Good morning. Good morning. So you guys have two different places that is the same place that you should have masked. We are in different places. Not in the studio. Hi, Prayan. So these are the studios we have here. They're supported by the class of 1982 and LNT Technology Services. And two of them are classroom studios capable of hosting hundreds of students. And one is a virtual studio where faculty can do something with special effects behind it. Enigmatically they have been named Phi E and Phi. So keeping with our traditions in the campus. Good evening everyone from LNT Technology Services. We now request you, we request Dr. Keshav Panda, CEO and MD of LNT Technology Services to please declare the classroom studio supported by LNT Technology Services. Yeah, I declared the studio open. Thank you. Thank you. We must be here but the next best thing we can have is that you're all watching from wherever you are. So, let us... Thank you very much for your support, sir. We are going to first walk into your studio and you can see visuals from your studio in a moment. We're now entering the studio supported by LNT Technology Services. So, this is a studio which can seat 100 people and we have a lot of audio visual support plus a green screen there. So, when faculty make any presentations, if they have slides, those can be flashed behind them in the video. Regular class plus... Plus a studio, yes. Whenever somebody wants to teach a regular class is also an individual... Yes, they can directly record. They can schedule the class here. The students get to see the displays which are up front. Yes, yes. We can just fill it up slot wise. And the faculty gets to see the display back here so that they can get an idea of what they are seeing, what they are presenting and how it is being presented. And the control room staff can view the classroom from behind. Is the air conditioning silent? It's got all the professional lighting which can be moved around as necessary based on... Manual. Yes, manually. Don't need to keep moving it. Yeah, they don't have to be moved around. We had the option of a drop-down screen versus this but this was the largest we could fit in here at the moment. So we have done this for the moment. We will run it by a few classes and see. Just open. So we are now going to look at the control room of one of the studios. So this is the control room facility and so the audio visual staff can sit here and monitor the recording that's going on and make any changes. So there are more than one camera. They can do that. Yes, they can go here. They can see multiple things and mix the video. Sir, I now request you to inaugurate the virtual studio which is also a green-matte studio. Next, we will have the Mahesh. Professor Mahesh is our dean, alumni and corporate relations. And this studio is the virtual studio or green-matte studio. It has special backgrounds so people can be surrounded by whatever. You can have oceanographies, whatever you want. The universe can be behind you and you can take a class. Please go ahead. Sir, the intention of the studios with the full green background, you can surround yourself with any audio-visual, any visual basically. You can stand and if you remove this table, basically you can surround yourself with anything. I mean any scenery from anywhere and underwater scene or space scene. Yes, yes, that can be a complete yeah, yeah, yeah. You can have a video playing which is basically a background. So this design, this is designed for that. So there is no student seating here. This is almost movie quality. Yes, this is movie quality production kind of thing. Yes. Yeah, we can take a quick look. Sir, this is the other control room. I didn't think. So these are representatives of the class of 1982. Mr. Venkat Raman, Subramaniam. Thankar. So we are now inaugurating the second classroom studio, identical to the one which we just saw, the same 100-seater kind of studio. I request representatives of the class of 1982 who have supported this classroom to please do the honors of cutting the ribbon. So we now invite you all to the classroom. Please come. So this is identical to the other classroom, same kind of seating, same kind of facility. Sir, I request you to join us on stage. Good evening to everyone here and whoever is watching the live streaming of this event too. So we'll start off with the welcome address. It will be given by Professor Andrew Tangaraj, a brief profile about him. He is a professor in the department of electrical engineering, IIT Madras. He's a coordinator of NPTEL since October 2011. And he's been instrumental in initiating the NPTEL certification by offering courses online. He's a national MOOCs coordinator for NPTEL in the SWIM project, alumnus of IIT Madras, BTEC 1998 batch, a PhD from Georgia Tech University. He joined as a faculty in IITM in 2004. He's one of the initiators of IITM's BSE in programming and data science program, the latest initiative from us and is a coordinator of the program as well. So I invite him to extend the welcome address to everyone present here and those who have joined us on our live streaming. Thank you. Thanks for the introduction. Thanks to everyone who's here physically and thanks to everyone who's joined virtually as well. It gives me great pleasure to welcome Subhaskar Ramurthy, director of IIT Madras, he's also the chairman of NPTEL's program implementation committee and he's been really giving us good direction on what we should be doing and helping us out, supporting us through tough times and congratulating us when we do good things. So he's been a pillar of support for us. Thank you, sir. I also have great pleasure in welcoming two of the sponsors of these studios. There are two studios that we have here. One studio is sponsored by a class of 1982 to represent that class. We have Mr. Venkatraman Subramanyam who's here with us physically today. Welcome, sir. And we also have the other studio which is sponsored by LNT Technology Services, Dr. Keshav Panda, CEO and MD of LNT Technology Services. He's here with us virtually joining us on V.C. You can see him on the screen right there. Thank you very much. Welcome, sir. Also joining us on stage is Professor Mahesh Panchagnola, he's Dean for Alumni and Corporate Relations at IIT Madras. He's the man who's been quietly doing work behind the scenes and getting us all the funding that we need for building this fantastic infrastructure. Thank you very much for your support. And I would also like to welcome everyone who's present here. We have Chairman of our Continuing Education Center, Prof. Devan Zazalihal who's here in person. I would also like to welcome members of the Engineering Unit. Quite a few of them are here and without their support this place wouldn't have been built up. I would like to welcome the coordinators of NPTEL. There are four coordinators today. You can see the sense of how much it has grown. There are four coordinators. This is Prof. Pratap, this is me, and then Prof. Vignesh who's here. Vignesh Muthuvijayan of Biotech Department IIT Madras and Prof. Niket Kaisare. He's also here. And I would also like to welcome among the people who are watching this remotely all the faculty who are involved in creating content for NPTEL. NPTEL started as you know all the way back in year 2000 or so as a very small project slowly we started creating content in about 20 years now more than 2000 courses have been created and particularly the last 7 years have been very fruitful. We've offered online courses with certification every semester today we offer more than 500 courses and 20 lakh students across the country do these courses and more than 2.5 lakh students every semester write exams and earn certificates from IIT and further their careers etc. So it's been a tremendous curling up that we've been able to do and this wouldn't have happened without the support of the institute, support of sponsors and support of everybody involved. As some of you may recall a few years back April 12 2017 to be precise our own field of studios burnt down in a fire in spite of all the safety precautions that we take there was a fire and burnt down and this new studio has sort of taken the place of that and in spite of fires and so many other setbacks NPTEL has always grown in strength and numbers and some of the important people behind that is the dedicated staff that we have under the leadership of Bharti I would like to welcome all the staff of NPTEL who are here amidst us once again I would like to welcome all the audience members who are watching this on the live streaming NPTEL team in other offices of NPTEL NPTEL is an inter IIT project as many of you know we have seven different older IITs and IASC where there are offices and I would like to welcome them who are here definitely the faculty who teach courses on NPTEL I think I have to mention them especially because all this is for them they have to come here teach and benefit from this and help out everyone who is interested in learning last but not the least I would like to welcome learners of NPTEL members of the local chapter colleges program welcome to each and every one of you thank you very much next I would like to call upon Prof. Mahesh he is a professor in the department of Applied Mechanics he is the Dean of Alumni and Corporate Relations at IIT Madras he is also a BTEC from IIT Madras batch of 1992 obtained his PhD from Purdue University he is a faculty associate of IIT Madras Incubation Cell and National Center for Combustion RND welcome to this evening's function it's remarkable to see IIT Madras go through this evolution from being very prestigious place to study when I graduated in 1992 to this really swanky world class teaching facility which has now been materialized thanks to the support of a lot of well wishers teaching is teaching a good teaching student centered teaching is part of the very DNA of IIT Madras thousands of alumni that I talked to vouch for it that their lives have been impacted for the better thanks to professors here who went out of the way to make their stay at IIT Madras their learning process at IIT Madras a little more fruitful and comfortable for them facilities such as this take that DNA to the world outside we are now through programs like NPTEL through programs like the BSE online online BSE in programming and data science able to take that culture to the country at large and possibly the world facilities such as this are essential to make that transition in a seamless and in a in a scale fashion particularly want to thank the support of the class of 1982 who have helped us create the studio that we are in right now I also want to acknowledge the efforts of vice president in our office of institutional advancement who has diligently worked with the class to help them create this facility I also want to thank Dr. Keshav Panda Dr. Ms. K. Prabhakaran Anuradha Basu from LNTTS for supporting this initiative is this is going to be a game changer for for students and learners in the country at large and I also want to acknowledge the efforts of Priya Sundaram a senior vice president in our office of institutional advancement who has been very diligently working with LTTTS against nearly impossible deadlines to make this facility happen for us thank you sirs thank you for all your efforts and thinking of us to make this happen lastly while we are all in the studio that's going to create a world of create a learning world for the students out there and a teaching world for the professors here the scale up process going forward cannot happen without well wishers like LTTTS and the class of 1982 please do not stop with just being financial supporters of these of the creation of these facilities please embrace the students that are going to come through the program mentor them help them be more successful citizens and individuals and positive contributors to the society there are many ways by which you can become partners in this whole learning process for the students in this programs in these programs both in NPTEL as well as the BSC program we welcome you to explore those opportunities as well thank you again and we look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with both the contributors thank you thank you Mr. Mahesh Mr. Venkat Rahman Mr. Subramanian is here with us representing the class of 1982 of IIT Madras which has been generous enough to contribute to the building of these studios Mr. Venkat is currently the VP of engineering Hitachi Vantara he has been with Oracle for about 13 years and in various senior leadership positions in companies like Spicehose DataGuys, Waterline Data in the USA in the last couple of years we invite him now to say a few words thank you for saying just a few words and I will keep it to a few words I'm honored to represent the class of 1982 and I just start with a small story here I've been thinking about what you're doing here and it kind of takes me back almost 44 years some of my cohorts here are in the audience and when we walked into the campus we actually had really no notion of what life is going to be like over the next five years we got about the best education possible and that's no amount of money can buy and to be told we also didn't pay very much thinking about the semester fees and the room rent and also the hostel mess fees and so on and so forth at that point I don't think any of my classmates even gave any kind of thought to how this was possible how this education is being provided to us but when we went into the real world we realized that education is really a big business especially quality education can cost a lot that's when it hit us that somehow somebody made it possible that's actually all the faceless people of India so that's when you kind of realize that for all that they have done to you you need to do something in return which is kind of what brings us here to this place as well so the challenge when you have such a sentiment is to actually find a channel that is trustworthy that's kind of apt for what you have in mind and I have to say that I do my trust actually kind of meets all of those requirements 100% and there are so many options and so couple of years ago for the 35th year of anniversary for the graduation on campus some of us got together we were talking about again giving back and we were not quite satisfied with what we had done after the 25th so that's how this whole exercise started so we started looking at what is it that we can contribute towards so the one thing we kind of settled on is the water center that was coming up at the public campus and as you all know between climate and environment those are uppermost in everybody's mind but water is a big thing it's quite possible that there could even be like a World War 3 just on water so until that moment we thought that's what we would actually be funding we were known about NPTEL it's not like we didn't but then we just heard that there was a fire that gutted the entire studio then it's almost like just flipping a switch we said that's the one we should really focus on and why is that that NPTEL Mahesh was talking about this Professor Thangraj was actually talking about this as well is that the education that we all we all get here it was just a select few it's now being made available to the entire country anybody outside can get this full circle for me so that best education that no amount of money can buy is not available to anybody who actually has the inclination to reach out and learn so that's what NPTEL does and also I think if I'm not mistaken Pratap I think between 30 and 40,000 faculty around the country also take courses in this that means they're also upping their own skills so we all hear about how some of the colleges students who are really not fit for employment are maybe using somewhat of extreme terms but it's somewhat true but I think this kind of availability of courses to those students can only up the levels at which they're going to graduate so what NPTEL is actually done is really raise the level of technical education in India so what started I guess as a vision for Professor Anand is now I think Professor Ramathi's mission to actually raise it multiple levels so that's what we're seeing now so it is definitely an honour for us and then actually I would like to thank the institute for giving us this opportunity so thank you Dr. Kesha Pandas the CEO and Managing Director of LNT Technology Services Bachelor's Degree in Aeronautical Engineering is from Anna Investee Chennai Postgraduate Degree in Aerospace Engineering from ISC Bangalore and PhD from the IIT Bombay in Aero Servo Elasticity Dr. Pandas over 31 years of experience and research conceptualising, creating, operationalising and turning around complex technology and engineering businesses Dr. Pandas was recognised as CEO of the year for 2019 by news channel CNBC Avas in recognition of his contributions the engineering and technology sectors over the last three decades LNT is also another big donor as we've heard previously for the construction of our studios Over to Dr. Pandas Good evening all of you Professor Ramathi Director IIT Madras and all the Professors Before I say anything I want to first salute you all the Professors in IIT and outside you have a big role in national building you guys are doing a wonderful job and whatever we are today nation is today all because of your contribution Last year Tupura is a company we have been involved last 80 plus years in national building I always joke when I go to any customer around the world I've been here last 22 years now and you can't go to India without touching LNT The airport you land built by LNT the road you drive built by us the power supply the hotel you stay is by last year Tupura and earlier days you know the circuit baker or the meters used in hotel built by LNT and the car you drive the refinery built by LNT the petrol pump and you go to gas station you go to by last year Tupura built around 2009 and I used to be a scientist and a show inside to satellite we work in LCA program after my education I am very closely associated with Indian sub science we do a lot of work in IAC as well as IIT Madras as well engineering work technology work I always believed next 100 years is for India now the average India is 28 years 29 years compared to the western world 39 to 40 years and China is also of the same range the two areas we need to focus is the country one is education and second one is the healthcare education and healthcare is so important for Indian you know system now the lot of people you know we see the stock market we see people in Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore the lot of people below poverty still so it is important that if you want life you touch educating them and we change transform India as a whole I see India 20 years ago 30 years ago every time go and come back and look at it and same thing true in America as well you will see New York and SFO San Francisco we always talk about how we US in the biggest country richest country in the world I have gone to the remote area in America they are no different from what is in in India so I think it is a human being forget about whatever role we play responsibility and nothing can replace education and I remember my father used to say I come from village and I was in Chennai I have seen 40 Tamil movies I can speak Tamil as well I have been there in Chennai for a long time but let me tell you my father used to say education is number one nobody can take what you learn so I think that brought us to all the children in all my siblings everybody did very very well and I am very passionate about the engineers I have 17,000 employees today every time talk to engineers do you know engineering do you know engineering today unfortunately more than teaching students I believe NPTEL can help the faculty in different engineering colleges lot of faculty I think they need education more than students need hundreds of engineering colleges around India and those faculty if you don't have quality education they do not give the students I don't think future looks so good so my request to I think this is excellent initiative I got a call from Prabhakaran and said you know I have been very closely associated with Indians of science for quite some time now and Prabhakaran called me and said IT Madras there is something like this opportunity we have do you want to do that I said please go ahead education and healthcare any opportunity comes we have lot of ambulances we have donated we do lot of work but money giving is one thing but engineering technology using for the benefit of people betterment of people I think we all have a responsibility we are very fortunate to be what we are today but I think all of us in this and especially the professors in IIT and you guys are doing I've seen lot of professor association with professors in IIT IAC at Gondar IIT Kanpur you know very recently we do some work with them as well and I think it's an amazing job I think the future of India more than anybody else depends on you and you are doing amazing job selflessly very passionately what you do keep it up and industry collaboration I think much more has to be done you need to be much more and today I see IAC director is much more involved we had a committee earlier I was there professor director IAC was also there so lot more we can do money is not a problem today I don't think money is a problem companies are doing well and willing to support but we support in the right place and not support give the money to people but create something where the future looks good so it's a great honor to be here on behalf of my 17,000 employees in 30 countries around the world it's a great honor and thank you very much for this opportunity and we look forward to associating ourselves with you IIT Madras for a long term not just this initiative but much more exciting work engineering technology we can do together which will take us to the next level and India will continue to sign thank you sharing your thoughts on this next we invite professor Bhaskar Ramurthi director of IIT Madras who is also the chairman of the NPTEL project he started writing a profile for him then we said he needs no introduction so we are not going to introduce him today so he can come and share thank you very much am I audible Dr. Panda yes I can hear you well so and all the others maybe there are other people from class of 1982 also watching so on behalf of the institute and all my colleagues and all students known and unknown of NPTEL I want to first straight away thank LNT technology services and the class of 1982 for their generous contribution to make this classroom for NPTEL possible see we have always had studios in fact we had one classroom like this I think before the thing got burned down which was not built for this it was built as a normal classroom but got converted to NPTEL studio and we now need to actually create the facility where more teachers can often NPTEL course even while they teach their regular class here otherwise you have to do it separately you know you have to so these two rooms actually enable that and you know we can run 4, 5, 6 courses a day so you can this enable straight away something like 12, 15 courses a year semester to be taught simultaneously to the class of IIT and to students at large we will create more such facilities as we need them so that is really the crux of this facility just to teach online you don't need such a big classroom small studios enough and as people have pointed out I think the NPTEL program which is jointly run by the IITs, ISE and a few other institutions I have chipped in also is a very very major program many things in India when we do things at scale we don't talk about it too much others don't realize it people talk about a lot of I mean this is true of everything whether it's Kumbh Mela or the NPTEL or even UPI so this is really happening at scale and different students and colleges are benefitting from it to the level they need and I think therefore it is sort of offered like an ala cart and people take what they want we have partnerships with almost 2,000 institutions we call them local chapters we therefore have feedback loops we understand what they get what they don't get it's not that we just broadcast it and forget about it 4,000 so I'm not kept track we have not had a review meeting recently so I think the point is we are therefore actually the IIT system therefore is connected very closely to the engineering education science education system in the country there are only 30,000 colleges in the country we already have 4,000 who are partners so you can see the level of connect and now we have launched this online BSE program so that's really if the learnings from all of this figuring out how to do this right we are now reaching out to students across the country and maybe across the world ultimately to offer them a really high quality degree program in something that will also be a knowledge and skill set which will also make them highly employable and it's a few days I don't want to talk too much about it but it looks very good looks like we are on the right track and I'm very happy that LNT Technology Services has also contributed significant amount for scholarships to students in that program because that program is not subsidized by the government and in a way I'm happy it's not we are finding already that I think we'll probably raise more money from philanthropy for supporting those who need than the government ever spend without in an untargeted fashion over the whole population so this is actually working out very well it's very exciting I think I'm looking forward to the very carefully curated online programs not across the board in everything under the sun but very carefully curated programs where employment potential is high where interest among the students is high and where we can therefore reach out and provide to people all over the country and anywhere actually very high quality education we are also learning how to do it combination of face to face meetings as well as online lectures it's not ideologically bound that it has to be only online or only this only that we'll use whatever works but I think we'll get the thing right so I'm very thankful to LNT Technology Services supporting both this classroom as well as that scholarships for the needy students in that program Class of 1982 what can I say they're all just two years behind me I am the class of 1980 I know many of them personally I hosted a few of them and I was a student in the US when they landed up there this class is close to me so I'm very glad they took this opportunity to be part of this to actually sponsor one of these NPTEL classrooms and very grateful to them I hope to look forward to their engagement in any way funding is one part of it but actually in different ways to engage with us engage with the students of the upcoming generation this is the next 20 years I think about 100 is too long next 20 years are going to transform the face of this country and it's very difficult I mean I just look back at last 20 years and see how little of what has happened I foresaw I just extrapolated what was 1990 like and thought little bit faster little bit better never understood what was going on and therefore never really planned my own outlook what was going to happen we should make that mistake twice I think we should understand what is going to happen in this country in the next 20 years and make our own outlook and our own focus of activities such that it aligns maximally with that so that we can do our little bit for the country before we go so in that sense I would say all of us are at a very exciting point in time people younger than us are even more at the right point in time in this country and therefore I thank the class of 1982 also for this wonderful gesture we are actually going to there's a huge ambiance improvement program of the institute now as part of the institute of eminence in fact all the old all the buildings built in the 60s the big buildings are all going to be air conditioned centrally classrooms are going to be air conditioned also so most of the classrooms in which class of 1982 and class of 1992 and class of 1980 all of us learned I really I would believe that I'm not having to teach in these classes these are frightening I like the old class where with the chalk piece in hand and blackboard I can walk about and teach but not used to this but it's going to change I think now faculty will want to teach face to face but also want to record everything and put it up on the website students want to be able to revisit when they don't understand in class or they slept off in class as all of us did students it's not going to be the same after this pandemic when they come back everybody will expect all the class recordings to be available everybody will expect you know they'll expect all the pluses that they got from the online education without the negative that you know it's there's no face to face they're going to expect both so we have to enable may not be broadcast quality because you don't have to record it for broadcasting but all the classrooms across the institute will have a huge step up so will the buildings the buildings are nice buildings there's no doubt about them they're all lovely buildings structurally they're very good but we need to really we are basically upping the level of finish level of support you know facilities and so on they're also finally making them monkey free so no monkeys in classrooms anymore okay coming too much to allow what's used to have have been given students now the faculty are complaining the students are complaining so they're all going to become people monkeys are going to be on not in the class okay so thank you again to we are a very close partner of LNT in many programs in the civil engineering department and other and you know and we run programs with them a lot of joint work with them on lean manufacturing lean construction and other things so the LNT group is a very close partner in any case they're very pleased that they have significantly in this program also also the class of 1982 thank all of you this is the first phase to phase program I am participating in after the lockdown started last thank you sir coming down to the last part where we would like to thank so many people who helped make these studios happen I would like to call upon professor Pratap Haridas he is a professor in the department of metallurgical and materials engineering in IIT Madras he did his beta in metallurgical engineering from IIT Madras batch of 1992 he got his PhD from University of Wisconsin Madison USA he's a coordinator of NPTEL and the IITM BSE program he's been a key factor in the studios which we see here today right from the design stage working with the architects increasing every component of furniture and equipment that you see here ensuring that the work is completed on time by helping coordinate between the various vendors and stakeholders involved he has been literally on this side the last I think one week or 10 days from when we finalize this date and he's been driving everybody saying that we have to complete we have to complete I mean we had to mention this because he has been one driving force for getting these studios up and running and be ready for the inaugurations today so Pratap for the move we have thank you you can thank the others good evening everyone it's my pleasure to you know propose vote of thanks I'm doing this on behalf of the NPTEL community the NPTEL office and staff here at IIT Madras as well as all the NPTEL offices across the country we have several of them and the NPTEL student community the local chapter community all of whom have a stake in this activity so I would like to begin first of all by thanking our supporters the LNT technology services and the class of 1982 today there are a lot of various causes that are worthy of support truly worthy of support and so we are particularly happy that you have chosen to support us in a journey that we have been along for a while and there's a lot of distance to go so we are really thanks to you for taking the time and effort to look through what we are doing and deciding that this is something that is worthy of support at the institute we have had a lot of support from Dr. Ramuti as Andrew mentioned he's the chairman of our program implementation committee he encourages us, gives us lots of new ideas I mean naturally being a director it's a very tight schedule but still he's the person where you know you can meet him in an elevator and he'll quickly give you an idea that is worth looking at at a moment's notice and you're always taken by surprise by that I would like to thank Dean Academic Courses Professor Jagdish Kumar because when we when this studio was being thought about he quite readily gave us these three classrooms we have we are kind of running full capacity in all our classrooms and these classrooms had to be kind of you know stopped from regular activities so that we could actually do some work on them. Dean planning Professor Liji Philip who has been supporting the entire construction activity there's a lot of construction on campus and so to support every new activity takes a lot of effort for that. Dean alumni and corporate relations Professor Mahesh Panchagnala he's been actually guiding us that we have not really you know publicized our work enough and he always says that you know you should really showcase your work more there are a lot of people really keenly interested in providing support and we need to do more to reach out to them. He and his team have worked quite hard to help us present our activities outside. I would like to thank the engineering unit chairman Professor Robinson. He has personally come here several times including you know a sat in the furniture given his comments telling us that this is not you know enough length and all that so that level of detail he has participated in in this process I thank him for that from the engineering unit Mr. Manika Vasagam, Mr. Ajay and Mr. Ravi Chandran I have endlessly called them on phone many times and at times of the time of the day they have been happy to reach out to me and tell me what can be done what cannot be done and how it can be done and so I'm really thankful to all three of them for that continuous support. Our contractors a lot of contractors worked here I briefly wanted to mention it three constructions who did the civil works here in space which did the furniture work here visual technologies which did all the audio visual equipment installation the carpeting for matrix electrical work actually we had a lot of electrical work in space Mr. Shekhar and Mr. Narayana Swami Purushottam who did a lot of work for us the signage all the signage that you see here from new design display and you know the overall person who kept track of all of this this Kale Selvi from Mac Architects she's putting a lot of effort the entire you know studio look the feel the you know layout of the furniture the selection of furniture at every stage she's been involved with us and she's put a lot of input so everything you see here from the first drawing that was seen to actually delivering it at this level we thank her for all those efforts to her and her team finally I would like to thank Mr. Kanem Krishnamurti and Mr. Sagar Ratnaka the last several days he's been here in fact last night he was here till I think four in the morning to just finish up all the final activities here and incidentally I think it's today it's his birthday so he's somewhere here so we wish him a very happy birthday on this occasion and with us at midnight on his birthday until 4 a.m. on his birthday so thank you very much and I would like to close of course by thanking Ministry of Education and which was previously MHRD they have been supportive of this program now almost approaching 20 years consistently supporting us consistently giving us more to do challenging us and going along in this journey with us I thank you once again all of you for joining us this evening on this present occasion and I thank you for all the support thank you very much. Dr. Panda I just wanted to thank you again for attending this event and I wanted to also see if Mr. Prabhakaran is also online along with Aniruddh Basu hello sir thank you for working against near impossible deadlines thank you very much for making this happen I was going to suggest that one of these days you should come have your own leadership meeting in the LNTTS studio we can beam you to the world from here we have the best facilities please come use this facility as your you know our campus is a resort in itself so please come stay on our campus and have a leadership team meeting with this as your facility we welcome you and we look forward to having you on campus sir. Thank you sir look forward to thank you thank you welcome thank Mr. Prabhakaran thank you again very much thank you thank you everybody bye


17 June 2015 is the deadline for the transition from analog to digital broadcasting for all countries in Region 1, which is Europe, Africa, CIS countries, and Middle East countries, and Iran. This deadline for switching off analog television broadcasting in the UHF band was set by the ITU member states at the Regional Radio Communication Conference in 2006. As the Specialized Agency of the United Nations dealing with information and communication technologies, including spectrum and satellite orbits, ITU applies the decisions of administrations at World Radio Communication Conferences and Regional Radio Communication Conferences, such as those relating to setting deadlines. In this case, the deadline was agreed by the consensus decisions of all participating member states, that is 120 member states, and ITU has no power at this stage to impose or modify this decision. It is important to say that the process of switching from analog to digital television has been long and complex. In this process, the ITU provides technical and planning assistance to its members, but the implementation lies in the hands of each administration. Some countries which are signatories to do 2006 agreement have already introduced digital television simultaneously with analogs. Others are in the process of doing so. We expect most countries in the region to meet the deadline. The countries that will not be able to implement the deadline will face the following situations. First, they will have an obligation to immediately resolve any harmful interference that may occur into digital television of other countries. And second, they will have no longer protection against harmful interference by these countries. Of course, the digital switchover is not restricted to the countries which are part of the 2006 Geneva agreement, but they are not bound by any deadline for the switching of analog broadcasting. Today, the overarching trend is to go digital. And countries around the world are actively working towards the switch to digital television, which itself creates a domino effect. Digital broadcasting has many advantages. Viewers and users can view a vast variety of additional programs, and they can do so on additional reception modes such as portable TV or even on mobile devices. In addition, there is improved quality of picture and sound, including HDTV, and there is soon ultra HDTV. Finally, there are additional services such as interactivity, electronic program guides that are extremely useful and attractive for the end users. For TV operators and content providers, digital TV offers significant decrease in transmission costs compared to analog. Power costs are reduced, the number of transmitters is also reduced, and this obviously translates in overall network costs reduction. In summary, the investment costs are decreased as one DTT transmitter can broadcast multiple channels or program leading to a substantial reduction of this cost through the sharing of infrastructure. New TV services can be developed without spectrum constraints, and new innovative services can be offered such as mobile TV, data, games, interactivity, voice, and much more. Digital TV is also a boon for regulators. More efficient use of radio spectrum provides the so-called digital dividend, frame a fresh spectrum for use by other services such as mobile broadband, a key and a blur for social and economic development. Digital TV lends itself to fair competition with the development of a terrestrial platform that is competitive for both with both cable and satellite platforms. In parallel, the global harmonization of the use of the 700 and 800 MHz band by the mobile service is progressing well with the adoption in Latin America, Asia and Europe of frequency arrangement which can be used concurrently for both bands in the same terminals. Political wheel and economies of scale are therefore setting the conditions for the rapid, ubiquitous and affordable development of broadband mobile through 3G and 4G IMT networks in developing and developed countries around the world to a large extent through the extensive use of the UHF band. As it has always done, ITU will keep supporting new technologies by promoting best practices in the use of spectrum and introducing new provisions in the regular relations when it is required to enable their development while protecting other services and providing long-term assurance for investments in radio communication systems. Finally, I would like to congratulate the administrations which have successfully switched to digital television broadcasting. As for the others, they can be assured of the continued support of the ITU to carry out this process. I wish all countries a successful transition to digital television broadcasting.


Hello and welcome to another episode of the collab talk podcast where we discuss the convergence of technology business productivity and collaboration culture. My guest today is Adam Harmetz. Hello, Adam. Great to be here. VP of product at Microsoft and we're talking today. So here's my fancy title collaborative by design colon cultivating a culture of collaboration. Liberation. Yeah, have to do that. So for folks that don't know at Adam and maybe more of an introduction what you focus on there at Microsoft. Yeah, sure. Today, I run a product data science and customer experience team that focuses on a couple different areas of of Microsoft 365 so in particular SharePoint bread and butter grew up through the SharePoint team as many of us did in the SharePoint community. But it branches out into Viva, various elements of Viva was a founding member of Viva and on the Viva leadership team right now because you know SharePoint and Viva overlap quite a bit in terms of helping employee experiences and helping organizations thrive. And then I sit on Jeff Teeper's larger leadership team which thinks about all the collaborative apps and platforms at Microsoft. You know, and it's a good good old chatter. It's and there's a lot under the hood I mean look that there's a it's not surprising why you look at the leadership team and see people that have been there like you're closing in on 20 years as well that next year when you hit the I think so yeah this would be 19 so yeah okay yeah well it's funny we started talking about doing this episode about a year and a half ago because you were I think I reached out to you first when you had just started your sabbatical. So you took that time off and then we saw each other interviewed at at ESPC, where was that ESPC which one was that together. I know I know this that we talked again and maybe Prague but I'm not sure you know well I'm sure we saw each other Prague but we we connected again in Amsterdam this this last December. But it was also when we first talked was relatively close to the launch of work lab of that site. And remember when we talked about because you were you were focusing on some other things again not tool based you were doing kind of bigger thinking about your culture and experiences when I talked to you about this and I, I love. And that that fit in very well with the cultural aspect of what I love talking about and what years ago I can't remember if I told you this I was actually going to go do a doctoral program where funny enough this is 25 years ago. And my plan study was to look at the at how collaboration technology impacted working teams, how to change culture, and which is really exactly what work lab looks at studies, a lot of the research there it's the home of the if you're not familiar with the work lab website it's the it gives a behind the scenes of like the thinking of how Microsoft builds technology, and it's also the home of like the work, a work trend index report and analysis. And so, yeah, I don't know, have you written for for work lab, or do you blog separately about those kinds of topics. Yeah, I mean well the work lab stuff is done by, you know, user research experts mostly those who do deep deep analysis and research that has quite a bit of rigor and backing to it. And I think the origin story of that for sure was as Microsoft deep in our relationship with customers to focus more on just sort of it tools as we did things like Viva which is absolutely a, you know, technology is not going to solve all your employee experience it has one role to solve and so does your people and your processes and your leadership strategy. And obviously with AI, which is a huge transformation you see the same thing right there's a role for AI and there's a role for change management and learning what others are doing and so work lab and work trends index was really saying like hey, you know, customers wanted our relationship to be more than just how to deploy the tool. It would be how to holistically think about this problem, also what the data that we are seeing in a global footprint from usage patterns are saying what analysis can we take from that. And just in general like customers relying on Microsoft more and more for guidance on how to approach some of these big transformational problems in their lives in their organizational lives. In addition to technology what advice can you give on how I can be a better executive a better person who's wrestling with these programs a battle change agent. And some is really the origin story of that I you know I do a lot of sort of separate personal blogging on my own journey as a product maker with my wife actually is also a VP a product that a, at a growth stage start up. So I have a lot of thoughts on, and I've seen over the years just like oh my gosh, like what used to be limited by technology is now limited by the ability for humans to all get on the same page. And that is the limiting factor of how much we can achieve together and I think that's super fascinating and it as as a product versus you know, for software development like products at the very center of that that bottleneck and solving that bottleneck. Well that that's a it's funny and so what we the interim while we talked about getting together doing this episode. We had a little release of something called co pilot that happened, and people probably aren't aware of what that is. Microsoft needs to do a better job of, I think selling people on that. I just, how did you choose a title for this talk with a bunch of season it and not that word. The podcast is the collab talk podcast, if I focus on collaboration. No, but I, but you talk about like that gap between the people in the technology that people with each other. And that's actually a huge opportunity for organizations is is for AI to help decipher the two I mean you think of it almost like when I was back in the working the manufacturing collaboration technology for the manufacturing space. A lot of we were doing is that you'd have different ERP platforms trying to communicate to get to each other and there was an opportunity for these third parties to create like a box a device that could take the incoming messages from two disparate systems, sort it out and then communicate back and AI has the ability to fill some of that gap. Oh no absolutely. A thousand percent. And, you know this has happened in our industry many many times every X number of years there's a new interaction model everything from mainframes to PCs more things be connected from PCs to the cloud well you can now have more fast solutions we're all about interconnecting disconnected services and AI is just the next evolution of that that frontier absolutely. And, you know it's exciting because I do think it is. There's always market and customer demand for more interrupt between disparate systems and every evolution of technology, you know, makes a leap on that and then eventually you can see you can't eke out any more integration among that leap and so you're invent another one and you know whether, you know, not to rag on crypto because that's probably going to get a bunch of haters on the podcast but like, you know, you know whether an emerging technology is going to like actually be sustainable whether it can actually move forward on that several different accesses but one of them certainly are productivity and collapse base is the ability to bring interconnected systems together and you could say other technologies like you look at it you're like meh I just don't believe that's going to be the paradigm shift step function and you look at AI and like is that a back is that a backdoor slam against dogecoin. I mean, come on, comment, no comment but more to the point for AI like it is so clear that that it is going to have a among many other positive outcomes and risk we have to manage but positive outcomes it is being able to bring interconnected disconnected systems and people together. You know, one of the things I'm blessed that I get to is as part of the ESPC community reporters the last few years I every year I get to interview Jeff Tipper as part of what he's out there keynoting. So it's like you see for folks that it follow along like there's the official ESPC interviews you'll see Tipper up there talking. I'm the one standing behind the camera asking the questions, but you're putting that together, and then I get edited out my voice everything on there but it's but it's there. But one of the things we talked about a little bit during that interview was with with the change that we just we don't yet understand with around AI and co pilot specifically. He made the comment talking about in parallel like cloud technology. And he says like it was, he says it took it was since I started talking selling cloud solutions was back in 2001. That's what I got aware of the topic and was going and talking with customer prospects, trying to commence them yes move your data into the SAS solution in the cloud and strong pushback from that. And Tipper mentioned he says it wasn't until like 2016 2017, where he felt like it really just clicked and everybody accepted that this is the future this is words could be. So that's, you know, 1516 years, it took time to get people to really accept the cloud co pilot AI is moving so much more quickly. Absolutely. So, you know that that's, and I'd say that, let me ask you this, do you think Microsoft has it figured out what that looks like in the next even three to five years, what that team culture and experience will look like.  Anybody thinks they know the future of AI as a fool perhaps a clever fool because people offering certainty will attract people to them because in this uncertain time. I mean, I think Microsoft runs on trust. I think, seriously, that's just not something we say I think maintaining and accelerating customer trust is incredibly important and so I think that's a mix of saying here's what we're sure about and here's what we're going to learn together. So, you know, I do hope that we have a lot of signals that gives us a point of view on the world and a point of view on how to adopt AI responsibly and well, and things we're very sure about and things we're hopeful of and investigating and and I think we're pretty clear, there are major conferences, you know, builds up coming about what we're sure about and what we're moving forward on and, and I think customers are want to bet and partner with us and trust and build trust with us on both what's ready and what's speculative and you know there's a whole spectrum of customers that want to adopt very early that want to sort of only adopt AI that seems pretty mainstream and you know, and in a whole spectrum there. So, you know, I think we have a great view compared to others in the industry and we're sharing that view and using it to build a lot of trust and make sure AI is deployed responsibly but no do we have every single thing figured out do we think we know like in three years. Exactly where we want to be. No, that's it's a, I would say two things. We always do our best work at Microsoft when we're co developing with our customers, both on in a big and a small way and this is no. This is no exception. We wouldn't have even been where we are today without incredibly awesome feedback in a you know, very tight fashion with some of our early adopters and we continue to learn from that. We do hope that when we're doing our best work at Microsoft we are a partner that customers can trust to be farther ahead of than anyone else they could choose. Partly because of our global scale partly because we're really good hopefully as product makers and partly because we're really building that trust with with our with our community our partners our customers and bringing forward along and you mentioned work trends already like that is I think one of the ways we build that trust is to be very public about what we're learning and very share that with the world. You know I have no way of proving this but I think the co pilot roll out might be the most studied piece of software roll out in the history of the world. What else would have been more studied than this I get it guarantee you the very early on partly learning from the cloud and how it was deployed and what we could have done to help prepare people more for that you know I had friends who were who were really whose careers were impacted many positive many not so positively about the cloud roll out. You know as they were great at racking and stacking servers but couldn't make the leap to what modern it is what's needed from in the cloud and I feel really responsible. I feel responsible for that and I feel in the air of AI that knowing that such disruptions are also going to happen. That's one of the reasons we share and partner and. What what are the comments that I make back talking with a lot of clients around digital transformation I think one of the gaps in talking about that is that a lot of organizations think of digital transformation they think instantly of well yeah upgrading to the newest version of whatever it's like. No it's like you go back to what you said it's there's the tools the technology certainly there's people there's process all of those things are part of it. For me digital transformation isn't so much around upgrading to less technology latest technology because you can use older technology older programs and get high productivity. It has more to do with like are we optimized to the tools are processes are people are we are we the best that we can be are we doing more are we generating more we innovating more we collaborating more. All that kind of thing one of the things I always use as an example. Like because Microsoft I'll say that when I left Microsoft in 2009 still so much of Microsoft sales was focused on selling the license getting that in there and and there was my perspective there was less interest. Whether they actually used it or not who cares but what happened and specifically with Office 365 is that people were getting to the end of their EAs and saying we're getting like 30% adoption 40% at best. Why are we paying for all this stuff and somebody woke up. Again this is my outside perspective somebody woke up and said engagement adoption what is that and this is important it's not just about selling licenses but making sure people are using this technology and so that's that was the beginning and this was I mean I would put it kind of in the. 2011 2012 when there seemed to be this wake up that that happened where people started talking more about adoption it helped that everybody's moving towards the cloud. Because and I used to always say that like you've got all these people that know the servers they know these boxes and so much of their time was spent keeping servers up and running rather than focusing on what are we actually running these servers in this software for. The technology this is to help our business our focus should be on the business doing more not hey I flipped switches and kept servers on and going. And so going back to digital transformation it's not just about updating all of these these tools is like what are we doing with that. I would argue that I think there's still a lot of work to be done on what digital transformation means and now with the rise of AI it makes it. Even more imperative that organizations don't just look at it as hey we deployed new technology but how does this really fit in and change the way that we do business. And that's something where that's why I like I wasn't seriously asking like what do you know in three to five years around that. The saying that we we have to communicate more we have to be talking about this sharing what we're learning. This is why I'm so you know interested I like I have to be ignite I have to be at ESPC because each one of these major and build is another thing I'll be watching online but starting to get the stories come in of the pilots of the early deployments to really understand like what did you learn from it. Yeah I know and I think we take that responsibility incredibly seriously and to your mid 2010 shift it was all about having the data that we didn't have before the currency for product success became monthly active users not seats sold. Not that anybody didn't want to track engagement and usage before but that's very difficult to do on premise just a different business model we just didn't frankly have responsibility for that half of the problem it was all you know different different stakeholders in the value chain. By the time I got to end users and one of the things of the cloud in addition to just cost reductions which is awesome you know great to save our customers money. Was also just this owning more of the end to end experience and then having the ability to measure and take accountability for it. I mean I mean to your point the. You know I'm I find myself to be the co-leader the Microsoft 365 conference coming up I don't actually know when this is published if it's before after but it's April 30. That's before. Great awesome everybody should come but. And it's very fascinating to be a co-leader of a conference at the product maker generally our marketing team exclusively handles it but you know these product level conference a lot more about guidance. And it's great to sort of be more involved in the the craft of putting on a conference I'm now a snob for keynote stages and I know every you know what how much money you can spend on what it looks like when you see. Better stages but in any case like Dan home a good friend of both of ours. I asked him to step up and and lead a super track at this conference for business decision makers so like you know it's like 65% it 10% developers and the best of the folks are like you know everybody that it partners with or like people that are in the business using this. Using all that we that we make. And it was really interesting to see us all think about so what are we going to do for these folks and you know partly it was very Viva focus because a lot of these business decision makers use Viva. And then partly we were sort of like well AI is coming and how do we prepare them for that and then many of these folks are adoption specialists and change agents and we sort of realized like oh my gosh that those three things are exactly the same thing. Like how can you use an employee experience platform to help with change what is the biggest change you have to deal with. It's it's AI and so you know there's a transform track or transformation track at this conference and it's just encapsulates exactly what you were saying where it's sort of like yes technology has a role to play especially the employee experience technology. You know but those it's really adoption change management you know that's always you know for always core to the ethos of our community and then really relating to that to AI because AI is very obviously it should be you know there's reasons for people have a little bit of fear of what's coming with it but it is actually just you know a change management project. Maybe more similar to ones you've already tackled in your career at your organization. But you didn't realize you know because it's brand new so you don't you can't quite pattern match it to the types of change management rollouts you've done before but all the technology and playbooks that you've used can help with with the transformation to. What's one of the reason I'm a huge advocate for the adoption. You know a website as well yeah great resources that are out there that's another thing I mean Microsoft has gotten. Much better at the documentation I often talk about and you know this to having been in the SharePoint world that a lot of the SharePoint community I would argue it was so cohesive and so strong because the documentation from Microsoft was so. Inadequate before the needs of the old and that's how we bonded by sharing that that information and so while that never slowed down and you have the MVP community have experts around the world. That are providing a lot in fact if you go to dot docs dot Microsoft a lot of the documentation is community oriented of course there's a lot of Microsoft people writing a lot of content. But you'd be surprised going in and looking at reference material that's Microsoft's official documentation and guidance on products. How much is community authors that are that are on there and working closely with Microsoft around that but yeah again this is something where I still it just it feels. Different it was so for years as a SharePoint at going to SharePoint Saturday SharePoint conferences all of those things. I'd say the majority of the content 60% was it pro related again we're looking at the servers we're looking at the administration of the tools and then there was developers a second the smallest thinnest was the end user the product productivity is like how to actually use that and it's now completely flipped around. So much is more business centric how you use is how do you get more out of it how do you transform change your business around that. And which I think is fantastic you know one that we have the luxury that technology works well enough and the cloud is benefited us by by I don't have to manage servers I've been a SharePoint admin. You know and running that doing that permissions management constantly and now there are tools and partners and things that are out there. So you instead can focus on how can we run more efficient meetings. So I want to shift to that slightly how was the meeting experience changed over the last couple years inside of Microsoft. Yeah it's hard not to answer that question without recognizing the pandemic of course where you know my org was a famous hashtag no screens culture in meetings where you know it sounds anachronistic at this point but like too many people on their phones or laptops during a meeting sort of being grazers of meetings or you know virtual popcorn eaters instead of instead of participating in the meeting and we had a real culture of no like be present. Put your phone away and then of course the pandemic started and all meetings were remote and and of course you had a screen and you know it was a little bit more about how to survive than it was how to how to thrive. And in now it's you know we don't have a return to work policy about 40% of my team is is not in the Puget Sound area well over 50 if you include sort of dotted line folks that technically aren't reporting structure but absolutely work on the on the mission and in the tribe. And and so you know you plan for that you plan for almost everything being hybrid actually this week right now the entire team is in Redmond we sort of do twice a year sort of onsites that sort of fill up our cup growth community and what why how you know alignment. And. And so you know I and and Microsoft's commitment to growth mindset to having many voices heard for a million good reasons including it creates better software is also sort of incredibly important to how we run meetings in terms of raise hand and sort of that protocol it's really shifted since it was you know mostly. You know in person only with a couple people may be trying to watch over over teams and you know before the pandemic. And then of course you know I can't help but mention copilot truly that's one of the elements of copilot that has the most product market fit the most depth the most positive reception from customers and my own usage like it really is. You know an ability if you miss something to be able to get updated on it. If you're not quite sure if you have alignment you can literally ask your you know copilot meetings copilot for their assessment of how much alignment you have it was just doing that something with three VPs the other day and I was like do we have agreement and it like listed out each each each VP and you know agreement but they had this concern agreement you know it was it was it was one of those magic moments for sure. And so you know I think that's you know coupled it out you know transcripts is also we just I said someone on my my that I work with closely that had a near infection and couldn't really couldn't hear well for a week. And was able to use transcription you know obviously it's awesome for those with sort of more permanent disabilities as well for whatever reason you know also for AI and transcription, you know search and all that, but it's also just a great reminder that accessibility is. You know also for you know it just makes software more usable and can help folks in a variety of different ways, including sort of, you know even temporary types of stuff which is what I think humanizes even more that the investments and sort of accessibility features that I've seen a lot in from the meeting team over the years. Yeah, it I often go back I think it was, I think it was at the old before it got rebranded as inspire the partner conference, where they did on stage, you know, maybe it was build, but they did like the future of meetings and they had like the little conference room set up on stage. And they were kind of showing this and people were like, look, this is all, I mean it's put it together it's a demo but it, they emphasize there's the things that it does that the tools and the technology that was changing process. Before you go in the meeting like, here's the things here's the decisions you're supposed to make this is what you're asked to do out of the last status meeting, you get all that for prep, then there's in the meeting, and they were showcasing some of the unified comms tools to be able to recognize. The voices that were dialing in there's somebody whose voice only there were multiple people on screen, there are people sitting around the table, and it was able to through the crosstalk, capture that identify who those those were, keep up with the multiple threads of conversations happening. And then after the meeting, summarizing that it was you know that at the time they were talking about I think it was officially referred to as the Cortana stuff I can't remember that branding happened later now now gone, which I kind of like because I'm a halo guy, but now, you know, there needs to be a Cortana add on or something or other to to co pilot but anyway, but you have all the post meeting, the analysis like here's what you need to do here's what you missed here were the side conversations, here's the the to do is off of that integration then into project into planner into your task your to do is I mean all that kind of stuff like I loved that vision of the future. And but it just seems so far away and out there, but this is well before pandemic for them to be talking about a lot of the stuff and I think really indicates to how long Microsoft has really been looking at AI and a lot of what you know the rest of the world kind of caught up to. And we're surprised by Microsoft being so much out in front. You know, let me let me ask kind of a broader question about your because you've been with Microsoft for a long time, like, how much have you seen around this own technology. I mean, how different would you say or what are the what are key differences that you see the way that your teams work together that your business unit works together versus, you know, 1015 years ago. Yeah, I mean there's just, gosh, your sprite striking so many thoughts in me. One is, I do think we work in an industry productivity and collaboration where, you know, two things happen one. You don't realize until you look under like a year or two or three and this is not just Microsoft is globally in the industry and like how much more efficient and productive you've gone from the just multitude of small fixes, you know, even, you know, not sending attachments around actually having real co-op being able to teams chat at a high volume per day. Understanding asynchronous collaboration I think is a huge change. But but yeah, but but there's two things in this industry. Some are are are are gradual and then sudden, like you're sort of talking about a little bit with the sort of meeting recap, working just like really well. Many years of work but once it got in the customer's hands it was a step function change. And I think those are great. And we all lionize those because we see a lot of them and they're easy to sort of have heroes. They demo well. Yeah. And and but but I actually like what gives the grit to make the 1% improvement every day makes a huge difference. Like you and I 10 years ago we're sharing attachments around with no ability to co-auth probably sending mostly email with no no real real maybe a couple chats a day. But like we're we are all way and that makes a difference in the amount that I can get done like and I look at my own career and my like literally I couldn't do the job I could do today if it wasn't for those productivity improvements I just couldn't scale. I'm reading Napoleon's biography right now. And he wrote about 3000 directives a year which is actually what that's almost 100 a day. So he spent a lot of time just sitting around telling people what to do which maybe is a little bit more like us we But like and he was probably the number one person you know the only person in the world so it'll be that much sort of and now every single person who uses you know any of our collaboration technology regardless of vendor can you know be able to direct more than that type of interaction today and if you think about the number of teams chats and emails are responding to in the you know right and so maybe that's a too long story art because we're talking 200 years but even just my career of 19 years I it's like it partly I've gotten better I hope at managing and processing information and partly there's been step function changes like we just talked about and then the unsung hero really is the grind from a bunch of product makers to eke out a little bit of progress until you don't even realize it but you are way more efficient you have way more superpowers and you ever realize in your ability to collab and be productive and it's a it I love naming it for people to work on the team because the times get tough and you don't get as much credit for eking out the couple percent improvement bug fix on performance but it makes a huge difference because it actually changes frankly probably more lives and some of these stuff function stuff just in terms of you know just that the way it enables collaboration to move forward and sets a new bar every every quarter every semester every year. Well that's a you know coming from a project management in a you know a kind of a PMO background shared services teams outside of why it's so important to baseline your metrics to be able to go back 30 every 90 days you quarterly to be able to show that that incremental improvement and look this is made a huge impact people need to hear that I mean that that's something else that I thought of as you were talking about this is that I remember when we were talking about everybody getting like like iPads started in smart phones and and people saying well and you know when you travel you're not going to need to have all these devices know what actually happened is we all had all these multiple devices. I mean I was free for years working in it and and working with clients like I had two phones I have the personal and I had my company phone I had a pager sometimes that is a joke one time working in a client site back in 2005. I had the pager my two phones my badge that was on like a belt clip on one of those expando lines whatever as a joke. I put a mini hung from my belt a little lightsaber just to see a people and I went almost the entire day without anybody real soon that I was standing in the doorway in a standing only like meeting and the director is just like it like pauses talking and he looks at me he's like is that a lightsaber. I was like I wanted the utility belt I mean come on. I promise not to have any ounce of judgment my voice people who had the cell phone on the belt no no judgment whatsoever. Yeah. No it was very much over people harass all the time like look like I'm on the go you have devices like just just let it go it's for work purposes I wasn't doing it for style points but but my point is that we new technology so much more advanced I mean my my mobile device today has so much more computing powers in the first 15 years of computers that I owned at home with all of that you think okay we could use fewer devices we did we use multiple we use multiple devices. Yeah, but it's a to take the human approach to it it opened up the obviously the mobile revolution among others sort of opened up a whole bunch of new joyous ways of experiencing computing. Oh, I just said how I got more productive over 19 years it's true but you know what I love to do every Monday I go to a coffee shop and I manage my task list and I respond to some teams chats and I respond to some emails, and I can do it right from my phone this isn't like this is pedestrian Christian talking about but like no but I couldn't have done that right joy of being able to work that way you had to go open the browser flexibility and I would have had to do it from home in front of a soulless like you know large desktop machine whatever it is so like. Once again it's a grind of 1000 people eking out the progress until it was just like you know an experience that is taken for granted and that you know the best technology should be taken for granted because it's just there as opposed to being lionized as something that's so novel that it is probably not good enough to be taken for granted. Well here's where I was going with that and why is because here we were you know for this opportunity to as you said you know where I'm you know so much more efficient than I was that with the tools in the setup. It's why sometimes even now, like when I'm out on the road I'm traveling to conference and I'm frustrated because I'm used to having the two giant monitors the setup where I could get everything done that I need to be done and I'm out in the road. You know and I'm like limited to this one smaller laptop screen I've got my second screen plug in that I leave in my room to do that. But part of this is that the more efficient we get you would think that people would then slow down a bit use that as opportunity to be more reflective of the things so we're even more efficient and yet we're still going at that that high speed. I mean I don't know what the where I'm going with more of that like the do you set see that and recognize that is that something because something we did see during pandemic is that people felt like they had to be online all the time. You know that working even longer hours that great efficiency with a lot of these the cool technology that came out of it and then burnout across the board. And so something that you think about as you're developing these solutions and thinking about a great increased productivity but how are we actually impacting our people. Yeah, no I mean well I think it's we could talk about that my personal journey my team's journey and then my journey as a product maker of either contributing or helping with the problem for sure. So we can take the conversation in any direction but yeah for you know one of the reasons I shared the like yeah I'm getting more efficient my job but I also love going to the coffee shop in the morning like technology that it's best it can do both things right like and and and I think that that's cool. You know there's no doubt. Making people more efficient and better at their jobs is great. Like, you know, I forget the economist he said there's not too many universal elixirs in this world but productivity improvements one of them right like. I guess you're we should measure happiness but just in terms of like in what most most economics are about trade offs right a or B but productivity improvement actually gives you a and B to you know, and we could all talk about how to distribute the benefits of that and make sure it's done fairly and the roles of various organizations and doing that but anyways to make it less theoretical. Yeah I mean personally I love a lot of my blogging has been about sort of the burnout and boredom spectrum spectrum it's one of my top sort of top posts that I've written something I think deeply about you and I sort of the impetus for this was during my sabbatical which is absolutely sort of a recharge time I think most creative people would say their moments of inspiration come from when they're not in the arena. Day to day you need that you need that fodder you don't want to be someone out of the arena but you need to step back in order to see. And I feel that myself I've been I have a job where my energy is the limiting factor not my time and my bill you know and restoring my energy is important and I do every time I take a step back and come back I come back with some new idea new way of approaching things that. That is really the unlock like I have a job where most things are going to happen anyways I'm blessed with an awesome leadership team that is going to get stuff done so like. The VP job or even the partner job at Microsoft a little bit like people trust you to figure out how you're going to provide value despite the right things happening anyways and so it's about bar raising it's about seeing the unknown it's about saying well we're going to go down this path but this one's even better and you can't do that without a little bit of. You know collecting data by being in the arena and then taking a step back and I'd like to think people on my team think that we you know we take that. Very seriously we use you know be the pulse and Glenn to measure it you know just from a tech perspective but then also spend an awful little time you know two or three of the all hand the year is dedicated to either burnout or rest or. Talking about the value of that. You know I found. Maybe I just you know lucky that experiences but as a teenager, you know I just read a lot read extensively but I would find it would struggle on something try to understand a concept or if I was working in you know it had a statistics class that I was frustrated with. I was about 16 and yet. And I found that to go and unplug from that just stop thinking about that and I may have a science fiction fantasy reader you know go and read something completely unrelated and I get like half a chapter and then realize then suddenly my mind cleared up would be like. Oh hey this is the answer that I was I was struggling with to this I would come up with ideas for things doing something completely unrelated. I mean it's like this now it's like I always have you know a science fiction book is my daughter was pushed me to go read this one the Pierce Brown. I think I read that before the last one was out so I have not. I read the first couple was good. Yeah, but but again I I that's another reason why I keep like a notepad around me because it's times where I'm just like oh I'm gonna unplug the brain from this and listen to something watch something just do something unrelated. It frees it up but makes me think I need to go and I just had an idea for this an article idea or I need to something I think that will help this project of this client you know comes out of that. Yeah I mean call it detox of the mind you know yeah yeah I work that way to I'm I try to not everybody does to there's many different ways very you know very different paths to success and thinking and creativity and so. Certainly the product maker try to recognize that there are many different ways of that coming to life and you know you and I live in very special times we were probably one of the point first point 1% of people in the world to use the Internet. If you just do the math of the number of people using in there today and when you probably use it first couple million right yeah well and so like wow what a privilege what a gift. And so we're more predisposed to seeing the advantages of information doubling every 2 years yeah and our lives have actually been centered around. That privilege we were given to be such early preview of what now the world is has adopted certainly I built my work life around it. Found satisfaction in many areas of life around it but also realize that you know that's not the journey that everybody has the technology many people's journey with technology is much less rosy. Much less all positive much less on the bandwagon of being the early adopter you know. Loving drinking from the fire hose and so you know I think a lot about that of the product maker one of the reasons I love Microsoft is I think fundamentally getting back to Microsoft runs on trust we. We see that even more so than other places in tech and the responsibility we have to recognize that there is gosh just so many emotions and thoughts on. People's relationship with technology and how we how we make as many of those folks achieve more it's sort of a I think it's a pretty cool mission. Do you think is is there danger in us becoming you know interpersonally more disconnected because of AI. Is that is that again is that a topic that your team the leadership team talks about is like we could do a lot of cool things and automate a lot of things. Do you talk about hey is this the right is are we disconnecting people too much from the those interpersonal connections. Yeah I mean you know like I said we. I think we take. Learning together with the world how I will impact it very seriously and it's not something we're going to do in a dark box it's something we're going to you know work together I think we were as you saw we were incredibly. Disciplined and intentional as we introduce copilot to the world last year to say it sits alongside you and it inspires your creativity. Microsoft which is not known sometimes in all cases of the best product naming copilot was a huge success and I think it's a perfect branding for this for what you're doing with AI that it is a copilot not the pilot. Yeah no absolutely and I think people thought incredibly carefully about that learning from all of our history, including how are we on board of the cloud and I'm pretty good friends with the chief. Yeah I have to assist at Microsoft she the neighbor of mine and so you know I know there's just a lot of people thinking about this not just from a naming but from a what it means. To all the stakeholders in the world perspective and so I think we take that role very seriously and I think you know. Microsoft got to that moment because of Satya's growth mindset because of things we put in place before because of frankly a business model that was a little bit less about. That had a lot of alignment between our customers and ourselves which I don't think could be said. For everybody in the tech industry and even before I came along I think that allowed us to take a pole position and how to think about these problems are realistically a lot of credit to Brad Smith this company for always being in the lead and thinking about. Thinking about that his book tools and weapons are the great read and across the valley from me now here. Great. But more to the point like I think that it wasn't. I don't think we could have had that level of. And frankly awareness of how to introduce this technology had it not been years of prep work to sort of take similar tough tough technology and societal problems wrestle with them. See what you know we're not telling everybody what to do and we're not a replacement for various other stakeholders in the system at all but we want to have a positive productive. Relationship there and you know I'm applying that to I'm. You know and we will see like certainly we're very excited about AI and so the whole industry is is. Seeing how it all evolves from. It sits alongside you and helps you be better was definitely a good statement about the technology can do today. And it was definitely the right way to introduce the technology to the world. I think to realize its full potential will have to figure out language and evolve a little bit as it can take actions as it can save time as it can automate full processes as it as we started this this podcast as it brings disparate systems even more together. You know it'll be really fascinating to co co develop co explore of how it. Is maybe a little bit less of only a personal co pilot and something that is more influential. Or more impactful I guess and how we do that with with a good understanding of how we're describing what it can do I think it's a really fascinating problem and. Like I said it goes all back to like working as much in the open as we can reporting that what we're seeing and then trying to be very intentional about how we introduce what we're doing to the world in a stepwise fashion. Well well Adam I really appreciate your time one thing I suggest maybe we maybe we we almost make this an annual thing maybe let's let's talk again. I'll see other events later in the year but but really like early next year maybe we would do it in person during MVP summit or something or other but where we go and we look at some of the. Again I'm fascinated by the whole digital transformation and the cultural impacts of what we're going through what we're sharing what we're learning about this and reflect on that again we could talk about the technologies and the specific examples of solutions out there. But I'm it's just fascinating to look at and say what what do we think has changed we we could even then go back and look at these episodes. Of the years and and say what what do we think and not know what we do I do a predictions tweet jam at the end of every year and some I've asked every year somebody says well what did we say last year. And I'm starting to go through and going back and calling people out on you said you thought this what do you think now. It's it's fascinating to look at that baseline use that as a reference for how much change has happened how much how many of those incremental changes have really added up and impacted our lives. Yeah I'd love to do that. Although I don't think it's about being right Christian I know I know it's it's not it's fun to go back and look at how different because we all know like like if I look if I think that my my car is going to be working. This is a dozen things that are going to happen over the course of the year. You know yeah yeah my car is running so. Oh this is this great book imaginable that I really love the framing it's about how to predict the future actually how to talk about the future and then gets the great lengths of saying it's not about predicting something right like our goal is to build a future we want to see. So it's not actually about saying I think it's going to be this way it's like I think by describing this potential future we can create it together and it's less about whether I'm trying to be right and more about like. I have a dream come with me type of thing so yeah. Let's do it every year. We should do it. When my kids were smaller. I had this I would tell them I said I know the answer to every important question and then they would you know obviously they didn't raise a question I didn't know the answer to and my response was that's not an important question. I'm reading a checkers guy to the galaxy to my 10 year old so we're we're about to get the most important question in the universe. There you go. That's the answer so we'll add a really appreciate your time and look forward to seeing you at the cut. I'm going to see you like a dozen times this year but we'll see at the next event. Yeah sounds good. Take care. You've been listening to the collab talk podcast new episodes are published weekly and you can find us on Spotify Apple podcast I heart radio and most other podcast platforms. Thanks for listening.