President of the Republic of Maldives, Prime Minister Shree Narendra Modiji, Honourable Ministers, Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen. I welcome you to this ceremony where we shall witness a few shining examples of India Maldives bilateral cooperation in the form of development projects and exchange of MOUs agreements. This would be followed by press statements by our two leaders. We begin the program by watching a video clip presenting an overview of India Maldives development cooperation. India has been a key partner in the socio-economic and infrastructural development of the Maldives. Several key projects have been completed in the past under this partnership. The National College for Policing and Law Enforcement in Uduk is India's largest grant project in the Maldives. Our bilateral partnership has made significant strides in recent years with a number of major development projects currently being carried out in the Maldives under Indian assistance. Among these, a road and drainage development project is being undertaken in Uduk City. Under this project, a drainage system of 103 kilometers will be built, helping to alleviate flooding experience during seasonal rains. In addition, 107 kilometers of road will be developed by the end of August 2023. The project for reclamation and shore protection in Uduk was initiated in March 2022. It will create close to 200 hectares of land that will further contribute to development of Uduk as a hub of economic activity in southern Maldives. India is also aiding the design and development of water and sewerage facilities across 34 islands in the Maldives. It is the largest climate adaptation initiative being carried out in the Maldives under concessional credit of over US$100 million. This project is closely linked to improving the well-being and livelihoods of communities across the country. India is happy to support efforts to preserve Maldivian culture and heritage, as evidenced by the project for conservation and preservation of Malay Friday Mosque. Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered assistance for this project during his visit to the Maldives in 2019. This project is being carried out with technical support from the Archaeological Survey of India and the project is estimated to be concluded by July 2023. India has been a true ally and trusted development partner of the Maldives. Long live the Maldives-India partnership. Next, we shall witness a video clip on the landmark Greater Malay Connectivity Project in Maldives. India and Maldives enjoy a strong bilateral relationship. Both countries share sturdy cultural links and the bilateral relations have been nurtured and strengthened by regular contacts at the highest levels. As part of its neighborhood-first policy, India is focused on delivering benefits like greater connectivity, improved infrastructure and broader people-to-people contacts in Maldives. The Greater Malay Connectivity Project aims to connect the capital, Malay, with the joining islands of Vilingili, Gullifalu and Tilafushi. This will decongest Malay while helping in the development of a port at Gullifalu, which is also being funded through an Indian line of credit. At Gullifalu, the government of Maldives is also planning a residential township. The Greater Malay Connectivity Project is being funded by an Indian grant and a line of credit. This development cooperation is based on Maldives' priorities. The project is being executed by Indian Infrastructure Nature, AFKONS. The Greater Malay Connectivity Project involves construction of a 6.69-kilometer sea-connecting link, including 3.6 kilometers of marine viaduct with navigation bridge spans and 3 kilometers of at-grade roads. A wide variety of marine fleet has already been deployed in the project. A significant amount of additional marine equipment will be mobilized as the project progresses. The Greater Malay Connectivity Project is a testament to a deep and enduring India-Maldives relationship. It's a strong reflection of a shared commitment to development and democracy and to a partnership that delivers. I now request both the leaders to kindly mark pouring of the first concrete of the project by jointly pressing the launch button. Thank you, sir. Next we shall view a video clip prepared to review the progress on construction of 4,000 social housing units being next we shall view a video clip prepared to review the progress on construction of 4,000 social housing units being constructed in Huda Malay. Providing affordable social housing is among the priority pledges of Government of Maldives. In order to enhance the quality of life of the residents of Greater Malay region, the Government of Maldives has initiated the development of 4,000 housing units under two projects. FDC-JMC Housing Project and FDC-NBCC Housing Project. The projects are supported by India through a bias-grade facility from the Exim Bank of India. The extension of India Maldives Corporation to the social housing sector stems from our flourishing development partnership. Located in Hulu Malay Phase 2, the two projects will comprise the development of 2,000 housing units each. Both projects will consist of 900 square feet 3-bedroom units and 650 square feet 2-bedroom units. FDC-JMC Housing Project is valued at US $137 million and the FDC-NBCC Housing Project is valued at US $130 million. The construction of the projects has now commenced. The projects aim to provide affordable housing for target populations through rent-to-own model and encourage home ownership for first-time buyers. These projects will cater to a total population of 20,000 people. Excellencies, we shall now proceed with the exchange of six documents between our two countries. First, we have the MOU and capacity building and training of members of local councils and women development committee and staff of local government authority. This will be exchanged from the Maldivian side by His Excellency Ahmad Khalil, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, and on the Indian side by Sri Giriraj Singh, Minister for Rural Development and Panchayati Raj. Next we have a MOU for cooperation in the area of cyber security. This will be exchanged on the Maldivian side by His Excellency Ahmad Khalil, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, and on the Indian side by Ashwini Vaishnav, Minister of Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology. Third, we have a MOU on collaboration in potential fishing zone forecast capacity building. This will be exchanged from the Maldivian side by His Excellency Fayaz Ismail, Minister of Economic Development, and on the Indian side by Dr. Jitendra Singh, Minister of Earth Sciences, Oceanography, etc. Number four is a MOU on cooperation in the field of disaster management. This will be exchanged from the Maldivian side by His Excellency Ibrahim Amir, Minister of Finance, and on the Indian side by Sri Manu Mahavar, High Commissioner of India to the Maldives. Number five is an agreement between Exim Bank of India and Ministry of Finance of the Maldives for Police Infrastructure. This will be exchanged from the Maldives side by Commissioner of Police Mohammad Hamid, and on the Indian side by Ms. Harsha Bangari, Managing Director of the Exim Bank of India. And finally, we have a letter of intent on buyer's credit funding, approval of US$119 million for additional 2000 social housing units to be constructed in Hudumale. This will be exchanged from the Maldivian side by His Excellency Ibrahim Amir, Minister of Finance, and on the Indian side by Mrs. Harsha Bangari, Managing Director of the Exim Bank. Excellencies, this concludes the exchange of agreement ceremony, and now request the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs to conduct the rest of the proceedings. Your Excellency, Mr. Ibrahim Mohammad Soly, President of the Republic of Maldives, Honourable Prime Minister Shinaridha Modiji, Honourable members from both countries, distinguished members of the delegation, friends of the media. We will now have the press statements. May I now request Honourable Prime Minister Shinaridha Modiji to make his press statement. Sir, the floor is yours. Your Excellency, my friend, President Soly, members of both the delegations, representatives of the media. Greetings. First of all, I welcome my friend, President Soly, and his delegation to India. In the last few years, in the relations between India and Maldives, a new force has come. Our rivers are big. Despite the challenges created by the Mahamari, our delegation is taking the form of a fortunate person. Friends, today, with President Soly, I have talked about many things. I have led all the delegations of our delegation, and I have also provided the resources on the important regional and international issues. A few minutes ago, I welcomed the start of the Greater Mala Connectivity Project. This will be the biggest infrastructure project of Maldives. Today, in the Greater Mala, 4,000 social housing units have been provided with the project. I am pleased to hear that we will also provide financial support for the other 2,000 social housing units. We have also decided to give 100 million dollars to the limited line of credit, so that all the projects can be completed in a timely manner. Friends, in Indian Ocean, transnational crimes, terrorism, and drug trafficking are very serious. Therefore, in the area of protection and security, there is a close relationship between India and Maldives and the community. It is important for the peace and stability of the entire region. We have increased our cohesion against all these social challenges. In this, capacity building and training cohesion is also included in the security of Maldives. I am pleased to hear that India will provide 24 units and a naval board for the Maldives. We will also assist in the development of police facilities in Maldives' 61 islands. Friends, the Maldives government has aimed to net zero carbon emissions. For this commitment, I congratulate the National Assembly and I also assure you that India will help Maldives in every possible way to achieve this goal. India has raised the flag of one world, one sun, one grid and it has raised the flag. And under this, we can take effective steps with Maldives. Friends, today, India's Maldives partnership is working in the hands of both the nations. In fact, peace, stability and stability are also being built for the region. Any need for Maldives or any problem, India has been the first responder and will continue to be. I thank the National Assembly and their delegation for their joyous trip to India. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. May I now request His Excellency Mr. Ibrahim Hamid Sully, President of the Republic of Maldives to make his press statement. Excellency, the floor is yours. Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim. Ladies and gentlemen, members of the media, good afternoon. It is an absolute pleasure to be here again. I would like to thank you, Excellency Prime Minister Modi, the government and the people of India for the worm hospitality extended to me and my delegation during this visit. Maldives-India relationship goes beyond diplomacy. Our values, our histories and our cultures are intertwined, making it a traditional relationship. Our centuries-old relationship has grown with political trust, economic cooperation and coherent strategic policies between our two countries. We see this visit as an affirmation of the close bond that has grown between us. Our relationship has been nurtured and strengthened by regular contact. I hope that we can strengthen the ties we have with your Excellency and your country. The COVID-19 pandemic has not been kind on anyone. Like many other nations, we were also forced to fully close our borders for months. The result left both our economy and people in distress. Was it not for the generous assistance received in the form of budgetary support, medical assistance and supplies and the co-issued vaccine donated by the government of India? Our economic recovery would have been hard and long. The air travel bubble arrangement enabled the flow of economic activity. The undistricted supplies of essential medicines and commodities to the Maldives is evident to the strong bond we share. My government took office with an ambitious development vision. We appreciate India's support and generosity towards realizing this vision and fulfilling our development objectives. During this visit, the Prime Minister and I took stock of the progress made since we last met and discussed ways in which we can further expand and strengthen our relationship. The groundbreaking pouring of the first concrete ceremony of the Greater Malay Connectivity Project and the construction of 4,000 social housing units that we witness today stand as testimony to the strong partnership. This moment is made even more auspicious with the approval of the Exim Bank of India, Buyer's Grid funding of US$119 million for construction of another 2,000 social housing units in Greater Malay region. I thank the Government of India for this facilitation. I would like to thank the Government of India for facilitating the additional US$100 million for the US$800 million line of credit through the Exim Bank of India, which I am confident will be an added impetus to ensure us the timely completion of important development projects including the Cancer Hospital in Lamu et al. Ghan and the Hanimado Airport Expansion Project. We recognize and thank the Government of India for the continuous support to develop infrastructure and expansion of our human resource development. We are pleased to add more agreement in various fields that will contribute to the development agenda today. The MOU signed today on cybersecurity aims to promote closer cooperation and exchange of information pertaining to cybersecurity in accordance with the relevant domestic laws, rules and regulations and based on equality, reciprocity and mutual benefit. Investing in skilled development is a high priority for my government. Today, we sign important MOUs that will help enhance our human resources and development. The MOU signed between local government authority Maldives and the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, India. On capacity building and training, we'll build the capacity of members of local councils women's development committee and the staff of local government authority. The MOU signed between the National Disaster Management Authority of the Republic of Maldives and the National Disaster Management Authority of the Republic of India. Aims to enhance and promote the cooperation in the field of emergency management between our two countries. The credit line MOU signed between the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Maldives and the Export-Import Bank of India to develop policy infrastructure of the Maldives will contribute towards enhancing cooperation between the police service and the public through neighborhood policing and ensure the social well-being and safety of our communities. The MOU signed between Ministry of Fisheries, Marine Resources and Agriculture of the Republic of Maldives and Indian International Centre for Ocean Information Services under Ministry of Earth Science Government of India will enable cooperation in potential fishing zone focused capacity. In light of the harsh lessons taught by COVID-19, the Prime Minister and I acknowledged that achieving economic resilience is exceptionally important to withstand the shock of unforeseen events. I urge investors from India to seize this opportunity as we work on building back better, to forge meaningful and mutually beneficial partnerships with the Maldives. As such, in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industry, we will be organizing two interactive business to business events in Delhi and Mumbai today and tomorrow, bringing together selected prominent representatives of leading cooperation from the Maldives and India. We welcome the operationalization of rupee card in the Maldives and agreed to consider further measures to boost bilateral travel and tourism and economic interlinkages which could lead to mutual benefit of both countries. In addition to bilateral matters relating to education, youth and sports, defense and security, fisheries, tourism, health and IT, the Prime Minister and I also discussed international issues of mutual concern. I congratulate Prime Minister Modi for his initiative and leadership of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, International Solar Alliance and India's pledge to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2017. We firmly believe climate action could only be achieved by international cooperation. Prime Minister and I discussed the issue of terrorism. We both reiterated a firm commitment to the work against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and strengthen cooperation to enhance many times safety and security in the Indian Ocean region. I would like to express my thanks and appreciation to your excellency and the government of India for the announcements made today to give the second landing assault craft and the replacement ship of the CGS Hurravi that was gifted from the government of India to the Maldives National Defense Force. I would also like to express my thanks for the announcement made today to give 24 utility vehicles from the government of India to the Maldives National Defense Force. My government, since assuming office, has been fully committed to giving new heights to the relations between our two countries. Our relationship with India will always be of the highest priority. Mr. Prime Minister, along with my visit to India in 2018 and your visit in 2019 and the recent exchanges of high-level visits have brought a renewed sense of dynamism to our relations. Mr. Prime Minister, I thank you for the very personal commitment you have shown in being a friend and partner to the Maldives. I wish your excellency and the people of India peace, progress and prosperity. The Maldives will always remain a true friend of India. Firmly committed to our shared vision of peace and development in our countries and our region. Thank you. Thank you, your excellency. That concludes the press statements. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us. Please remain seated as the dignitaries make their way out of this.


Okay. So, good morning. My name is Dara Coakley. I'm from the Cork Institute of Technology, and I'm here to give an update on the TelTools project. So, the project partnership consists of CIT, UCC, DIT, ITTRILY, and UCD. And I suppose the concept of the project kind of originated from the provision of training for technology enhanced learning in higher education institutes. So, research kind of indicates that there's a number of barriers here around, I suppose, first off, a paucity of training in terms of the technology kind of evolving and kind of certain training elements becoming useless. And also maybe a lack of a focus on a pedagogy or a tie-in in terms of the technology to a particular teaching or learning activity. And a lot of the data which was identified in a number of the national forum reports helped kind of reinforce these findings. So, data from things like the National Survey on the use of technology from the principles and first insight, excuse me, first insight report. Some of the main kind of barriers identified for Irish or for training for Irish HCI's in terms of technology enhanced learning was a lack of available training, a lack of time for training on the part of the instructor, degrees of unawareness regarding the potential of TL, and also a lack of consideration in terms of the pedagogical approach or a tie-in, I guess, to a particular activity for teaching or learning. So, from this, the kind of concept for the project was to develop short, easily digestible kind of learning objects on technology enhanced learning, but with a focus on a particular teaching or learning activity to develop an online platform to facilitate learning and house these learning objects, to hold information sessions which is going to live webinars, to promote and provide training, and also to essentially just pilot the content and the online platform, receive feedback and integrate that back into development. So, the whole kind of circle begins again. So, in terms of project outputs, I suppose the main project output has been the learning content and the online platform. So, if you bear with me, and hopefully there's no major technical difficulties, I might just show this short animation, which we developed just as a means of kind of advertising the platform and the learning content, and again, the concept as a whole. So, at the moment, the online learning platform has a URL of telly.me. Now, when you go there first, it's a very basic kind of sign-up screen with this animation, but behind that then, the entire platform is kind of fully running. We just haven't made it fully available to the general public for reasons I'll talk about in a little bit. So, rather than kind of making you sit through the entire animation, as I mentioned, the URL is telly.me. There's a number of granular learning objects there designed for short and practical training on TEL, and the platform itself is designed to be free and open with content that's easily searchable and so forth. Maybe just to give a brief kind of breakdown of the content in the platform. So, all content in the platform consists of short learning objects called micro lessons, and these are focused on addressing a teacher, helping to support that particular teaching or learning activity using a relevant technology. These micro lessons can then be combined into micro courses, which are slightly kind of longer courses then with kind of larger learning objectives, and then these micro courses can be strung together to form learning, what we call in the platform, learning paths, which even larger learning objectives again. So, if I could just very briefly show you the platform. The homepage is available here, and it details some of the terminology and the kind of concepts, some of the benefits and some of the latest courses to demonstrate a course in action. It's possible to search through the area on the front, or I'll show you in a moment the full kind of content library. So, then the learning content within the platform typically begins with some kind of an introduction. It's possible for learners to kind of begin from where they left. So, the last point that they left the course, they'll be able to go straight back into that again. The curriculum or the kind of steps in the course is available on the right-hand side here, and then it's also possible to navigate through the buttons here. And all of the micro lessons follow a, excuse me, similar structure. And as part of that, we're hoping to include a short animation for every micro lesson for this section. Why should I use this particular piece of software for teaching and learning? With the intention that this would be kind of, that this would kind of be a useful tool for helping to identify two instructors, why they should bother learning about this particular technology for supporting or enhancing their practice. So, as well as the learning content and the online platform, we've created a number of case studies. So, these are essentially just what they say in the tin, kind of case studies or interviews with real-life TEL users. So, they include exemplary practitioners and maybe not so exemplary practitioners. And these, as I mentioned, are kind of essentially interviews with instructors, and they're kind of based on their own real-life practice. So, they're experiencing using a particular technology for teaching or learning, the benefits, the drawbacks, things they'd encourage others to be aware of, so on and so forth. And I can quickly just go to one here. So, these case studies are available in a number of different formats. So, some are text-based, some like this one are an audio recording, other would be video interviews, so on and so forth. So, we've also held a lot of interviews and are hoping to hold a lot more information sessions, and these would essentially be live streamed webinars, and they'd be carrying on kind of from what was covered in the platform, but, you know, how to use a particular tool for a particular teaching and learning approach, but with additional elements in terms of demonstration, opportunities for discussion with attendees, and all of these would be recorded and would be made available to viewers afterwards as well. As well as this, it's developed as a project scope plan, which is essentially a map of the learning content, so all of the learning content to be included in the platform, and how that breaks down in particular teaching and learning categories and into the micro lessons and micro courses and paths. And from all this activity as well, we're hoping that a large amount of additional learning material is kind of developed as well, so these would include kind of presentations for staff using Google Slides for each micro lesson, so the same content that would be in the micro lesson but made available on Google Slides in case one wish to, I don't know, do some training within their own institution. Recordings of the live webinars, animated content for the section I showed earlier in terms of why should I use this particular tool for this particular teaching approach, and also a number of articles on the project outputs, the project teams, so on and so forth. So the last kind of meetings such as this which we had, there was quite a bit of feedback from the international panel, so since then we've tried to implement that feedback as best we can, so a big element was the approach to content in the platform, so initially kind of content, how content was kind of covered in the platform was very much focused on I suppose more abstract or kind of larger concepts to do with teaching and learning, so initially the platform was looking at how to use blogs for reflective practice, or how to use forums for work-based learning, and what we found feedback which was given from the international panel as well as from pilotees who we piloted the platform and the learning content with was that, I suppose it became quite complicated to write for first and off, but also when you wanted to include the relevant amount of necessary information for something like reflective practice, the learning object no longer became granular or short, it became long and unwieldy, so we moved away from that towards a more kind of practical approach towards what's actually done inside and outside of the classroom, things like facilitating discussion using particular technologies, creative activities using particular technologies like mind mapping and brainstorming, developing supporting resources for what will go on in the classroom, so on and so forth. Another piece of feedback which we incorporated into the platform was based on feedback from the international panel about the taxonomy which the platform used, so previously we had referred to blocks and stacks and someone made the point that there's no need to reinvent the wheel in terms of the terminology that's used, so we switched to the hopefully more understandable micro lesson and micro courses, and the next step, an additional piece of important feedback from the panel is very much tied into the next step of the project which is to focus heavily on disseminating the platform and to get buy-in from the target audience in as much as possible, and also to try and help maybe control expectation in terms of what the user is expecting. So in terms of national impact to date, we've been piloting the platform and the content with very small focus groups or with individuals, and I suppose the reason for this was we had a reluctance to maybe release the platform and the content to the general public until I suppose we were satisfied with it, and this is based in previous experiences which we've had with piloting where one only gets to make a good first impression the one time, so the platform and the content is almost ready to go within the next week or two we think it should be ready to fully release and to the general public in terms of the standards we've set for it, and then the intention for the remainder of the project is to disseminate the project and the platform as heavily as possible and get that kind of buy-in from kind of staff on the ground that we that had been mentioned by the panel. In terms of ongoing impact and ongoing dissemination, as I mentioned we've done quite a bit of piloting with kind of small groups and individuals, we've submitted a number of conference papers into conferences like ESIA and AICC, we've presented and disseminated national forum events and seminars, we've also held a number of live webinars or information sessions, we're hoping to hold a lot more before the end of the project, and we've also tried to disseminate the project and the platform via other ongoing national forum projects. So in terms of upcoming dissemination for the remainder of the project we'd be very much focused on direct contact with Irish higher education institutions, large volume of information sessions, submitting additional conference papers, we're looking to get to mailing groups such as ALT which we think would be kind of a good way of kind of putting the platform out there and getting feedback also through additional national forum projects and we're also hoping that the call for case studies would maybe be a draw for people to participate in the project and to provide some kind of and to get involved in it in that capacity. So in terms of the evaluation of the project we feel that there's been some minor changes against the project plan, good in some ways, less good in others, we're ahead of time in terms of the platform development based on the original project plan, but we're a bit behind in terms of the amount of information sessions or webinars that we had wanted to have by this stage and we're slightly behind in content development although we're expecting that that will be resolved within the next couple of weeks. And as I mentioned in terms of piloting and promotion our intention is to continue to disseminate the project quite heavily to receive feedback and to refine the platform based on that feedback for the remainder of the project. So the remainder of the project really is this kind of cycle of putting it out there, getting feedback, refining the platform and content based on that and repeating that process. And also as I mentioned we're hoping to hold quite an additional number of information sessions to continue until the end of the project to kind of add some kind of live element to the asynchronous content that's available on the platform at the moment. So apologies if I rushed through that pretty quickly. Fantastic. So thank you very much for your attention.


Well, hey everybody, thank you for coming to our session. We'll be talking about engaging the FSI community for a good cause. I'm Sarah Calife, I'm a solutions engineer from GitHub. I actually have been working through a lot of FSI customers from a GitHub perspective and that's how I ended up meeting Leo. We worked on an awesome hackathon this last year and we'll be talking about that today. So I'll pass it over to Leo. Perfect, thank you. Let's see where we are. Okay, so Leo Hunkera, I am a managing director in the financial services practice for Microsoft within the, really around the financial services organizations within the community, I'm sorry, is that me? And I spent 10 years at Microsoft, came from the financial services organization there, that's where Sarah and I met, working with some of the largest financial services customers. And it was an idea that we had or that we would have been working on and it was all around really this person, my son Drew. He was diagnosed with autism at 16 months old. So it's something that, I'm not always 17 years old, but it was something that I sort of faced, all the challenges and all the things that we needed to overcome. It's a really intensive sort of therapeutic program that you put towards kids with autism. And he's a great kid, fantastic sense of humor, really sweet, but he's also faced with some very significant challenges. Like he cannot be left alone. He has to be with a one-on-one all day long. And so in my job, I would walk into organizations and I would see sort of, it was really around helping organizations adopt technology, you know, we call it digital transformation, but how do you transform industries, the work that you do, all of that, using technology. And I'd come home and I would see these archaic sort of pencil and paper and stuff like that being used in an incredibly data intensive practice with my son. And so, you know, the hackathon was really founded on how can I help him with the expectation that whatever we do is going to help a whole bunch of other people like him. And so that's really what caused us to come up with this idea. In, there have been a lot of things, joining Microsoft, Microsoft, EY, great companies, a lot of the companies that we work with, you know, Morgan Stanley's, Goldman Sachs and the more fantastic companies. And I found myself, you know, getting involved in a lot of initiatives around autism, autism awareness, autism employment hiring. I thought this was like a cause that I think I can, you know, I know well, and therefore I can have maybe a perspective on. But, you know, great things that we did, right?  All of these were great. I mean, they were fantastic, but got to a point where Satya Nadella became the CEO of Microsoft and he had written a book about, you know, about his experiences. And it caused me to sort of rethink, you know, am I really bringing my unique set of capabilities to these causes? So great, you know, the work that we've done have been fantastic, but was it really sort of my unique value proposition or Microsoft's unique value proposition. So I wanted to hone in and do a little bit more around that. And I expressed this idea to somebody I know, Peter Smolovic, I don't know, he was presenting here from Morgan Stanley, I was covering the account and talking to him and said, I have this idea about hackathon. He says, let's do it, right? It was Peter just saying, we're going to tomorrow, let's go, right? And he started, you know, asking me for materials to send out to developers. We started pulling this thing together. And the next thing you know, we were, you know, running a hackathon. And we did the first one, we weren't sure that was, you know, 2018, right? We weren't sure if it was going to last or what was going to happen. This is just a great thing to do. And then the next year we had calls to do it again. And then the following year we did it, we realized, well, this is really sort of, you know, taking off. There's a lot of interest, a lot of demand. We had new groups coming in. There was developers from Goldman Sachs and American Express and NASDAQ, you know, just independent developers that started joining the group. And we realized that we got to think of this more than just a one year event that we do over and over and over again, but how we sort of extend it beyond that, how we have consistency, how we can build upon what we've done before. And that's where open source really had a big impact. And, you know, Sarah specifically and how she brought the GitHub perspective to this, the open source perspective to this and extending. I just wanted to jump in a little bit. You know, I mentioned the book. Satya was, you know, we gave this away at the first hackathon. It just happens that Satya has a kid with special needs, a son with special needs. And he mentioned how we sort of found purpose in bringing, you know, in the work that he's been doing, how people need to find meaning and purpose in their work and how that was going to be something that it was going to infuse into the culture, you know, and that it gave him a lot of empathy and understanding. And that's something that, you know, he felt Microsoft really needed and the people work they really need. And that's also, you know, looking at the quote here and some sections of the book, you know, the what we can bring to the world that makes, that's could be special in this area is why the hackathon came about. Like we have technology that can digitally transform it can be applied to this challenge. Why don't we focus on that specifically? And how can we also in the process bring meaning to the people who are working on these campaigns? To me, this was great because this is sort of how I thought about it.  Got my work, the company I work for, the companies I work with, you know, I mentioned Peter, friends of mine, you know, who worked at these companies and what we were supposed to be doing for them. And then this greater cause of how do we help the world and how do we go beyond that? The Office of Hackathon sort of hit all of them, right? I mean, there's really no difference between what I was doing for the hackathon and my job. I'm supposed to be teaching, you know, customers how to use Microsoft technologies for, you know, advanced, enlightening sort of experiences and novel ideas. And that was exactly what we did. So it just brought all the things that Microsoft had to bear. Peter, respectively, did the same on his side. You know, Sarah did the same on her side. We're teaching customers how to use GitHub. So we found it very easy to sort of get corporate support. And I think there's a lot of programs that, you know, benefit when everything is aligned in this manner. So that's the autism hackathon. Sarah's going to go a little bit deeper into it. But we started by, you know, having a set of principles. You know, those principles have been adapted over the years. This is the most recent one, the fourth one that we had. We sort of added the bottom piece there. So the continue the work through the open source community. The other ones were, you know, like I mentioned, harnessing the unique value proposition that we all brought. The second one is make it tangible immediate. It has to be meaningful, right? Not just something we wanted to show what the world can be, but also wanted to help people today. And then how do we continue this work so it's not just a one-time event? There's a little outline of the program here, but, and we've put the use cases. So we outlined the use cases in advance, knowing that, you know, we would be sort of the subject matter expertise in this area, knowing what the deficits were in terms of the capabilities being applied. But I'm going to let Sarah go through some of the more detail around the program itself and what we did there. Awesome. Thanks, Leo. Yeah. So what were some of the challenges that we had this year? Well, 2020, the pandemic overall was moving things virtually. We had a lot more remote work. Usually the hackathon is held in person, people fly in, all get to work together in one place. So a couple of different things that we had to think about this year and some of the things that we had to work through to make it easier for people to collaborate is moving virtual, remote work. People that participated are differently skilled. So some are developers, some are non-technical roles, but still wanted to participate. So how do we get them to really participate and contribute back to this somewhat technical type of hackathon? And we also wanted to build sustainable projects for the next years to come. As Leo said, when it first started, it started as a simple idea. It started, hey, let's do this hackathon, excitement all around. And then it got bigger and bigger every year. Things started working out to build out in the next year's hackathon. And how do you maintain that in some of the projects that have been done to make sure that they're sustainable for the next year to continue working and building off of those projects? So the first thing that we did, the first thing that Leo was mentioning is the use cases. So they actually created, we actually had four different use cases and we gave some technical descriptions, had some enablement around these use cases and then built awareness around these use cases. With these use cases, we're able to kind of scope out what the hackathon can provide and can consolidate in one place what teams should be working on. So then it's not necessarily open-ended not knowing where to start, where to go next. So with these use cases, again, they are just the four use cases that we had this year, but they can be adapted for the next year. They can be taken and really look through what other type of projects can really fit into these use cases to continue working on the hackathon or beyond, not necessarily during the two-day hackathon. Again, you can work on some of these use cases outside of the hackathon itself. The next thing we did is really get participants to be engaged. So the first couple of things were having a champion from each company that participated. What do we mean by that? Having the champion from Morgan Stanley going into Morgan Stanley and saying, hey, who wants to participate in this hackathon? Going into NASDAQ, going into AMICS, going into Goldman Sachs. There's just so many companies out there around working on developer type of work that can be there within the FSI community that can be taken and we can tap into that talent. And we needed these champions to really go into the company and take more of the information with them so then they can bring more participants into the hackathon. We wanted to market and build up excitement. So we actually built a website this year. We had a registration page in case you wanted to participate outside of the companies that were participating. We had an awesome flyer that we just used and made it easy to read, easy to consume just so people can understand what was going on. And we also had tech leads. So within each of these use cases, we actually had a couple tech leads that can help run the projects during the hackathon. Because in many cases, hackathons are great, but you can build anything and that's time sometimes overwhelming. You only have a couple of days. You have a couple of things that you want to build out and to really make something successful kind of have to scope it down a little bit. So these tech leads really learned about the use cases. We're able to share that information with the participating teams and really build up awesome projects that you'll see later on and partners. So I'll let Leo mention some of the partnerships that we actually built out through the hackathon to make sure that this was a successful year. Yeah, one of the important things was making sure that we had partners to be able to. There was great partner technology. We had an AI partner in there that could detect skeletal movements from video. So each one of the use cases, I went back to the product teams within Microsoft and asked them, what do you think you could do to the space? And they would sometimes give me a partner, oh, there's a great partner. Line Dance AI, if you dance to a song, they'll relate it to the song that you were dancing to. And they'll find the song. So I thought that was fantastic because we could do the same thing with autism. There were other partners that were in the field that potentially could take this technology and apply it to their solutions or their products, right? So how do we sustain this beyond it? So we had a couple of partners on that front. And then we've drawn from everybody, there's a PhD in Miami who was really interested in some of the technologies. He's the one who brought the Connect one to me originally because that's what it was, and now obviously it was a Connect for Azure use case. And then I think there was, there's another group I would love to see this year. There's a school in New York, Boses for New York, which helps with a lot of different kinds of training for kids with special needs. And that's one of the things that they do. Love to pull them into the fold this year as well. So I think pulling partners in was essential for this. Yeah, to maintain any sustainable product in general, having subject matter experts, having them for structure-rounded. So take that idea and put it into a hackathon, bring in different experts that really could help build out these projects. Then the next thing is, we mentioned we had developers and we had people ranging from all type of non-technical roles. How do we engage them to get participating and actually contributing back to these projects without having to know how to code, right? So these hackathons, these trainings, we want people to participate just to build out these amazing projects. They're all for such good causes and we have such great talent in the FSI community. So how do we bring that in? The training sessions from this year, we had so many of them because we had cross-regional teams participating. So we had multiple sessions on different Azure components. Some awareness sessions around autism and what some of the projects were around from the different scenarios. And we also had GitHub training sessions if you weren't aware how to use some of the components there. We just had ask me anything sessions where you can just jump in and really just ask anything that comes to your mind having trouble with this. Great, let's talk about it. Let's really look into it. The other thing was because we were virtual, we also recorded all these sessions. So then we can share these sessions with those that couldn't participate at that time. So it makes it easier to share that information, make sure that everybody's up to speed, make sure that everybody's understanding the use cases, the tools that we're using, so then they can contribute and really talk about what they were able to successfully do with their teams. Even from the non-technical roles, we talked about documentation, how do you build out this presentation, how do you build personas if you're a UX designer and so forth. So it really builds out a community and collaboration throughout this hackathon and you can see it from a lot of our work. So I'm actually gonna show a quick live demo of this. So I'm gonna end the show really quickly and see if we can see my screen here and go into our hackathon. So the first thing that we did actually is to provide, so I'll just actually jump back to slides really quick. The first thing that we did we wanted to do is provide synchronous and asynchronous communication. How do you get easy for people to communicate? You can't have everything be synchronous because people are across regions, across different time zones, different priorities in their days. Some people were working many hours a week but still wanted to participate. Maybe they didn't have time to message at the same time as everybody else. So we wanted to make sure that there's places for people to communicate both from a messaging perspective but also from a contributing perspective. So the first thing that we did actually is create a teams group where you can have multiple use case teams that you are able to communicate through messaging. In that group there, you can actually spin up video calls so then you can communicate synchronously as well as asynchronously. We had a general channel where Leo and I and other subject matter experts were jumping on to answer questions, to be able to help people if they were stuck on something, and so forth. And then with all of that we wanted to maintain a community. So what we ended up doing is consolidating the repositories of all the projects that were being worked on in a single organization. So if you aren't familiar, this is what GitHub looks like when you have an organization and you have repositories with an outgrown organization. This really allowed us to bring all the repos that were being worked on in one place and be able to share that. And what we ended up doing is incorporating some of the criteria for the hackathon around community and sustainability of these projects. So here you can see some of the projects that were worked on this year and then people can take these projects continue working on them outside of that time or they can take these projects next hackathon and build more upon them. So some examples of these are, for example, this is from use case three. They did an awesome data science kind of project using some of the data that were they're receiving from the field. And you can see they actually use the GitHub repositories and the GitHub Wikis and the readme to make sure that everything was communicated clearly and they actually use these as part of their demo. So then if somebody were to come in new, they will be able to pick up exactly where somebody else had left off and as well as making it easier for you to understand how do you even use this project if somebody is a subject matter expert from the field and wants to maybe take advantage of some of the cool things that were built, how do we jump in and learn about it so they can actually use it? So let's go back to the slides here. Oh, and this is our website that we built. So it actually made it easy for everybody to get their information in one place. So we had a lot of the event information here. We had registration. We had some pictures from the previous years when it was in person. But again, when you're moving to a virtual and remote world, you have to have easy access to information and make sure that it's sustainable. It's not out of date. It's not beyond what you're expecting just to make sure everybody's on the same page. So we'll go back to this. All right. So some of the criteria we had was the community sustainability side of things and the demo of the use cases. We had a cutliness of the GitHub repository. We had make sure that your use case was easily communicated and that your technical solution was easily communicated. And we made sure that the demo of the actual use case was a fun activity where everybody can join at the end of the day or at the end of the hackathon and really showcase what they've done throughout the year. I mean, throughout the hackathon. So Leah, I don't know if you wanted to talk about some of the cool projects here. Yeah, like these were sort of fun. This is from just a collection of pictures we put together. Put a link up on LinkedIn to communicate what was going on. And right here, one of them was an IoT device. So data collection. How people collect data. And it's very, like you can do it through a phone, but it's obviously very messy when you're trying to provide therapy and collect data at the same time. And some of the old mechanisms for doing it were great clickers, right? And so we wanted to create an IoT device, a printable one. So you can create any variation of printable IoT device that you wanted to collect data. Standard clicker like they had, one with five buttons on it, anything that you wanted to do, any pattern you wanted to do. Yeah, they 3D printed that one, didn't they? Yeah, they printed it. And they said, if we can put the 3D printable formats for it, then maybe you can print a format. And so this is an example of that use case, right? A 3D printable one, obviously that's a little bigger than we'd like, but it was really demonstration of the capabilities with buttons on it. You saw in the teams, there was like three different parts of it. They broke the team up. So one of them was printing and creating this. The other one was communicating, using a chip to communicate through a Wi-Fi to an Azure IoT hub. And so there was three different teams, one working on each component of it. And it was interesting, incredible demonstration. Two days, you're able to pull that stuff out with the kind of technology we have today. It's amazing. Second one was a mobile device to read using cognitive services at Microsoft to be able to extract language from a therapy session. So that over time, you can determine, you know, the progress in language and have just more data points around that. And this was an example of that extraction during a therapy session that you could do using a mobile device. And Power Platform, in fact, this was, I think that one was, there was a whole bunch, three different use cases encompassed in the data piece, but it was really around like sort of the money ball of data collection. All this data is being collected, but are we extracting information from it? I mean, marketers are able to tell what I'm going to buy before. I'm even able to buy it, yet we're not able to do anything close to that in autism despite the fact we're collecting all this data. And that's really where the idea was behind this one and sort of, you know, that always gets a lot of attention, always gets a lot of support for that one. And finally, ambient data collection through, you know, this was, there were two different aspects to this one. One of them was ambient data collection of, you know, of self-stimulatory behaviors. And the other one was an analysis of self-stimulatory behaviors and how, you know, in order to understand how programs can be, you know, targeted, better programs can be targeted towards different classifications, you know, of autism. And there seems to be a strong correlation there. There's a researcher from Miami who was involved in that one, so. Yeah. And so these are really all of them. You can see everybody participating in the event and all the different sort of outputs from the teams, which were super creative and a lot of really just intense effort by the teams, and it was just amazing to be a part of. I'd say it was actually one of the most enjoyable Zoom video, Skype video, team video calls ever, because it was just so heartwarming. Personally, I kind of wanted to tear up during some of the use case demonstrations. It was really, it was honestly, like, so nice, especially it was still technical, still working on amazing things, still tapping into an amazing set of talent that is existing within the FSI community, but really using it for a good cause and just seeing what people were able to do within a couple of days is just, you know, kind of mind-blowing and also just very different than what you normally have video calls about. So there's definitely such a fulfilling event that it made such a huge difference when you see all these different teams working on different projects and then that final day when you talk about these amazing things that we're being worked on, it really just brings it all together. This final demonstration day on a, you know, video call has, I felt like, was one of the most emotional video calls I've had over, you know, over other work calls that we've had before. I mean, emotional in a good way. In a great way. And I was like, this is just so heartwarming. But at the end of the day, we had some learning, some great successes. We had over 70 plus attendees, participants throughout the four different use cases, all working within multiple teams. FSI teams, some of the teams were more than just one company that we were working together. So it was actually, again, similar to what you heard from the sessions yesterday and the sessions today, about bringing and collaborating with other companies who are normally competitors to build something that is just for a good cause. It's just much more powerful to see how you can tap into this wonderful talent that we have and really build out something that will help not only the company itself, but will help the world overall. And the open source platform piece of it and the importance there is the fact that, you know, just judging from, you know, what I've seen in terms of the tools and techniques that are being used in order to help my son, you know, with like day to day stuff like crossing the street or learning how to cook or learning, you know, karate, like learning how to talk to a peer which he desperately wants to do, you know. All of those things, there's not a lot, there's such great technology that can be applied to these areas, but it is really, it's not a viable business model in most cases, right? This is specific technologies that can be impacted for specific individuals on specific areas. And so the solution that the open source, you know, provides in this case is that we have a, you know, just think about it, you can pull this code down and you've got a working POC, you know, that you can leverage in whatever product you want to from the start, right? And so the idea that open source can help improve the business model for companies in these areas for things that are really important to society and to families and people facing a variety of different challenges, there's just not an economic means for them to be built. And that's why I think this hackathon is trying to address that and open source is essential in making, you know, in making that a reality. And so I think I can't underscore the importance of this enough because I see it. You look for tools, they're not there and nobody's built them because it costs too much, right? Yeah, I'm from a sustainability again point of view. This year we were able to consolidate a lot of the projects in a single organization. It made it easier for us to bring all the information that we've worked on from the hackathon previous years and this year into one place so then at least it can be built upon, at least from the next hackathon and beyond but people can actually just go into the organization today and see what's out there and actually continue using or building upon those projects. The end of the day that was a very fulfilling event for not only the attendees but for the companies. It's just to have such a positive impact into the community that affects so many more people than you expect. Honestly, like I found out so many more of my co-workers have kids with autism because of this hackathon just because we talked about it and, you know, that's not something that you always talk about on day-to-day basis and making that impact from a very, very technical FSI community coming in and using that talent and tapping again into that community to leverage it for a good cause. It's just something that not everybody, you know, has necessarily time for on their day-to-day basis but when you bring it in and you make it around a community that's scoped down and you talk about all these different use cases it's just so much easier for people to jump on and work on it. And this year being remote we just had so many participants come from all different regions all different areas of the world and all different levels and skills that they have and just work together for a couple of days actually participate over trainings a couple of weeks before so they start working on a lot of these ideas and become a little more aware of what's out there over the previous weeks and those two days you just saw everybody hands down working on some amazing things. Yeah, and you hear people on the call during those sessions like just, you know, I think there's sometimes like shocked at how meaningful it is for them to participate and so that last two-day call we're going through the demos and everybody's showing what they've done it's not only the excitement of working with the team, you know it's also sort of the thrill of being able to put your skills to work in an area that really helps the community in a way that's incredibly tangible.  So any questions? Yeah, thanks everybody if you have questions. Thank you. Thanks a lot. If you have questions we'll be around and I know we are at the end of this session but we'll be around for, you know, outside of here so if you have any questions of how we work through things what Leo started how we ended up here today let us know and we can definitely chat about that. Thank you. Thank you.


I'm Richard McNally. I work for SNV. I'm the Red Global Coordinator and also Coordinator for Climate Smart Agriculture. I'm based in Vietnam and the project that we are working on as part of this study is the Cat Yen Landscape Project. Cat Yen is just north of Ho Chi Minh City and it's the one of the biggest and best known national parks in Vietnam. We started the project in 2009 and the idea was to try to reduce the degradation and deforestation happening around the Cat Yen National Park. I think in terms of the challenges, particularly early on, was a difficulty for the local communities and the national authorities to understand the ideas around red and particularly how to understand the technical components of a red project, things like MRV, carbon accounting and so forth. So initially there was quite a lot of a more sort of cautious approach from our government counterparts and the communities in terms of implementing this project. We've done a series of capacity building with the provincial and district authorities around red and at the same time we worked with the communities particularly around looking at agriculture, livelihoods, forest protection, enforcement. But quite early on in the project we decided that the economics didn't really add up, that the potential benefits from red credits was quite far below the potential benefits from rubber expansion. In this area there's a lot of rubber expansion. So trying to work with the communities to try to change their behavior and trying to encourage them to protect the forests and stop rubber expansion was a major problem. We carried out a series of economic analysis of the area and quite soon it became quite clear that the red as an economic incentive to protect the forest probably wasn't strong enough. So after that we changed our approach to how we worked in this site. Early on in 2012 we changed track so we started to look at how we could integrate red into more the district and the provincial level development patterns that this I think everyone refers to as green growth. So I think very much what needs to be looked at is how we can look at red as part of a broader package of development. How we put that into practice or how the negotiators put that into practice is probably quite challenging given the context of the international red agreement but certainly in terms of application or implementation on the ground there's a real need to see how to integrate red further into the existing development plans and practices from our experience. I think it very clearly highlights the major challenges of working on red. So it provides a nice basis to try to move forward in terms of how to work on red in the future. So I think it's an excellent collation of different case studies that we can build on.


I feel like I get and understand new struggling insurance agents. 92% of interest agents fail. That's why we keep with this 8% theme. It's a bad number. I'm committed to really trying to do my best to really help. You have to shift your mindset. This business is a roller coaster. It's an emotional freaking roller coaster that's really tough to succeed at. 92% fell for a reason. I believe it's the most mentally tough industry on planet Earth. I truly believe that. I guess that's why we do what we do, man. I get excited by seeing other people grow and succeed. The men, the myth, the legends, Landon McArthur and Cody Askins, my goal is to make over $400,000.  I miss Akeem. How are you doing, my friend? Good, man. You have Mr. James Whitley of SLS. You have Brian Askins with us today, with Cody and Jair Orenstein. Mr. Tony Moore went to the genius Justin Brock. Not in the 8%, but you're in the 0.008%. Appreciate you having me on. We will do tens of millions this year. That's your current goal, $5,000 a week. No, that's the minimum. Minimum. What's staggering to me is not doing $5,000 a week following this model. That's why we're successful because of some of the people we have. I mean, their stories are incredible. It's way cooler than mine. And with us today by the name of Anthony Toliver. Anthony, say hi to the people. Hey, everybody. How are you guys doing? The clients, they're relying on us to do what's right and to take care of them. And I take that very personal. And I take it as a huge responsibility. Focus on the result. That's not going to get you in. Anyone can say, well, I'd like to write 100 policy a month. Awesome. What gets you there?  Don't doubt yourself. The market knowledge is out there to get. So go get it. And your market can be wherever you want it to be because you could be in Florida and make it Iowa if you want to. But you can brand anywhere in the world. If you want to sell insurance in the Philippines, you'll have a lot of competition. It's covered everything from Google, to SEO, to video ads, to running a call center, to scaling the call center to $25 million. It was, I was up there like, he's showing real numbers of what we're doing for people. One piece of advice can have a multimillion dollar outcome.


What's up guys and in this video? We're gonna show you exactly how anyone can open a US bank account in less than five minutes from anywhere in the world So why would you want to open a US bank account? Maybe if you want to open a Amazon business of some sort sometimes they will require a US bank account or a Canadian or a British bank account sometimes they don't allow all international bank accounts So let's show you how to do it. What you'll be using is Payoneer payoneer is like this online global payment service banking service is basically like an online bank So we're gonna go here to sign up this big orange button, but before you sign up make sure you Go to their fees page and make sure that you agree to all the fees that they take So it's not like the worst fees in the world, but it's also not the best fees in the world So there are some fees on certain currencies and things like that So we just click the orange sign-up button which took us to this page to the first sign-up page So we can get started creating our US bank account. And of course this video is showing you how we're going to do it in less than five minutes Which means we got put on a timer to make sure we're doing less than five minutes. So start the timer Yeah, up your fingers and it'll start the timer three two one. Let's go So I'm gonna be creating a US bank account for my girlfriend Her name is Charlotte Chan. Let's see how fast we could do it So of course this is mostly just gonna be like a fill-in the blank situation So you can just see as I fill it in You get to watch it and we're gonna be blur out all the info. Yes, we will need to blur out all the way Do you even want to see it? They get to see her type quicker. Ah They see her birthday. Yeah, we're gonna try to make no cuts so you can see that's a real five minutes Yeah, but if it gets super boring perhaps a little fast for I don't know Right here, so that's the getting started page click next have a cold by the way So I might be sniffling in once a while then the contact details why I sound like squidward. Yeah, you do sound like squidward That's why I said it So now it's just typical address stuff we will need to Blur this one out. I don't want anyone going to her house and murdering her Facts, I guess I Yeah, well, it's very helpful Five I know I have the information here on my phone next to me. That's why I'm looking here By the way, it's weird how Canadians zip codes has have numbers and letters. That's very strange to me as well I thought it was all numbers Postal code sorry Can you just do it weird man eight seven? Oh, no, I can't say the phone number out loud But we will get this done in less than five minutes next next Security details Username is just that a password. Do you have a password you're gonna do? Yeah, okay How we're how we are security question two minutes Tush Is it right here? What's the time and be here? Here Here rub that timer Zero how are we doing on time does anyone know I just had a comment. I mean Dane. We're just having that conversation. Okay Yeah It wants me to add numbers numerical values to the password That should be good and then this last page the almost done page You just need you just need to put in your bank account details so that pay near So pay near knows where to send the pay near money to type type type Now you maybe you know the camera may be on us or now you may be thinking oh wow There's more light than there was five seconds ago. How's that? Okay, we had to do a little cut Because we got some some numbers wrongs. We had to go get it and then put in the right stuff Right, but doesn't change anything how long it takes come on. Let's go. We got this Checkings agreed to terms of service. I agreed to the pricing and fees make sure you look at the fees page Ends free the pricing is free, but there are fees Yep, when you use the transfers and stuff so click that Maybe it was three meals for it was definitely under five it was definitely under five hopefully So the application is completed a review in process You will receive an email confirmation within the next several business days once your application has been reviewed They will approve it and you will then have a pay near account which creates a US It actually also creates a British and a Canadian bank account for you before we end the video Let's quickly show you exactly where you could get those banking details now We're on the pay near home page Let us show you quickly how to find your bank account details for your new US bank account So you go here under receive drop that menu click on global payment service Now I will avoid scrolling too much so the editing for the blower won't be too difficult right there So here we have three bank accounts set up for us So one is a European one set up with wire card bank, which is a German one Here's all the details. It's blurred out, but it's all there up here under US dollars is your US bank account So I don't know if they're all set up under first century bank But ours is then you have the routing number account number account type Everything you need and then you also have a British account and then that's everything you need Here's what you insert into Amazon when they ask your bank account details. Yes All right, that's the end of the video showing you how to set up your own US bank account in less than five minutes If you enjoyed the video drop a like Subscribe check out all the other videos on our channel and that's the end of it Thanks for watching. Bye


Hello everyone. So I'm kind of from the big corporation world I guess compared to you. Although I'm not going to talk about technology at all since I come from something called the user experience lab at Ericsson Research. Myself I'm a designer, one out of two designers at Ericsson I guess. So it's not so many Ericsson, they make phones. We make the kind of invisible stuff between this Arduino board and your phone, all the infrastructure in between and how that SMS was paid for and all that stuff. Invisible stuff. And when we approach this internet of things or whatever it's called this week, we try to think about how people understand this interconnectivity. Kind of the first step is to connect things and then to understand how all that together kind of creates new possibilities that we haven't seen before. So basically for us it's about how I mean the technology is fine that we assume that's going to happen, everything will be solved. But it tends to be like that when all the nerds get in and use their time. But when normal consumers are going to be faced with this extremely complex mashup of things, we were interested in exploring how to find interfaces for that. Not necessarily the graphic user interfaces that we see, but how are we going to understand that? So we worked for some years experimenting and trying to find something to build upon. We have anthropologists and ethnographers living in people's houses for like four months just to observe and theorize about how they perceive and experience all their things today and see if we can find any patterns or behavioral mental models that we can build on when we create new services and interfaces. So we went out and tried to see if people actually have some kind of sense or interconnectivity between the daily objects that we use. And the answer that I think we got was no, they don't really have this sense of interconnectivity. It's really a lot about interacting with one thing at a time at a specific place or two things in relation to each other. We have experimented a lot with, since we are designers, we create like these new concepts for small networks, how to make these things interplay with each other and how to understand and control them. But when we scale this relatively small and current kinds of networks up and present concepts which includes all the things at the same time and also have a layer on services on top of that and everything is interconnected, it becomes really hard to create good user interfaces that truly shows the power of all this interconnectedness. At least that was what we felt. It's really hard for people to understand what happened between your Arduino board and the phone. You can't imagine how much infrastructure and things going on behind the scenes. Especially when it's wireless network, we don't see it. We don't know what it is. And as humans we tend to learn new things by looking backwards. What did we have before to explain what the new technology was? So basically the wireless technologies that we have now in the networks are understand as if it was invisible cables. That's kind of the idea we have to explain for ourselves what it is. And the cable is a typical thing that connects two things. It has to end A to B. And when that becomes the mental model for networks as such, it kind of, we create a huge blind spot for whatever interconnectivity means. It's basically the same as what we can see with today's smartphones. People still tend to think about them as telephones, although people hardly talk in them. That's still the perceived main function. So it's a little bit the same with the networks. Basically people are intellectually aware that it's many nodes in the network, but the two things at the same time is kind of the way we interact with and understand it. And why is this important at all? It's because we have a huge potential, we think, in creating new services and products that build upon not just A to B connections, but extremely many to extremely many interconnections. I'll show you a little bit later what that could look like. Then during this research that we do when we talk to people and try new products and prototypes on them and they give feedback to us, it appears that everyone has a really good mental model already for a network, which is how we interact socially. That's also a network. But we think very differently about it. Then with social networks, we have no problems at all grasping this, that everyone are interconnected, that you have like multi-hop connections, and that is situated that you might have one groups here at a certain time and place and everything is dynamic. So we try, okay, why not try to experiment with using that mental model on an internet of things? Just to make people understand the power of this interconnection or the networkedness or whatever. Is that a word? Networkness? I don't know. Anyhow. So this is where I'm going to try my demo, which you've ripped out now. I'm going to rip out your things here. It's a cable. So I'm not going to do it for real, luckily. I'm going to fake it all. That's a good thing about creating concepts. We don't have to actually do it for real. As long as it looks good. So literally, we created something that resembles a quite well-known social network. Although I don't have people as friends, I have things as friends. I mean, this side is, I realize now it's almost banal. But putting it in this context and creating an intelligence layer that connects to things, reads their capability, and give them a little bit of intelligence and the ability to speak. We talk about things that speak. We intend to create that. I mean, do that literally. Make things speak. So here, for example, I checked in here with Foursquare, and my lights at home reminds me that, hey, you're not here anymore. Why should we be on? We should be off. Okay, to that. Great. So I'm sure. So this is your door, basically, but in Facebook style. And, well, that could be fun. But the point here is to show that, as on Facebook, all the other things that I have connected, my thing friends, I do have real friends as well, by the way, but they're on Facebook. Here, for example, my camera at home can pitch in its functionality. Its specialty is to show pictures. We can do this with my booster, I guess. And it could kind of make me witness that the lights are actually off. Yep, looks good. I don't want to have this hassle every time I forget to turn something off so that the lights here could offer to do this automatically the next time. Thank you. Home automation right there. And this, the last thing here, the energy company liking this. What is that about? It's, for one, it's a small gesture that kind of reinforces my feeling of everything being interconnected. That's one. Another thing is that it's a small branding thing. They want to encourage this kind of behavior that I just did. I want to associate with that. And it's not a thing, it's a service. I'm a customer. So that's one kind of usual suspect use case, I would say. If we, if I were going to inspire a little more, if you look a little bit further ahead, when all the modules are dirt cheap, and, and even Samsonite can have VG modules in their suitcases, for example. I forgot my suitcase when I came here. Or I lost it in the airport. So I should be able to, ah, okay. That's good. It's not lost, but it's at home at least. But I need it here, obviously. It's important stuff in that suitcase. Like underwear. So if I could have this internet of things also containing a set of real life services, that could give me, like, the suitcase could go check what in the yellow pages, what kind of career company can bring it here and give me an offer. And I could buy that service here. I want it here. See. And then I could sit back and wait for the suitcase. It will come. Or I could see the message here from the suitcase to the driver of this company. I mean, this could be FedEx globally or just a local bicycle carrier. But basically here, they could just go to my house. And since the door is a friend of me as well, I can open that remotely. And my location is dynamic. It finds me here. So if I travel to another country, it will follow me around the globe, I guess. It would be huge roaming costs for my suitcase around the globe. But these kind of things are not, I mean, one, it's intended to inspire a bit. But it's really about trying to make people understand the power of this interconnectivity. And how are we going to make mental models that make people understand that? And as far as we can see, this model helps in understanding this networkness. So that, I think, was what I wanted to say.


The Activity Chooser. To add learning content to a Moodle course, you use Moodle's Activity Chooser, which you can access by turning on the editing, and then, in the section where you want to have your learning content, you click Add an Activity or Resource. This will bring up the Activity Chooser. If you don't see this link, but instead you see two separate drop-down menus, check with your administrator. Let's click this link to take a look at the Activity Chooser and what it does. Depending on your administrator's settings, you might see an All tab, which displays every type of learning content available to use, and, or, you might see two separate tabs, Activities. These require students to interact with Moodle, such as posting in forums or submitting assignments. And, Resources, which students read, watch or listen to. You add an Activity or Resource by clicking it to go to its setup page, or you can click the information icon to find out more, and then click the Add button bottom right. You can favour it an item by clicking the star, and then easily find it again from a starred tab. Some administrators recommend activities and resources they think you'll find useful, as we can see here on another Moodle site where the admin has recommended three activities. Again, this is to help you locate them quickly and encourage you to try them.