Tagoras

What Should You Spend on Mobile Marketing for Your Education Products?

Celisa Steele — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:00:40 +0000

7 percent, give or take, of your overall marketing budget, according to a white paper available from the Mobile Marketing Association.

What’s Driving the Recommendation

Often when it comes to advice, I’m left unsatisfied by platitudes of inactionable unspecificity. Do just enough, and no more. Everybody’s situation is different, so you’ll have to experiment to find out what’s right for you. And so on and so forth.

This 7-percent recommendation is at the other end of the spectrum. And its preciseness got under my skin, made me both skeptical and curious.

The white paper draws on a lot of data to get a bead on the return on investment for various marketing media, including mobile:

The analysis here embraces the tenets of “Impact Based Planning,” and uses software to get an objective benchmark of optimized industry mix. This provides a recommendation based on multiple synthesized data sources—an approach that is increasingly becoming the way savvy marketers’ approach budget allocation….

Obviously, each marketer and each campaign is unique. Our meta-data establishes a benchmark for planning future budgets. But benchmarks are only a reference point. Nonetheless, media agencies and marketers that plan their marketing budget allocations with Impact Based Planning benchmarks and optimization software are consistently better off than those that build plans without spend-to-impact response functions (SIRFs).

The white paper also discusses what might drive an organization’s mobile marketing above or below the recommended 7-percent average. Namely, four factors:

Industry vertical
Marketing objective
Profile of the people the marketer hopes to reach
Marketer’s budget and scope of the budget

Figuring Out Mobile in Your Marketing Mix

While there’s nothing particularly magical about those four factors (fairly standard marketing fare), I did appreciate the discussion of the first two—industry vertical and marketing objective—as they relate to mobile marketing.

Source: Business Audience Marketing (http://blog.bizo.com)

“Higher involvement” verticals like automotive and financial services tend to justify a higher-than-average spend on mobile marketing while “lower involvement” verticals like consumer packaged goods and entertainment tend to warrant a lower-than-average spend.

Mobile marketing tends to be more effective on “lower funnel” marketing objectives, like intent to purchase, than on “higher funnel” objectives like awareness.

These two points alone can be useful tools to help you think through your mobile marketing spend.

I’d argue associations as a whole are a “higher involvement” vertical. You might want to lay your association’s particular industry focus over top to see if that reinforces the “higher involvement” designation or perhaps averages out to a more mid-range involvement.

Consider too the type of educational product you’re considering for mobile marketing—is it a “higher involvement” product, perhaps a facilitated multiweek course or mentorship program, or a “lower involvement” product, perhaps a short self-paced course aimed at getting the learner some continuing education credit?

For marketing objective, it’s useful to know that “lower funnel” activities work better with mobile—so what mobile marketing dollars you spend for your education business are likely better geared to actual purchases or referrals than general awareness campaigns.

Recourse to a Platitude

In the end, the platitudes are true, if not particularly helpful—everybody’s situation is different, so you’ll have to experiment to find out what’s right for you. It may turn out that the 7-percent range is not right for your organization’s spend on mobile marketing for its education business. But having the white paper’s bigger-picture framework and findings to reference may well help you figure out what is right.

Celisa

P.S.

For more on mobile marketing, register for our free July 18 Webinar on “How Mobile Technology Impacts Your Organization’s Learning and Marketing of Learning.” Thanks to Meridian Knowledge Solutions for sponsoring the Webinar.

Do You Use Speakers?

Celisa Steele — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:46:36 +0000

If you use speakers at a meeting that attracts 500 or more attendees, we’d be truly grateful if you’d take 10 minutes to complete a survey on professional and industry speakers we just launched in collaboration with Velvet Chainsaw.

This is a reprise of a research we did two years ago on how organizations are using professional and industry speakers at their meetings (i.e., conferences and other events), including how they select them, what they expect from them, and how educational impact is measured. And the outcome of the survey will be a new free report that can organizations help their improve face-to-face meetings.

The Previous Speaker Report

The Speaker Report we released in December 2011 identified trends and provided insight on the use of professional and industry speakers at major conferences. The previous report is available for free—check it out, if you haven’t already.

Like our friends at Velvet Chainsaw, we believe that education can be a key differentiator for associations. But are the processes for identifying and coaching the speakers who are the lifeblood of many meetings evolving as they should be to make the education a compelling offering?

We want to find out—and we need your help.

How You Can Help

If your organization holds a meeting that attracts 500 or more attendees at which you use industry speakers of if your organization spends $5,000 or more annually on professional speakers, please complete this survey.
Spread the word, and encourage your colleagues to respond. Any sharing with your network will help improve the quality and helpfulness of the output.

What’s in It for You

The data collected will be aggregated, interpreted, and shared as a free resource to help improve face-to-face meetings.
Individuals who contribute to the research will receive advance notice of the availability of the aggregate data.
Participants get the chance to win one of five $50 gift cards.
You will help identify critical trends.

We would be truly grateful if you or the appropriate person in your organization would complete this survey (we’re seeking only one response per organization).

Celisa

P.S.

If you happen to be free at 1 pm today (June 13), check out our free Webinar “Clearing Up the Cloud: What It Is—and How It Impacts Your Learning”. Actually, even if you aren’t free at 1 pm today, you can still register for the Webinar as folks who sign up will be sent a link to a recording of the session to watch according to their own schedule. Thanks to Meridian Knowledge Solutions for sponsoring the Webinar.

Minimum Viable Products and the Power of Validated Learning

Celisa Steele — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:00:06 +0000

A few weeks ago, I mentioned the idea of minimum viable product in a post on market assessment called “Are You Testing Like You Should?”

Today I wanted to provide more detail about what a minimum viable product is—and how you can use it in your association’s education business.

What a Minimum Viable Product Is

Eric Ries, of Lean Startup fame, popularized the term minimum viable product, seeing it as a way to bridge the extreme of the build-it-right approach and the release-early-release-often extreme.

Organizations tend to use the build-it-right approach when they think they only have one chance to get it right (whatever “it” is—Web site or widget or educational product), and so they withhold it until it’s as perfect as they can make it. The dangers to this approach are are at least twofold:

Maybe the organizations are wrong about only having one shot to get it right. Maybe their market is more forgiving and would welcome the chance to see the “it” earlier. Maybe they’re losing their market to competitors while they’re polishing the product behind closed doors.
Even if the organization does have only one shot, without market input until the end, there’s no guarantee that the product, no matter how perfect, is going to be needed or wanted.

The dangers of the release-early-release-often approach are the “it” may be buggy and the “it” may be too dependent on user feedback. Listening to the market isn’t so great if the market doesn’t know what it wants or needs—or if the organization listening can’t get a clear bead on what the market is saying (e.g., every person in the focus group says she wants something different from the next potential customer).

The minimum viable product approach tries to minimize the dangers of both extremes and blend the best of the two approaches by building a viable product (beyond release-early-release-often phase) but doing it minimally (not to the point of build-it-right perfection).

The Importance of Validated Learning

Validated learning involves testing an initial idea (e.g., our members would welcome more education products on topic X) and using metrics to confirm or disprove the accuracy of the initial idea. Combined with a minimum viable product, validated learning provides invaluable information for building and growing your education business.

You can, and should, assess your market—ask your members and other customers what educational products they would like to buy. But there’s often a saying-doing gap. What members say they want, they don’t always use.

With a minimum viable product, you aren’t asking your customers to tell you if they would sign up for a course like Y or Z—you’re asking them to actually sign up for course Y or Z.

How You Might Use Minimum Viable Products in Your Education Business

If you’re already using the minimum viable product approach for some of of your education products, I’d love to hear your comments on what you’re doing and the results.

If you’re not yet using the minimum viable product approach, are there opportunities to apply it to your development of new education offerings?

Here are some potential applications. Spark any ideas?

Build out the first month’s worth of content for a six-month course.
Rather than investing in hotel and place-based logistics, use WebEx or GoToMeeting to try out a new conference to gauge demand.
Cobble together free or cheap tools (YouTube, Google Drive, Skype, etc.) to offer a new education program (like a mentorship program for young professionals in your field) rather doing intense integration or white labeling of platforms upfront.

The power of validated learning is that you get feedback before you go too far down any particular path. If what you learn validates your initial idea, then you can proceed to add more features—or determine you really don’t need particular features. Maybe that new conference is just fine a virtual event.

P.S.

Cloud-based tools are often a natural fit for minimum viable products. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our Webinar “Clearing Up the Cloud: What It Is—and How It Impacts Your Learning” on Thursday, June 13. Thanks to Meridian Knowledge Solutions for sponsoring the Webinar.

Using the Cloud to Assess the Market for Your Educational Products

Celisa Steele — Wed, 29 May 2013 12:52:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I asked “Are You Testing Like You Should?” I was referring to market assessment—a willingness to test our assumptions rather than running with them.

The cloud in all its radiant, if amorphous glory, is a powerful enabler of the kind of market testing I advocate.

Your Pal, the Cloud

You’ve almost certainly heard about the cloud (perhaps ad nauseum), but have you thought about how you can leverage it for your education business?

I hadn’t really given it much thought until recently—the cloud itself is so amorphous that it can be hard to recognize, even when it’s integral to what we’re doing.

But when I do stop to think about the cloud, I see tremendous possibilities for the full cycle of educational products, from the initial analysis to the post-learning evaluation.

As just one example, think about the data the cloud makes available for market research and assessment. Thanks to the cloud, you can mine information about your market from multiple sources like social networks (Twitter and Facebook), blogs, search engine results, Google Adwords, and Google Analytics.

These are powerful—and relatively new ways—to assess the need and demand for your products.

A Cloud by Any Other Name…

It doesn’t really matter, in my book, whether you recognize it as cloud or just glom on to the myriad cloud-powered tools that make old tasks easier and enable you to do new things.

The value is not in naming the trend but in recognizing the tremendous potential—and applying it.

Celisa

P.S.

If you’re interested in learning other ways the cloud can be harnessed to improve your education business, join us on Thursday, June 13, for our free Webinar on the cloud and how it impacts your educational programing. Our thanks to Meridian Knowledge Solutions for sponsoring the Webinar.

Why wouldn’t you?

Jeff Cobb — Tue, 28 May 2013 12:11:37 +0000

We just released the latest version of the Leading Learning newsletter. In case you are not familiar with it, this is a monthly e-mail that highlights a variety of free resources related to being in the business of continuing education and professional development. These include both resources we have developed here at Tagoras as well as valuable finds out on the Web. Hundreds of association learning leaders subscribe to it, and frankly – here’s the hard sell – you should to.

Really, why wouldn’t you? It’s free, chock full of value, and if you decide you disagree with that previous point, you can easily unsubscribe at any time.

But wait! There’s more! When you subscribe you also get some great freebies:

The full Association Learning + Technology: State of the Sector report
Until now, this was $149 in our research catalog. Now it’s free just for signing up. Why? We are planning a new version soon (which will also be free) and would like to be able to contact you about participating in the survey for it. Of course, we have no way of twisting your arm and making you participate in the survey – but, to be upfront about it, that’s why we want your e-mail address.
Chapter 1 from Jeff’s new book Leading the Learning Revolution: The Expert’s Guide to Capitalizing on the Exploding Lifelong Education Market
You can read the reviews to get a sense for the value readers are finding in this book.
~~A set of Ginzu steak knives~~
Okay, not really.

So, use the simple form below to sign up. You will automatically get the issue we released today. Why wouldn’t you?

7 Steps in Selecting a Learning Management System Infographic

Celisa Steele — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:00:36 +0000

How do you select a learning management system? Exactly how you examine an alligator’s teeth—very carefully. (That was one of my favorite jokes as a kid; some things stick with you.)

Joking aside, that care manifests itself in 7 steps, and we have an infographic to help you keep them in mind.

The 7-Step Process for Selecting a Learning Management System (LMS)

Jeff and I together have more than 30 years experience in the world of education and technology, and the majority of that time has been spent working in the association world. We’ve designed, built, sold, and implemented learning management systems.

Currently we work primarily with organizations around setting the strategy for their education programs and then helping them select technology. So we’ve been involved in a great many LMS selection processes.

We use a 7-step LMS selection process whenever we’re working with clients to select a learning management system.

And now we have an infographic of the 7 steps that can serve as a crib sheet if you’re going through the LMS selction process. A 4-MB PDF suitable for framing (well, printing, at least), the infographic provides the 7 steps and a synopsis of each.

More LMS Selection Resources

We recently did a Webinar on the 7-step LMS selection process, thanks to the sponsorship of Meridian Knowledge Solutions.

We’ll be offering another Webinar on the LMS selection process in August. To make sure you know about that free Webinar and others, sign up for Leading Learning, the e-newsletter and community for professionals in the business of continuing education and professional development.

In the meantime, check out our free resources for LMS selection.

Celisa

P.S.

Our next free Webinar Clearing Up the Cloud: What It Is—and How It Impacts Your Learning will be held Thursday, June 13. Thanks to Meridian for sponsoring this Webinar as well.

Social Learning for the Education Department

Guest Writer — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:07:50 +0000

We’re happy to announce the first guest post on the Tagoras blog and thrilled that it comes from Maddie Grant of SocialFish. Enjoy! – Jeff

Why do busy professionals turn to social media? For professional development, of course. Social tools make it possible for you to increase participation in your learning programs, actively engage learners, and make your learning programs more effective. Your job will be more rewarding when you transition your learners from passively listening to actively engaging through social channels you intentionally design as part of the learning experience.

But having social tools is just the start: you have to know how to apply them to instructional design. That’s where your expertise in learning and education is invaluable. You now have the tools to apply the principles of adult learning to your programs–whether face-to-face or online. Here are some tips for weaving social into your learning design – and vice-versa:

1. Make social a part of the instructional design of your programs. For adult learners, passive listening is not the most effective teaching method. Luckily, social tools give you the chance to design more engaging, effective programs.

Get creative. You can use public social networks or the built-in chat feature of your online learning platform. And you can plan interaction before, during, and/or immediately following the formal presentation of content. For example:

Plan collaborative activities using tools your learners are comfortable using. Ask your learners how they prefer to interact, whether through the built-in chat feature or using a Twitter hashtag, for example.
Schedule 5-minute chat-back periods into your programs. Ask thought provoking questions that compel participants to share.
Invite registrants to comment on what they hope to learn. This is one of many simple ideas to get registrants engaged with one another days before the program. You might choose to use your private online community to host the pre-program interaction.
Continue the Q&A after the program. You can schedule an extra 15 minutes of discussion-based Q&A with your expert in your private online community immediately following the program as a way to carry the learning forward.

Pair your presenters with experienced facilitators. If you work with subject matter experts who are long on content, but short on engagement, pair them with a partner who can help them segment their content and engage the audience between segments. Since some presenters might mistake participant engagement with distracting side conversation, be sure to brief first-time presenters on what to expect from audience members as they’re presenting.

Try alternative formats, and give credit for participation. Try a series of programs that are entirely chat- or discussion-based. Invite a group of expert practitioners to get the conversation rolling and engage the entire group. You might host the discussion on Twitter, a Facebook Group, or your private online community–whatever works best for your learners. If continuing education credit is important for your learners, find a way to offer it for these alternative formats as well.

2. Nurture informal learning channels. You spend most of your time delivering formal education programs, as you should. But for your learners, informal learning channels are just as important. By nurturing those channels and contributing resources there, you can connect with folks who value learning. When they’re ready to spend their training dollars, they’ll turn to you.

Promote a Twitter hashtag for your learners to use. Work with your social media team to determine the best hashtag. If you’re worried there won’t be much activity at first, use one hashtag for all of your learning programs, or any hashtag your community already uses. Make sure someone monitors the Twitter chatter just before, during, and after formal programs.

Connect the dots between formal and informal channels. This is especially important if you have a private online community or listserv, but also if you have active groups on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.

Preview upcoming formal programs in related informal channels. Don’t think of this as promotion–think of it as sharing what you’re working on. For example, you might ask the speaker to reach out to the group with a pertinent question, or you might pull a particularly interesting slide from the presentation and ask for comments on it.
Point participants in formal programs back to related informal channels. Suggest specific, recent discussions that participants can review and even join in. Don’t worry if the discussion is members-only–just be clear about who can access what.
Reimagine content from your formal learning channels to feed informal channels. During every formal program, look for a nugget (or a pearl!) that lends itself to posting in social spaces. It could be a brief audio clip, a short video snippet, a slide or group of slides, and even great questions or dialogue between participants.
Surface archived programs related to recent discussions. No one knows your catalog of archived programs better than you. When a discussion heats up, chime in to recommend related content from your archives–or better yet, have your presenters chime in.

It’s never too late to start applying social media to education and learning. You may already be doing some of this. And with a little planning and collaboration with your colleagues, you can use social to drive better results for your participants, and greater member engagement for your entire organization.

This post is by Maddie Grant, CAE, web strategist, association practice – ICF Ironworks and lead editor of SocialFish social media blog for associations and nonprofits.

If you are interested in social learning, you may also be interested in:

Are the Next 50 Years Getting Longer?

Celisa Steele — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:00:48 +0000

The issue of college education—is it still relevant? is it worth the financial investment? what are the alternatives?—has cropped up on on my radar several times of late.

Last Tuesday the Brookings Institution issued the report Should Everyone Go to College? (Spoiler alert: The answer to the report title’s question is no.)

Last Wednesday Diane Rehm devoted an hour to “Who Benefits From College And Why.”

And last Thursday The Daily Show‘s Aasif Mandvi ran a Scared Straight-inspired session with students on the verge of ruining their lives. By going to college. (The five-minute segment is embedded below—if you need a laugh, take the time to watch it.)

The debate covered by these shows and and this report seems particularly important to those in the business of professional development and lifelong learning, like associations.

The Implications for Associations

I see both threats and opportunities for associations.

The main threat is carrying on as you have on the past. Assuming what’s worked for your education business will continue to work seems a dangerous position in today’s world where we both have unemployed college graduates and a dearth of qualified candidates in some fields.

The opportunities have to do with what associations might do to help fill the gap that’s being created as the value of college education erodes. (And looking at opportunities here dovetails nicely with Jeff’s series of posts on Blue Ocean Strategy.)

Associations already have a great opportunity to play a formative role in the “other 50 years.”

Think what else associations might do if that 50 years begins to stretch back and start earlier, as higher ed becomes less de rigueur and more dispensable.

Here are a few things to consider:

Is your association prepared to attract future employees in the new college-degree-optional world that seems to be emerging? Should a college degree be listed as a requirement for a new hire, or are there other ways to assess candidates’ readiness?
If you offer a certification, does it make sense to have a college degree as a prerequisite? Could something else, like prior work experience, substitute?
How can your association contribute to the quality and viability of your field in a world where college degrees are of questionable value? How can you help ensure those working in the field are well equipped to do their job? Can you offer apprenticeships that become an alternative to, or supplement for, college?

What other implications do you see? What other questions does your organization need to consider?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Celisa

P.S. Here’s “Stay Out of School,” Aasif Mandvi’s Daily Show segment I mentioned above—enjoy.

Are You Testing Like You Should?

Celisa Steele — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:00:00 +0000

Or maybe I should ask, “What Do You Really Know About Your Education Market?”

The problem is I don’t know which question I should ask—unless I test which blog post title is most effective.

When we think about learning and education, testing inevitably comes up. Should we offer a pre-test and a post-test? How many self-checks?

But some folks in the education business forget they have to think about the testing that needs to happen beyond any assessments grounded in the content.

I’m talking about market testing.

A Testing Lesson from Content Marketers

Good content marketers know the importance of testing. If they’re working on an e-mail campaign, they split-test different headlines to figure out which gets the best open rates.

They work hard to come up with good headlines they think will work. But they don’t assume they know—they test their assumptions and base decisions on their audience’s behavior.

For those in the education business, there’s the obvious parallel to be drawn to the marketing of educational products. Whether you have a marketing team to lean on or have to figure it out on your own, testing which titles, which descriptions, which catalog layouts get the best results (sales, enrollments, whatever metrics are important to you) is critical.

If you’ve taken the time to build a good product, don’t skimp when taking it to market—or it may not matter how good the product is.

Testing as Complement to the Beta Mentality

The other lesson to learn may be less obvious: Remember there’s testing to be done even as you’re developing your educational products.

At the end of last Thursday’s post, I touched briefly on the idea of beta mentality. Don’t aim for perfection (it’s unattainable anyway). Instead, develop a minimum viable product, and take that to your market to see the response.

Maybe you got it exactly right. If so, you can invest in building out the product more fully, knowing there’s a market for it.

Maybe you got it totally wrong. In which case, you can scrap the product without the anguish of having wasted a ton of time and resources.

And maybe you got it somewhere in between, and what you learn from the market feedback can help you improve, or remove, the rickety-rackety parts and forefront the shiny and useful.

You can even go so far as to test multiple minimum viable products to see which shows the strongest. You could offer a Webinar on a topic and a miniseries of podcasts on the same topic to see which format flies.

Have the Courage of Your Testing Conviction

While few would argue testing is bad, it’s not done as much as it should be—I’ve heard it compared to flossing.

Maybe cognitive biases, like groupthink, hold us back (“But we’ve also promoted our education this way…”), or maybe it’s the simple fact that testing takes time and planning. Whichever the case, I think it’s worth cutting through our biases to see what testing can give in the long term. So here’s to having the courage of the testing conviction.

Celisa

P.S. Tomorrow we’re offering a free Webinar (thanks to the sponsorship of Meridian Knowledge Solutions) on Selecting a Learning Management System: Picking the Right Technology for Your Association’s Vision. If you’re free at 1 pm Eastern, fate might be telling you something.

Tin Can API 1.0: Good News, Good Lesson

Celisa Steele — Wed, 01 May 2013 11:00:12 +0000

This past Friday version 1.0 of the Tin Can API was released, as promised. As I noted in the previous blog post “What the Experience API Is—and Why You Should Care,” I didn’t expect the learning landscape to change overnight, and it didn’t. But the release of version 1.0 is an important marker on the way to a new vision for technology-enabled learning.

Mike Rustici, president of Rustici Software (the developers of the API), summed up the nature of the new vision in his quote for the press release around the release of version 1.0

We spent the past decade surrounded by e-learning geeks. We think we’ll spend the next decade surrounded by K-12, teachers, hackers, universities, government, education technology, MOOCs, games, and an array of real-world use cases we can’t even imagine yet. These are especially exciting times for anyone who ever heard the acronyms SCORM or AICC.

Mike Rustici’s comments struck me as an apt complement to what Jeff describes as the “other 50 years” in his book Leading the Learning Revolution.

Education has traditionally meant K-12 and higher ed—and reasonably accurately so for many years. But we’re living longer, switching jobs and careers more, and struggling to keep up with the increasingly fast pace of change. We can’t afford to assume that education is something that we ever finish. We have to be thinking about how we keep learning (and providing learning) for the other 50 years of life that, statistically speaking, we have coming to us after we finish our formal education.

Tin Can’s inclusive nature looks to be a good fit for the future, where technology-enabled learning isn’t just for “e-learning geeks” but for anyone serious about learning.

Good Product Development and Launch Basics

As I was following the release of version 1.0 of the Tin Can API, I found myself thinking Rustici Software did a nice job with the basic tenets of good product development and launch—tenets that apply as well to learning products as they do to software.

Listen to your market.This one is less about what Rustici Software did around last Friday’s launch, and more about the important groundwork they laid before diving into development—they convened a lot of meetings with various stakeholders and gathered input about what the new API should do. This is classic listening to your market and arguably the most important thing you can do before building a product.
Embrace a beta mentality.Rustici Software didn’t wait until they had version 1.0 of the API ready to release something—they released lower versions earlier. This let them gather feedback to finetune and add to the API.
Deliver what you promise.Rustici Software said version 1.0 would come out on April 26, and it did. It may seem a small thing, but launching on time sends the message you’re attentive and trustworthy. Those are traits I like in those I choose to work with and learn from.
Tie the product to other offerings, free and paid.Not only did the company roll out version 1.0 on time, but Rustici Software also made sure their other products were version 1.0-ready, including paid products like SCORM Cloud and free offerings like a free sandbox and Javascript open source library. Something I see overlooked too often when an organization releases a new learning offering is making the connections for potential learners about how the new offering relates to other products and making it easy for those potential learners to somehow get a little taste of the latest and greatest.

So kudos to Rustici Software for bringing us version 1.0 of the Tin Can API and for providing an example of a good product development and launch practices.

Celisa

P.S. Next Thursday, we’re offering a free Webinar (thanks to the sponsorship of Meridian Knowledge Solutions) on Selecting a Learning Management System: Picking the Right Technology for Your Association’s Vision. I hope you’ll join us!