He has two goals this year with four assists. The Blue Line also contributes a lot. Miro Heiskanen, Thomas Harley, and Ryan Suter have contributed well. Heiskanen has a goal and three assists. Harley has two goals and two assists this year. Finally ...

Stars vs. Flames prediction, odds, pick, how to watch – 11/1/2023

The Miró Quartet to present these first three concerts. Tickets are $20 online at Ticket Master.com (search Miro Quartet in TM to see the three concerts), at the Center for the

What’s Going On

An AEW star recently recalled her unexpected encounter with Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson during her time in WWE. The star in question is none other than CJ Perry, formerly known as Lana.  At AEW All Out 2023,

"And I'm like, wait, what?" - AEW star recalls how The Rock's appearance led to promo getting scrapped

CJ Perry worked with some of the biggest WWE Superstars of all time during her run with the company. All Elite Wrestling‘s CJ Perry was a recent guest on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet. When asked about leaning into the hot and flexible gimmick that Miro first spoke of on AEW programming,

CJ Perry Reflects On Interacting With The Rock In WWE

Silver Spring biotech United Therapeutics has spent years laying groundwork to break into xenotransplantation and related work.

Silver Spring's United Therapeutics reaches $91M deal to buy Miromatrix Medical

Game preview, player props, stats and odds on Miro Heiskanen vs. the Columbus Blue Jackets on October 30, 2023.

Miro Heiskanen Game Preview: Stars vs. Blue Jackets - October 30

The facility also provides hands-on research opportunities for students at UVM. They will analyze data from the site at the McNeil Generating Station.

UVM and Burlington Electric Dept. unveil new solar research and training facility

Can we anticipate Miro Heiskanen finding the back of the net when the Dallas Stars face off with the Columbus Blue Jackets at 8:00 PM ET on Monday? To help you with your bets, take a look at the numbers and insights below. Catch over 1,000 out of market NHL games, plus original programming, with ESPN+ or the Disney Bundle.

Will Miro Heiskanen Score a Goal Against the Blue Jackets on October 30?

Born and raised in the Catalonian capital, the co-founder and creative director of Rowse lets us in on where to find the best shared plates, natural wines, and creative nourishment.

Ask a Local: The Coolest Places in Barcelona According to Nuria Val

Find the best player prop odds, plus stats, trends and more betting info for Miro Heiskanen ahead of his matchup with the Jackets.

Jackets vs. Stars Player Props | Miro Heiskanen | Monday

Miro

realtimeboard

If you are anything like me, you would jump at every possible chance to the whiteboard and scribble. If there's a brainstorming or discussion happening, I need a whiteboard - doesn't matter if I am listening or talking. When you are in the same room, it is super easy to draw, explain and share using a physical whiteboard. Over the past 4 years, working with our tech team remotely, I have realised it is that much difficult to replicate the whiteboarding scenario in a remote setting. So I have put together my learnings over time around remote brainstorming and whiteboarding in this post. Remote whiteboarding anti-pattern - Video call with a physical whiteboard It's an for 2 reasons - anti-pattern 1. Tough to make out what's written on the whiteboard. Plus your movement is highly restricted. 2. No element of collaboration. Works only when you want to present something. You're probably better off not using a whiteboard altogether than using a physical one on video. Getting your setup right If you refuse to move away from using your mouse or trackpad for remote whiteboarding, you would probably end up with something like this - A touch interface is an absolute must if you are planning on scribbling and drawing on a remote whiteboard. A tablet with a pencil connected to your laptop/ desktop screen is ideal. Here's a setup I often use - I connect my iPad with my Macbook Pro through the app 'Duet Display'. If you have iPad OS (on later versions of the iPad), Sidecar works perfectly. Although, whiteboarding isn't just about scribbling and drawings as I will detail upon further. If majority of your remote brainstorming session is going to involve clipping pictures and typing text, you don't need a tablet and a stylus. How to choose the right remote whiteboard Here's a set of essentials I would look for when choosing a remote whiteboard - 1. Infinite canvas - If I am putting any thought into choosing a remote whiteboard, this is the very first thing I would like to have. Nothing beats the limitless flow on an infinite canvas. 2. Presentation and sharing - Of course I am doing remote brainstorming with other people and hence, presentation and export options are handy. 3. Collaboration - In most cases, I would like others to participate and edit the whiteboard. So this becomes a necessary feature. 4. Adding images, videos or any kind of files - As I will show you, when I am brainstorming a version of the website, I would like to put up snippets of webpages I like, photos or illustrations that could go in certain sections or even simple notes/ stickies for certain parts of the whiteboard. 5. Access & sync across devices - Usually not a deal breaker. Ideally, would like native apps (iOS, Android, MacOS). Case in Point 1: Quick brainstorming This is typically when I am doing a quick catch-up with one of my teammates or a not-so-structured discussion about our future plans with my co-founders. I am only using the whiteboard to help me write things during that discussion - don't intend to build upon the same whiteboard later. Of course, I do need a copy of the whiteboard writing/ sketching after the discussion but I will make sure to document the key points/ action items elsewhere. - Discussion with my co-founders in April, 2020 to brainstorm on the next steps for Remote Tools after the traffic spike in March. Example - since it's super easy to fire up a whiteboard (no signups) and it is completely free. Tool used Whiteboard Fox Here's a snippet of a part of our whiteboard on that call - A tool like Whiteboard Fox works very well for such use-cases because - 1. I get to open up a whiteboard quickly, sometimes even during an ongoing discussion. 2. I get to do free-hand drawing & sketching. Typically I have my iPad handy, so that I don't end up sketching gibberish. 3. I have the option of adding images onto the whiteboard - an absolute must because we keep talking about inspirations we have come across earlier. 4. I can replay the entire whiteboard video but more often, I just take a snapshot and mail it afterwards. Case in Point 2: Building a project through multiple discussions This is primarily when I am working on a structured project and it typically involves multiple brainstorming sessions along with tasks, TODOs etc. I would like to maintain all my files, whiteboard drawings (if any), text, notes etc. in a single place. - All of the discussions I have had with my co-founders and team on building The Remote Clan. I want to have all of the files, TODOs, notes etc. stored in a single place so that it is well maintained and easily accessible. Example - primarily because I use it for my personal projects and I like the interface a lot. It also ticks all my whiteboard requirements except for free-hand drawing or sketching. For that, I just pull up a board on Whiteboard Fox and drop the snippet onto Milanote. Tool used Milanote Milanote isn't a traditional choice for whiteboard. And hence, in a way, this also demonstrates how you can use a tool in your existing stack to serve as a whiteboard. Here's a snippet of how the entire Remote Clan project looks like on Milanote - You might be wondering that this looks too organised for brainstorming or whiteboarding sessions. So let me pull up our recent board where we put up ideas on immediate changes to the current website - Horizontal Scroll 1 of the infinite canvas Horizontal Scroll 2 of the infinite canvas A tool like Milanote works very well for such use-cases because - 1. The hierarchy and structure of elements is very solid. Helps me keep things organized over time. 2. The interface is very intuitive and easy-to-use. 3. It lets me drop any kind of file onto the project - videos, GIFs, images, pretty much anything. 4. I can easily switch between being super organized (TODOs, due dates, cards) to being totally unstructured (notes, links, files). Existing remote whiteboard tools We have an entire listed on Remote Tools. category for remote whiteboards But here's my quick take on when you can use some of those tools - - Super popular and established. Boasts of enterprise clients as well and has a separate offering for that. Miro (formerly RealtimeBoard ) Pricing - Free version available. Paid version starts at $8/user/month. Platforms - Web, Android, iOS, Mac, Windows - Dedicated whiteboard originally designed for educators. Again, very popular with a ~4mn user base. Explain Everything Pricing - Starts at $7/month. Free plan available with 3 projects. Platforms - Web, Android, iOS, ChromeOS - Web-only interface that allows you to group multiple whiteboards together. Needs you to sign up to access most features. SketchBoard Pricing - Starts at $8/month. Free trial available. Platforms - Web - No login, web-only touch friendly interface. Allows you to embed the whiteboard on your webpage. AWW Pricing - Free plan with basic tools & board sharing. Paid plan starts at $10/ month. Platforms - Web - Designed to give you a realistic whiteboard experience. Limnu Pricing - Starts at $5/ month. Free plan gives 14-day access to whiteboards. Platforms - Web, Android, iOS - Not just a whiteboard, but a tool for visual collaboration & project management. Deskle Pricing - Starts at $6/ month. Platforms - Web First Published on Remote Tools

How to Remotely Brainstorm and Whiteboard 😎

The purpose of this article to share my process and journey launching — Sweden’s first sustainable donation-based yoga studio. Lund Yoga Community Specifically, the goal is to draw parallels the software world of product management practices and creating a yoga business. Not only will this article demonstrate growth, but its FULL INTENTION is to illustrate MY PROCESS in how I went about creating something from nothing. I purposefully, intentionally, and consciously chose a Product Management process. Why did I choose a PM process? It’s simple — I enjoy product management. Everything you read here was pragmatic, calculated, and strategically created. I will explain the steps I took to grow my company and the process behind every step — detailing the why. You will read about my failures and my milestones. I hope you find this article helpful in understanding how I think, how I act, and most importantly, how I serve my customers’ needs. Before I explain the tools and articles I used to guide my process of building ; I am fully aware that there are dozens of ways to go about doing a PM process. However, I purposefully used tools/articles to illustrate my ability to follow a method. Additionally, using tools and articles in my process will give the reader an opportunity to critically reflect on my process with their own perspective. Lund Yoga Community The Start After googling for a bit, I used a from Axelsoft on PM and the PM process. I adopted their “4 stages of product management”: great article Vision Strategy Development Product Development Marketing and Sales 1. Vision I used Roman Pichler’s to get started: vision board Here are the following sections filled out from the vision board above. Vision The purpose for creating the product/service is to create an opportunity to make yoga accessible for everyone. There are so many benefits to practicing yoga. Yoga can increase people’s physical strength, improve people’s mental health, and give people an opportunity to explore their bodies in a safe way. A successful product/service will give people an opportunity to feel these positive changes from practicing yoga. Plus, there is potential for a large spillover effect for whoever these people interact with! Target Groups (Segmentation) Demographic Segmentation Bio: Lund University Student, Lund Resident Age: 18–24 Gender: Any Job: Lund University Student Psychographic Segmentation Exercise, Fitness, Meditation, Wellness, Healthy Eating, Sports People who are curious about yoga, who have heard about the possible benefits but do not want to pay for a membership. People who want to be more flexible and gain strength at the same time! People who do not want to be stressed or anxious. Facebook users who “like” or “follow” wellness lifestyles such as veganism, yoga, mindfulness, etc. Mindset of challenging themselves, perhaps looking for ways to improve their mental state of mind, or recovering from a traumatic past. Value curiosity, kindness, community, supporting, and inclusiveness Influencers Lund University Instagram Account with 10k+ followers Academic Society Partnership (30k+ reach) Needs In Lund, there is no yoga without signing up for a membership, paying fees, or requiring reservations. The curious yogi who does not want to take on a big commitment and the experienced yogi who cannot afford an expensive yoga membership do not have a place to practice. The Lund Yoga Community would benefit people who want to try something new (yoga) with no obligations. Product/Service A donation-based yoga studio: Lund Yoga Community. Currently, there is no donation-based yoga studio in Lund, Sweden. With low capital costs and a small investment, the product’s first MVP can be developed in 2 weeks. The service is feasible with a small investment, curious people, and a passionate and determined yoga teacher! Business Goals To create a sustainable business model where the donations of the students can pay for all fixed and recurring costs such as: yoga studio, yoga mats, and tea. The second business goal would be make enough revenue to pay teachers and myself to make a living off of it. Competitors One Hot Spot Yoga & Raja Yoga Lund Strengths: They have yoga studios with 100s of active memberships and a local Swedish demographic Weakness: They do not offer donation-based classes. They do not market to students without experience (beginners) Revenue Streams Donations: 50 SEK (5 Euro) each. Cost Factors The major cost factors are my time, renting a yoga space, and purchasing yoga mats to offer for rent Minor cost factors include: social media marketing (IG and FB), tea, candles Channels I will market this product first through gathering emails and interest. The next marketing channel will be to create a facebook group and page. Then I will market on my personal Instagram, Lund University Instagram, and hand out business cards. The next step will be to promote a couple ads on IG and FB. 2. Strategy Development For strategy, I created a strategy roadmap per Axelsoft’s article. I used (formerly ) to create a roadmap. Due to the nature of the service, I created a Goal-Oriented Roadmap so I can control the direction of my vision. Miro RealTimeBoard In September, I wrote down everything I needed to plan my launch. Here is the Roadmap Version 1: I divided each task into 4 categories: Infrastructure, Features (online), Marketing, and Sales. As of March 2019, the new and actual roadmap turned into Roadmap Version 2: A few learning outcomes I did not expect or foresee at the time I drafted the first roadmap: I created more than one Facebook/Instagram marketing campaigns I rebranded my business cards with an official logo I went through another website iteration (totaling three iterations) I had to add an online payment system (Swish) to accept donations because Swedes don’t carry cash The reason why I had these unexpected changes were due to new customer demographics. Originally, I thought cash would suffice. However, Sweden is moving towards a cashless economy. Therefore, I had to implement Swish across all my marketing channels. Plus, I believed the LYC logo should be implemented on new business cards to better align the brand. 3. Product Development Product/Service development consisted of implementing all the categories on my product roadmap. work and development started with gathering people’s emails to inquire interest. I used an email listserv to schedule the first yoga class using a google form. Within two weeks, I bought yoga mats for people to borrow if they did not own one. I initially taught outdoors, but I knew by October, it would get too cold. Infrastructure In October, I secured an indoor space to practice yoga. Continuity and consistency are very important to the flow of yoga practice. I did not want to miss any practices because I could not secure an indoor space. I booked the first one I can find. It is still currently the LYC studio! The last infrastructure addition was serving tea. Many yoga studios serve tea. I believe it’s a great way to build a community since it gives people an opportunity to stay after class and build relationships. development started with a facebook group and page. I needed to create a space where I can communicate with everyone interested in practicing yoga. Within 2 months, I had over 200+ in the group with people from all over the world (Lund University is an international university with many international students). Feature The Facebook group and page was the first time I created the Mission (Purpose), Vision, and Values of Lund Yoga Community. It was extremely important for me to develop the birth of the brand. It took me two weeks. See below: Before 2019, I wanted to launch the LYC website to create a more professional brand and legitimization. I used to draft website wireframe designs. I ended up going through 3 iterations. From Axelsoft’s article mentioned above, Product Managers work with UX designers. Throughout the iteration process, I consulted a UX designer (a colleague and friend). Balsamiq Mimi Yu We came up with 2 designs together. Here are the wireframe designs followed by the website designs: Baslamiq Version 1.0 Website Version 1.0 Baslamiq Version 2.0 Website Version 2.0 consisted of Facebook and Instagram campaigns, plus an unexpected Lund University partnership. I submitted an application to be a partner association with Lund University and then spoke to 12 board members explaining why LYC is innovative and brings students together. This partnership created a further reach to 30,000 more people bringing in more demand growth generation. The partnership also gave me access to their website marketing channels too! Marketing and Sales Prioritization I’m adding a section on prioritization because I’m aware that PMs must prioritize every day! Therefore, the purpose of this is to let you know a few of the reasons behind my choices from the product road-mapping section above. Due to the nature of this service, I used the relative prioritization method ICE: . I performed a qualitative version of ICE, as opposed to the normal quantitative one. Impact, Confidence, and Ease I will detail 3 important decisions. 1. Securing an indoor yoga studio Impact At the time this decision was made, I was teaching yoga outdoors. The weather was starting to get cold as October arrived. Therefore, I knew that outdoor yoga wouldn’t be a long term solution for LYC. The impact of finding an indoor yoga space was imperative for one major reason: so the service could continue. However, time was of the essence. If I did not find a space soon enough, I could have to cancel yoga. I prioritized consistency and repetition at number 1. Therefore, I knew I had to secure an indoor yoga space quickly. Luckily, the first space that I could afford was good enough! Confidence The confidence of this decision was clear — if I did not find an indoor space, yoga would be canceled. Therefore, I was 100% sure finding an indoor space would allow the service to continue. Ease The easiness rating of this decision was low. Finding an indoor space in a city I did not know a lot about was difficult. It took me two weeks to locate a space I could afford. However, the impact of this decision overshadowed the lack of ease. 2. Adding a new payment system Impact During the beginning of the service, I only took cash donations. However, there was one major demographic that did not carry cash: Swedes. Swedish people are moving towards cashless payment systems. They have a mobile payment system similar to Venmo called Swish. By not allowing people to donate via mobile banking, I was loosing out on potential revenue. Confidence I had nothing to lose. At the time, I was receiving direct questions from my students: “Hey, do you take Swish?” I was positive that Swish was important to implement. Ease To have a Swish account, you need a Swedish bank account. As a student, I did not have one. Therefore, this would be a major obstacle. Implementing a Swish would be difficult because I would need to have someone else tied to the Swish account, not me. 3. Saying NO to teachers who wanted to teach for LYC Impact The impact of this decision had to be carefully investigated. On one hand, having other teachers teach for LYC would be helpful as it reduces my time and resources. Additionally, students benefit from having new teachers to learn from. However, on the other hand, some teachers do not meet the standards or mission of LYC. The LYC tagline is “Accessible for All.” Every piece of the yoga that is offered is accessible to the curious beginner and the experienced yogi. Therefore, if teachers were able to teach in an accessible way, I had to deny them. The impact is a 51/49 split amongst positives and negatives. I had to go with NO. Confidence As a certified yoga teacher, I had to use my best judgment on what “accessible” means. My confidence in not allowing teachers to teach was justified by my judgment. At the time, my time was not limited and could still manage the number of hours while finding other teachers. Ease Easy. I said, “Sorry, but I don’t believe my students are ready to take your class. However, if you are more serious about teaching for LYC, let’s work on how you can modify your teaching style. Please note that English was a second language for the majority of people here in Sweden. This was a major player in the decision. Case Study Research After the 4 stages of the PM development process was complete, I created a problem case study on the yoga culture in Sweden because I believe it’s important to detail the learnings throughout my experience and how it relates to Sweden. I also created this case study to give myself an opportunity to develop user stories and personas, which are key in product management, marketing, and UX spaces. The purpose of the case study below is to demonstrate my process in identifying a problem, gathering user data, and redefining the opportunity. The case study follows (almost) the “Discover” and “Define” steps in the . Double Diamond Framework The outline of the below is as follows: SlideShare Problem Definition Assumptions Testing Validation User Stories Personas New Assumptions Problem → Opportunity Full Here! Slideshare Metrics: Show me the numbers! I documented everything. If there is one thing I’ve read about Product Management, it’s METRICS METRICS METRICS! The purpose of this section is to demonstrate my process of collecting and analyzing meaningful data. The framework I used to contextualize my metrics was the AARRR Framework: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Referral (Reviews). Acquisition Acquisition metrics were difficult to capture due to the nature of the service. Without specifically asking each student how they discovered LYC and decided to come to class, there was no way to successfully correlate a visitor, a member, or an follow directly with a new student. One of the perpetuating missions of LYC is to make yoga accessible without any obstacles and therefore, I did not want to ask people to sign up because that would go against the purpose. Sticking to the purpose of the brand was number 1 on any prioritization list. Therefore, I did not value acquisition as an important metric to measure. website Facebook Instagram Activation & Retention Unlike acquisition, I defined activation as a new student. Others may argue this is acquisition but for the sake of monitoring metrics, new students were valuable for me to label as activation. I defined retention as a returning student for at least two classes. Meaning, a student’s third class would now be counted as retention. I documented the number of students every class plus the number of new students and returning students. I created a graph below (using an Excel pivot chart) that represents week over week activation vs retention. The orange stacked area represents new students (activation) and the blue stacked area represents returning students (retention). On the left side of the graph during October 2018, LYC had 14 students, 10 of whom were new and 4 of them were returning. Looking at the maximum point where there were the most students, only 5 students were new and 15 were returning. Over the course of these 6 months or so, the % of returning students was increasing as the % of new students was decreasing. Activation and retention started to steady out over time. The average week over week activation and retention was 25% and 75%, respectively. I argue that a high % retention is a good measure of success! Revenue To be as transparent as I can without giving all the financial details, the revenue made from Lund Yoga Community has met the original business goal mentioned above during the Vision Board planning! LYC successfully made enough revenue to support all fixed costs for the 2019–2020 year! One of the most important decisions made that helped increase revenue was adding another yoga class per week and benchmarking (behavioral economics term) a suggested donation at 50 SEK. Referral/Reviews The referral metrics are measured by on the LYC Facebook page. These were the only referral metrics documented, as most of the referral/reviews are spoken directly to the teachers after class (e.g., “Hey, I really loved your class. I will come back next week!”). Facebook reviews In addition to the reviews below, the LYC has an average month over month referral (or word of mouth) percentage of 93%. This means that I only invited 7% of all the people in the facebook group. The rest of the group found their way to the group or were invited by someone else. Facebook Group Here are some reviews: Milestones The last part of this journey of product management is the milestones. There are a few milestones that I would like to share that were not captured in the metrics. was on the first page of Google after 2 months of launch. LYC is the in the top 3 results on Google if keywords “lund yoga”, “yoga lund sweden”, and “lund yoga classes” are entered. Lund Yoga Community , Lund Yoga Community appeared more than 100 times when people searched “lund yoga” on Google. On April 28, 2019 met the business goal to finance next years fixed costs. Sales revenue partnered with Lund University during 2018–2019 school year and will continue partnering with Lund University in the years to come. The partnership provides additional reach to all 30,000+ students at Lund University. Lund Yoga Community Reflection & Criticism The purpose of this article was to reveal transparency throughout this journey towards product management. The goal was to let you (the reader) in on every decision I made, every tool I used, and illustrate my intentions behind every step moving forward. I hope you now know a little bit more about how I utilize the tools to reach my goals. Lund Yoga Community has been an incredible journey. I’m grateful for the opportunity to impact others through my personal values of creativity and curiosity. If any of this resonated with you or would like to collaborate in any way — please drop a comment! I love feedback! One of my favorite books is the Four Agreements and agreement number 4 is “Always do your best.” I try to strive for doing my best at everything I do. I would rather work towards imperfection while doing my best than trying to make everyone happy. I will leave you with a quote that resonated with me during my journey to product management: “Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of being.” — John Wooden Thanks for reading! :)

How I Used a Product Management Process to Start a Yoga Business [Part 1]

— It’s going to be a packed and exciting week for hackers in Austin! South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Conference and Festivals (March 8–17, 2019) have announced that the is coming back. With an exhilarating 24-hour marathon on March 12–13 at the , developers, coders, and tech creatives will collaborate in teams to build technology focused on topics covered at the conference— including Music, VR, AR, AI, and Blockchain. Austin, Texas SXSW Hackathon Omni Austin Hotel Downtown “[The SXSW Hackathon] has created a ton of business for us and we are currently able to continue as a startup without the need for an accelerator or funding at this time,” — Ryan Constant, CEO of Constant Venture LLC. Returning for its sixth year, the SXSW Hackathon is the perfect opportunity to bring your ideas to life and compete for valuable prizes. Fostering innovation, inspiring developers and coders attend to take their projects to the next level. The Hackathon has brought together the power of creativity and novelty, with previous SXSW Hackathon winners launching companies based on their projects. Legit Tix, now known as , have envisioned the bigger picture thanks to the competition. “[The SXSW Hackathon] has created a ton of business for us and we are currently able to continue as a startup without the need for an accelerator or funding at this time,” explains CEO Ryan Constant. Constant Venture LLC This year’s Hackathon will open up to greater challenges for participants. With developers joining from Japan, Mexico, Germany, Canada and the U.S., SXSW® will continue to uncover some of the best tech creators, programmers, and developers that have a passion in tech and other industries. Topics covered include Music, VR, AR, AI, Blockchain, and much more. Participating hackers will have admission to a vast range of resources, including guidance from SXSW®’s official mentors, public APIs and tools, and SXSW®’s partner APIs and SDKs. With $6,000 in prizes, three winning teams will be awarded cash and sponsor prizes by this year’s panel of industry judges. This year’s judges include , VP Production & Innovation of ; , Editor-At-Large at ; , CEO of ; , Founding Employee at ; , Co-Founder of ; , Director of ; and , Senior VP New Digital Business and Innovation at . The Hackathon is produced in conjunction with , Founder of . Scot Barbour Sony Pictures Entertainment Josh Constine TechCrunch Louise-Marie Marguet EmoJam Lauren Vitek TravelBank Jon Gottfried Major League Hacking Andrew Dubber Music Tech Fest Tuhin Roy Universal Music Group Travis Laurendine CODEMKRS “Universal Music Group is pleased to partner with SXSW to encourage the development of a new wave of music applications and technologies by supporting the talented developers and entrepreneurs participating in the 2019 SXSW Hackathon” — Tuhin Roy, Senior Vice President of New Digital Business and Innovation of Universal Music Group. All eligible hacks submitted will be reviewed and rated by the panel of judges. After considering the top three winning teams for this year’s Hackathon, the Final Presentations and Awards event will take place on at , and is open to all SXSW® badge holders. Winners will also be invited to join the SXSW Hackathon Incubator from March 14–15, where they will fine-tune their projects and pursue their creations with guidance from industry mentors. Interested hackers can until the deadline of March 5. Wednesday, March 13 1:30 pm apply here (Left to Right) The winners from last year’s Hackathon, including Focus, Scalp V, and Practice Hero — Randy and Jackie Smith The 2019 SXSW Hackathon is sponsored by Root9B ( ), the provider of advanced cybersecurity services. The title sponsor for this year specializes in threat detection and elimination through its proprietary HUNT platform, ORION. R9B Additional SXSW Hackathon sponsors include , , , , , , , , , , and . Buzz Angle Music Capitol360 Cox Automotive Devpost Eluvio Kony Native Instruments RealtimeBoard R3 Show Sparker Universal Music Group So, for all hackers who’ve got what it takes, make sure you register before March 5. Get packing, get hacking!

Creativity, Innovation & Thinking — SXSW Announces 2019 Hackathon

Hacker Noon is building the best place for tech professionals to publish — and we need your help. As you might have heard. We are , and we need help. We are hiring for these part-time positions: building our own Content Management System from scratch User-centric Frontend Developer with a great taste for Design , Content Strategist with Social Media expertise , and Product Designer who gives a s*** about future of publishing Click on the jobs ad above to apply. Scroll down to learn more about each job. User-centric Frontend Developer with great Design taste We’re looking for a to help us . Unfortunately, we can’t afford to invest in months of research and planning before taking action. So you’ll need to trust your intuition and proactively figure out what our users need while you design and write code. It’s a demanding role what will require a lot of context switching. But you’ll be working a small but strong team of energetic startup vets to help as needed. scrappy user-centric generalist lay the foundation for Hacker Noon 2.0 A typical day for you might include: You start by imagining how to improve an interaction to a nagging problem our users commonly face. Then you design and rapidly prototype a solution to the problem using . Code Sandbox Next you share the proposed solution with our team and community for feedback. You then make iterations inspired by what you learn from the feedback. After all that, you share a workable solution with the team and help think through implementation challenges. The next day, you might work on something completely different: You could start by refining our shared wireframe document on . realtime board You notice that we haven’t put much thought into how we layout and display stories in a particular homepage section. So you decide to take a deeper dive into that element and pull up your preferred design tool, Sketch. After a few hours of experimenting with spacing, layouts, typography and all the other details most people don’t care about…you produce a design that you’re proud to share with the team and community. You continue iterating as you share and talk about your work. Eventually you produce something you’re really proud of. It is aesthetically pleasing but also very usable. The team is jazzed about your design and implementation starts immediately. You take the first stab at building a simple React component that is basically HTML/CSS. The team helps clean up your code and wire up the data. This is a part time position that will require around 15-20 hours/ week. Pay is competitive and there will be opportunities to be promoted to full time. This role reports directly to CPO Dane Lyons . Content Strategist with Social Media expertise We are looking for someone who can filter through the noise (that is the internet), understand content & distribution, and learn/fail fast. Think: Ideally, every single piece of Hacker Noon content should be distributed and discussed somewhere with someone around the net. Our library of 20,000 posts is getting bigger everyday. how can we engage with communities around the interwebs about Hacker Noon in a thoughtful but also scalable way? We have 200,000 daily readers visiting HackerNoon.com everyday. We are diversifying our assets with the emergence of new communities, such as the , , and more. Think: Hacker Noon Podcast Contributor Communities how can we improve our existing communities and grow them to be self-sustaining? 7000+ contributors are contributing to Hacker Noon everyday, most of them original content. They deserve great distribution. To date, we’ve done a fine job helping most stories published on Hacker Noon searchable in more places. But we could always do more. Think: how do we amplify Hacker Noon writers’ content around the net while also recruit new writers with other great content? All these are questions that a will have to grapple with. You will be expected to use to be successful in this job. Social Media & Content Strategist a combination of growth hacks, cool new software/technologies, and your unique writing/communication skills Don’t worry — you won’t work alone. There’s a reason why Hacker Noon emerged to be one of the top tech blogs in the world — we do know how to grow communities! And we can help you. But we do expect you to have natural inclination for the job and be your own boss. This is a part time position that will require around 20 hours/ week. Pay is competitive and there will be opportunities to be promoted to full time. This role reports directly to COO Linh Dao Smooke . Product Designer who gives a s*** about publishing The internet, the final frontier. These are the voyages of Hacker Noon. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new ideas, to seek out artificial life forms and exotic technologies, to boldly go where no tech team has gone before. Seriously. We need a designer with creative confidence, the ability to collaborate in a quirky fast-paced product team, and the drive to make things happen. Unfortunately, we don’t have the budget or the time to conduct academic research. We’ve got to make decisions quickly and adapt when our assumptions are not correct. Dual track is our preferred flavor of agile. This means we’ll have a discovery backlog for rapid prototyping and testing new concepts. We’ll also have a delivery backlog for turning validated concepts into reality. If you choose to accept this mission, you’ll be heavily involved in both tracks. Example of a discovery track project: As a team, we’ve decided that we’d like to allow readers to react to Hacker Noon stories with emojis. Conceptually we feel that emoji reactions are richer than common likes/dislikes while still offering low-friction simplicity. But we need to validate our assumption and explore implementation options. You could rapidly sketch or prototype a few concepts and take them to our community and have public and private discussions to learn as much as you can as quickly as possible. Once we feel confident with a direction, you’ll be expected to summarize your learnings in a delivery story that is ready to be worked on. Example of a delivery track project: We believe designers shouldn’t be bottlenecks. If our developers depend on you for every single task, then you’ll quickly get bogged down designing and writing specs to support every sprint. Instead, we should work on building a design system that empowers developers to make progress on their own. This will free you up to spend time thinking about and helping shape the future of Hacker Noon. This is a part time position that will require around 15–20 hours/ week. Pay is competitive and there will be opportunities to be promoted to full time. This role reports directly to CPO Dane Lyons .

Calling for Hacker Noon community: We are hiring!

Hi, my name is Pavel. I work at mobile app development company in Russia and more than a year ago I actively immersed into the designing process of voice apps. I took part in several real projects, was the expert of different conferences, met developers of Google Assistant, shared my experience with other VUI designers and after that took a deep thought of how to optimise the designing and testing processes of voice apps. This thought gave me a motivational kick to a long journey through existing tools and to an analysis of their limitation, and, well, led me to the expected conclusion — I leave it until the end of the article. Firstly, about present. Theoretical part Let me tell some words about designing voice apps process for those who have never used such interfaces at all. Good voice app is different from chatbots that there is no compulsion to use specific commands. The user has an opportunity to build light talk with the service similar with the real life conversation. The main tools are voice and text, but if the device has a screen, the app can add visual accompaniment in the form of cards, carousels, lists with the purpose of the best information delivery. For example, let’s have a look at “Pizza order”. Just pretend how many variants of phrases you have to tell the application you want pizza. The user can order some certain pizza, but also he can ask for something with mushrooms and ham. User can ask the application to list all available products and choose the suitable one. Eventually he can just say he is hungry. All these arescenarios for the development of the plot and we should provide for each individual step in each possible way in each scenario of the app. What a mess! And we haven’t order a pizza yet! Design Methodology Regardless of a platform VUI design run through the standart set of steps. You can find detailed guidelines on developers page of , and . Each team builds its processes in a different way. As for me, I highlight the following steps (sometimes, they run not consistently): Google Assistant Amazon Alexa Microsoft Cortana Each persona is a collective image of a representative of a group of app audience. Personas help us to understand better user needs and each of them has a certain set of phrases, based on behavioral patterns. Identify people from the audience. Now we need to decide on what scripts will be implemented in the application. You can not just take and “convert” the graphics app into a voice one. For myself, I derived a simple rule: if it’s impossible to imagine how I pronounce a concrete script with a real person, then we shouldn’t take it to work, because users will definitely have problems with it. Filter scripts. We should strive to make conversation with the app as similar as a regular talk with a living person. For this the user should form the image of the person with whom he communicates. You can do this by inventing a character. We add a name, draw the exterior, skills, brief biography, character and, of course, voice. Create a character. We know who our users are, we know what functionality they want, we know from whose face we speak to users. It’s time to write examples of dialogs between the user and the application for each script. Write examples of dialogues. To take into account all the variants of the course of events, all the steps that will lead the user to a hypothetical “pizza order”, it is worth to visualize all the actions. I avoid confusion by drawing a dialog tree in the form of a flowchart. Building a dialog tree. 6. We want to make the conversation live, so for each replica on the interface side we should have 3+ options. And we want to help developers in speech recognition, so we write several variants of replicas of users. Work with phrases. 7. Are all the branches of the dialogue taken into account, are there no logical dead ends, chopped phrases? For this we need to check our work. I use WoZ testing. Testing. Houston, we have a problem The root of all problems of VUI-designers is a huge mass of information. Scenarious, variants of their passage, trees of dialogues, hundreds of steps even in a small application. All this info has to be stored somewhere, somehow synthesized, checked, tested, passed on to development, shared with the customer, and there are simply no recommendations in the guidelines from the developers of voice assistants of how to choose appropriate tool. After painful and laborious designing my first apps I brought out a specific set of problems: Detailed and intuitive way from point A to point B, the entire labyrinth of confusing user’s movement toward the goal. For such a task the regular white board is not suitable. Just imagine how to write all words and then drag them to the developers. And we still have to agree with the team what common symbols we use on the map. Gosh! Huge map of the dialogue. A lot of time has to be spent not only on posting info, but also on synchronizing edits and changes. You can’t place all variants of phrases on the map, so you have to keep them in the Google sheets or whatever. A huge part of the time is spent on manually synchronizing all available information. Since all actions are performed manually and we are not immune from usual human mistakes and typos, we have to recheck ourselves a hundred times. Routine work. Each time to check the quality of the completed work, you have to collect a transcript of the dialogue manually, constantly switching between a document with the transcript, a dialogue map and a table with phrases. This is a terribly tedious and long process, which completely discourages the desire to control the quality of their work. Ponderous testing. The result of this constant struggle with pains is not only the extended development terms, but also the loss of quality due to inattention, tiredless and, of course, loss of motivation. Thera are some tools which can facilitate this complicated process. Let’s review them. Evaluation criteria To be objective in my analysis I took one and the same part of the real application that I worked on and tried to implement it with the help of the proposed tools. I put all the results into the table and evaluated each set of services according to three basic criteria, estimate them on a 5-point scale: Visibility of dialogue map; simplicity and quality of testing; simplicity of making edits and synchronization. Before you read I and my team are makers of one of the tools below. The main goal of this article is not to promote our tool. The main goal is to fairly tell about the pros and cons of every tool so you could make a decision which tool to use by yourself. In my opinion, every team has their own needs so there are no clear winner or loser. I’ll be happy to discuss in comments if I missed something or made a wrong statement. Happy reading! Whiteboard (Realtimeboard) Realtimeboard Let’s start from the “classic”: building map of dialogues on a white board, more precisely in its digital equivalent — Realtimeboard. Description of a character and examples of dialogues will be stored in and phrases in . Google Docs Google Sheets I suppose that the mechanism of work is very similar to other similar tools — draw.io, liquidchart and so on. Dialog Map Before building a map, you will have to choose your own definitions — it takes a lot of time, but then you get personal framework for your team. When constructing a map, each step is drawn and aligned manually — it is slow, but the map visually becomes clearer. Testing Collection materials process takes a lot of time. It looks like this: take a glimpse into the map, then take the phrase from the table and insert it into the document. No flexibility, solid routine and constant switching between tools. Editing and synchronization It’s easy to edit the map: you can swap the steps, move entire branches and select individual elements in groups. But you have to synchronize the map with the phrases table manually — again the scraping sense of lost data. Summary Realtimeboard gets “four” for the visibility and flexible methodology of designing process. But the testing time is too long and manual synchronization doesn’t make us happy. Dialog Map — 5/5 Editing and synchronization— 0/5 Testing — 0/5 Link: https://realtimeboard.com Tortu Tortu helps you with mapping out your dialogs into diagrams, allows you to store all phrase variants and can build an interactive prototype. For dialogs scripts and persona descriptions we will use Google Docs. Dialog Map The map is constructed from two main blocks — the user step and the interface step. Steps are added and linked conveniently, and also automatically aligned. This saves time. The tool is very flexible and allows you to associate any step with any other, the number of links is not limited. The map can be divided into scenarios. However, auto-alligment periodically plays a cruel joke. With large size of a map auto-alignment does not always work correctly and it is difficult “read” the map. Editing and synchronizing Each step on the map, whether it’s a user step or an interface reaction can contain an unlimited number of phrases. This allows us not to store them separately, so there is no problem with manual synchronization. The information is edited conveniently, internal notes can be attached to the steps. Working with the map and making edits is also convenient, you can change the steps, rename them, change the links, but there is no drag-and-drop, and also the group selection / copying functions. Testing One click builds an interactive prototype in which we select the steps of the user and the interface alternately. You can see the history and undo the actions. The text is visible on the screen, which means we can read the phrases for typos and watch the history. You don’t waste time for collecting materials and whole process is rather simplier. But there is no functionality to test the scripts by voice and even no voice-over for your phrases. Summary The map is visible and easy and convinient in creating and working with. All phrases are inside steps and the re is no porblems with editing and synchronizing. Interactive prototype is built by one click and gives a lot of opportunitis for testing. No drag-and-drop function and the difficulty in reading the map depends on the size of it. No voice-over. Dialog map — 3/5 Editing and synchronizing — 4/5 Testing — 4/5 Link: https://tortu.io Sayspring Maps and phrases are inside Saysprng, info about the character, personas and examples of dialogues are in Google Docs. Dialog map The map is formed step by step: there are notations for user and interface, it can be divided into scripts. At the same time, the map is absolutely linear: transitions are not displayed. It can be done quite quickly and conveniently, but it doesn’t look understandable. Testing The service allows you to test the scripts by voice, but the text analogue is not available, there is no possibility to return back into a couple of steps (you have to start from the beginning), speech recognition is available only for three languages and works poorly (or it’s my accent’s fault, sorry). As a voice prototype — okay, but for testing this mode is useless, because there is no possibility to look at the history of the dialogue, get into the phrases, go back a couple of steps. Still have to collect dialogs in a text file to test them. Fortunately, the collection of dialogues here is facilitated. By clicking on the button the tool itself will show you the possible dialogs. There are many problems and inconveniences (for example, you can not collect two scripts in one file, you can not download the file, only view it in the tool), but we seriously save time on collecting materials. Editing and synchronizing All replicas are assigned to a specific logical step in the map, which saves us from a table with phrases and the need to switch between tools and synchronize their state. This is a huge plus. It is not convient to edit the map by dragging elements only inside one script and without function of grouping steps. Summary Sayspring eliminates the routine work of collecting materials for testing and synchronizing the phrase table with the map, due to the fact that the replicas are fixed after the steps. In a couple of clicks we get an interactive voice prototype. The map is unclear, difficult and inconvenient in design process. There is an interactive prototype, but it works only by voice, which makes it useless for testing, as there is no way to get into the replicas, see the history and the unloading of dialogs is limited. Dialog Map — 0/5 Editing and synchronizing — 3/5 Testing — 3/5 Link: https://sayspring.com Botsociety The tool is fundamentally different in approach. We write a dialogue, and the map is built automatically. Phrases and characters will be stored in Google Docs. Dialog Map On the map, the forks and the connections between the steps are clearly visible. It is interactive: by clicking on the step, the item is opened. There is no division into the script, it leads to a large number of repetitions and a huge confusing flowchart. Testing Testing is carried out in the form of chat, which allows you to get into the replicas, and see the history. However, there is no opportunity to control the process, in fact, we just watch the video, not test. Editing and synchronizing For a step, you can specify only one variant of a phrase, so phrases and a map are stored separately. The problem with synchronization remains. It is quite convenient to make edits to the map, there is drag-and-drop function, but you can not select several elements and make a general action over them. Other There is “build-mode” in the service: you can add variables in to phrases and get access to them through API. Thus, the tool can become a content keeper. And there is Dialogflow integration which is cool. Summary The tool is created rather for rapid prototyping of simple apps and chatbots. For a full-fledged design, in my opinion, it does not fit. Testing does not work, leaving the problem with the collection of materials open. Downloading dialogs is only available in MP4, GIF or AVI format. Dialog map— 2/5 Editing ans synchronizing — 2/5 Testing — 1/5 Link: https://botsociety.io Conclusions The results of the research are quite predictable. Every team has its own processes and definitely there is no the best tool. Every tool has its pros and cons. But I hope that this article will help you to pick the perfect tool for you and your team. It’s clear, I haven’t researched every VUI design tool, I could miss some of them. I will be glad to discuss at comments both the choice of the certain tool and the design process. Thank you for attention 😉 PS. I want to thank Maria Kruglova and Nikita Korneev from mobile-development studio KODE for helping to translate the article into English.

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