Singletons are fairly controversial as far as I can tell, especially in Javascript programming. Let's take a look at what they are, when to (maybe) use them, and when not to. What is a Singleton? A singleton is a class that allows only a single instance of itself to be created and gives access to that created instance. It contains static variables that can accommodate unique and private instances of itself. We use it in scenarios when a user wants to restrict instantiation of a class to only one object. This is helpful usually when a single object is required to coordinate actions across a system. techopedia Usually in object-oriented programming the idea is to define classes and create multiple instances of that class, each with their own state. This keeps code and easy to maintain. DRY By contrast, it only instantiates a singleton once, and therefore any code that accesses the singleton will either: Create a new instance Read, update, or modify that instance Which means a singleton is a global instance of a class. Gross. almost I Can't Believe It's Not Global! For the purpose of this article, we will assume we are using ES6 modules in our front-end React or Vue project. An example of a singleton we might want could be: darkMode = ; Settings = { : darkMode = newVal, : darkMode,
} .freeze(Settings); Settings; // Define our state and initialize it let false // Define the functions that will expose that state const setDarkMode ( ) => newVal getDarkMode => () // Disallow new properties on our object Object export default As stated earlier, a singleton is dangerously close to being a global variable, and we don't like those. There is one important difference: The singleton instance : in order to modify state the caller must import the class and use getters/setters. This makes access more explicit and controlled. Not only are the ways in which the state can be modified explicitly defined, but files that use the state must 'import' it. isn't actually globally scoped But Muh Redux Here's my over-simplified opinion in the form of a flowchart: The idea is to use the simplest, most-controlled solution we reasonably can. In order of least evil --> most evil: scoped constants scoped variables singletons redux/vuex global variables Singletons Suck Redux, vuex, singletons and globals all suck. Try not to use them. I'm just trying to point out that they all suck to varying degrees. Good luck. Here are some additional resources on how much we don't like singletons: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/scottdensmore/2004/05/25/why-singletons-are-evil/ https://alligator.io/js/js-singletons/ Previously published at https://qvault.io/2019/11/04/singletons-in-es6-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/ By Lane Wagner @wagslane Subscribe to Qvault: https://qvault.io

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In early February I saw that a “March Madness” competition was being hosted on . I thought this might be something I could do since I am somewhat interested in sports, but when I looked at the competition I was pleasantly surprised . . . there was an analytics portion. had three portions this year: A Competition predicting the Men’s Tournament, the Women’s Tournament, and a separate analytics competition. I had been planning on working on my EDA and visualization skills anyway, so I thought this would be the perfect training ground. Kaggle The Google Cloud & March Madness Competition The competition originally began on February 13 and would end on April 6th. The challenge is “to tell a data story about college basketball through a combination of both narrative text and data exploration.” The rules for the notebook were relatively broad, so the topics you could explore were endless as long as they related to March Madness. I began exploring the data and saw that the opportunities were basically endless. There was data about both the Men’s and Women’s Tournament and Regular Season going back over 20 years. Fearful of drowning in a sea of data, I began brainstorming topics that would allow me to be creative and produce good visualizations, as well as have a chance at finishing this notebook on time. After exploring some data on points per game (PPG) and the track records of different teams, an idea popped into my head. It was just a passing thought at first, but then, after a few hours, I could not stop thinking about it. I had begun to deeply wonder about a connection between the men’s and women’s data. The more I thought, the more the idea took shape—Schools that have two good teams (men and women) could be more likely to win games in the NCAA Tournament. It was a crazy thought, I know. I didn’t even have any evidence or experience to back up the idea. But on some level, it just clicked with me. So, from there I began my exploration into what I have dubbed the “Two-Team Factor.” I needed to first establish what exactly this factor did, and how I could explain it in my notebook. Basically, the Two-Team Factor shows us that when programs/schools (like, say Duke) have both their Men’s and Women’s teams competing in both NCAA Tournaments in the same season, their teams are more likely to win games and advance in the tournament than programs that only have one team in the tournament. I know that is a mouthful so I tried to condense to just saying Two-Team programs and Single Team programs. Two-Team programs are special, they are an anomaly; they are schools that are lucky enough to be able to watch both their Men’s and Women’s teams play in March Madness in the same year. As this idea began to take shape and my fantasies about maybe even winning my first competition grew, the world suddenly changed. COVID-19 (Coronavirus) had spread to the U.S., and in early March the NCAA canceled the remaining college basketball season, including March Madness. This was a shock, and soon the prediction competitions for both the Men’s and Women’s Tournaments were canceled too. As I worried about whether my hard work had been wasted, Kaggle announced that the analytics competition for Google Cloud & March Madness would continue and the deadline would be extended to April 30. This was great news, which also allowed many contestants from the prediction competitions to move into the analytics competition. Surprisingly, this influx of competitors only motivated me to work harder on my idea. Now that I had extra time, I could really flesh it out and make some great visualizations. This competition forced me to learn more about pandas and visualizations. For days I dove into , , and . Each library offered something different that I could use. is the classic, the one I, and everyone else, starts out using. It is really great for being able to describe how each and every detail of your visualization will look, but this also means it can be a very complex and long block of code. is a visualization library that is built on top of . It allowed me to use shorter code to make my plots. However, was really the library that I had never used before, and it became a large part of my arsenal. is a web-based library that allowed me to build interactive plots. This means I could build plots like this: Matplotlib Plotly seaborn Matplotlib Seaborn Matplotlib Plotly Plotly that allow users to hover over the columns and see the different values. It also allows me to make bar charts like this that can compare data from two different variables. As I progressed, I learned that a notebook can get out of hand very quickly. I had done this entire competition so far in one notebook. It consisted of many of my experiments and many failed attempts. As the notebook got longer and longer it became more difficult to keep up with the variables I created and the different datasets. This alerted me to the fact that I need to make a plan and outline earlier in the competition to keep up with everything, maybe even multiple notebooks like I do in normal competitions. So with this realization, I started to prepare another notebook that would be my final draft. My original notebook had served its purpose. I was able to explore the data and reach the conclusion that the Two-Team Factor had merit. I discovered that in each round the “Two-Team” programs, as a percentage of the teams in the round, grew from under 30% in the first round to over 60% in the final rounds. This held true for both the men’s and women’s tournaments, and showed that these few teams must be winning most of their matchups. I was able to then provide visualizations that showed the winning percentages of each type of program (Two-Team & Single Team) in each round of the tournament. As I had expected, the Two-Team programs had a higher winning percentage (60% or higher) in every round except one. With this information I created the basis of my argument and decided to continue exploring this factor in relation to other common factors associated with team performance. During this entire experimentation period, the submission date was growing nearer. It caused a certain amount of stress, but just enough to motivate me. Fortunately, I had a lot of extra time due to the unfortunate event of the Coronavirus. This allowed me to really put in the extra hours in the last couple weeks. I eventually came to a point where there was no more time for exploration, and it was now time to create a beautiful notebook. My personal requirements for a beautiful notebook were: (1) Clear and concise writing, (2) Great visualizations, and (3) understandable, concise code. The writing was not very difficult because I had a perfect idea of what I wanted to convey. It just took time and many revisions. The visualizations, however, were something I needed to spend a lot of time on. I discovered that I could change the style of each chart with a single line of code. This was really a game-changer for me because I think the chart style adds a lot to a visualization. Some charts need the style, and others need a simple “fivethirtyeight” “seaborn-whitegrid.” Finding the perfect fit took some tinkering, but I think it improves the value of a visualization by a lot. Finally, I came to the code. I had decided I would use the hide feature on most of it in the final notebook for readability. But I still wanted my code to by clear, efficient, and understandable. The only problem was I had written so much unstructured code in my original notebook it was hard to piece it all together in the final one. My actual code needed good variable names and good documentation that explained what the code was doing so it is reproducible and understandable. This is something that is easy to forget when using a . Jupyter Notebook I’ve heard for months now that Jupyter notebooks can be dangerous to developers, but data scientists love them. I love them! They are easy to use and great for data exploration, but as soon as you start running cells out of order things can get out of hand fast. To make more readable and useful code I realized I needed to actually use my (very weak) python programming skills. I needed to define objects clearly, write notes, and use classes and functions. These can be very useful for shortening code and creating repeatable processes. It also allows me to understand and run the code in order. This was a big hurdle, but I now believe developer skills are much more valuable to a data scientist than I originally thought. Even though it is a , we need reproducible code that has structure. This is something I want to focus on in the near future, and develop these programming skills further. jupyter notebook The deadline was now only days away and I scrambled to make sure my writing was clear and concise, and all of my visualizations had labels and made sense. On March 30, 2020, my first live Kaggle competition ended and I turned in the notebook, “The Two-Team Factor: Gender in March Madness.” There were many great notebooks turned in to this competition. On May 18, 2020, the competition creators chose five winners in the . I, not surprisingly, was not chosen. The winners, whose notebooks can be viewed , had very impressive and creative notebooks. For my first competition, I was very proud of my submission. It was a semi-clear, creative notebook with what I thought were good visualizations. March Madness Analytics Competition here I could not have asked for a better first live competition. The other competitors were great and I was able to really dive deep into some of the skills I wanted to work on. I think this competition has really improved my dataset manipulation and visualization skills. This is something that I hope will be extremely helpful in creating EDAs in future competitions, as well as creating great notebooks to share.

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We're excited to announce a June Library 2.0 mini-conference that is being co-organized by TechSoup. It is "Small, Rural, and Independent Libraries," which will be held online (and for free) on Wednesday, June 17, from 12 to 3 p.m., U.S. Pacific time. . Register for this free event here This mini-conference will focus on innovation and innovative thinking in rural, independent, tribal, and other small libraries, as well as the many unique challenges that libraries face in these strange times. A diverse array of keynote panelists and curated presenters will cover topics that will include Innovations to provide Internet access and training to rural patrons New ways that small libraries can offer services that the big urban libraries offer Taking community partnerships to the next level How workers from small and rural libraries can easily connect with each other to get ideas and keep innovating Novel ways to fund special programs Unique Internet of Things offers that are tailored to specific communities Safety, security, and ways to deal with emergencies when the sheriff's department is far away This event is being organized in partnership with Jim Lynch from TechSoup for Libraries, Kate Laughlin from the , and , the founding conference sponsor. Association for Rural and Small Libraries The School of Information at San José State University Everyone is invited to participate in our Library 2.0 conference events, designed to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among information professionals worldwide. Each three-hour event consists of a keynote panel, up to 15 crowdsourced 30-minute presentations, and a closing 30-minute keynote. In case you have never attended a free Library 2.0 Mini-Conference, here are some frequently asked questions about the events. What Are the Free Library 2.0 Mini-Conferences? The Library 2.0 mini-conference events are held three times a year on specific library-related topics. They are designed to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among information professionals worldwide. What Is the Format of the Mini-Conferences? Each mini-conference is three hours long and consists of a one-hour keynote panel; then three half-hour slots with a total of 10 to 15 crowdsourced presentations; and finishing with a 30-minute closing keynote. What Is the Conference Online Platform? Mini-conference sessions are held in the Zoom virtual meeting platform. To test your individual computer or device, go to zoom.us and sign up for a free account. Are the Mini-Conferences Really Free? Yes. The School of Information at San José State University is the founding conference sponsor and supports the event series so that it can be freely available. How Do I Register for a Mini-Conference? Each mini-conference has a devoted page on library20.com, and on that page is a link to the individual conference registration, which takes place through Eventbrite. Where Do I Find the Specific Agenda for a Mini-Conference? The detailed agenda for each mini-conference is hosted on its devoted page and is usually posted in final form the week before the event. How Can I Join a Conference on the Day of the Event? You can join a Library 2.0 mini-conference at any time up to, and during, the actual conference. You follow the regular conference Eventbrite sign-up link on the conference page, and an automated email with the schedule and sign-in instructions is sent to you within minutes. Can I Listen to Just Part of a Conference? Yes. Once you have registered for a mini-conference, you can pick and choose which sessions to attend and can come and go in sessions as you please. Can I Volunteer to Help with a Conference? Yes, each mini-conference has a team of volunteer moderators to help presenters during their sessions in case they encounter any difficulties. Look for the link in the main Library 2.0 site menu. volunteer How Do I Access the Recordings of the Library 2.0 Events? The Library 2.0 online event series started in 2010 as a multi-day annual online event. There are now 10 years of conference keynote and session recordings available on the Library 2.0 site, and many keynote sessions on the Library 2.0 YouTube channel. Access to the recordings is free, requiring only a free Library 2.0 account. How Can I Ask Questions or Provide Feedback During or After the Event? During the mini-conference event, there is an online chat box available on the front page of Library 2.0. You can also chat with other attendees in a particular keynote or session by using the Zoom chat feature. Can I Present at a Library 2.0 Mini-Conference? Yes, each mini-conference has a call for proposals that opens when the conference is announced, and gives you the opportunity to propose a 30-minute presentation session on the specific conference topic. About the Author Steve Hargadon is an educator and pioneer in live, virtual, and peer-to-peer education conferences. He is the organizer and conference co-chair at Library 2.0. He took over Library 2.0 in 2010 and brought it into his family of educational networks and online events. In the fall of 2011, Steve and Library 2.0 started a partnership with Dr. Sandra Hirsh and the to hold large-scale, free, online conference events for the library community at large. Steve typically organizes three mini-conferences per year. To date they have reached over 60,000 attendees from 175 countries. Each event typically draws over 5,000 registrations. Learning Revolution The School of Information at San Jose State University Credits Originally published as " Introducing the Library 2.0 Small and Rural Library Conference " with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

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Customer service automation is not a new thing in business. Many brands have successfully implemented automation to streamline the processes and save costs. However, there are still many questions on how to balance automation with a human touch and worries about sounding robotic and impersonal. But if done right, customer service automation can boost your workflow, , and improve overall CX without sounding like a machine. So let’s cover-up how to do that. cut labor costs I’ll start with the basics to make sure we are on the same page. What is customer service automation? Customer service automation is a process that reduces human involvement in customer interactions with your brand. Automated customer support helps to eliminate inefficient and unnecessary human touchpoints from the customer journey. Therefore, it improves the operational efficiency, speeds up the responses, and maintains team morale by reducing routine in their daily job. Ways to use customer service automation – a system that comprehends customer words or phrases and gives an instant pre-set answer. Chatbots – emails that are launched by specific actions taken by your customer on the website. Triggered emails – predetermined responses to common questions. It’s like a template. Canned responses – a self-serve online portal with information about your product or service. And did you know that expect an online portal for customer service? Knowledgebase 90% of consumers – a system that places incoming calls in a queue and then routes to a specific agent based on predetermined criteria. Call routing – a feature that routes tickets to specific customer service agent based on predefined rules or keywords. Automated ticketing – a system that automates social media posting and responding. Don’t ignore social media as expect companies to offer support via social media, and 35% of customers prefer it to other channels. Social media responder 63% of customers – allows a group of agents to access and process emails from one place. Team inbox – allows your customer to leave their number and ask for a call back from you, if your lines are currently busy or not working. Automatic callback phone system – allows sending surveys after a specific action taken by your customer. Automated customer satisfaction surveys These are the most popular types of customer service automation. You can use one of them or combine them all. Many customer service automation tools provide all those features in one place. If you want to know more about these tools, we’ve covered it up for you in this table: https://airtable.com/shrHAVrqVk4Muz6jQ/tblxg0sFTyvbXzijw?backgroundColor=blue&viewControls=on Keeping the balance between human touch and customer service automation With all those tools available, it’s easy to throw customers to a fully automated system and make them feel alone and unappreciated. For sure, you don’t want that. So using customer service automation is a risk. But those who risk wisely, get all the benefits like lower operational costs, happy management, grateful team, and being a leader driving a company through innovation. How to find that balance and wisdom? There is a common ground of what you should do and avoid doing at any cost. The Do’s of customer service automation 1. Automate routine, simple tasks. FAQs like are the best fit for customer service automation. About of customers expect “now" service within five minutes of making contact online. And with such types of questions, people quickly get impatient. “how can I order this," “how to reset the password," “where is the closest store," “does this product have X feature" 75% Don’t make people wait. Those questions are simple enough for self-help. So chatbots and knowledge bases are great ways of tackling those kinds of requests. Chatbots When you create a chatbot to cover your routine requests, there are always two choices. You can go either with a chatbot builder or a chatbot development company. I’ll briefly explain the difference. With , you can start small and launch a POC within weeks. It requires almost no budget. But you’ll need to figure things out on your own, and your solution will be limited. So if it works and you want to scale, you’ll have to start from the ground up with a chatbot development company at a particular stage. chatbot builders With , you have the flexibility to build what you need, and you can start with a POC as well. The company option is more complicated and expensive since you have contracts, kick-offs, maybe procurement, etc. But by paying more, you don’t need to do things on your own, and it’s easy to scale if the POC proves working well. chatbot development companies Speaking of the price difference, it can be around ±$5,000 for a custom POC solution instead of ±$500 for a builder. Your customer service chatbot could look something like this: The chatbot is simpler for customers, faster and more engaging. On the other hand, it requires more effort and time to create and maintain than a knowledge base. Knowledge Base Imagine a 100-page manual most of the companies have for their products, policies, branding, etc. Those documents no-one wants to read despite much valuable info hidden there. A knowledgebase is a way to make those documents user-friendly and searchable. So instead of scrolling through the pages, you type your question and get the answer from the doc. You can build your first knowledge base out of the FAQs from your customer support team and then expand. The software solutions allow you to analyze queries and grow your knowledge base by answering the most common requests. Here’s a great article that will help you choose and guide you on building your knowledge base: https://herothemes.com/blog/best-knowledge-base-software/ Note: You can use the most common customer support requests for building a custom chatbot as well. The vendor can connect your list and train the NLP agent to answer those queries. 2. Use sentiment analysis Sentiment analysis is applicable mostly to chatbots when combined with live chat. During a conversation, sentiment analysis will understand the emotional state of a customer based on their language. So if I irritably ask about my shipping, the chatbot will understand my mood and redirect to a customer support agent right away. Also, sentiment analysis can be used for social media mentions and brand mentions on the web. It can help to quickly track and analyze what customers say about your company on social media channels and act based on this data. There are many sentiment analysis tools like , , , , , , etc. IBM Watson Repustate Lexalytics MonkeyLearn Critical Mention Brand24 3. Provide a convenient way to contact human support If a client wants to talk to a human agent, he should be able to do that. Look into live chat if you still don’t have it. Phone calls and emails become outdated. You should probably count more on them if you deal with an older audience. Yet, for a younger generation, it is preferable to use live chat. From an operational standpoint, live chat is also more efficient. One customer support agent can cover about four live chat requests simultaneously, while over the phone, it is always one at a time. Plus, live chat solutions are quite advanced now and can be integrated with your CRM, giving your representatives a better understanding of the customer. 4. Test the system and ask for feedback It may sound odd, but this point often gets neglected. And the need for testing grows with the complexity of the solution you implement. By testing your automation on a focus group, you can spot problems and make improvements early on. You will better understand where the automation works best, and when a human agent is needed. So don’t forget to add testing to your agenda. 5. Review and update your automation Customer service automation is never a “set and done" thing. I may be biased, but it is especially true with chatbots. From our practice at BotsCrew, the most successful projects are the ones that are continually iterating and improving their solution. That’s what unsuccessful projects don’t usually do. Regularly review and improve your customer service automation to keep it up to date with your company and clients. Analyze interactions, review analytics, and upgrade the system when needed. 6. Integrate all tools and services when possible Make sure all channels and tools are connected. That way, you’ll be able to have a full client’s portfolio and interaction history to provide better support. Also, you’ll have all the data and stats in one place, which will make analyzing and reporting easier. How to do that? Some tools have native integrations. It means you can connect specific tools in a few clicks without coding. Commonly, small tools connect with giants like Salesforce, Zendesk, etc. But it’s not always the case that the giants connect with one another. For these cases, you’ll need a custom integration or a 3rd-party integration tool. The systems that you want to connect need to have an open API (application programming interface). It is true for 90+% of the cases. However, you should think first about how you’ll use it because there is no need for every tool to be integrated with each other. Choose a hub where you want to have all the data, and then incorporate your tech stack with this hub. There are 3rd-party integration tools like and . Still, with a large volume of data points, it is always more cost-effective to build an in-house integration (if native integration is not available). PieSync Zapier 7. Personalize you automation Personalization improves drastically when your systems are integrated. Let’s say each client has their profile with personal, geo, and behavioral data fields. So each field you can use as a personalization point. The hard thing is having the data centralized. For instance, if a customer left a washing machine in his cart, a chatbot can ask him if he needs some help with this purchase. If someone’s asking for his order status via live chat, it is always better to know whom you’re talking to and what orders a person has. How exciting would it be if you don’t even need to tell the order number? "72% of respondents expect agents to already know who they are, what they’ve purchased, and have insight into their previous engagements." The Don’ts of customer service automation 1. Don’t automate everything Review and understand which queries should be tackled by customer service automation and which ones should be addressed by humans. If the customer’s question requires a unique approach, then don’t automate that. It is also applicable to working automation. Regularly review the performance (Do’s rule #5) to spot answers customers are unsatisfied with. Improve or remove customer service automation for those cases. 2. Don’t try to disguise the automation as a real person You would never want your customers to feel dumb because they didn’t recognize they were talking to a bot. It would harm their loyalty severely. Don’t put a human face as the logo of a chatbot. Try to avoid giving a human name to your bot. Let your customers know they’re talking to a virtual assistant from the very beginning of the conversation. 3. Don’t force people to use automation Don’t make it harder for people to contact support. While customer service automation is a cost-effective support channel, it’s not profitable in the end to have a disloyal customer because he was unable to reach out to a human to assist with an issue. Make contact options visible and available at any point in the automation flow. It can be done by “talk to a human," “live agent" or similar commands in a chatbot and a particular digit for live support via phone bot. 4. Don’t forget to user test and update the automation Yes, those were in do’s. But do’s are optional, while everyone knows what happens when you neglect don’ts. Before entirely relying on customer service automation to cover your repetitive tasks, you should do user testing. Check how your clients like automation and how it’s doing the job. You will receive valuable feedback that will let you tune the system to match clients’ needs the best. Then regularly review its results and upgrade the system. The final word Customer service automation is a powerful tool in the right hands. But, automation should never go over personalization and customer-centric approach. Using automation, you can make your customer service team more efficient and happier while cutting operational costs. It takes courage to find the balance between human-approach and automation, but it is always rewarding when done right. Read our latest article here: Cutting Costs by Investing in Customer Service Bots Previously published at https://botscrew.com/blog/customer-service-automation-balance/

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In 2017 I launched a College and University themed version of the game . College Cards, as I dubbed it, was my first ever ‘official business’, and as a 22 year old recent college grad, I was pretty excited when I sold $13,000 of the game to University of Wisconsin students just 45 days after launch. Cards Against Humanity How did I do it? Easy. I growth-hacked the College Cards Instagram page with fake followers, fake engagement, and fake everything to make it look like the game was . all the rage This way when I drove real traffic and real people to the Instagram account, it looked like College Cards was simply something you to own. had It worked well. Honestly, too well. The game went so viral that the intellectual property law firm representing the University demanded that I shut the whole thing down and threatened me with a trademark infringement lawsuit if I didn’t comply. Checkout written by the school newspaper at the time. this article Looking back, this was one of the best things to ever happen to me. It’s the reason I wound up pursuing the entrepreneurial path and why I was able to start a new company which has become 10X more valuable than College Cards ever could have been. But more on that later… Allow me to explain exactly how I growth-hacked Instagram to drive hundreds of product sales and thousands of dollars of revenues in a short period of time College Cards Instagram Follower Count = 0 The goal was fairly straightforward. Prior to launch, I wanted to create an engaging and seemingly popular Instagram page for College Cards that would showcase the game. This way, once I started driving traffic and real people to the Instagram page, they would be much more inclined to check it out, interact with a post, and perhaps even buy the game. I started out by buying 500 fake followers for the Instagram account. Perception is reality, and my plan was to make the account appear as if it was all the rage before the game was even launched. To buy the followers, I simply typed “buy Instagram followers” on Google, and went with a company that was using Google Adwords to bid on that search term. It might have cost me $20 back then to purchase 500 followers. I put in my credit card, added the , and voila! 500-ish followers followed the account by the next day. @College_Cards Instagram handle College Cards Instagram Follower Count = 500 Next, I needed a solid gallery of photos and content live on the Instagram page before I started driving traffic to it. This way once people landed on the account, they had content to peruse and tag/share with their friends. I took pictures of the game content with my iPhone. I intentionally made the combinations that I posted on Instagram as outrageous as possible. I knew that the more raunchy and ridiculous I could make it, the more buzz and word of mouth the Instagram page would generate. Fake Engagement 101 It wasn’t enough to just have fake followers. To make the account look like it was thriving and active, I also needed some of that Grade A fake engagement. I needed people liking and commenting on the game photos to create the illusion that the game was popular, hilarious, and fun. In the fake world of Instagram, manufacturing fony engagement isn’t hard to do. It’s just time consuming. Every time I’d post a new photo, I’d head over to Kylie Jenner’s Instagram account, open one of her recent photos, and comment something like: ‘LB’, ‘Lbbbbb’, or ‘LB LB :)’. You see, Instagram is a huge cesspool of fakers. ‘Engagement’ is the currency of the cesspool, and as a result, it has become commoditized. You can purchase fake engagement just like you can followers. There is a whole micro-economy that lives to generate this type of engagement. And there are huge numbers of people working day and night to try to game the cesspool system. People like me. By simply commenting LB (“Like back”) on the recent posts of insanely popular instagram accounts like Kylie Jenner, other poor souls would take the time to click on my profile and like my photos in hopes that I would return the favor and “Like back” theirs in return. Insane, right? Below is Kylie Jenner’s most recent post on Instagram. Take a look at the comment section, and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. So, this was my system. Post a hilarious and outrageous photo, comment hundreds of times on Kylie Jenner’s Instagram account to generate phony ‘likes’, and then do it all over again. My College Cards Instagram content was generating hundreds of likes this way, and the page was coming alive. Generating fake comments was harder. Especially for an Instagram account like College Cards. I could have simply commented “Comment back” or “CB” on Kylie’s posts, but doing this would only get me a bunch of pre-written comments like “So inspirational <3” or “Love THIS” (perhaps you’ve seen these fony comments on some of your friends’ Instagram posts!). I didn’t want these spam comments on my posts. I wanted real comments talking about how freakin’ awesome my card game was. It’s these types of comments that inspires people to take action and purchase the game. So I simply recruited my friends and asked them to comment on my new Instagram account for the game I was creating. I had sent them copies of the game prior, so they were commenting their honest opinions about the game—they just needed a little push from me! The Stage Was Set After a couple weeks worth of work, my Instagram account was done. I had about 12-15 photos in my gallery showcasing hilarious card combinations from the game. Each photo had more than 100 likes and were filled with comments from my friends saying how much fun it was. Pre-Launch At this point, I had spent months preparing for launch day. My launch plan was simple: send as much qualified traffic (University of Wisconsin students) as possible to the College Cards Instagram page. If my thesis was correct, this traffic and these people would check out all of the pictures and posts and I had worked so hard to generate and pump up with fake engagement. They would see how great this game was and potentially buy themselves a copy. To drive this qualified traffic to the Instagram page, I did a couple things. 1. Get UW students to post and tag @College_Cards in their Instagram stories Prior to the day of launch, I reached out to all of my UW friends and connections and explained the game I had created and how I really could use their help to get the word out on the day of launch buy tagging @College_Cards on their Instagram stories. All of my close friends were happy to do this for free. For others I offered discounts and free games in exchange for shoutouts. For everyone who agreed to participate, I sent a number of product pictures/card combinations of the game that showcased it being played. I instructed them to write whatever they wanted about the game and simply tag @College_cards on the day of launch. Using this method, I had between 30-50 Instagram accounts ready to shout out the game on launch day. 2. Aggressively follow as many UW students as possible On the day of launch (as well as days following the launch), I spent hours and hours simply ‘following’ students on Instagram who went to UW Madison. This was extremely time consuming, but for every person I followed, they received a notification showing that “College Cards” just followed them. They then proceeded to check out our instagram account showcasing the game. The Launch The combination of these two things sent a wave of traffic to the Instagram account on the day of launch. My phone completely blew up that day with notifications, alerts, and messages. Just as planned, people were tagging their friends, commenting, liking, and messaging in asking how they could get a copy of the game. The techniques mentioned above drove thousands of page impressions and hundreds of click throughs to the website where the game was for sale. The game was selling fast, and that first day I sold more than $2,400 of College Cards to students who found us through our Instagram account. 45 days following the launch, I had officially sold more than $13,000 of the game almost solely through Instagram. So then what happened? About a month after the launch, the virality of the game started to take on a life of its own. School newspapers were talking about, kids on campus were playing the game with their friends, and those friends were then buying the game and playing with their friends—starting the process all over again. The flywheel was rolling. Unfortunately it all came crashing down once the intellectual property law firm that represents the University caught wind and demanded I shut the whole thing down. I wrote about the entirety of these events in my blog post describing exactly how I manufactured, marketed, and wound up having to shut down the game here: . The Story of College Cards Takeaway College Cards was my first official business venture. I had an absolute blast building it, and more importantly I learned so much doing so. Since then, I have started a number of other businesses like which has allowed me to quit my “9 to 5” and live life on my terms. While building these other companies, I’ve learned even more about the best possible ways to drive amounts of traffic, users, and customers. this tax software company insane I love sharing these real-life growth tactics with as many people as possible. If you enjoyed this article, you should I talk about my first-hand experience with the best possible ways to market and grow your business in today’s competitive environment. I’ll see you in the inbox! sign up for my email list here !

BUNCH

How I Localized Cards Against Humanity, Gamed Instagram, Made $13,000, & Got Shut Down by University

If you do a good job as a leader, the people you mentor will eventually outgrow their original roles. Some will rise within their departments; others will go on to lead new teams. Many will go on to work for other businesses. Whatever their reasons, people don’t stay still for long. On average, workers change jobs . With unemployment rates skyrocketing and budgets tighter than they've been in decades, businesses must act now to avoid the devastating consequences of sudden knowledge loss. Losing workers is bad enough, but losing knowledge can lead to even greater problems over time. once every four years Your strategy determines whether your company can survive the loss of key employees. Businesses that plan for the inevitable make smooth transitions, while others scramble after every change. knowledge management Don’t imagine your team members are too loyal to leave or too happy in their current positions to demand advancement. People and situations change. The administrative assistant who keeps things running like clockwork may decide to return to school. Your best salesperson may decide to open a craft brewery. Your brilliant HR manager may apply for that open position in your marketing department. When life happens, you can either lean on your processes to mitigate the disruption or let chaos and confusion put your profits at risk. Help insulate your company from the dangers of knowledge loss by establishing best practices ahead of time. Conduct longer, more thorough exit interviews. Just as people change over time, so do their work roles. Someone who was onboarded as a customer service representative may have become the development team’s go-to person for FAQ content over the years. The people who work with that person might recognize her valuable contributions, but you won’t know unless you ask. When employees leave, don’t just wish them well and set an end date. Take some time to have them walk through their daily work with their managers and show off all the projects they’ve completed. Not only does this process help employees take inventory of their accomplishments, but it also lets leaders see and appreciate more of the work that happens between the lines — and protect it. Form mentorship arrangements to train and cross-train workers. When longtime employees make the big jump to VP, retire, or take on a new challenge, they take all their little tricks, processes, and problem-solving approaches with them. You can’t replace years of experience, but you can ensure that you retain as much knowledge as possible by setting up mentorship chains. As you establish a culture that , you can strengthen bonds between workers, improving communication and facilitating the transfer of knowledge that might otherwise go undiscovered. values mentorship Use mentorship arrangements as opportunities for cross-training. Encourage frontline reps to spend some time shadowing programmers to get a greater appreciation for the challenges of the back end. Similarly, have coders spend some time with people who take customer calls to learn more about the real problems customers face. When everyone knows a bit of everything, the whole company benefits. Develop an updated map of responsibilities. Your org chart tells you who holds which titles, but does it tell you what those titles mean? Without an updated map of which responsibilities go with which roles, you may not realize what knowledge you’ve lost after a departure until the damage is done. Take sales and marketing, for example. These two teams share several goals, tools, and contacts. In some organizations, the sales team might handle duties that other companies assign to the marketing team. If your director of marketing leaves and you bring in an outside replacement, the new director may not expect to own certain vendor relationships or performance metrics. Avoid this situation by regularly updating and documenting the responsibilities for every role in your organization. Identify and develop successors before you need them. Great employees find ways to push their careers forward. You can either facilitate that growth or lose your best and brightest to headhunters and competitors. Teach workers to identify one person who would take over their duties should they become unable to complete them. Managers should know which of their team members — or if not a team member, a colleague — would be the best short-term replacement if circumstances demanded it. Even people committed to the company for the long haul may spend long periods of time away from work. Serious medical issues or family troubles can prevent workers from performing their regular duties. Groomed successors can step in to help with short-term needs, and if someone leaves unexpectedly, a trained successor makes an ideal candidate to fill the open position. Never let your desire to hold on to knowledge prevent you from investing in the growth of your employees. Some will leave, but others will stay to shape the future of your company. Continue to invest in the development of your teams — and in the bonds between them — to mitigate knowledge loss during transitions.

How to Hold on to Critical Knowledge When Employees Leave

To what extent do you allow your users and customers guide your development process?  This is a question we have grappled with over the last year and, frankly, continue to debate passionately at our morning . But, today is the first time we have shipped a purely user-requested feature and it feels like a significant milestone. pow wow For context, the requested feature allows you to start customising the appearance of DID.app’s sign in pages to ensure your authentication aligns with your brand. . ]. Here’s the feature request on our roadmap And here’s the output in our docs This is a significant moment for a couple of reasons, first off, we allowed ourselves to be guided completely by our users.  We probably wouldn’t have come up with this feature because we, like doting parents, believed our creation was perfect and beautiful and perfect and even more beautiful snookums, kissy kissy, oochycooo cockapoo. And of course, we are right. Right?  Actually our users helped us to see something we couldn’t see and prioritise a feature that had real value to the amazing people actually using our product. Left to our own devices we would probably be releasing a more technical feature, such as . This will undoubtedly be an exciting feature for our audience but it would have been at the expense of what was most pressing to our users at the time.  Unless you have ten dev ops on the team one simply has to prioritise one feature in front of another. WebAuthN integration (also on our roadmap) The second reason I believe this is significant is that it can be hard to ensure your vision really resonates with your audience and achieves what you set out to achieve when you’re also trying to sell it to people. A typical prospect chat goes something like this: : “Well sure we’d love to give your product a go and pay for it but really we need it to do X first.” Prospect : “Sure, we can do that.  Give us a week and we’ll have it ready!”  - barely concealed undertones of excitement at the prospect of acquiring paying customer. Product founder : “Splendid. Speak again in a week’s time.” Prospect : “OK!” - hangs up.  Realisation that they’ve just committed themselves to developing a niche feature that is only relevant to this one user, will take a full week of development time up and stop us from developing everything else on our roadmap. Product founder In this scenario, your vision risks being put on hold. Then the question arises, is your vision resonating with your audience? Do your users want what you’re making? This one is really hard to answer. A week spent now developing a niche feature to win 1 customer might prevent you from developing a more widely adoptable feature that helps you win 10 more customers in a month’s time.  This is more commonly known as ‘opportunity cost’. I think the lesson learned from publishing our roadmap is that listening to your users at volume is the number one thing any product development team should be doing.  Every user you speak to has a different opinion, a different feature idea and a different view on life but they are all united behind your vision to ‘change the world’. probably The greater number of conversations you have, the more you can see if certain features (or variants of) are discussed.  There comes a point where a feature request reaches something akin to statistical significance if you will. If this is the case and it aligns with the vision it's a perfect fit for you. In our case, our vision is to deliver on equal terms to websites and end-users in a way that . Users requesting features like WebAuthN integration, custom styling or a Netlify guide fit well with the overall vision and these are specific requests that enable us and the user to more easily fulfill their requirements. passwordless authentication respects privacy Something like a feature to add password auth as a fallback is completely at odds with the vision and doesn't feel right at all, even if it does mean 1 customer come on board if we offered that feature. might Defend your vision.  It’s the reason you get up in the morning and the reason you’re loyal tribe of users support you. If a feature request comes in from a new prospect that doesn’t align with your vision then think very carefully about whether the business relationship is a good fit for you. If the feature request aligns with your vision and is just another small step along the road to the goal then go for it. Your product exists for your users. One feature I really like about the roadmap is that users can upvote features. This seems the simplest and fairest way of putting feature development into some kind of order. And now, our developing days are guided exclusively by our public roadmap.  If it’s on the roadmap, we’re doing it. We’re excited by the way users engage with the roadmap by leaving comments and ideas.  It’s really helping users get on board with our journey to achieving the vision we’re all behind and I am delighted that we have been able to take a purely user requested feature from suggestion to production now for the first time. The first of many I am sure. I’d love to know your thoughts on publishing public product roadmaps.  If you do already, has it worked for you?  If you don’t publish a roadmap is there a reason why and what is that reason? Previously published at https://dev.to/richardlikestea/what-we-learned-from-publishing-a-public-roadmap-and-listening-to-users-ke9/edit

Different

How Public Product Roadmap Help Us to Understand Our Users

Editor's note: On April 23, Congress allocated an additional $370 billion for nonprofits and small businesses under the CARES Act: $310 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), and $60 billion for Emergency Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL). In late March, Congress passed significant legislation designed to provide relief to U.S. taxpayers, businesses, and nonprofits affected by the coronavirus outbreak. This new $2.2 trillion law is called the (CARES Act). There's lots to unpack in it, but one thing we really want you to know is that , so if you are interested in applying, do it as soon as possible.* Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act the forgivable loan for nonprofits part of the CARES Act, called the Paycheck Protection Program, will likely run out of money soon We'll tell you exactly how below. Here is what is important for nonprofits to know about the CARES Act. Also, be sure to below between TechSoup's Ken Tsunoda and Jennifer Kawar of the Nonprofit Finance Fund. view the conversation on this topic * Note: On April 8, 2020, it was reported that the Treasury Department has asked Congress to approve additional funding for the Paycheck Protection Act. Much Better Tax Deduction Provisions for Charities Under the 2017 tax overhaul law, called the , only people who itemize their taxes could effectively claim charitable deductions. The CARES Act will now allow nonitemizers to deduct up to $300 in cash giving for the 2020 tax year. For those who itemize, the bill lifts the cap on annual giving from 60 percent of adjusted gross income to 100 percent. This information may well be useful if you participate in the upcoming on May 5, 2020. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act #GivingTuesdayNow Day of Giving and Unity The Paycheck Protection Program Reinstating charitable tax deductions for nonitemizer taxpayers would normally be massive news, but the new federal is possibly even bigger — at least in the short term. It's a $349 billion fund created by the CARES Act for any small business or charity with 500 or fewer employees. The loans can be forgiven if you keep employees on the payroll for eight weeks or through June 30, 2020. If borrowers meet the program's requirements for loan forgiveness, the loans essentially turn into grants. Paycheck Protection Program The Paycheck Protection Loan Fund is being handled by the Small Business Administration (SBA). Nonprofits and churches are eligible for SBA loans in this program of up to $10 million. The money needs to be used for payroll, including paid leave, as well as health-insurance premiums and debt service. that it will forgive loans if the money is used for payroll, rent, mortgage interest, or utilities. SBA says on its website that even though the law allows the use of the loans for such things as mortgages interest, lease payments, utilities and interest on preexisting loans, the priority is on payroll. "The draft SBA Form 2483, Paycheck Protection Program Application Form, discloses a modification to the loan forgiveness provisions. Due to likely high subscription, it is anticipated that not more than twenty-five percent of the forgiven amount may be for non-payroll costs." Bottom line — if you want most or all of the loan forgiven, devote at least 75 percent of the funds to payroll. Thomson Reuters reports Forgiveness is based on the employer maintaining or quickly rehiring employees and maintaining salary levels. Forgiveness will be reduced if full-time headcount declines or if salaries and wages decrease. No collateral or personal guarantees are required for the loans. Neither the government nor lenders will charge small businesses any fees. However, borrowers will need to pay interest on the loans. The loans can be for up to 2.5 times average monthly payroll costs over the last 12 months, with some restrictions. Full-time and part-time employees are counted equally. SBA forgivable loans will be available through June 30, 2020, but said that this program, large as it is, will probably be oversubscribed, so they recommend getting applications in ASAP. that banks may well be unprepared for the onslaught in inquiries and applications because of how recent the program is and also because of evolving lending guidelines from the federal government. It may well take some persistence to get through the loan application process. KPMG in a recent webcast Thomson Reuters also reports Submitting an Application Find a downloadable (PDF). After filling it out, you then go to the , enter your zip code, and find a nearby lender eligible to issue a loan under the Paycheck Protection Program. It's probably best if you can find a bank where you already have an account. For those seeking a Paycheck Protection loan but having a hard time finding a local lender, you might try or TechSoup corporate partner, . Both companies have just been approved to provide access to Paycheck Protection Program loans. Paycheck Protection Program Borrower Application Form here SBA web page PayPal Intuit QuickBooks Here is a summary of the information you'll need from calendar year 2019 to do an application to the Paycheck Protection Program (PDF): from PNC Bank 2019 IRS Quarterly 940, 941, or 944 payroll returns Payroll report for a 12-month period ending on your most recent payroll date, which includes gross wages to each employee if paid by W2, paid time off for each employee, vacation pay, family leave pay, and state and local tax assessments on employee compensation Documentation of all health insurance premiums paid by the organization Retirement plan funding documentation for 401(k) or 403(b) plans, SIMPLE, and SEP IRAs The guiding principle on all this is to support your claim that, as of February 15, 2020, you had employees for whom you paid salaries and payroll taxes. Additional Programs The (EIDL) now has in place a rapid grant procedure that can get $10,000 to a nonprofit within three days to pay salary and operating expenses. This program is also administered by the SBA. Longer term, the program can provide up to $2 million of affordable loan assistance. To be eligible for EIDL assistance, nonprofits must have sustained economic injury and be located in a disaster-declared county or state. The CARES Act has set aside $10 billion total for the coronavirus disaster EIDL. There are no upfront fees or early payment penalties charged by SBA. The repayment term will be determined by your ability to repay the loan. This program does not have loan forgiveness. Apply online for disaster loan assistance at SBA's . Expanded Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program Disaster Loan Assistance website The CARES Act has also created a refundable payroll tax credit of up to $5,000 for each employee on the payroll. To be eligible, a nonprofit must have experienced a decrease in revenue of at least 50 percent in the first quarter of 2020 compared with the first quarter of 2019. The credit is available each quarter until the nonprofit's revenue exceeds 80 percent of the same quarter in 2019. Nonprofits receiving emergency SBA loans are not eligible for these payroll tax credits. that there is a promised Mid-Size Loan Program for nonprofits with between 500 and 10,000 employees. It will help ensure that organizations can retain at least 90 percent of their workforces. But it still needs to be designed and implemented. Nonprofit Quarterly reports We hope you find this information useful — and remember, if you plan on applying for a forgivable loan from the Paycheck Protection Program, that you need to do it as soon as possible. TechSoup Resources TechSoup's Resources Page for Nonprofits Impacted by COVID-19 Nonprofit Resources for Remote Work During the COVID-19 Outbreak Credits Originally published as " What Nonprofits Need to Know Now About the New CARES Act " with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Funding

Intuit

What Nonprofits Need to Know Now About the New CARES Act

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