insights into product users, their perspectives and abilities, delivered to the right people at the right time, and as fast as possible.
This following diagram shows these variables:
There are three key Lean User Research techniques we should explore. These are:
- Experience Sampling
- Observation
- Fake Doors
Experience Sampling
This technique requires that you interrupt people at various points in their day to gather insights. After defining a test group, you should ask them a question over and over again during a set period (for example five times a day for five days).
You need to make sure the question is great - no 'yes / no' questions, and it should ask about repeated behaviours. An example for a note taking product would be 'what was the reason you recently used a piece of paper to write something down?'.
This should help you get a deeper understanding of them as users - their workflows, needs, pains and delights.
This technique requires you to observe the user in a relevant environment. While we need to listen to what the user has to say and the conversations they have with others (their jargon and language), we need to make sure we are observing their actions to understand their deeper intrinsic behaviours.
Part of this process includes gathering and collecting artefacts - the things they use to create or complete a task. Try to also notice and identify what they want and need.
The following diagram outlines key elements of this process:
- Routines: What are the repetitive tasks they undertake?
- Interruptions: What breaks their continuity or stops tasks?
- Annoyances: What causes frustration in their tasks?
- Delights: What do they love or enjoy about the task?
- Transitions: What do they do in the lead up to a task or once they complete it?
This should help you learn about their assumptions, problems, workflows and goals, and hopefully identify key features.
Note, for both Experience Sampling and Observation, if you are curious about ample size, check out the Q&A in the video at the bottom at the 32:20 mark.
Fake Doors
This technique is about validating features before you build a product. So in essence practicing the art of "faking it 'till you make it".
Most often this can be done by creating a product landing page and using this to gather data.
The biggest mistake here is to only use the page to capture email addresses. While this may give you the ability to communicate to the person in future around the product launch, it does not give you any actual deeper data on intent.
Instead, we should try and illicit some form of commitment from the user, to prove that there is in fact a genuine commitment to the product if it is created. A good analogy here is Kickstarter - a project is only engaged when a certain level of commitment is achieved from the wider public.
Another technique that can be applied is the 'button to nowhere' or '404 testing'. This means either adding a button to your landing page about a topic or buying search or display advertising to measure click interest. Once they click through, display a 'Coming Soon' or similar message.
To use this technique accurately, decide beforehand the ratio of people who click the button or ad versus visitors or impressions, and then measure results to quantify.
The following example shows a page validating its users will commit by paying $5 for early access.
You may be concerned in this situation that customers may be being led to a product that doesn't yet exist, and they may complain to you that they are being lied to. This is actually a positive - if they have taken the time to complain, you know you have a product that they desperately want!
Once you have completed your Lean User Research, you will hopefully have a range of data points generated quite rapidly that you can dive into to determine product viability. With this in hand, you will be able to answer questions like the following:
- Do people have a discernible problem we can try and solve?
- Who are the potential customers?
- Will the product be useable?
- Will the product be better than the competition?
- Do people actually want the product?
From here, the next stage is to get the product into market as fast as possible - Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat.
Check out the original keynote video below:
Tomer is writing a book on Lean User Research. Sign up for updates if your interested.
This post continues my series on Mental Models.


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Do I Have a Medical Malpractice Case?
When a medical professional slips up in medical diagnosis or treatment, it raises a number of worries, most importantly being the wellness of the patient and the effect of the mistake on his or her problem. Ultimately, the case could raise a different type of red flag, when the client asks whether the medical professional's error amounts to medical malpractice. The solution might be more complicated compared to you might anticipate. That's the focus of this short article: understanding when a mistake in the healthcare setting can lead to a valid malpractice case.
Exactly what is Medical Malpractice?
There's a lot more to a feasible medical malpractice instance compared to merely an error on the part of a health care specialist or facility.
Below's an introduction of the different aspects that have to be in location– and that, when in disagreement, should be established with proof and testimony by the plaintiff as well as his or her legal group– in order to bring an effective medical malpractice legal action:
The existence of a doctor-patient relationship
The arrangement of care (that includes choices, therapy, as well as the failure to treat) that dropped listed below the approved clinical criterion of care (a "breach" of the requirement of treatment that totals up to "medical carelessness," in the language of the legislation).
A causal connection in between the treatment supplier's medical neglect and the patient's injury, as well as.
Measurable damage to the patient consequently.
Medical Carelessness.
Next off, the complainant's team has to establish how the medical criterion of care was "breached," suggesting specifically just how the defendant doctor fell short of satisfying the criterion when offering care to the patient. Again, it's usually the plaintiff's clinical expert that offers the key evidence, with specificed (and also often quite complicated) statement– painstakingly strolling the jury with the complainant's condition, the appropriate program of treatment or medical diagnosis methodology, and exactly what the doctor did (or did not do) at each stage of treatment.
It's important to note right here that, as the definition of "medical requirement of treatment" indicates, a mistake could well occur in the therapy setting even as the physician's decisions as well as conduct stay in accordance with the clinical criterion of treatment. Probably the decision or the treatment was extremely complicated from a clinical or functional point ofview– perhaps it also came with well-known risks that were effectively revealed to the patient, as well as the "error" was an offshoot of those risks.
Lastly, It's inadequate that your medical professional made some type of mistake. The complainant's experienced witness( es) will also need to verify a causal web link in between that error as well as measurable damage to the client. Simply puts, it has to be revealed that were it except the mistake, the patient would not have actually experienced a worsening of his/her health and wellness. Possibly the error led to unanticipated issues or brand-new health issue that currently require extra medical treatment. Perhaps the mistake was even more of the diagnostic variety, and the offender's failing to determine a health problem means that a vital therapy home window is currently shut. Anyway, unless the patient experienced some procedure of damage because of the physician's error, there's no medical malpractice instance.


text: Should there be more prisons than Libraries in our Community? Lack of knowledge is total imprisonment. Join me(@helenekez) and fellow prominent Librarians on this Discourse (On Twitter) as we Speak on "Building #CommunityLibrary in Nigeria on 17th June, 2017 @7pm. Please if you don't have a Twitter account yet, create one and use the hashtag: #CommunityLibrary in your Tweets (questions, comments, etc).


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Lessons Learned After an International Vacation
I recently traveled to Athens, Greece; Rome, Italy; and Paris, France. The whole adventure began as I decided to join the #winelover community for their anniversary trip. I'll be posting about the #winelover community and trip as well as other fun. This post is about lessons learned a few days after my trip.
Stay Present
I frequently have trouble staying in the moment and this proves even more challenging when traveling. I am not sure if it's a mantra or what that will help, but staying present is important. It's important to enjoy that moment especially as one stands in the midst of ancient ruins.
Accepting That You are a Tourist
I hate admitting this to myself. This means getting lost, looking silly, pulling out a map or more. I have gotten better with this one, but still struggle. Who wants to admit they have no idea what they are doing? But that's where sometimes the most fun and unusual situations can happen.
Landmarks and Museums Need Tickets/Cost Money
I always forget that each country is different and many times European countries charge for their museums and landmarks. I went to the Colosseum where the line was at least 100 deep. If I had bought a ticket in advance online, it would have made things much easier. It's not that everything has to be planned out, but think out some of the day's adventures that may require tickets.
Take More Photos
I think I hesitate to take photos because I will look like a tourist or I will have too many photos. It's better to have photos to go through and delete than not enough.
Don't Bucket List Travel
My friend mentioned that perhaps Americans travel with a bucket list or check list. I think that unfortunately that may be true. Instead of just enjoying the journey we focus on checking off things to see or cities to visit. It's ok to go to Paris and not see the Eiffel Tower. It's ok to not go to Paris if one doesn't want to go.
What are some of your lessons learned? Leave your answers in the comments.


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20 Sizzling Pizza Places in Ohio
Rikki Teeters
We are always on the hunt for the perfect pizza. Luckily, Ohio has some of the best pizza shops in the world so we do not ever have to travel far. We asked our Instagram followers to tell us their favorite pizza places which helped us create our list. Get ready to take a pizza road trip around Ohio to try these 20 Sizzling Pizza Places in Ohio.
20. Mohio - Delaware, Ohio
19. Brimfield Bread Oven - Kent, Ohio
18. Dewey's Pizza - Cincinnati, Ohio
17. Wheat Penny - Dayton, Ohio
16. Two Cities Pizza - Mason, Ohio
15. 3 Palms Pizzeria - Hudson, Ohio
14. Park Street Pizza - Sugarcreek, Ohio
13. Cocca's Pizza Boardman - Youngstown, Ohio
12. Goodfellas Pizzeria - Cincinnati, Ohio
11. 5th Street Pub - Perrysburg, Ohio
10. Angelo's - Lakewood, Ohio
9. Forno Kitchen + Bar
8. Citizen Pie - Cleveland, Ohio
7. Paulie Gee's Short North - Columbus, Ohio
6. Mia Bella Restaurant - Cleveland, Ohio
5. Crust - Cleveland, Ohio
4. Harlow's - Lakewood, Ohio
3. Old Scratch Pizza - Dayton, Ohio
2. A Tavola Bar + Trattoria - Cincinnati, Ohio
1. Harvest Pizzeria - Columbus & Cincinnati, Ohio
Did your favorite local pizza shop make our list? Tell us your favorite Ohio pizza places via the form below.
Featured Photo by Harlow's Pizza


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New AANP Director of Health Policy and State Issues speaks at FNPN Conference
The FNPN Annual Conference is thrilled to feature our guest legislative
speaker on Saturday, July 17th at the 10:45 am- 12 noon session. Dr.Tay Kopanos, the new AANP Director of Health Policy and State Issues will begin our legislative update to give you a sense of the national picture of health care and hone in on Florida issues. Come hear Dr Kopanos "State of the Profession" address on health regulation and policy and where NPs fit into the overall plan of health reform. Her role at AANP is to focus on improving patient access to health care, removing barriers to effect health care delivery and bringing stakeholders together to improve workforce delivery and utilization. Hear her thoughts on Florida issues and how they compare to other state NP practice environments and strategies we all can use to promote our profession. It will be an exciting venue, don't miss this opportunity!
There is still time to register at www.fnpn.org


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Monday, 13 October 2014
World carbon emissions out of control
'While the per capita average for the world as a whole is 5 tonnes of carbon dioxide, China is now producing 7.2 tonnes per person, to the EU's 6.8 tonnes. The US is still far ahead on 16.5 tonnes per person.'
I was always led to believe that it was China's 1 tonne footprint, based on less consumer goods, lower energy consumption and higher bicycle usage, that we were meant to aspire to. The chart below taken from Shrink That Footprint shows how things stood back in 2001.
In 2001 the carbon footprint for the whole world was 4 tonnes per person per year, so over the last 12 years, despite knowing that carbon emissions are causing catastrophic climate change, the world's footprint has increased to 5 tonnes per person. The actual carbon emissions are even worse than this, because there are an additional 1 billion people in the world now, who are all emitting 5 tonnes each too.
Why wasn't this the headline? World carbon emissions are still increasing wildly. Any pretence that carbon emissions are under control let alone decreasing is a farce!
So how could China's per capita carbon emissions overtake the EU, from such humble beginnings? That is an enormous change from 1.7 tonnes per person in 2001 to 7.2 tonnes in 2013. I have mentioned previously, a large part of the increase in carbon emissions is a result of the shift in manufacturing industries from the West to China. So the largest increase in their emissions is from burning coal, to power factories, that are producing cheap goods for us.
Also emissions in the EU have decreased slightly, but that is mainly the other side of manufacturing industries moving to China and taking the energy consumption with them.
It is such a bad idea. Labour is cheaper in China because there is a lower standard of living and less regulations to protect the workers. So instead of keeping jobs in the EU, where there is a minimum wage, sick pay, holiday pay, paid maternity leave, strict health and safety rules, regulations on pollution and pressure to reduce carbon emissions, companies have cut costs so that we can have more 'stuff' at a lower price.
Personally, I don't want more 'stuff' and when I do really need to buy something new, I aim to buy local products or EU as a minimum, so that I know no one has been exploited making it and my money helps to support local industries. This may mean paying higher prices, but that will just mean that I can't buy so much stuff. It also reduces shipping all round the world and hidden carbon emissions.
What the above article really made me question is why have I been basing my personal carbon reductions on 90% of the average American, when they are clearly the biggest carbon emitters. Using the formula that Sharon Astyk used in the Riot for Austerity, was relatively easy to understand and follow so it had some appeal, but in all honesty I personally wanted quite a generous starting point, to make my target easier. Making a 90% reduction seemed......overwhelming. Now I feel like not making a 90% reduction is overwhelming!
So from now on I am going to frame things differently, and continue to significantly reduce my carbon emissions.
2 comments:
- Anonymous17 October 2014 at 22:23
Good for you! This is really sad reading...I can't understand why people choose to ignore what is happening, or maybe it's easier for them to ignore it? And 'stuff'...why do people feel the need to buy more and more 'things' without a thought.....it's much more fun re-using and recycling things to use and I must say I have a lovely smug feeling when I've saved money in the process.ReplyDeleteReplies
Well fear paralyses people and prevents them from acting apparently. But I think in this instance people are not being told the truth by the media in the UK and US. I saw a report that basically said in English-speaking countries there are 'climate skeptics', who are mainly not scientists, and they are given an equal if not more prominent say in interviews or newspaper articles. This gives the general public the impression that there is some debate or uncertainty and gives politicians the excuse not to act. Whereas the rest of the World listen to the 95% of scientists who have evidence to prove climate change is really happening. There is no question about it.Delete
You can probably testify from your own experience outdoors gardening that the climate is changing? For instance I never collected conkers wearing a T-shirt as a kid. This year I could.
You set such a good example on the 'stuff' front! I have found your ideas to re-use things really helpful :-)


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Meeting individual needs
As a parent, you have responsibility for providing or arranging your child's transport between school and home. If you believe there will be difficulty in getting your child to school, you are able to request an assessment to determine eligibility for transport assistance. This is a formal assessment undertaken at the school by a trained school transport assessor. To be eligible, a student must have a disability that necessitates the provision of transport assistance.
More information can be found on the School transport assistance program website.
If you are eligible for contract transport assistance it is the parents/carers responsibility to:
Requests for transport assistance for temporary residential accommodation should be made as early as possible. You are responsible for the delivery of medication and belongings to the residential accommodation and to transport your child between home and the residential accommodation if this is necessary.
Any request to vary transport arrangements should be discussed with the school. Parents must not approach transport operators directly to make changes such as change of collection or drop off address or changes to days travelling.
Printable version
© The State of Queensland (Department of Education) 2019


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Most people really love the 4th of July; it's a time to celebrate with family and friends and officially kick off our summer and enjoy some fireworks. Please be aware, however, that your pets will not be enjoying most of these festivities!
5 Reasons Why Your Pet Shouldn't Have a Beer
I get many questions regarding what someone's pet should and shouldn't have, ranging from foods to medications. And although many answers include "in moderation", there are quite a few that are a sweet, simple, emphatic, "NO". This is one of those answers! Not just because it can make them sick, but because alcohol poisoning can kill your pet. Here's why: Continue reading "5 Reasons Why Your Pet Shouldn't Have a Beer"
Special Needs: Caring for Your Pet's Diabetes
Diabetes is a disease we are all too familiar with. It's so prevalent in people that most of us know at least one person who is dealing with this illness. What some people may not be aware of is that it is very common in animal medicine as well. Continue reading "Special Needs: Caring for Your Pet's Diabetes"
3 Top Medical Issues that Pretend to be House Training Problems
Being a new puppy owner can be such a wonderful experience. Your puppy is exploring, and being adorably awkward. And naughty… adorably naughty. You're learning all the ins-and-outs of puppy training, nutrition, and veterinary care. House training is definitely on top of that list! Continue reading "3 Top Medical Issues that Pretend to be House Training Problems"


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Taking time out to sit down to pay your water or electric bill may at first seem like an onerous chore, even the utility companies and others encourage automatic payment through pay or direct debt payment of your bills to help make your life simpler but does it? Your bill is one way to monitor your water and energy consumption. "If your electricity bill is high, maybe it means the air conditioning is operating overnight" Herbert says. Having to check the bill every month can be tiresome but it's the first step to manage energy consumption. Another great idea is try and predict your bill for the next month, once you have the prediction write it down, its important to write your prediction, in the office get your colleagues involved, at home get your family involved.
From the professional energy management perspective monthly billing is too coarse, over the billing period there are too many variables to consider. We recommend weekly monitoring, and predictions of next weeks energy consumption.
Let me share a true story from here in Hong Kong, a property management company managed a high rise residential property. Bills arrived (for the common areas) and were paid. Then they received a water bill approx. HK$ 160,000 – many times higher than normal. Shocked and certain it was not their problem they requested the Water Authority to check there water meter – that was the second mistake to assume it must be a meter problem, the first mistake was not monitoring consumption.
Time passes, the next water bill arrived it was higher, HK$ 220,000, again much higher than normal. Eventually, the Water Authority reported back, no fault with the metering or billing. You have probably guessed, it was a water leak within the development after the meter. It's a timely reminder to encourage closer monitoring of all utilities bills, every week, and don't assume that an abnormally high consumption is a metering problem. Beyond the professionals in the industry, people automatically assume that it must be a metering problem! Whereas 21st century metering does not suffer from the problems your parents suffered through, indeed today meters are robust and accurate.
~~~ John Herbert, Consultant


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Call for Submissions: ROAR Magazine
The second annual print publication of ROAR Magazine, a literary journal focused on supporting fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual art by women, is seeking submissions. For Issue #2, we're looking for:
--> fiction (short stories, flash fiction) --> nonfiction (personal essays, memoir excerpts and profiles) --> poetry (traditional, experimental) --> digital visual art
For information about how to submit your work, please visit us at www.roarmagazine.org. We accept submissions on a rolling basis, but priority for the issue will be given to those received by Nov.15, 2011.


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Is it Safe to Fly with Your Dog or Cat?
While dog training in Miami and South Florida one of the questions we get asked often is "How should I get my dog, cat, bird or pet to another part of the country?" This seems like a straight forward question, one that should be easy enough to answer, but actually requires and in-depth analysis weighing your options.
The world runs on trust, from businesses, to relationships, to governments, to our fiat currency we call money, and this world is short on trust. Given the diminishing trust levels everywhere (rightly so) how can you trust a business or person in this day and age? Trust in my book is earned through actions, not through empty, meaningless words, nor cute little pictures of dogs and cats on an airlines web site, nor a deceptive dog trainer's website obfuscating their continuing education classes and claims they are certified although they clearly are not from any independent certification councils such as the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants (IAABC). Trust is further eroded through dog trainers who claim they "whisper" to dogs or practice positive reinforcement while taking out a choke chain to force your dog or choke them into submission to do their bidding. Trust and integrity come from within and are shown to others through actions. These actions demonstrate how one treats other human and sentient nonhuman animals. Trust and integrity mean doing the right thing even when no one is watching.
Given the recent unnecessary deaths with United airlines1-2 (and throughout the airline industry at large), United's "Pet Safe" program3 (along with other airlines pet travel rules and programs) is a scam, farce, marketing ploy, a tragedy of justice and needs to be fixed!
How to Travel With My Dog?
Given that most airline employees, government TSA workers, baggage handlers and everyone along the factory line interact with human passengers, with contempt, lack of care, aloof attitudes, lack of amenities, attention, and basic humanity, I would never let my dog or cat fly under the airplane. If I had a disability, my pet would only fly in the seat next to me, or if my dog was an Emotional Support Animal (ESA), accompanied by my note from my mental health doctor that he/she is required for my health and is necessary for my travel. Dogs and cats are not inanimate pieces of luggage! As my regular blog readers know, I am not a fan of the rampant abuse of the service dog title just for conveniences. That being said, you have choices if you want to travel and are a pet parent.
Don't fly- there are many alternatives. You can drive, take a train, bus or have your pet stay home with a qualified pet sitter or dog boarding facility (be sure to do your homework well!)
If you have a disability, get an Emotional Support Animal (ESA) designation letter from your mental health professional that stipulates your need for your dog on the airplane to support you emotionally. In short, this means your dog may fly in the cabin with you. Make sure your pet is trained to at the very least a Canine Good Citizen (CGC) level so you do not have any problems with anyone regarding your dog's behavior. It is also a great idea to achieve this minimum standard of training for the safety and comfort of you and your pet for the duration of your dog's life.
Placing your dog in the care of airline and government personal who have no background in animal behavior is very dangerous. This requires trusting the airlines (a faceless, apathetic organization) and the numerous government officials and airline employees to know your dog's health issues, likes, dislikes, signs of stress or discomfort and to understand dog ethology. NOT LIKELY!
Airline Service, What Service?
Unless you are one of the very few lucky ones to fly private, or enjoy business or first class services, the "service" is horrific. For the rest of humanity, there is the cattle class. Humans are shuffled around like cattle in herds, jammed into uncomfortable seats fit for children and treated as if we are doing the airlines a favor and as though they paid us and we are there to serve them not the other way around. Please, take our money, treat us like garbage and kill our pet's while you are at it. Are you kidding me?! What has the world come to? The worst service I have ever received (besides from the DMV, another government agency) is from the airline industry. Bad experiences are not specific to an airline or location (they are all experiences we would otherwise chose not to have) but the entire process from the horribly inefficient, crashing, inaccurate websites to the timeless waits for incompetent agents to answer the phones (if they do) and the entire process at the airport, from parking your vehicle, to the waiting/holding areas, the long lines, the food (or lack thereof) on the airplane, to the beyond incompetent thieves at the TSA, the check in terminal, the flight stewardess….etc There is not one stage of the process that is even remotely enjoyable, humane or dignified. Do you think for one minute that it would be a better experience for your pet? If you do, call me because I have a bridge for sale. I cannot remember the last time a passenger died from a lack of water or from a heat stroke on an airplane, can you? Even most veterinarians and "pet professionals" do not know the nuances of dog ethology, cognitive ethology, and the health needs of certain breeds, so why do you think "Joe" throwing luggage in the back of an airplane has any remote clue what a brachycephalic dog is or looks like, or what the dog is trying to tell them with their body language or behavior? Without this knowledge, how could a dog possibly receive humane, ethical, healthy treatment by a qualified person?
Airline corporate offices add insult to injury by merely offering to pay for the price of the traveling pet's ticket in the event of their negligence and killing your dog. This is an atrocity and embarrassment to the entire airline industry and an inhumane, disgraceful show of care or concern for customers and life. I saw Michael and Bam Bam on a regular basis, he was surly a loved dog and will be missed dearly. Our sympathies go out to Maggie Rizer & Bea, Michael Jarboe & Bam Bam, and all of the countless families and individuals who have needlessly lost a member of their family due to negligence, disregard and lack of care.
An animal flying in the hands of an airline or government employee is too often a death sentence. Even if your pet does not perish, I have had dogs that get so psychologically damaged or mistreated that they come back stressed, shaken, scarred, scared and distraught from the experience that their parents have learned never to fly with their pets again. It is a good thing that animals can't talk or airlines would have been ousted long ago.
Maybe none of this will change until the ludicrous notion that pets are considered property and "valued" at the price at which they were purchased is abolished. Then maybe our government and businesses would be forced treat them differently. I'm not sure what the answer is, but one thing I am sure about is that no pet of mine will ever be flying under any airplane, unless I'm the pilot and it is my plane. What do you think about the industry and the safety of our pets?
1. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/flying-deadly-skies-florida-man-140-pound-mastiff-bam-bam-died-cross-country-united-flight-article-1.1169505
2. http://dogtime.com/cover-model-blames-united-airlines-for-dogs-death.html
3. http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/travel/animals/default.aspx


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The Adoption Process
Ready to Adopt? Great! Start Here.
What should I bring with me? How long does the adoption process take? Anything special I need to know? We'll walk you through the process so you can come prepared!
More Information
Shop at Animal House
Feed Your Pet While Feeding Homeless Pets
When you shop at ARL's Animal House store, 100% of the proceeds provide care for the homeless pets at the ARL waiting for their forever home. Food, bedding, leash, collar, treats, gifts - we have it all!
shop online
For All Your Pet Questions
ARL Pet Helpline - We're Here for You and Your Pet
Our Pet Helpline is in place to assist pet owners who may be struggling with pet issues. We can provide resources and assistance to help keep you and your pet together.
call now
Help Control the Pet Population
Low Cost Spay/Neuter Programs
The ARL has spay/neuter programs which offer surgeries, vaccines and/or microchips at low or no cost for individuals who could not otherwise afford those services.
see if you qualify
Be a hero. Foster an animal.
Give Pets a Chance to Relax in your Home!
Some pets need a break from the shelter while waiting for a forever home. Caring for a pet in your home is both fun and rewarding.
learn more
Make a Difference
Join the ARL Team to Change Lives Daily
Every member of the ARL team plays an important role in changing the lives of animals and the people who love them.
view open positions
Sit. Shake. Stay. Good!
Short on Time? Join Our Drop In Training Classes!
Drop In Training Class is perfect for those with busy schedules who aren't able to commit to a 6-week class, but still want their dog to learn the basic manners.
For Pet Parents
Questions about your Pet's Behavior?
The ARL offers dog and cat behavior counseling to help adoptive pet parents, as well as the general public, better understand our pets.
Take Action!
Join the ARL's Humane Action Network
Join us to advocate for improved animal welfare laws for the animals and people of Iowa.
Cruelty Intervention
Report Animal Abuse
The ARL can help you assess the situation and report it to the proper law enforcement agency.
People and pups - don't miss this one!
At the Iowa Dog Jog, you'll strengthen your bond and probably also make some new friends along the way! Pick your choice of 2K or 4K, and then enjoy a rockin' dog festival full of fun activities for you and your dog, such as paw-print painting, off-leash dog parks with separate areas for large and small dogs, visit with great vendors and rescue groups, dog contests (including a whip cream eating contest...for your dog, not you) and so much more.
Register as an individual or as a team!
BYOD EVENT ("Bring Your Own Dog")
We love dogs, that's why we're all here, right? For the safety of all dogs at the Iowa Dog Jog, please make sure your dog is up-to-date on vaccinations. No retractable leashes. We will have plenty of water for drinking and playing after your pups big adventure on the course!
The Animal Rescue League of Iowa is Iowa's largest nonprofit animal shelter, caring for and finding homes for thousands of animals each year. By participating in the Iowa Dog Jog - you are helping the ARL to CHANGE LIVES!
Collect some sWAG when you create a fundraising page to further support the homeless animals at the ARL! Everyone wins - you get cool stuff, and the animals feel the love, too! Raise money to earn the badges below and show them off to your family and friends!
Presenting Sponsor:
Photos from the 2017 Iowa Dog Jog!
Powered by flickr embed.


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No matter who is elected president, I always remember watching my first inauguration speech when I was in the 3rd grade. I knew I was a freak - hehe. While the other kids were having their lunch, I was watching the small television at the front of the room and trying to understand what was being said.
Today, we were so busy in the office, I did not have a chance to check out the festivities live. Four years ago, I was totally plugged in and watching every second live video streaming on the internet.
I know that this was a ceremonial and symbolic day, with not a lot of expectations on substance. The President is a great speaker, but, to me, I didn't hear a lot of inspiration there in today's speech. Sounded like he was reading a lot. I've watched all the partisans today analyze the speech along party lines.
This country has a lot of problems, and even though today was supposed to give us hope, I'm still skeptical that the political parties can find any kind of common ground. The American people have to rise up and tell Washington DC to stop playing politics and come together to actually do something - and not be in gridlock...


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Bill Carman
Bill Carman was born in Korea and grew up in the Bay Area of northern California. Carman has earned a BFA in Visual Communications and Illustration and an MFA in Painting. He has worked as a designer, art director, concept artist, and technical illustrator, and continues to work freelance and teach at the University of Boise in Idaho. Carman is a contemporary surrealist and master painter whose work showcases a unique combination of surfaces, media, and mark-making. His collective works are a strangely captivating mix of the organic and inorganic. Through his, work Carman attempts to create a reality that lacks the tedious nature of this often too mundane world. Works by Bill Carman have been exhibited in the Museum of American Illustration and in galleries across the country. His work has been featured on the covers of prestigious annuals, including those for organizations such as The Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, and Spectrum. His illustrations appearing on the cover of the University of Boise's magazine have won regional and national bronze, silver, and gold awards from CASE. In 2015, Carman's first catalogue raisonne, Imagery from the Bird's Home, was published.


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6 listed
The Australian Research Council (ARC) is a statutory authority within the Australian Government's Innovation, Industry, Science and Research portfolio. The ARC ... more »
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority is a largely self-funded government agency with the charter of enhancing efficiency in the delivery of safety and other ... more »
The Australian National Wildlife Collection is one of Australia's most valuable biodiversity research resources covering birds mammals, reptiles and amphibians. ... more »
The Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC) is a statutory Corporation formed in July 1990 under the Primary Industries and Energy Research ... more »
TAFEWA (Technical And Further Education Western Australia) colleges are training institutions that are funded by the State Government of Western Australia. They ... more »
Welcome to The Thistle Hill Vineyard.The Thornleigh Area Bushland Society has worked for the past 15 years to promote awareness of the Thornleigh area bushland ... more »
Canberra – Councils – Eco Courses – Eco Data Analysis – Eco Funds – Eco Research – Eco Research Centres – Environmental Consultants – Green Funds – Sustainable Funds