The purpose and hope of Soul of a Citizen today is to gather together civic and faith leaders in our dominant culture of society and how we have separation of church and state and how it's difficult to talk about religion and politics at the Thanksgiving table. How can we come together as faith leaders and civic leaders utilizing the best resources that we have available to us and make a greater community striving toward the greater good and the common good. That's the conversations that we're having today, that we're starting today. We have a history in San Antonio that goes back to like probably long before the Civil Rights Movement but even during the Civil Rights Movement there weren't riots in San Antonio because there are faith leaders and community leaders who said, that's not happening here. We have a history of, you know, when gangs and gang violence was at its highest peak that we brought leadership together across faith lines and across civic lines to do something different. And so we start again today at Soul of a Citizen and asking those questions can faith relations be a civic practice and can civic relations be a faith practice? Coming from an environment where our religion or spiritual growth has always been very, very important I think in looking at it and still observing in a public office I think my conclusion about behavior in that realm is that religion can be a set of rituals that speak from a certain dedication of values. And so I feel like what I need to bring into public office is that set of values. I don't need to bring in a set of rituals. I don't need to bring in die-hard, you know, regulations and die-hard beliefs but to bring those values. I remember the first time when I was all shocked and upset that when I was running for office and somebody just lied about things and I was just kind of entertained and amazed and then my friends were saying, oh well Patty, that's politics. And I said, no, that's lying. And so it disturbs me every time somebody does something ugly, something bad in politics and people say that's politics. That was supposed to be about making good decisions, right, for people's lives, for society's lives. So we have to stop identifying, lying and cheating and stealing with politics. But I just start off there that I think that it's the values that we have to intermingle. Why would we leave behind, why would we enter civic engagement, why would we enter a public office and leave behind a commitment to honesty, a commitment to love, a commitment to understanding? I guess when you said that I had a particular question when you found yourself at this place and you said no, this person is lying. Sometimes we've seen it in public discourse where people are speaking out out of anger and sometimes out of anger comes a fear. And so part of it is sometimes, although it takes time to enter into dialogue, is how do we find moments where we can approach those who are coming at us, right? To say, what is it that you fear the most? What is it that causes you to behave in this manner? I remember specifically one time going to public forum when the city was considering expanding our nuclear energy plants. And I was at a town hall meeting and I had questions about process that I went up and asked those sitting up CPS and all those. Because I had questions and concerns. It was after everything had happened in Japan and I was sincerely concerned. I had questions about how we were going to take care of the waste. And I remember walking towards the back and this gentleman approached me just attacked me verbally and everything. And I had to stop and say, what is it that I said that angered you so much? And he didn't know how to answer that. But until I think we can start to engage in some kind of dialogue about what is it, is it the fear and what is that fear? Because that's where it stems from. And that's how we start to begin to have a conversation to move forward, I think in a productive manner. I'll say judging by the fact that everybody raised their hands when asked if they're a person of faith tells me that the answer has to be yes. We just have to figure out how to get there. And I think for me it's very helpful to think about the differences between politics and civics, which is kind of your distinguishing between the two because I bristle. In fact, when I was campaigning one of the first things I would tell people was I'm not a politician. I'm here to be a public servant. And I think there's a difference there for people that we have to be clear about. The other part is that I think faith is a deeply personal thing and there is a difference between faith and organized religion in the same sort of way. I think about politics as a way of separating people from the camps. Civics is a way of bringing us all together under a cause, under a community. Same way that faith is a deeply personal thing, your connection with your creator is something that's different for me than going to church on Sunday. I think that if we understand that what we're civics, if we're going to make it work, is about bringing more people into the tent, figuring out how we can involve more people and figure out how we can get to where we want to go as a community as opposed to individual camps of people, I think for me that's a step towards the answer. I started doing something and she said the institute called the Institute of Interfaith Dialogue but we changed the name to Dialogue Institute. There's a basic reason behind that. When you say the interfaith, you put a particular group of people in one site and there's a question. Is there another person that's not a faith person? But what's going to happen? If it's a city and we need the engagement of all citizens, then it needs to be a common name that welcomes everyone. Interfaith, maybe it's not a problem for San Antonio but a problem for some part of the world, and when you change the name from interfaith to the dialogue, some people they welcome you because it might come from the background, from the environment that they didn't raise in a faith family or they don't believe that it works. But honestly, everyone has a value.  And when it comes to our city or to our life, we need to look at which value is shaping our life. If it's our city, let's look at... Do you have a technology for our city? The way that we build our buildings, the way that we build our neighborhoods. What's leading us? Our faith, our humanitarian value or the full legend that is behind of our mind? There's a common belief for the politicians in all around the world. It's a question mark. And honestly, if they have a value, is it the faith value or the international value, the humanitarian value, then it comes to, as the councilman mentioned, it comes not to be a politician, it comes to be a civic servant for the city. All good points. And Patty, I'd say to you that I respect you very much, but politics doesn't have the corner on the market, I'm lying. It goes on other places. It goes on business and neighborhoods and all that. In my business career, I felt like, and I like what you said about values, it's not about wearing your religion on your sleeve, but sometimes it is, but it's about having, like the councilman said, it's a deeply personal belief that has an effect on the way you live and work. And what I've found is people in the business world that have that deep personal fundamental value system, whether their religion is something I understand or not, they have more balance in their life, I think. And so I think about that with civic engagement. If there is more of that, we have more balance in our civic engagement in our city. And I'm just excited to go to work for an organization that is faith-based. I don't think it's worn in the sleeve all the time, but I've talked to one employee there who was in very organized religion and that person has told me this has been a satisfying part of my career and that's helping people, and I think it's deeply seated in that value system of faith. I'd like to add on to the theme of the personal and how difficult it is to enter into dialogue because it is so personal, the aspect of faith, how it relates to our identity. For me, I grew up sick in San Antonio and I remember shying away always going to great lengths to avoid being in conversation with people where I would reveal that. Or feeling shameful or embarrassed of friends meeting my parents and seeing that my dad wore a turban, and that was actually before 9-11. Then after 9-11, it radically changed the way that my family practiced our faith. My dad removed his turban and cut his hair to be a very experienced that many folks who were turban in the United States experienced after 9-11. So just to drive home the point of how personal it is, I think this aspect of identity can bring us joy and it can also bring us pain and that's what makes it so hard to talk about. For me, it wasn't until I went to college and my critical consciousness formed and I started to understand how identities affect our lived experiences that I then was able to take control of that part of my identity, be proud of it and celebrate it and even go as far as then to say what responsibility does my faith give me, what values does my faith tell me how I can contribute to having an inclusive community, not only for people of the Sikh faith and tradition but other religious communities, other identities that experience discrimination or biases or prejudices and that's then how it informs or how it defines my public service. I appreciate being in the room with such a distinguished group of people. I know a lot of you through the years have done a great deal to work on inner faith yourselves. I would stand right by Patty which she so eloquently expressed about separation of church and state. I think it's separated for a reason to give strength to each. My concern is that there are people of faith and I'm not sure a lot of them are in this room who feel squelch that they can't speak about it in the public square and I think we're going to have to figure out how to talk to them to bring everybody in so people feel safe but we can protect separation of church and state. Thank you Nelson for joining us. We've just basically been responding to the question that Anne put before us regarding the integration of politics and church and civic service, religion. If you'd like to make an e-commerce answer. First of all I think it's extremely important to go in the right way. I don't like anybody taking their faith in telling me that it has to be that way in no other way and we see that in the political spectrum today where there's Ted Cruz and where there's Trump or whoever. It's great to have faith, great to expose your own but not make everybody feel uncomfortable if they don't agree with the faith that you have. We all have faith in some way because religion stands for faith I'm certainly different but I think it's extremely important to have that working condition. I'll give you two or three examples. When I was mayor this city was exploding with violence. The highest murder rate ever in the early 1990s. Gang shootings. It was a faith community that came together that created an atmosphere of taking young people and giving them other choices to do and I worked with every religious group there was in town to be able to do that. We shut down our clubs on the river that were strip clubs. We opposed gambling coming to San Antonio. We did a lot of good things collectively to get political system and faith. Same thing I guess you've got to point to cops metro is a good example. Catholic faiths but they're not telling me what I have to believe in in terms of my faith but they're telling me what I need to believe in in terms of community. I think that was great and we still have a great working relationship after 25, 25 years or so. We're going to have a big conference in the fall of this year led by faith dealing with mental health issues and how can churches be more proactive in doing that. So the relationship and the coming together is very, very important because it's done in the right way and I think most religious groups do that in the right way but there's some candidates that I just don't like the idea of somebody completely telling me that I've got to believe in a certain way or that that's the way it's going to be and every other Christian is a bad person. And so on that point so with the dialogue when we go back to dialogue is certainly trying not to so much talk about our different faiths and the differences that exist but how do we go about having conversations and dialogue about our shared interests in humanity? How do we address the needs of the most vulnerable in our communities and include them, right? But how do we also really talk about what are the shared interests that we all have because I think collectively we all want a better San Antonio a better, a stronger San Antonio a San Antonio that brings people to the table and so with that our hope or the hope is that that when we are sitting at the table when we are convening groups and making decisions that my hope is that we would talk about the changes that we want to make for the common good but also look at who's at the table making those decisions but most importantly who is not and I think that's very, very critical who is not at the table when we're looking to pass policies or we're looking to pass laws, policies that are affecting different groups in our community I think it's important to ask ourselves those questions I'll respond to that and you mentioned COPS Metro and Jorge's here I've had a relationship with them it's been very enjoyable for a long time and there's faith at the heart of that it's not just Catholics I mean there's some Methodists there too Jorge and others but I know that at the root of you know it's that value that is there and they do just what you are saying and they are the voice for those who would otherwise have a voice and I think they're a very important component of our community and faith is in that somewhere Kiran should bring a really important issue to the table the identity the question is how you are going to describe yourself how many identities do you have do you have just one identity that relates to your faith or do you have one identity that relates to your nation your color and your beliefs each of us has many identities and I guess the most important thing which one is dominant in whatever you do for the community if your faith is dominant then you are going to act that way if your race is then you are going to discriminate some people because you cannot bring a common ground for all of them now we have to make the distinction between our identities and either being a father or being a faith leader or being a politician that doesn't matter all have to have a balance and when you act as a public servant in a city you don't have to add right to make a distinction between the different faith people we have different organizations like happy for hope or food bank they do an amazing job but when you look at who they are serving they don't look at the race the color, the faith they serve to all people who are in need and we have to be careful about our identity and which one is dominant the conversation about identity is fascinating and I don't know where I heard this but I was told that America is unique in the world with regard to how we express identity in terms of the hyphen we have Mexican Americans we have African Americans we have Italian Americans Jewish Americans everything hyphenated American and that's been the emphasis on American that's where we come together as a country but you talk about the political dialogue that's happening now it's an attempt to reverse that you ask what's the priority well, it's this first country but it's the emphasis on how do we create the visions among these Americans so that we know who is really speaking for me this comment about this is my religion if you're with me you're with me, you're with my religion if you're not, then you're not even an American and that's the part that I think is really destructive and we really have to be wary of especially in a local community like San Antonio to keep that away because we have done, we've expressed that hyphen so very well in San Antonio and our history I wanted to comment on something you said earlier, Monica regarding the fear and having a reflex that says what are you afraid of I think that's an important reflex because the delivery of it would be cautious as well but it's like getting to that root of what is it that's separating us and usually somewhere in there it's that we don't understand each other or there's an ignorance on my part about what your background is or how you came to the conclusion of what you're doing and getting to that I think it's very important and it again it affects where our common ground is and if we don't ask that question it gets in the way of us understanding our common ground and perhaps we're operating out of the same value but seeing it in a different light and if I can understand how it is that you're seeing it maybe I can relay my fears of whatever it is and I think also your statement about who's at the table is very, very important I think of when I was in college and this priest asked us what does it mean to feed the hungry and here we are very middle class students living on campus in the dorms and one of them says well I think it means if somebody wants a second dessert we should get up and go get it for them and that didn't really sit with me I didn't think that's what Jesus was talking about it but there you know who was at the table it wasn't the people of poverty that were one block away and when we're making decisions in the city thank God that cops is there and yet there's so many people who aren't and are you do you bring to the table in politics or civic engagement that idea of inclusiveness if that's one of your values to be inclusive are you looking broad enough and if you're in some kind of a cocoon like we were on the college campus are you aware of that because you know people who live on the north side have no reason to drive down El Vida street or Dorion and see the terrible conditions of that housing but they may be people who operate out of very strong values about helping people who are poor but if they don't see it if it's out of their vision you know so how do we get ourselves to be conscious of asking questions related to inclusiveness when it comes to making political decisions and how do we bring those again those values that are at the root of perhaps why somebody ran for public office or why they're involved with their church you know if we get to that value we can I think unite on some of the actions it might actually be a good time to move and expand the conversation sounds like a natural cause how about when Judy was I didn't see I was just going to add that my national group started a civility institute firstly I think so that we Jews could learn how to speak to each other civilly but also so that for our country and to several of their workshops and there are actual tools that people can learn and that's something that we could share to get people to learn to listen and talk to each other a perfect segue it's a really strong word that most of us we have to learn listen and learn just basic it's in our knowledge but we don't use it listen and learn let the other side speak what they want to say and respect what what they say and learn from them I guess it's all thank you so I think what we're going to do is expand the conversation because I also saw some folks who were like wanting to raise their hand and participate which means they're ready so what we're going to do for another half hour is that I'm going to invite the entire room to be in conversation and to turn to each other in groups of like three no more than four and I'm going to encourage you as leaders and as adults maybe being groups of people you've never met before there's something but we might be able to listen and learn things from people we don't know you know we like to as humans kind of stick with the folks that we know and that's real affirming and comfortable but anyway for about a half hour to turn to other people and talk continue the conversation just as if because you were in the room and I know Ali was over here he was one of those raising his hand so he's ready to talk right so we're going to do that for about 30 minutes and we also want to invite those small groups if you have a thought or a question we're going to come and bring you some index cards but a thought of conversation a question of conversation that kind of comes out of your group we'll collect those and then we're going to come back again in a closing circle and we're going to kind of continue from those if that makes sense I do want to take a moment to recognize the architect because she's going to go to work I hope look at her but this is my daughter Rachel and she helped create this beautiful room that you're in and so I'm very proud of my legacy standing over there because she believes in San Antonio and that's why she does the storage of architecture anyway so I invite you to do that if you don't know where the restrooms are because this might be something someone needs they're out the door here and immediately to the left and there's water and coffee and pastries still but we're not really taking a break we're turning to each other in threes or fours and continuing the conversation alright are we clear great okay if we can take a seat we can take a seat our closing circle will again be our convening circle again what we're just trying to do here is to continue to model leadership and so I'm relying on the leaders in the middle and I'm going to interject as if we're having a conversation with the entire room a few more people are taking their seat um Plaza de Armas what does that translate into exactly this is a test this isn't part of the conversation the weapons yeah it's weapons square storehouse weapons storehouse but what's beautiful about this gathering is that we've all brought our own lives in our own arms, our own hands, our own thoughts, our own voices and we're humanizing and working towards the greater good so the first part of the next round is a comment and so the closing circle can come in on it as well but with citizens of Jewish synagogues, Islamic mosques, Sikh temples and Christian churches in this room let's move beyond the language of separation of church and state let's say religions and state thoughts about that comment I think it's a lovely idea I think we all understand that church means is inclusive by the other religions we're just not always aware we become the most religiously diverse country in the world I think that when that term was first brought up it was probably very appropriate to those who are making that term but again it's a matter of us waking up for something we so commonly say to say that it's another day now we are we do look different from people that just go to church so I think it becomes an important piece as we progress together trying to be more inclusive how about closer the comment brings up an important space to talk about the importance of language and how we enter into dialogue with each other and also how we define again our public service I think a commitment to always staying current with language that is inclusive of all different kinds of people is a practice that we have to continually dedicate ourselves to and so while we might all understand that the history of why it's church rather than religion there's so many other aspects I'm sure for all of us that we could afford to learn more and expand our vocabulary when it comes to language which really works comments and connects to this next question how can we work with how can we open up a conversation with government officials whose religious ideas are the basis of policies and that can be harmful like believing in science and environmental concerns how do we open up that language I don't know that I got the gesture to the question but I guess it was how do you approach a official that's got strong religious beliefs in a certain way I don't know but try to figure that out with Ted Cruz I can't figure it out I don't know how you've reached that kind of a gap all I know and religions are sacred each one of them is and you got to stand up for each other I know after the 9-1-1 there was an attack on Muslims here somebody's restaurant was broken into and the windows were crashed and we all had a conference at the front steps of City Hall with the mayor there and almost every religious leader where there was some of the Jewish community or the Christian or Protestants or Catholic were there to speak up for the Muslims and I think that was really important we see some of that today with Trump's keep the Muslims out but the Christians in you got to stand up for each other that reminds me of that day where you feel like things like that are so far away and what can we do you know that's New York here we are in San Antonio and on that issue of hate that came out my son and I went up to the Muslims who run the little store up the street and just brought them flowers and said you know sorry for what you're going to I think there's you know that thing you know work locally think globally and we forget how local that can be sometimes and how important little actions can be reach some of those gaps I was talking about those segregation about 1500 veterans they came to the mosque over there to support the Muslims there was no place in the whole area to park any cars everyone wouldn't know what was going on and there were veterans there were the people that served in the Middle East most of them that they know what was going on in the politics and when they served the army what was going on just letting you know and you think about that brave act as well and it turns to the next question how do we try to overcome fear in faith communities to be more civically engaged without talking politics and I would suggest the other side is also a valid question how do we try to overcome fear in the political realm to be more engaged with the faith community we kind of talked about this in our group a little bit and because we had one member of our group who was talking about the concerns when they when one starts to try to discuss how to become engaged and specifically we did bring in like cops metro and I know what they're very well so we had lots of conversations and granted I think the role cops metro has played historically over the years has been very important role but I also would like to think and I'm speaking for Jorge that he would like not to be the only place the only thing happening in town right that the hope is that there are other groups and other congregations and around the city that are doing exactly that so the question was certainly they have great tools and cops metro has done great work but how can we teach each other and if it's not going through that door of let's say the cops metro door then we create another door but that we look again at how we bring people bring members of our faith community think about serving the most vulnerable vulnerable in our community what is the humanity behind what we're trying to achieve for the common good can we all agree that we have the shared interest of making our community better and then government plays a role in that and how can we become more engaged in government at that level so that it's all of us coming together to speak at city council or commissioners court to hold other members accountable and to be engaged to be part of the solution not just be able to hold others accountable how do we collectively hold ourselves accountable for these decisions personally I am at the side of learning that there is two terms teaching and learning I'm not at the side of the teaching when you believe that to teach something to someone then you close your mind to learn because your main goal what you believe is correct for you hold your life and you try to preach it and teach the people but I believe that we have to be open to learning it doesn't matter what you do you are a teacher government officer but you have to be open to learning another question how can we turn the negative perspective of politics and politicians to a positive one in America is that possible the basic word just simply means the work of the people boy that's a tough one isn't it first to answer your question I have to apologize because I'm part of this problem when we talk about politics as being different from civics because we've seated the ground we had a great conversation our group about this we've seated the ground of vocabulary to the folks that want to denigrate what happens in the political environment politics is very necessary for us to achieve compromise on any kind of issue tough issue to find what the common ground is for a community of diverse people and getting back to the earlier question also there's any number of issues from the environment to public health that is going to require us to figure out how we bridge gaps between very different points of view politics is what gets us there this idea that politics being the art of compromise and the compromise in relativism is a sin that needs to be done away with very quickly we're never going to get anything done in our community and we see that that's kind of the gridlock that's happening in state and national politics now so we have to I think for me personally my takeaway is no longer talk about politics as being different from the work that I do or the kind of public service that I want to deliver bring it back into the tent of this is a very good thing for us if we behave well in our community about what politics can do well what we're lacking today is civility and the political spectrum and particularly at the national level appealing to people's worst instincts and those voices are heard a great deal more than say Kasek from Ohio who has kept a very positive campaign and and overshadowed by all of the rhetoric of the two other major candidates so it's missing and I don't know how the faith-based community can teach a just a civic lesson in how to behave how that could affect politicians but right now the rhetoric of the candidate in the Republican Party is garnering more votes and civility is growing seems to me too that whole Gondian concept of be the change we wish to see you know to be these different to use the different language to do that actively to be about the work as well I think also in the conversation that we're having where I'd like to differentiate between different registers of affecting change it's the individual and there's also the institutional and I think Patti your example of walking to a nearby store and providing flowers that you know the stores run by a Muslim family that's from the individual to the individual and that show of compassion I think when we think about affecting change or even building trust between public servants or politicians and communities the individual there has a responsibility for example to vote to participate in those in our institutions in our local government and then from the institution side there's a responsibility as well to think about again using the voting example how can we ensure that everyone has access to vote and that's an inclusive process which kind of ties into this one that in the convening circle it was mentioned several times that's important to include everyone at the table and the question is where is the table or what is the table I think we sit at various tables every day of our lives or every week or throughout the year and so where is the table I don't know how to answer that but it's changing like we said it's a mobile table but I think it's just taking that time to pause if we are in a decision making process or looking at at the university where I work we try and see whenever we're looking to implement some kind of policy even on campus we say what are students saying what do students think about this and I think often times especially in higher education that we don't do a very good job of including the voices of young people in the decision that is occurring rather on campus or in our community I think maybe one of the challenges is that we're trying to define what the table is civic life should be inclusive of voices all of the time we can see that people aren't at the table when we get less than 10% turnout in a municipal election or when Pew studies tell us that Americans in greater numbers than ever before find themselves non-religious and don't affiliate with a faith of any kind that means that they are not at the table we're defining the problem but I think until we stop saying well this is your table you go synthetic when you're called and not consider that voices of civics and voices of faith and religious life should be present all of the time for everyone making decisions we're not going to really get to a solution and to push that into the next generation as well and so to follow on we talked about how do you integrate other people how do you integrate community voices and community opinions with your own when you're asked to make a decision part of that is just being a listener the number one job for anybody to live in a community of any kind is to listen to your neighbors and make sure you're conducting yourself in a way that's but just to offer and to be open with any kind of media channel any kind of opportunity to communicate with people in the community especially when you're in that kind of position and since we're talking about how do we communicate with people in the community what might be next from today I got a walking mic if others have thoughts might be the next step here's one follow up on question of where is the table and I think that was a good answer the table is everywhere wherever you are in decision making position you are at the table and a good question that came up a good statement is how do we instill the language of peacemaking the leaders at the table that doesn't seem to occur often and I think maybe leaders today are perceived a certain way they rise to the top with certain mindsets so they walk into the table with preconceptions of teaching and doing not learning and listening so what's the if you talk about the dichotomy of the dangerous dichotomy of two languages occurring in the spiritual life and workplace life how do we reconcile those because there's a lot of energy I think you mentioned in the workspace that is an entertainment that is almost dangerous and it's how do we harness that energy into more of a peacemaking energy and I think the last statement was the language of peacemaking is not for weaklings let's change that attitude so the question of what's next part of it is how do we harness the energy and move forward I think we had a statement over there oh yes okay now hello yes I'm sitting here thinking about a project I have working on right now from the University of Carnot Ward it is called interfaith inc inclusive celebration of faith and reason and I would love to send you the first draft of our mission state vision and plan and find from people like yourselves in fact find from yourselves if we're hitting in the right direction and if you would like to put any additions or subtractions to what we are planning it will be held any place in the city the table will be everywhere but eventually we will have a retreat and conference center not for living retreats but for a place like the raindrop house a place like that or the university itself where people can come and hear their faith life not to evangelize but to grow in understanding and where it's directly it will be situated north of the denman estate park when the denman estate was being sold to developers one of the city council people used her power and the people around the area used their power to connect with Diana Cyprian who went to back for them and the city purchased approximately 15 acres approximately 7 and a half acres was left for development and she went over to Lou Agnesi at UIW he got the board to purchase it and said his dream was to have a retreat and conference center because walking into that space is like walking into the middle of the hill country of Texas right here in the middle of San Antonio so it's a gorgeous spot it's wonderful it's country and it's still in the middle of the city we have the space and the plans to build but in the meanwhile we need to build this we need to build our relationships to support that and we have now who is teaching marketing at UIW and using her students to develop a marketing plan for the interfaith ache and it is amazing what those young people are coming up with you most likely will have more stickers before we know it you know websites and I now own five or six domains I never owned a domain I didn't know what it was anyway it's in my name poverty not withstanding anyway so if you would like information I cannot promise that I will write to all of you but if you would like information take down this address it's an email, a new email address new to me interfaith ache that's I-N-T-E-R-F-A-I-T H-I-N-C but it doesn't mean incorporation it means inclusive celebration all one word just interfaith ache at UIW T-X dot E-D U I will have my student at UIW respond to you he's not working until next Friday not good Friday but the next Friday or Saturday anyway he is taking on the responsibility to respond for me so what we've heard so far is harnessing the energy and the importance of knowing what's happening communicating and connecting and we got somebody coming here and it's also going to pass around the list of the folks in here if you want to stay on an email list to hear more if you would check, then you will be if you don't check, you won't so you had somebody, oh Ali just a quick question going back again to how can we what is going to be the outcome that could be of this meeting and that is, I have two suggestions one is that all of us that we are involved in our to initiate more learning in regards to many of our people that they have come to America, they are all immigrants ok, once upon a time we all, our ancestors have been immigrants they do not know how to merge and get involved into the politics of America when they see what we see today in regards to the presidential elections will turn them out very badly because all of them have come from the countries having you choosing someone has been a taboo even though we cannot choose someone here either we are not democratic we are more union so what I am trying to say but still, my point is that learning education of our communities in regards to not to be turned off from becoming a voting member and still be involved even if they do not want to get involved into the national level that we are involving the local levels in the people that they choose that they really make policies and regulations in their daily life in their locality that is one thing that I am suggesting that all we do when we go back to our interfaith, I mean inner communities of our faith but then also suggestions to our politicians the positive gesture that you mentioned as the people who they want to serve their communities and the communities that they are trying to serve and understand the diversity which is existing so that they can serve them better thank you very much I think we are going to close it at this point because we said we would do that but to sum up the harness the energy to know what is going on in our larger community communicate and connect to continue to learn and educate and go back to our own communities and up as well I think those are all words of wisdom if you have other specific ideas and how to do that the peace center is welcome to hear that and we welcome that as well I just want to take one moment before we go out into the world and back into our places and I invite each of us to think of at least one other person in our life to expand this room a bit that you have been having maybe a similar conversation think about them I also invite you to think about somebody else in your life that you find that it is more difficult to have this conversation with and to think about them and encourage you to maybe reach out to them and may they be blessed those who have brought us to this place our own family our own communities may they be blessed may those directions that are harder for us to go and the people for us to engage may they also be blessed because that's the only way this is going to work may the folks who made this happen today may they be blessed and may our lives today all be blessed as we move forward into the world I want to also thank Sebastian when you're on your way out he kind of runs this place and we give him a thank you for the space for setting it up


Ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure to welcome you all and our Secretary-General Dr. Tore to your keynote speaker for this evening. Cisco's Executive Vice President for Industry Solutions and Chief Globalization Officer, Wim Elfrink. Thank you. A warm welcome. And thank you for joining us at the end probably of a busy day. A lot of interactions. And then you have a topic like this. The role of technology in enabling sustainable growth. I'll keep it relatively light. I'm not going deep in technology. Don't worry about that. Because it's not about what technology is. It is what technology can enable. And how it can enable sustainable growth. If you think about the topics that I will cover in probably around 40 minutes of one-way communication. What type of problems do we want to solve? What are the pressing problems and the challenges from a social, economic and environmental point of view? And secondly, what is the role that technology can play? I've called it in the past, oftenly, the fourth utility. Gas, water, electricity. And people told me, don't do that. It's an essential infrastructure. I should like to have your feedback also later. Can you see technology as an essential infrastructure? What can it enable? And how can it stimulate, like I said, sustainable growth? And then last but not least, I'll show you a lot of use cases, best practices. And then again, in our dialogue, why do something scale and others don't? How can we accelerate the adaptation of technology as a key enabler? So let's talk about those challenges, the global challenges. At number one, social demographics. A topic that I think is still very underestimated. At the 21st century is going through a demographic shift that we have never seen in history before. Secondly, it's all about GDP shift. It's a given now. And I'm always embarrassed to say that emerging markets are outgrowing developed markets. So shall we stop saying emerging markets? Shall we call it the new power economies? Shall we call it the new growth markets? But I think that developing markets is a wrong way to call it. And then thirdly, the environment. And that's one of the most pressing challenges for the 21st century. Whether we call it carbon emission, if we do nothing and we go on in the way we do today, by 2030 we will have an energy consumption that increases by 40%. How can we change these trends and how can we accept them? So first, if we look at demographic shifts, part of the world is aging, specifically the U.S. Part of the world is aging and shrinking, Europe, China. And then last but not least, we have the Middle East, Africa and India where we still see hypergrowth. If we look at the numbers, what these numbers give you is the percentage of people of 65 years and older. I've called out here the world, as you can see, we're growing from 7% to almost 15%. So the world is getting older and older. China, a lot of people overlooked that, but China is aging quickly. And then last but not least, the Netherlands. And now you probably wonder why the Netherlands? It's my accent. I'm Dutch. And I'm going to be one of those folks from 65 and over. Also, the point I tried to make is that I'm Chief Globalization Officer. Very interesting title, but still I'm very Dutch. Every four years there is an event on the world and suddenly I go in my orange outfit.  It's the world championship soccer. And the point I tried to make with that is that we are tribal. As human beings, we belong to something. And that is probably a big imperative in accepting new technologies and communities. I'll come back to that. So now I'm Dutch and I will refer a couple of times to it. The aging population, if you think about it, I was born in Rotterdam and later moved to a small city close to the coast, Nordwijk. When I went to school, we had six schools. Today, we have no schools anymore. We have not a lot of young people anymore. And so the demographics of countries and the economic cycles are changing faster than people experience. So aging, aging and shrinking. And shrinking, if you look at Europe, at the net reduction in population in the next coming decades is 5%. Germany added what we call a miracle from an economic spirit. And Germany is one of the few countries who has maintained manufacturing in the country. And now they start facing that they can't source it. But because the population is aging, the population is shrinking. Russia, as an example, 20% reduction. We need a 2% productivity improvement per year to just maintain a standard of life. And now we go to the hypergrowth part of the world. The world is growing from 7 billion to 9 billion people. And they take a country like Nigeria. They're almost the same population as the US today in the next coming decades. Saudi Arabia, India. And the real, I think, essential is that these countries are still getting younger. And countries that get younger, young people are more innovators, are more dynamic, are more change agents. So also from an innovation point of view, you can expect that the shift from an innovation point of view where it happens around the world is shifting. It has shifted from Europe to the US. It's shifting to this side of the world. But the consequences of these demographic shifts, in a nutshell, in emerging countries, the new power economies, I'm going to stick to that, is that 700 million people are going to be urbanized. Can you imagine 700 million people, that's 180,000 a day, that are two Tokyo's a year, people who move from rural areas to an urbanization, to an urban to a city. And that will mean that we have a need of 100 cities and more in the next decade, 100 cities. And there will be a lot of greenfields, there will be new innovation, and we can do it first time right. 50% of that construction is going to take place in Asia. So guess what? There will be the center of innovation and the center of knowledge that will be on this part of the world. And that's why we have our globalization practice as a business consultancy for urbanization here in Dubai. And that's not in Silicon Valley, not in the US, not in Europe. We are investing that global function to be operated out of Dubai here. 50% of the population, if you think about India, if you think about Africa in general, has not yet access to water, electricity, education, or healthcare. Three billion people is the forecast that is going to be connected. And for the first time in history, you will see that people in small villages will have access to information before they have access to the normal utilities like water and electricity. And that will generate new business models and create innovation and new cycles that we haven't seen before. And the most frequent use, the download of application of the Apple Store in these rural areas because the majority has a cell phone is just the light. And because in the evening, you can use your phone as a lamp. You already see that in some parts of India, in rural areas, people who didn't have the opportunity to have an education, can't read or write, they do video surveillance. And they do video surveillance for retail companies specifically in Europe and the US. And so you start seeing new economic cycles going up that we haven't seen before. There will be a shortage of 4 million teachers in the country with high unemployment. And India alone will need for safety and security more than 600,000 police officers to secure the cities and the city dwellers. On the other side, if you look at the developed world, there are stimulus packages and there is a lot of revitalization of cities going on. So only 3% of buildings in the developed world are lead certified. 70% of worldwide energy is consumed in the majority of cities. And 70% in these cities is consumed by buildings, by enterprise companies. If you think about an easy hit to reduce energy consumption, think about buildings who have a utilization of 40%. And then by not get more directives on lead certification and do it first time right. And then get these global policies implemented. Life extension, assisted living. In the US, 8% unemployment, 7.8, who cares? But around that number and a shortage of nurses. More than 200,000 growing to 300,000. So the point I tried to make is that on one hand we have unemployment, we have demographic shifts and we have a mismatch. We have a total mismatch around the world at this moment. And that estimation is that we have 10 million jobs open in manufacturing. Because in the western world we can talk about we will get manufacturing back. But you know, we wear leather shoes. We don't go back in factories. Perhaps in the high end, in the new technologies. But basic production will start shifting from China to the Philippines to Vietnam to Indonesia to India. It will constantly move around. But the mismatch of skill sets, demand and supply from a human inventory point of view is something we have to address. And technology can play a key role. A million teachers in the US will retire at the baby boomers. My type of generation. And then last but not least, crime rates are going up rapidly. And so on one hand, the power economies have needs and have mismatches. But the same applies to the developed world. And so we have a common type of challenges. It's not that divided as you perhaps initially think. So here's my statement. How can we, and I'll have a little bit about technology, but how can we position technology? Are we seeing the perfect storm? Are there some things coming together now that I would say that accessibility and the observation of technology will be accelerated? I was in a policy session earlier this afternoon and I said, you know, I asked and I didn't get a real answer. Why can we phone worldwide now with a cell phone? Why do we have a standard? What happens? What was that compelling event that suddenly we have global open standards? And we have to wonder, is there a moment now that we see in technology coming together that we'll have that again? And so we talk about devices. We talk about what we call the internet of everything. So not the internet for ICT and communication. All devices are going to be connected. And that will create unprecedented opportunities. We are currently at an inflection point and that we have more devices connected than that we have people on the earth. And it will rapidly increase now and the numbers are around 50 billion by 2020. It's an industry in itself according to IDC. It will be in a 1.5 trillion device market and it will be on top of that a 2 trillion services market. And so an enormous, I would say, new type of development from an economic perspective. We call it machine to machine. And a lot of people always say, but what do you mean with machine to machine? Let me give you an example. This is not even machine to machine. This is application to application. And it happened to me this morning.  And that nowadays you're not safe anywhere. You can't even go to a conference without having to work in conference calls or telepresent sessions. So what happened? You know, took my shower, dressed up, had ordered the breakfast. Six o'clock I logged in and guess what? My call was canceled. Could have slept an hour longer. That's a frustration. Machine to machine, application to application, intelligent. And I give it three years, give it five years. If somebody cancels a call in your scheduler, should go to your alarm clock. And your alarm clock should go an hour out. That are real benefits, you agree? But that is what's going to happen with machine to machine and application to application. Everything that will be connected will drive productivity improvements. Will create new value and can be green and secure. So from a technology point of view, and I'm not going detail here, but that we see inflection points. From an infrastructure point of view technology, Cisco, routers, switches. And we went from what we call circuit to packet switching. And we've gone through a lot of transition points. And we now go from voice and data to video. We call video the new voice. And guess what? In five, ten years, you will only make voice call. And voice will be pervasive in everything you do. We talk about smart grid. Everything connected from an energy management point of view. Connected industries, manufacturing, all devices being connected. And then last but not least, not independent networks, but what we call the internet of everything, compiled over one network. On top of that, and that could be that accelerator. And we see also market transitions. We see cloud virtualization. Mobility is going to play a key role. Cell phones, smart phones, collaboration, video, and then big data moving to open data. Open data and open data will create an explosion of applications. So all these things coming together, normally we say in the next three years, mostly that we are too optimistic over the next three years, and we are too pessimistic over the next ten years. But in the next decade, let me say it like that, these things are going to come together and will create unprecedented opportunities. And if people say, I don't think so, if you see what has happened with telephony eight years ago for the people, the technologies under us, we had no penetration of IP funds. Today, we have more than 95% business enterprise funds over IP, and it has given a 50% reductions in cost. So productivity improvement, additional value, new standards that are emerging. Data. And I've heard a lot about it, and you probably too about the explosion of data. A couple of numbers. At this moment, a typical US household with three children with Facebook and applications generate more traffic over the internet than the entire internet in 2008. And it will go to what we call zetabyte, and I don't even know what it is, zetabyte of data. If you put it as books on top of it, it's from here to Pluto 20 times. It's 73 billion miles, not even kilometers, miles of data. And it goes beyond your imagination. But who cares about data? It's about what you do with the data. How do you make intelligent decisions? How can you use it in your daily life to be more predictable? And data in itself has no relevance. Every second, one million minutes of video content will cross the globe. So an explosion of data and access to data. So let me go to a couple of examples and use cases. This is one of our favorite examples. It's urbanization. Urbanization, access to healthcare, education, and country transformation are going to be my topics for use cases. It's a city in Korea, Incheon. It's being built as a greenfield city. It's reclaimed land. It's actually where General MacArthur landed in 1953. The city is built by Gale International, an American company. And when they started building it, they had sustainability in mind. So there is a waste management system underground. We also learned that if the distance between apartments, between shops, is not longer than a 12 and a half minute walk, people walk and they don't take the car. And it's sort of from a sustainability point of view to reduce traffic, to have public transportation, waste management system. And it's really built as one of the most sustainable cities in the world. It's a bridge. You can see it in the shadow that goes to the airport. So it's going to be an aerotropolis. Because with planes flying further, bigger distances, you also see traffic flows changing logistic centers. You know, when I was a kid in Rotterdam and my father took me to the harbor, he predicted that when he always said to me, kid, when you have my age, this harbor will be in the sea. It will not be in the city anymore. I will tell my kids, probably Rotterdam in 50 years have no harbor anymore. It will potentially be in Jeddah, could be here in Dubai. Because water is rising and you will get new flows around the world of shipments. They will be in a railroad. That's somewhere between Saudi and Germany. And these logistical flows are changing with rapid change. But aerotropolis, and it's good to create jobs. Look, look at here, Dubai. And with Emirates, it's not just the passengers. It's also the cargo. It creates hundreds of thousands of jobs, aerotropolises. So we added technology in the city. And it's so underground, all the utilities are connected. And that gives an opportunity together with cloud services and everything connected. And that you can start thinking about a services economy. And we are used that you get in your apartment, in your house, you get gas, water and electricity. In the future, you will get a new essential infrastructure, ICT.  You buy devices. Five, ten years from now, it will be built in. And you just provision services. And you go to your service provider that who will provide services to you that goes far beyond triple play for his data and video. It will be a whole set of new data. And those two pictures, the left side, also for you, the left side, this is a command center in Rio de Janeiro. And that's one of the most sophisticated ones where all utilities come together over one infrastructure. And, you know, it gives an opportunity to do scenario planning because the data is real-time. And I was on the ground when a storm and a typhoon hit Rio. And then, you know, they have these what-if type of scenarios, these playbooks that they can say, let's close these roads. Children go home earlier from school. And that reroute traffic, do this, do that. Police escorts. It's a command center that's really activated by real data. On the other side, the citizens will get access to all that data either via a cell phone and a tablet or in the house via a television set, a telepresence. And then, real-time data will become usable and providers will start building apps around it. And what you will see in these cities, there will be harmony between an economic cycle attracting investors and have a good business, social aspects. It are nice cities to live in and environmental. And, oftenly, we focus just on one element. You have a green city and you have no job. Or what if you have a job and the city is totally polluted? Or there is a high crime rate. It's that balance between the three that can be different and on different levels by different urban cities. So, it's also that data and information is useless unless you can do something with it. And so, we basically, we talk about data. We talk about information. But the top is wisdom. If you have all that data, you can do scenario planning. What if? What if a thunderstorm hits? What if there is a natural disaster? What if there is a big traffic accident somewhere on the road? What if scenario building is the future of what big data will enable you? For citizens, and, you know, don't try to read this. But this is our portfolio. We have identified more than 200 services that you can use. Services to a better quality of life. And because that's another thing that oftenly is overlooked. Why did people move to cities? How did urbanization start? Urbanization basically started because of security. People wanted to be safe. And the security was a physical wall around the city. And then you got specialization, and people started to do jobs. And you got trade. And then people got some prosperity. They wanted to go to a restaurant, nowadays to music, to a concert, to a movie. And that quality of life is increasing. And so, these are all services that will become available. And so, this is a menu that I choose for myself. If I would live in the city of Incheon, this would be my menu. You know, I would do healthcare monitoring from home. Eighty percent of doctors' calls don't need physical interaction. Why should you jump in the car and drive to a doctor? More and more equipment at the internet of everything, all devices will be connected. There will be price points for diagnostic equipment that you can have at home. So you can basically have blood, stool, urine from home. And only at the time you need therapy, you go to a doctor. Virtual healthcare, and you've seen probably a lot of use cases, is real and is happening. And, you know, a very down-to-earth that some of my colleagues hated if I give that example. But I would pay five dollars a month if we all go to a place in the morning. And I would get a nutrition advice for the day, based upon what I ate, drank, or did last night. And that these are services that are going to be available. And a great opportunity for service providers is to extend their reach of services and to go in new businesses. Because voice is going to be video. It's not about minutes anymore. It's about distance. It's about data. It's about services. And how can you monetize that? And so another example I have is parking services. Did you know that an average citizen in Paris, an average citizen in Paris, is spending four years of their life finding a parking place?  Wouldn't it be a great service that via your GPS you come off the highway, you drive home, and you see where you have free parking places? And then you park at your home and you can have basically a blue, silver, or gold type of packet. And the elevator will be there. And you have a privileged place. Access to security services.  And so a whole new set of services. And so the point I tried to make is that it's not about technology anymore. Technology will be an essential infrastructure. We will consume services. We don't buy equipment. Everything as a service. One of those inflection points coming all together is also the growth of software applications. Who would have predicted three or four years ago at the tablet with an explosion of apps? And if you think about it, we have more than a million applications now and I don't dare to give a prediction. But it will explode. And if you compare it, nowadays every week we see 100 new movies coming out and 250 books are released worldwide and 15,000 apps already. And an average apps is downloaded 15 times 18 billion downloads a year today. So open data becoming available. Application providers start building services and start building apps. And that's a new revolution together with the Internet of Everything. That could be an inflection point and acceleration of adaptation of services. So is it all greenfields? We talk about greenfields. We talk about brownfields. I heard it in the session. It is afternoon on smart cities. No. There are fantastic use cases. Amsterdam, London, Rio. I picked here Barcelona. Where via visionary management that adaptation already has started. At district 22 at Barcelona that they have created innovation clusters around themes. They have provided infrastructure and they have documented that over the last 10 years 4,500 new companies are being established. They created 150,000 jobs and counting. And it's good for the environment. It's green, less energy usage. A fantastic use case that would urge you to look at. And that innovation around clusters. And that we already see nowadays entire cities being built around a theme. Another use case is open data. This is an example of Washington where they made what they call the 311 data available for application developers. And 311 are irritations of citizens about services. And with a budget of $50,000 they generated more than 2.5 million in a couple of weeks. So if we said in the past that George Orwell big brother will watch you it's going to be the other way around. The citizens will watch big brother. And nowadays that via Twitter you know earlier we're showing happening something and then that you get the official information. And so all these type of things are coming together and that whole explosion of big data to open data. The public sector is going to be a model for innovation. So the benefits. The benefits because that's what it's all about. And was that one of the reasons that the cell phone was accepted as a global standard? Because people wanted to have it. Smart cities. It's not about what is smart or not smart. In the end is that the new norm from a competitive point of view is going to be between cities. It will be London versus Dubai versus Mumbai. It will be physical distribution centers competing for investors and business. And so you can reduce your operational costs by having one infrastructure and by taking costs out. But energy savings 30% and these are real numbers out of city plants. Water consumption down by 50%. Singapore is already water-neutral. They call it from toilet to tap and perhaps that's not the right way to call it. But it's water-neutral. There is no absolute consumption. Crime rates down. There is a one-to-one correlation between people being more happy. Crime rates go down. Traffic. All these small things for US citizens under us here actually go to the DMV to queue up for a new driving license. You can take the test online. You can have the form. And there are so many things that we do now out of routine physically that we could do virtually. On the other hand, and I want to come back to that, education via technology, via cloud-based curriculums will be accessible for $3 per student per month. Healthcare. So is this a formula for developing countries? Will the cost come down that far that everybody will have the right to get education and healthcare? I'm somewhere halfway in my presentation. I want to have a checkpoint with you. What do you think? Who is cynical? I don't know. Anybody dares to raise their hand? Who is skeptical? Skeptical, cynical? Clear majority. People have a discussion afterwards. Who is with me? Who is embracing these types of concepts? Excellent. Thank you. Majority. So how are we going to accelerate this? How are we going to do that?  I was 12 years old when we got our black and white television at home. I lived on a small island for the coast of the Netherlands. 12 years at the first color television.   I was 30 years old when I got my first cell phone. My son was 10 years old and he said, I want to have a cell phone. Then I said to him, son, I think you're a little bit too young for that. And then he had to deadly question. And he said, how old were you? The discussion was over. But if I tell these stories that I had my first job in Italy working for Olivetti, if I wanted to phone home, I had to ask for a line. And it took, you know, two days to make a connection. But, you know, if I tell these stories to my kids, they look at me as I look to my parents. But so I can go on. I was 40 years old with my first VPN. I was 50 years old with my first telepresence at home. But it's not about my age. It's not the point I tried to make. The point I tried to make, and this is telepresence, these telepresence rooms, still relatively new. And if I get customers in, they talk about the technology.  They start playing. They start using it. And they don't think about all these barriers and they accept it. They use it to their benefit. This was in a picture when I lived in India. And I spent four years of my life there. And left top, you know, that's my son, that's Max. He was the only kid in India with yellow hair. So, very, very known. So, if you think about, I said the technology, what it can enable, think about work. Look at, you know, young generation. They work totally different. They study different. They accept technology as a given. And they don't think in these barriers, we are oftenly prisoners of our own experiences. And so my advice to you and in your meetings, invite some kids. Let them talk. I met an Indian professor who said, you know, everybody older than 40 is not innovative anymore. Because we're thinking, of course we are the exceptions here. At every rule you have an exception. But you get the points, you know, that look at your children, how they play, how they work, how they live, how they socialize. Although I don't accept that they text on the dinner table to each other. You know these behaviors. If you think about how work will change, and that, you know, cities in the past were built to go to your work. And that was what you did. You went to your work. Nowadays, work comes to you. And that work follows you. Work will be virtualized. And mobility, that makes you, will be able to escape. You will see what we call spontaneous collaboration and clusters of experts. And it's not that it's going to be this or that. It is this and that. And that we all have these physical places in cities where it happened. If you go to Paris and you go to Montmartre, that's where basically art developed. And that in Rome, it was all about societies and culture.  And that every city has that hot place where it happens. And it will stay that way. But you now can also extend these hot places virtually. You can cluster in expertise. In a couple of years, you will get telepresence and video walls. And we always say that let's discuss this close to the coffee machine. And we have these places in offices and you have these pubs or places where you come together. But entire walls, you can then look at a coffee machine in New York or in a coffee machine in Dubai or a coffee machine in Mumbai or Shanghai. And so you can easily mobilize a workforce. And so we don't go to work, work will come to you. And work will be virtualized. So don't commute to compute. I never go to the office to work. I only go to the office to meet people and to have sessions that you want to do physically. But if I want to compute, I can do it from any place in the world. So we could talk about it for hours. But work will fundamentally change. It will be virtualized.  And so when I made my point that we have 200,000 shortage of nurses in the U.S., it are mostly females who don't have the time to certify or to recertify if you can train them virtually at home in a community center, you can match supply and demand much better. And so with that whole virtualization and these chains of demographics accept the chains of working behaviors. Smart working centers, the concept developed in Amsterdam, that congestion, that there was a visionary mayor who basically said, you know, I'm going to decentralize the smart working centers. And it basically communities where social, economic and environmental drivers came together. And so it should always be close to a residential area and decentralize from the center close to a highway, public transportation, open meeting space, crashes, access to healthcare. And so complete different type of parameters to create a workplace. And this concept now goes global. And in Korea alone, there's a plan for 400 feet, the smart working centers, and they're building it. It's a net saving of $1.3 billion. Imagine what you can do with that money and how you can reinvest it in more innovative type of things. And it's a $1.1 billion reduction in carbon emission because there's less traffic on the road. And people share these. And so smart working centers is a concept that's seeing flying. Let me now go to countries. Developing countries. We have a lot of our African friends here. And they had to look at, you know, how to get an economic activity going, how to create jobs. And just training, education and healthcare is one. But the next one is how to create jobs. And this is often still proof of concepts. And my question to you is, and, you know, I have some ideas, but how are we going to scale these proof of concepts? There are countries at the moment who say, please stop, not another proof of concept. You know, what is going to be the formula to scale it? And this is a village that in my four years of staying in India that we built. It's in the north of Karnataka. It was a flooded place. People lost their home, you know, more than 100,000 people. You don't see it even in the newspaper. And that low education, illiterate, demographic, everybody of, you know, 17 years and older would go to the city to escape the misery. We rebuilt houses. We connected schools virtually. We have documented this. And we basically are following now that if broadband reaches a village, that you can have virtual education, you can have virtual healthcare. As parents in the evening come in, they had to start looking at training courses, how to improve the crop and the agriculture. Also, the community starts arising. Marketplaces, trading, it fights corruption because you eliminate all kinds of middlemen. And it works. The question is, how are we going to scale these type of things? I think technology can play a key role there. And Jordan, healthcare initiative. And that also started with corporate social responsibility. And we have a responsibility as enterprise company to get it started. But then we need all stakeholders to get it scaled. And so this is access to healthcare and specifically specialized healthcare. Knowledge center in Sub-Saharan countries had it with Clinton Foundation, $10 million project investments in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya. And again, you see economic cycles coming up. Education comes up. Jobs are being created. Productivity goes up. People start becoming self-supporting. And you see sustainable growth coming. However, it doesn't scale.  And that it are our certification programs, the network academies, that we improve employability. At this moment, every day in the world we have a million people connected following classes and courses. And 95% of people who certify find a job in three months. That because it increases employability. And it makes their life better. Better jobs, better incomes. This is one of the few examples where we are really getting scale now. As in its conception, we have more than 4 million people trained. But I want to close and have an interaction with you and a drink. And it starts, you know, how can we accelerate? How can we scale? My two cents on the topic is we have to think as this, as a new industry. Everything. A couple of things coming together, like cloud computing, virtualization, open data, apps. We need visionary leadership. And we need people and politicians, government leaders, and with that passion to make a difference. We need global open standards. And, you know, ITU is playing a key role in that to help develop to enable that. Energy management, I don't know. We're not going to monetize on the plug around the world yet. And we have 220 and 120. We have 286 protocols. But perhaps we can have five standards. At least it's better. And the Netherlands is one of the first countries in the world that deregulated energy consumption. And you can buy what you want. Finland has a plan to start trading energy via social networking. And if you have a surplus, you can sell it to your friends. And you can settle it yourself. You can pay in different ways. It's doable. But it needs smart regulation. Also called policies. We have the right people in this audience. Global open standards. The right policies. Amsterdam, San Francisco at this moment. And they have an eco map where they follow waste per zip codes. And it was funny. Kevin used the former mayor with me at the press conference.  That was embarrassing. It was one of the worst places. But the point I tried to make is that my kids said home, you know, kids, they never should have the light. When they go to school, the lights are on. So I have home automation Don't use it. And then, you know, we have a dashboard and they can see what they waste. It didn't work. Now I give them 50% of the savings as pocket money. And guess what? They switch it off. So smart regulation and incentives and policies and how can you change behavior is going to be essential. Public-private partnerships around the conference. And there are great examples of playbooks. And if the mayor of Chicago and he said, fantastic, all these smart city plans, but how will I be re-elected in four years? Great vision, but people will say, what have you implemented? So Chicago has now created a couple of funds that public-private things are starting to happen. And there are different ways of doing things. We need that visionary leadership. And last but not least, we have to build new ecosystems. And we have to get industries connected that haven't been connected before. So from my side to you, question for action. I think ITU, public-private partnerships, academic worlds, have you here all together? And I should like to invite you to talk about it and join us and get some further creativity. Thanks for your attendance. Thank you for listening. If you want, I could take some questions. Yes? Okay. The minority wins. Can I have a mic for the gentleman over here? Good evening. My name is Gerard Alfiel. I'm a financial journalist for Shinhua News Agency here in Dubai. Thank you very much for the presentation. Very interesting. Only one correction and one question. You said that Germany was outsourcing manufacturing because of the aging society. However, they rather outsource because wages are higher. The wage costs are too high in Germany. So it's better to employ people in Asia or in Africa than an aged person. Actually, there are a lot of old people in Germany unemployed because they can't find jobs simply because the wages are too high and they outsource to other parts of the world. My question is the two regions, Middle East and China, are getting closer. The rate is growing at a double digit rate per year. How do you as Cisco systems benefit from these growing connections between the two regions? How can you benefit from this? You mentioned the connectivity within cities, within countries. I find it most interesting. But how can you as Cisco systems benefit from the closer relations between China and the Middle East? Thank you. So first, that's correcting my remark on Germany. I think Germany is one of the few countries who has been able, even with high wages, to maintain manufacturing as a core expertise. But now due to an aging population, there are not enough inflow to keep the lines going. That's one point, sorry. So how can you trade accessibility of markets I think is key. We always say in Cisco, we love competition because if you have competition, customers will benefit from that. That with lower prices, that with bigger needs of innovation. So that open trade, I think, is always prosperity around the world. And between what type of places that takes place, I don't care. But free trade, at this moment, at an economic slowdown, you always see a tendency for people called indigenous innovation. I call it protectionism. And it never helps. It is always that free trade, global and open standards, will stimulate innovation and economic cycles. Please. Hi, I'm Peter Brook. I'm the chairman of the World Summit Award. We run within the World Summit on Information Society the global competition in 160 countries for best practice in content and creative use of ICT. I love very much your presentation. I'm fully with you. I like very much the relationship which you established between a networked society and a more humane society and a more green society. However, I would make a distinction between something which is services and what is content. And the really interesting thing about content is that we have lived and evolved as a culture for 10,000 years without interactivity in terms of content when we use media. But we are about 20 years now into having networked interactive content. What's your vision for the role of content in terms of Cisco seeing that path for the next five years? That's perhaps a question over a drink. You can help that lead on. It's me between now and drink. Content, like you said, is a treasure. It often leads to thousands of years of culture and history like languages. So I strongly believe that it's more a personal opinion than perhaps a company opinion is that with technology that enables it you can even easier sustain it. So contact, services. I believe that a lot of content can be made accessible and available. If you take movie productions, I love foreign movies. But often I don't have access. There are a lot of treasures that's maintained in ancient civilizations. I'm a European and I have the classic education so I had to spend a lot of time on languages that I don't use like Greek and Latin. But when I lived in India it's all about Sanskrit. It's the language of languages. So I think content in itself is a treasure that we should be able to nurture and maintain. Services is a monetization of big data and open data and even a further thrive of participation of democracy and that all these type of examples I showed and you start seeing that neighborhoods start budget planning in a participative way. And that is so from Big Brother watching you, that citizen watching Big Brother. To round it up, I agree with you that content and services are two different things. But a lot of content in form of data can be monetized via services. Let me close it off. I see that the drinks are being served. Thanks for your attention and I'm looking forward to mingling around.


Meeting planners, this post is probably one of the most honest and potentially most controversial posts I've ever done. It's taken me a long time to get ready to launch this post, but it's time to rip off the band-aid. Today we're talking about our event planner bad habits, so stick around if you dare. Hey friends, it's Leanne and you truly are my friends, which is why I felt compelled to do this post about event planner bad habits. To start with, there are so many incredible event professionals out there. A lot of you who are true collaborators and partners with our meeting partners throughout the entire process, and you are completely innocent of all of these bad habits I'm about to outline. And friends, this post is actually not for you. This vlog, however, is for planners like me, those who have fallen short to be true collaborators and partners in the meetings process. But if you find yourself with me in some of these habits, I encourage you to take a step back and see how we can fix some of these habits and that could potentially move our meetings faster or in a better direction with our meeting partners. So let's take this journey together. Bad habit number one, we are bad at communicating changes and updating our partners. And change is inevitable, folks, but we need to do a better job of updating our partners in a timely manner. A potential solution is to have a list of all of our stakeholders for each meeting and when change happens, ensuring that all of those stakeholders are kept in the loop. It could be a plethora of meeting partners or even people internal at our organization that needs to know about these changes. Planner bad habit number two, we are bad at communicating timelines. In fact, we are so bad at this that I did a video about this not too long ago. And if you're watching this in YouTube, you can check out that video right here about communicating timelines better to our partners. We just need to do a better job of it and I'm hopeful that those tips will set you in the right direction. Bad habit number three, they are out there, the fam whores, as I like to call them. These are individuals who attend fams hosted by destinations with absolutely no potential to do business with that destination. And they treat that familiarization trip opportunity as a vacation and it makes us legitimate meeting planners look really bad. Now, friends, I get it sometimes planners and site selection professionals like myself, we need to see a destination without actually having a particular program in hand for that destination. But let's self check ourselves at the door. Let's make sure that there is in fact potential for this destination before we accept an invitation from our partners. And keep in mind that those invitations are coming along every 12 months, every 18 months. So if you miss the opportunity to see a destination now in 12 months time, you might actually have something more concrete at hand. And it would actually make that fam a little bit more beneficial and you'll get more ROI out of it at the time. There is a blog post I wrote about fam best practices for meeting planners. You can find that blog post in the description for this video. Bad habit number four, we are demanding with short turnaround times. I am so guilty of this, but I feel that I'm doing better and this is how I'm fixing it is I'm communicating with my clients, the end users a little bit better about what it means to provide our suppliers and partners with more time to respond to the proposal. The proposals will be more complete. It'll give the partners time to talk to everyone internally and their stakeholders to ensure that they give us more accurate information. So there's a lot of benefit to giving partners more time to respond to that proposal. So doing the education piece I think is the biggest one in ensuring that we give them a little bit more time to respond accordingly. Conversely, bad habit number five is it's a long decision making process. And sometimes it is so drawn out that proposals literally start growing mold. They are so overdue for decision solution for this planners and site selection professionals. Ensure that you have your timelines in hand and ensure that you educate to your end users what it means to make a decision in a timely manner. Sometimes there are financial incentives at hand. So that might be worth sharing as well with our stakeholders to ensure that we get those decisions moved along in a timely manner, not only for ourselves as planners so we can move on to the next phase of planning, but also with respect to our meeting partners. Bad habit number six, the vague lead and the vague RFP. And often planners, sometimes the RFPs are vague because you don't have a lot of information yourself to pass on to the partner to get an accurate proposal. May I suggest then doing an RFI versus an RFP, so RFI being a request for information. This may be a better approach than doing a request for proposal and getting very specific information back when the partner doesn't have specific information to work from in the first place. If you have questions about how RFIs and RFPs can differ and which one is the most beneficial for your meeting program, please reach out to me. My contact information is in the description for this video. Bad habit number seven, the RFP is sent to way too many properties. And boy, have I done this a lot over the years. And I'm really hopeful that my solution for this is to communicate better with my clients about setting the objectives which should pare down the types of properties and the location of the properties that we're looking for. Sending it to more than 10, 15, 20 hotels serves nobody. It's a lot of wasted resources on the part of our meeting partners, hoteliers and destinations. But planners, it gives you decision paralysis. It gives your stakeholders decision paralysis. So let's do more research in the beginning before even sending that lead out to the hotels and make sure that that list only goes to highly qualified properties based on the objectives of our program. Again, I did a blog post about setting objectives and how that drives your destination. You can find that blog post in the description for this video.  This one creates a lot of bad blood and for obvious reasons. When suppliers are treated beneath the planners in terms of their role in the meetings process, it creates a hierarchy and there's little collaboration. But when everyone is on the same level playing field, bringing the same kind of value to the table as the partner, the planner, the supplier, we're all in this together to create a successful meeting. So much ROI comes out of those types of meetings and the meetings that are planned with that respect for one another. Okay, so that is the end of the Band-Aid Ripping Reality Check. Certainly heavier than some of the other content we've created for our meeting planners. If you're looking for that lighter content and looking to put a smile back on your face, I encourage you to go over to our website at conferencesource.net. There you're going to find lots of resources and lots of tips to help you with your event planning. Thanks for sticking with me through to the end of this post and this vlog. I hope you have a fantastic week. Bye for now.