from the 34th Chaos Communication Congress in Leipzig. So good morning everyone on day four of 34C3 and we're getting started right away. Here's Leander Seigl on stage and he'll be talking about International Image Interoperability Framework how cultural institutions can create an interoperable framework for digitalized works of art. Give it up for Leander. Thanks a lot. Also from my side, good morning everyone and I'm really happy that even though this is day four of the congress all of you showed up for this first talk today so thank you very much for being here and I'm really glad to have the opportunity to present this favorite technology of mine the International Image Interoperability Framework that allows us to create interoperable cultural exchange points for digitalized cultural works. About myself, I work at the University Library of Leipzig and in the Department for Digital Services and so that is my background, how I get to deal with these things on a daily basis but it's also a private passion of mine and so I have a few private side projects going on in that area. So I think it's well known and many would agree with me that digitalized images are a fundamental part of our cultural heritage for example, scriptures, paintings, manuscripts there's more access being made available through this it was restricted in earlier years but now access is provided to lots of people and so far digitalization was connected to meant that the metadata, the images themselves were kept in closed off systems there wasn't any possibility to connect them to other data and so that meant the data was also saved in a way that it was only possible to work with a certain system to present the data and so this is an example from a couple years back this was very modern back then but today this isn't what we're looking for at all and doesn't meet our demands and so how does it look like, I'm going to talk about that soon. So here an example of the situation that we were confronted with over the years and it's still that way isolated systems they have their different characters and they're accessible from repositories but there's no interoperability between them and so that is where the international image interoperability framework comes in so this build upon this build a spec and API between the repositories themselves where digitalized images and metadata is located and these APIs were connected with the presentation, the front end layer so that not even bound by certain institutions all these workspaces could be glued together by the user so it was up to the user and this came out of a community from the Stanford University Libraries, the British Library the libraries at Oxford and this community has really grown quite a lot for example the Bavarian State Library is very much involved our library here in Leipzig and one in France as well and so it's a lot of very renowned international libraries are participating in this even the Vatican Library they also provide their digitalized works of art in this interoperable framework so there's four APIs right now that are licensed under CC by license two of them are necessary to enable a presentation the image API that delivers the pixels themselves the presentation API that provides the structure and metadata for these pixels and makes them available in an interoperable way other APIs are concerned with search and authentication but I'm not going to talk about it more and so what's nice about this is that it is built on Canvas data, the data stored in adjacent format and the identifiers are usually HTTP URIs so that allows us to link different sources no matter how they're saved a few words on the presentation API the hierarchy is modeled here we have the collection that creates that bundles multiple works to a reasonable collection so researchers can create their own collections and then we have a manifest file so this manifest file means it defines a work as a series of images and then we have the canvas and that can be annotated using images or text so for example on this slide you can see that the abstract canvas object is annotated with the original image content and so this allows us to fill this canvas object with different images, with different context with different annotations and so these manifest files are structured in this way as you can see on the slide don't have to look at all the details it just gives you a rough idea of how the internal structure works and in the same way the annotations that the users themselves can create within this framework they're structured the same way and so it's possible to create annotations in my own system for objects that aren't even necessarily available within my own system but in some other institutions and again this is represented here using this triple IF we can combine images from different repositories and collect them into a single unified research environment which is a nice term I think and then save our scientific research results for the APIs from triple IF for the APIs that we use for this project for the software applications we're giving a few live examples right now we can digitally present some examples for this API and these things actually are combined from different data sources that are then shown together and then we see the function of how this application of the pictures combining together it's a dynamically structured combination of pictures here we're looking at which section of the picture is actually taken and is it rotated at all we can then call and request certain information in the server and then have certain things presented back to us it's dynamic for every application that we're using in a presentation API there's a whole series of software products for our presentation API we have a range of different applications this is an IP image server we're using now as an example we're using Apache under the hood and this is based upon the picture data there's different resolutions for the different sections of the pictures and then it is then resolved and displayed dynamically there's different types there's TIFFs that's a usually used JPEG 2000 is actually a little bit more difficult the open JPEG implementation should improve with this context the first example we have is this Papyrus from Ebers it's from Egypt it's a paper scroll that's over 3500 years old it has about 880 medical treatments written on it the roll has a length of 18 meters over 18 meters and it's now digitalized so this is now callable we can now call this to be loaded and we can look at the quality of this is very good and then we can zoom out to see the entire thing at once here 3000 pixels high gives you an idea of how large this document is and it has different functionalities on top of it so we can look at the translation that's loaded over it we can look at which medical treatments would then be prescribed for different conditions and now we're skipping over some slides this is our second example for the codecs this is the first full New Testament manuscript it was actually separated the first section was in England the second lipstick the third in Russia and also one in Egypt so this is actually a perfect use case to look at because this document is separated from each other so we need to then actually combine them to see the work in its original entirety here's a second picture of some handwriting and this was actually sitting right now in the Vatican and then there's also some in Leipzig it's in the Vatican library under our framework right now so now we're going into a demo and I'm going to show you how it's possible to use a triple IF compatible layer that you can create yourself and then use various digitalized works from various institutions I'm going to use the codecs idicus from Leipzig and I'm also going to load the manifest from the codecs Vaticanus into this layer and now I have this fewer so now it's very easy for me to have these works next to each other and using this example I can pick whatever works I want so for example if we look at the same content the start of the book of Aester and I as a layman don't know much about this but you can see that it's the same content, the same words so moving on again a representation of how this works looking at digitalized works from different repositories being loaded at the same time example number three is a demo from Project Mirador here we can see a manuscript from France and apparently this happened quite a lot an illustration was cut out of it and today this illustration is in another institution's repository and so now using this triple IF model we can combine different digitalized works on the same canvas so now we can recreate the original impression using these digital tools and since this is such a nice system I can show you how annotations work now so we can define certain area and then enter our text important notice and depending on how the fewer system is configured this annotation gets saved locally but it will be possible in the future to have a work environment for researchers to deposit their annotations in some central system here another look into the manifest file here we can see that the URL is loaded from different image servers and those two images get combined on the canvas layer another example we have this technology tested in the real world at the university library of Leipzig there's a handwriting course every year and so we provided a work environment for the participants in which they could use our own manuscripts but also manuscripts from other institutions and annotate these manuscripts working together and so document their research results together and this was provided by the Stanford University Library using this Mirador system that I've talked about already and as I've said in the beginning I want to talk about a little private project of mine using wiki data and the SparkQL endpoint I loaded images of caps onto my own server changed the format to IIIF and made it available for the public and searchable and so now in this system you can pick the digital works and now I can also show you the drag and drop feature that is recommended for implementing the discovery system with presentation systems and through this system you can also reach IIIF manifest files to use these images in different contexts and so another interesting fact a lot of institutions have used the IIIF system to provide digital content online for example the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York another institution in France and also one in Switzerland and they have this project called E-Codesies and you can look at the PDF presentation later and get the URLs from there archive.org also supports the standard by now so this to give you an example of huge data pools that you can tap to fill your presentations or your projects so these IIIF APIs are constantly being developed further there's going to be a switch of the data models for different annotation possibilities and we also want to support video data looking at the institutional side of things the University Library of Leipzig passed the Open Digitalization Policy so most of the digitalized works we want to publish them under CC0 or CCPD mark licenses and also IIIF compatible and so if you go on this URL you can look into our digitalization workspace and see what is being digitalized live one more remark we're going to have a hackathon soon in Leipzig where we will also host a IIIF workshop thank you very much for your attention if you want to learn more about IIIF then you can check that out at IIIF.io and here's my contact information and if there's any questions we still have some minutes left applause thank you very much we have five minutes for Q&A if you have any questions ask a signal angel is the internet smart and has questions no questions from the internet let's start with the microphone good morning thank you very much for the presentation do you have any questions about inventory data banks my question then is about the database what text is there exactly so this product I can't say anything about that but I believe IIIF is a well it's just a description of a standard framework and so systems would have to provide access points to realize the standard my question is there's now a standard are there alternative standards I mean the big advantage here is that everything you can alter it you can apply it but what about if Berlin uses a different standard for instance and then how do you then in common apply all of these different standards yeah there's an older standard based on XML files in which data is supposed to be delivered as whole images but the technological standard we provide layered images and that's really we're one of a kind there any more questions no everybody's still tired all right so thank you very much thank you for listening to the interoperability


Hey everyone, Lee Lowell here, smartopsinseller.com. Today is Saturday, August 7th, 2021. Welcome to another edition of our Saturday Synopsis. We take a look at the charts, we look at the indexes, we look at individual stocks and we try to see what's been happening. I'm here to teach you, try to help you become a better and smarter trader. In my service, smartopsinseller, I use the charts exclusively to try to help me gauge where a stock or index will be going in the future and that is how I make my trades. I base it all on the charts, technical analysis, pattern support and resistance. So that is what I use to help me decide when it's time to get in and or out of a trade. And this is why I make these videos to help you, try to give you some of my knowledge, use some of my experience to help your learning curve. So this is what we do. So let's jump right in and talk about what's been happening in the markets. As you may know, if you've been watching these videos, we always start with the SPY, which is the Exchange Traded Fund for the S&P 500, gives us the best overall, broadest view of the market. So we like to take a look at the S&P 500 first. And the SPY is the Exchange Traded Fund, which trades just like a stock. So we like to see how it's been doing. So what has been happening in the market? Let me blow this up a little bit here. If you've been watching my videos on Saturdays, you know I've been bullish, been bullish for a long time because the market is telling us it wants to be bullish. So we go along for the ride. As you can see right here, this is a daily chart of the SPY. Each vertical bar, each vertical line is one day's worth of trading. And as you can see right here, this was Friday, August 6th, 2021. This bar made all-time new highs again for the S&P 500. This is a daily chart, okay? So we can see it goes back on my screen real estate here. Goes back to, you know, it's about a two-year range, okay, that you can see on the chart here. But what we can also do is look at a monthly chart. This goes all the way back to the early 1990s. As you can see, the S&P 500 has gone up all-time new highs. Now, yes, we were flat for a number of years, number of years, bottomed out in 2008, 2009 financial crisis, and look at this trajectory just since then. So it's been incredible. Let's go back to the daily chart. So S&P 500 right here, all-time new highs. The market looks strong. What do I use on my charts to help me gauge where the market is going? I have three moving averages that I use. I try to keep it simple. I don't use a lot of technical indicators because I've tried over the years. I've looked at many indicators and I feel it just jumbles up the chart. So this is what I've honed in on. This is what it's come down to for me. I have three moving averages. I've got a 20-day simple, a 50-day simple, and a 200-day simple moving average. Down here, I have the RSI, which is the overbought, oversold indicator, a 14-day RSI. I use the 80-level and the 20-level. You can set those parameters yourself. You can set the day amounts of days. I use the 14-day. And I use the overbought and oversold levels to kind of give me a gauge of whether a market is entering overbought territory or oversold territory. It doesn't tell me a market turns about to happen. It just tells me that things are either getting overheated or oversold. And I take that in conjunction with what I see up here. And I also use patterns, lots of different patterns to help me gauge where stock may be going next. This is what's called the W pattern. We've got congestion patterns here, these triangles. This is an ascending wedge pattern. So there's all these chart patterns that you can use to help you gauge where stock may be going next. And you can find these patterns online. Just do a Google search. I've shown some websites before where you can look up these chart patterns. So these help us gauge where a market might be going. And I keep these on the chart so you can see what we've been talking about over the last couple of months. So the SAP 500, the market in general is looking strong. And what happens is once you have a market that's trending, in this case, trending upwards, it will usually tag along moving average lines, 20 day or 50 day. When you have a nice, strongly up-trending market or even down-trending market, they will typically bounce off of the 20 day or 50 day moving average. As you can see the SAP 500, when it has a pullback, it either pulls back to the 50 day or 20 day. And you could almost be assured that it will bounce and continue up with the trend. Even here where it's fallen for a couple of days below the 50 day, it still regains its composure and starts to move higher again. So don't think that just because a market has fallen below a moving average, it means, oh, here comes the next bear market, not so.  Like when a market falls below a major moving average like this, I like to see at least, I give it three days to stay below or fall below a moving average before I decide, well, maybe a turn in the market is coming. So we really haven't seen three days below major moving averages before it starts to bounce. Now down here in the W pattern, yes, the market was a couple of days below, but it did pop back up again. So even if it falls below moving averages for more than a couple of days, you can still watch it. Doesn't mean you have to take a trade right then and there. So the market's looking strong. As I say, each week the market is like physics and object in motion tends to stay in that same motion until something comes along and pushes it in another direction. You have an uptrending market that's bouncing off the moving average lines. Nothing has come along yet to knock it down into a different direction, meaning bearish in this case. Now there's some things happening here in the US. We have the coronavirus, the Delta variant is certainly still around. People are getting sick, but vaccinations are happening. We got about half of the US population vaccinated now. And so that comes into consideration every now and again with the market. If there's a sell-off, the narrative will be, oh, well, people are getting sick again. But on the other hand, we have earnings that have been coming out. Companies are still producing good earnings. Their outlooks for the future is still good. So that's really what's going to drive stock prices in the long run. It's the outlook for companies on their future and how they've done on their prior quarters worth of earnings. Earnings is what determines where stock price goes. If a company is selling a lot of products and making money every quarter, obviously the stock price is going to go up. If the company is not producing earnings, not producing sales and they're burning through cash, the stock price is going to go down. Yes, we have these backdrop of other news items, narratives of rising interest rates, unemployment, the coronavirus, yes, those things are out there that can affect market movements. But in the long run, those stories will go away at some point and the earnings of a company is what eventually will keep a market going. Now, we can go back and look at the S&P 500 over time. We've had multiple wars, we've had pandemics, we've had recessions, the Great Recession in 2008, but the market always finds its footing and goes higher. That's how the market works because the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial, the Nasdaq are all made up of companies that are producing products that people buy and have real earnings that keep increasing over time. That's why stock prices go up. In the short run, stock prices can get hit because of fear out there in the world, which is valid, but it can only last for so long, right? The pandemic was barely a blip in March 2020. I mean, it came down really hard, but look how fast it turned around. So stock prices are going to be driven by how the companies do. And in this case right now, companies in the S&P 500 are doing well. That's why the market keeps going up. So when you have a pullback like this, here's a pullback here, pullback here, pullback here, it doesn't mean the next bear market is starting. It just means we have normal ebbs and flows, markets pullback, that's just what they do. And so you can use the support of the 20-day or 50-day moving average as your guide of, hey, I wanna get long on this stock or this index, this is my timing pattern. This is where I could look to get in, okay? And even if it falls below the moving average, watch it. You know, you could always nibble on a few shares first or wait for it to bounce before you go a little bit stronger into the trade, okay? So that's, I wanna clear the air and let everyone know this is how the markets work, this is how stock prices move, they bounce off moving averages, they form chart patterns, that's how it is. So let's take a look at the NASDAQ. We'll look at the triple Qs as a proxy for the NASDAQ. Just like the SPY, the QQQ is exchange traded fund, NASDAQ. Again, daily chart, hit all time new highs again this week and the market looks good. It's hugging the 20-day moving average, the 50-day moving average is there below. Now the NASDAQ came down below the 50-day for a number of days. So in that case, you wait and watch. Wait and watch to see if it's got more downside to come or if it will bounce back. Obviously it bounced back and it's bounced back pretty hard. So you can still use the 20-day and 50-day as a gauge. Now the 200-day has not been touched yet in a long time. That's sort of the granddaddy of moving averages. That's basically the last line in the sand for a lot of stocks or indexes that will be a make or break point. So we haven't seen anything touch the 200-day moving average in a long time. So the market looks good. I'm remaining bullish until something tells me that's coming along to move it in another direction. Let's look at the Dow here for a second. Let me pull up my index here, the Dow right here. Now we've been talking about the Dow and the markets have been pretty flat. Summertime things can get flat. Here's the ascending triangle pattern. This is a bullish pattern where you connect the uptrending lows of however many points you want to use. I can even connect these lows down here. You can draw a line here connecting some of the lows. It depends how far back you want to go. But obviously the market's going up and it hits this resistance pattern right here. It's a resistance top that the market will try for a number of times to get through this resistance and eventually it'll either crack through it or it'll fail and it'll come down below the triangle. As you can see right here, look at all this pressure building to get up through this resistance line. And right here, yesterday, Friday, August 6th, 2021, the market seems to convincingly have popped above resistance right here. So that is a sign that, hey, I think we've blasted through the resistance. Let's keep this party going. I have to believe that over the next couple of weeks, you will start to see it either will congest here above the line or just have a vertical move higher. So things look good for the Dow, S&P 500 and NASAC. And yes, this was all time new highs right here for the Dow Jones. Things are looking good. Let's take a look at some individual stocks as we do each week. We always start with Apple. We look at these NASDAQ stocks. A lot of these NASDAQ stocks are favorites of a lot of people and they have a lot of news stories. There's a lot of excitement around these high tech stocks because they're the ones that move. So Apple finally has hit an all-time new high just recently. Here's the resistance line I have up here. Some may call this a double top. Double top can be a bearish trade for a short period of time while the stock regains composure. Got a little congestion pattern right here. I don't know if you can see this blue triangle side of a triangle right here. So Apple's kind of congesting here, made all-time new highs kind of congesting. Will it get above 150 where it hit all-time new highs? I think eventually it will happen. It's gearing up, storing up some energy from possible next move higher or maybe it'll come back down and tag the uptrending 50-day moving average. It's yet to be seen. Apple could move sideways for a short period of time. Depending how strong the general market is or it could bust up through resistance. But I think for now we may see some more sideways action here below this 150 line but Apple certainly has finally gotten off its keyster and moved higher. Let's take a look at Tesla. Tesla. So we had drawn this congestion triangle pattern right here and what that means is that the ranges, the daily ranges gets tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter until it has nowhere to go but a power move higher or a power move lower. And you can see this past week it powered up higher out of this big congestion pattern. Trading right around $700 a share. I mean the chart still kind of looks ugly in a way. And you can even draw a larger triangle here. So there's a lot of things happening with Tesla congestion in this major area but I think this moved this week up out of this triangle is good news for Tesla. It probably wants to keep going higher but it's still kind of jumbled here but I'd have to lean to the side of being bullish for the next move for Tesla. Let's look at Amazon because Amazon was doing well. Let's open this up a little bit. Had been in this long channel here and finally broke above it. Finally broke above it as looking like it was gonna stay above it until earnings came out last week. Amazon dropped about $300 a share. It's a big move for Amazon and you know what it's done? Now it's knocked it back down inside this channel. So Amazon back in the channel will probably remain in the channel for the foreseeable future until maybe next quarter's earnings because people wanna see what Amazon's going to do. So I have to believe Amazon will stay in this range for a while. I don't see it breaking up above resistance and I don't see it coming all the way back down here. So look for more sideways action for Amazon. I wanna talk about AMD. AMD, one of my favorite stocks. And I'm so angry that we missed this trade. Right here when it was hitting on around $85 a share it had a nice pullback and that was our cue to get in. When we sell put options, that's what we do for bullish trades. We sell put options here at the smart option seller. And we try to get in right here on this low and we missed the trade, couldn't get filled on the put options that we were trying to sell and then the market just took off without us. I love the company. It blasted through this resistance line here. It bounced nicely off the moving average. It was a perfect setup. And look from $85 all the way up to $122, $123. It's just a massive move in a very short period of time. That's big for AMD. It's never moved like that before. So it had a little bit of pullback the last couple of days this week. I'm hoping to see maybe a little bit more of a pullback have the moving averages start to move up. So price comes down, moving averages go up, but maybe they'll meet somewhere here in the middle. And that could possibly be our next opportunity to get long for the next leg up for AMD. So I'm hoping we'll see a little bit of a pullback moving average and move up because I don't wanna buy it up here. This is still a little bit too overbought for me. I don't wanna jump in here yet. I'm waiting for a little bit of a pullback. Will the pullback come? I'm hoping, no guarantee. But after a harsh, strong move like that, the stock needs some congestion, people need to take some profits. So I'm hoping that we'll see a little bit of pullback here, moving averages move up, and then it'll give us an opportunity. Let's take a look at, also Eli Lilly has had a power move higher. Eli Lilly's just, look at this, been hugging the 20 day moving average. So you use these moving averages as your gauge or your key or your timing to get long, if that's what you wanna do. See how it powered higher, but then had a nice little pullback, moving average line moved upwards, so it met up right here. Same thing, move up, met the moving average line, and then continue to go higher. I have to believe this little power higher is gonna have the same thing that this one had. You'll have the pullback, and the moving averages will move up to meet it, and then it's all clear for its next leg higher. That's how the pricing works, that's how stocks move. They stay in that same trajectory, but they engage with the moving averages. That's what you wanna see, and you look for the patterns as well. Let's see what else we can take a look at here. Walmart is another one that I liked this week. Walmart got some buy signals. You have, let's draw some lines here. So you've had the uptrending line here, you kinda connect the bottoms, and then you have the resistance at the top right here, which forms the other part of the ascending wedge or triangle, whatever you wanna call it. And Walmart popped above it this week, so I like the action, I like this upward movement, I like it moving through resistance. I like Walmart maybe congesting here a little bit because it has to congest, made a power move above resistance. So it has to figure out, okay, are we really happy that we busted through resistance? May have a little sideways action, and then everyone says, yeah, let's go, and then the stock will continue to move higher. That's what I'm seeing. So I like Walmart here, I hope it continues higher. Netflix, they take Netflix still, still in this long channel right here. So Netflix has just been hugging, between 4.75 to 5.75, still in this range. If you're an option seller, this has been a dream come true for you. If you sell iron condors or strangles on Netflix, it's been great for you over the last year. Procter and Gamble, same thing. Had this little sideways channel has blasted through it, hugging the 20 day moving average. I think I like Procter and Gamble for a continue move higher, great company as well. Stall work, good dividend payer. Let's see what else we have. Disney also, okay, so we've drawn some chart patterns on Disney. So Disney had been moving up since the pandemic, but then got down into this channel here. So this is a situation where physics took over. Disney had been in this nice uptrending channel. We'll just draw it here so you can see it. Was in the uptrending channel, and then something came along to knock it in another direction. So Disney entered this down trending channel. But what's been happening here is that now it's got support, found support down here and had somewhat of a sideways channel, which is good. That means it's trying to find its footing, find its bottom. And I think that Disney may have turned the corner and we're looking to see if it can get above this resistance line and start a new leg higher for a future uptrend, okay? So watch Disney, if it gets above this resistance line and starts to move higher, that should be the all clear that the next leg higher is coming and it should take it out. It's all time highs here, near $200 a share. Let's see if those are in fact the all time highs for Disney. Look at a monthly chart, yep. So we're definitely at all time highs. It was hit in April. So let's go back to the daily chart, yep. Right here. Here's the all time highs for Disney. So I think what this sideways action gets above resistance line should be the all clear for Disney to start moving higher. What else do we have? Let's take a look at Coca-Cola because I've been talking about Coca-Cola in our newsletter. I like the price action for Coca-Cola. I like that it's been trending higher. It's hugging off the 20 day moving average. I think it's congesting here a little and I think the next leg higher is about to come. It has a nice little uptrend here. Coca's a stalwart. It moves slow, great dividend. So it's good for long term portfolios. If you hold it for 10, 20, 30 years, whatever. Coca's here to stay and it's in a nice trend. I think we have the all clear that, okay, the next leg higher should be happening. So I'm gonna be watching Coke for a little while longer. McDonald's came back down at the channel. Pepsi, Pepsi looks good. Pepsi's in an uptrend. Pull back to the 20 day moving average. Let's see if it could hold here and move back up again. So we've got, they've got some work to do or it could fall down to the 50 day moving average. I've got nothing on Pepsi right now. Twitter, okay, so let's take a look at Twitter real quick. Twitter's been in this uptrend. We actually have a position in our newsletter. We've sold some put options on Twitter. Our strike price is down here. So we have some room for error. And we have this uptrending channel. You can see yesterday it's falling out of the channel right here. So we have to keep an eye on it, see where it wants to go. Our next line is the uptrending 50 day moving average. Will it bounce off of it and continue to move higher or will it fall below? We don't know yet, but we're in wait and see mode on Twitter, I wouldn't say anything else about Twitter right now, just watching this channel. Facebook, Facebook. So Facebook, we also have a position in Facebook. I like the uptrending channel here. You can draw the lines. You know, here's your support line. It's also in the channel. So Facebook is in a nice uptrending channel. I don't really see anything that's going to derail it. It should bounce off the bottom edge here when and if it pulls back. You can see it's been bouncing pretty good, but it's in an overall uptrend like that. What else do we have? That's pretty much it here. Let's take a quick look at Clorox. Cause I like to use that as a gauge of, you know, how to gauge where stocks are going. So Clorox was in this nice uptrend and then something knocked it down in the other direction. So it had been in this downtrend. Looked like just very recently, looked like it was starting another uptrend, possibly to move back up again, but had the earnings right here got knocked it back down. So now it's got this island bottom here, whether you got a lot of space gaps here. So Clorox is down here, waiting to see what happens next, no position here, but it looked like it was ready to go and then it had earnings. So you got to be careful. When we trade, we always trade in between those three months of earnings announcements. Once the earnings comes out, then you have a three month grace period where there shouldn't be any major news and that's the best time to make your trades in that three month period. So that's how we gauge our trades and make our trades in smartoptionsseller.com. Two to three months is really all we need for a trade to play out with us. So we time it in between earnings announcements. Earnings announcements can make or break you. So you want to have your positions closed out, but for earnings, unless you're holding for years and years and years, the shorter term traders, you want to trade in between earnings. All right, well, I think that's about it for the markets here in general. Let's take a quick look at the VIX. Haven't looked at the VIX in a while. This is the volatility indicator for the market based on the SAP 500 options. Volatility has come down greatly since the pandemic, hit the highs here, and it's just been coming down since getting back to its all time, not all time lows, but longer time average prices between 10 and 20% in the VIX. It's pretty low right now, 16%. So that means people are complacent, the market's going up, things aren't as volatile. So that's good, we like that. All right, one more time SAP 500, things look good. Market's going up, it's got support from moving averages. I'm staying long staying bolts until the price action tells me otherwise. All right, so that's it for your Saturday synopsis. Let's quickly go to our website. We always talk about selling put options, that's what we do here at the smart option seller.  Also on our website, our services tab talks about our two newsletters and our coaching sessions if you need help getting to that next level. All right, don't forget to subscribe to this YouTube channel, hit that red subscribe button. Turn on your notifications so you'll always know when I put out a new video. Leave me a thumbs up if you like, if you think this has been helpful, give me a comment, send me an email, I will always answer. All right, that's all for me today. I hope everyone has a great weekend and a great trading week ahead. This is Lee Lowell signing off.


I have the pleasure to announce Robert Zenfleben. He's interested in ecological restoration for two to three years now. And he's here today to tell us about his work in ecological restoration. Sorry. And yeah, please give him a big round of applause and say welcome. Thanks. Hello everyone. I'm a bit nervous. It's my first time I'm doing a speech about this topic. And in front of so many people and chairs and in such a big room. So bear over with me if I have to look up or down or just think for ten seconds to get a hold of it again. So first I would like just to say a couple of words about myself and who I am and perhaps how I ended at the Cares Community Camp at this place today. So I'm born on a small island in Denmark by a German dad and a Danish mama. We could also speak German, but I think there are a few people in Jordan that are very excited and saying hello. Hello Jordania and hello friends over there. So yes, well, I'm a guy who looked into a lot of things since a young age. And I guess I'm not alone in this space when it comes to questioning things and looking into how society and how systems work and what we're doing and what it brings with it and so on. So a couple of years ago when I finished my high school I decided to go on a bicycle journey to explore a bit more. So I did a small bicycle journey from Denmark to India which promoted certain things in me like mobility. It makes you cultural sensitive. It gives a great view on how things are going, other places and you get very close to different environments and cultures and so on and so forth. When I came back I ended in a place that is called Institute for X. So this is a place I'm not going to go away from the terraforming, but I think some of the background knowledge is interesting to know, to understand how I ended up where I did and why. So this is a place in Orhus. It's called Institute for X. Some might call it a hacker space. Some might call it a platform for culture, for music, for business, for environment, for cultural things and social things and so on and so forth. Here I learned a great deal about mobility and about collaboration, about how to mix many ideas and how to make it all happen. Simultaneously with me being present at this place, I went on a school that is called the Chaos Pilots, which is a school that engaged with creative business development, project management, leadership and process design and process leadership. So this is my professional background with which I'm engaging in the work and the issue that we are going to talk about right now. So I got scoped in on the topic of terraforming and ecological restoration and what it can lead along with the feedback loop of the action. What happens when you do it? When I ended up at a conference in Sweden two years and a little bit, originally I went there with the focus and interest because I was campaigning against Monsanto and arranging some conferences a couple of times. So I went to the summer of soils where these and other topics are discussed. But at the summer of soils I met a very particular man whose name is John Dennis Liu who has been studying and documenting terraforming and ecological restoration for the last 30 years. And he is coming with a background as a journalist, as a soil scientist, environmentalist, has a master in the music and art. So he comes from a very wide, you may say, creative education and background that makes it able to view things from a very wide perspective. So I met this guy who was telling about ecological restoration, about terraforming, political issues, social issues, environmental issues, ethical issues. When it comes to land use and property rights and the way we do agriculture or how we produce and extract from the soil. So to give you a better view on who this guy is and what this work is about and what I would say the most modern type of ecological restoration or terraforming or ecological regeneration is. I want to show you just three minutes of one of John's many films. I think we have a sound problem. Yes, there's only one input. I'm very sorry for this. But I think we're going to be right down. No, you don't get anything here? Yes. What happens if I just. What? Sorry. Just talk about it. Well, so here you see John Dennis Liu. This is in 1995. He went to an area called the Los Plateau. And this place you can see on these pictures here. It is this area that they engaged in is the size of just a tiny bit smaller than Holland, bigger than Belgium and a little bit smaller than Holland. What you see here is probably the most modern day way of terraforming and improving ecological function that we have done in well in this century. The Americans under the Great Depression, they actually did huge similar projects you can look at in around the 1930s, right? But this is just about now that this happened. So sorry. Should I maybe put the sound down here first? Strange. Well, anyway, so what you see here now he's telling about how we can enhance food, water, life quality, economics, ecology. And of course, health if we enhance the quality of the soil. So what you see there is a completely degraded ecosystem where basically all microbial life in the soil is eradicated or dead. Yeah, I wish that John he could have introduced this to you because he does have better skills and knowledge in this subject. So the picture you see here is the change that has happened eight years after they started the rehabilitation of the soil.  But till then, this is sound is finished. It was working fine in my headset earlier. So what we'll have to do? I think there's anything there. Well, the illustrations tells a lot. So the basic issue when you have degraded or we have degraded a piece of land is that we have destroyed this life that exists within the soil. All these small helpers from the bacteria to the protozoa to the especially the earthworms are there to make sure that this planet of ours can host the life of ours. What happens, for example, in the Los Plateau for around eight, nine hundred years ago was that the civilization that once was breeding and developing at this place simply overused and overproduced and over extracted what was there. So that means taking the trees down, putting too much animals out and in the end you would not have any vegetation or green organic life in the soil. To a green and fertile wallet, mudslides and famine. But with the fanfare comes the hope of change for the better. My name is John D. Liu. I've been documenting the changes on the plateau for 15 years. I first came here in 1995 to film an ambitious project where local people were constructing a new landscape on a vast scale of barren land into a green and fertile one. Projects certainly changed my life, convincing me to become a soil scientist. The lessons I've learned in the last few years have made me realize that many of the human tragedies that we regularly witness around the world, the floods, mudslides, droughts and famines are not inevitable. On the Los Plateau, I've witnessed that people can lift themselves out of poverty. They can radically improve their environment. And by doing so, reduce the threat of climate change. One thing that became apparent early on is the connection between damaged environments and human poverty. In many parts of the world there's been a vicious cycle. Continuous use of the land has led to subsistence agriculture. And generation by generation, this has further degraded the soils. The vital question we have to ask is, can this destructive process be reversed? When I first filmed Mr. Tafu Yuen and his colleagues back in 1995, I had no idea this initiative could achieve such dramatic results. People put into converting their slopes into terraces has resulted in a marked increase in agricultural productivity, directly related to the return of natural vegetation in the surrounding ecological land. Okay, so it worked. So how does it happen that it comes from the green state to the desert state? It was what I was just getting into slightly before. The main issue, we all know, is chop and drop, overgrazing and chemical use kind of puts the dot over the eye when we start to use artificial fertilizer and pesticide and herbicide. We reach, so to say, complete the destruction of the soils and thereby the foundation for the natural systems. So the issue is quite known and if you take a quick look on one of NASA's latest photos from our dear planet Earth, it's easy to see that around a quarter up to a third of our planet has reached the state of desertification. If you now take a look on the areas that are most desertified and you think where are all the major conflicts happening right now, where is it that we see huge, how do you call it, huge crowds of migration and civil war and famines. It is in the areas where the ecological systems are extremely degraded. So many incidents and many events have shown the linkage between ecological degradation and eco-nomical and social issues going on in these areas and countries. So what do we do about it? Here is a photo from an area called Almuakka in Jordan, around 40 minutes from the capital Amman, where we are going to launch the first project. And as you can see, the state is severe. There's not much vegetation left. So one of the main issues when you have reached this state of soil is that the water does not penetrate into the soil any longer. And when this has happened, it's very difficult of course to get anything to grow there. It's a rather simple science and simple biology and the solution is as simple. So we are following in RISO some of the mythology and some of the work that is being introduced by permaculture, which was developed by Bill Mollison. And one of the techniques that we use is simply to make what is called swales into the soil to make the water infiltrate. So the problem is water does not infiltrate, so we must make the water infiltrate in one way or the other. And the simple technique is simple to either use excavator or as you saw in the movie, engage millions or hundreds of thousands of people in the work to start to rehabilitate their area and thereby improve their life. But when you have made the first holes in the soil, you need to cover it to protect from the sun and to make sure that it gets new organic matter. Because organic matter is the direct feed or food for the microbial life. And if the microbial life in the soil does not get what it needs, it will not support the functionality of the soil. So actually the work starts underground. It is the underground that basically keeps the upper ground alive. So if we do not manage to feed and protect this life under the earth, it will not make it able to create a soil structure that is moisture enough, has a certain pH and has life forms enough for the root systems and the plants and so on to go on and sustain itself but also sustain the microbial life. Because they have an interlinked life and they have an interlinked relation, the microbial life and the root systems and the plants. They benefit from each other and one cannot go without the other. Right? So this is task number one. It is to re-alive the microbial life. So again the underground sustains the upper ground or the top. And this is done well with the earthwork and of course to catch the rain for the water to get in. But then it needs to be covered with organic matter which can be everything from leaves to trees to biosolids which is the nice word for human feces which can be prepared. It is not full of parasites or any intoxication for humans to eat later from products that comes out of the functionality of the ecosystem. And of course animal manure can use newspapers and many other materials. So one of the big tasks we have in Jordan because it is already very dry and it is in a lack of what you call biomass or necromass which means... which is basically dead organic matter. This we need to collect to spread it out for the earth and the water and the biomass again to create the microbial life to a certain level. So that it again can host trees, vegetation and so on and so forth. An approach that is introduced by John is that you look at functionality of ecosystems. So when it comes to these projects and this work, traditionally development agencies and agencies have been focusing when they do these projects on producing food straight away. So you make an analysis, you find out what the need is in the community.  We want to introduce a new approach where the focus is on functionality. So rather looking at food production straight away it is important to look at the functionality. So a lot of trees they will not produce any food for us humans but their function in the ecosystems is to provide enormous amounts of nutrition for the life underground. So we are talking about rather complex plant systems that will be introduced and all of this you can read about in permaculture. A very good book to, how do you call it? I can suggest you, it's called The Sinus Manual and it's by Bill Mollison. With one L or two L? No, it's like this. So he has over many years, Bill Mollison explained and observed how every kind of climate works to its best functionality basically. And there is really a lot of knowledge to get there. So after the basic earth work is done, here I just want to show you a small illustration. So RISO is a foundation that is being set up at the moment. Maybe I should give you a small update about where we are at the moment with this work and how it's looking at the moment. So at present we are setting up a foundation in Holland with the name RISO Foundation. RISO comes from Greek and means to strike root. And RISO, the prefix is known from the word RISOBIUM which is tiny root structures that come out of the roots and function as kind of support channels underground and build the way through the soil for air and water and energy and small microbial life to pass through. So what we are intending to do is we are going to move the so-called RISO camp out to designated areas. In this particular case it's in Jordan at the picture I showed you just before. And we are setting up a mobile unit consisting of pneumatic houses which in the case of Jordan probably will be traditional biturine houses. And then we are working with a couple of designers to design upcycled shipping containers, 40-foot upcycled shipping containers to host research facilities in ecological restoration or terraforming, training facilities to innovate in products and tools and different ways to do the work and also to be able to have a good produce because there comes a time after when the ecosystems are well functioning. We are able to start to think about how do we maintain the ecosystems now and what do we want to use of it and to what degree in order not to, how can you say, degrade the ecosystem again. Because the basic aim is that we must make sure in this work always to have an increase in biodiversity. So I assume most of you know what biodiversity means but for the ones not it means the amount of difference of life forms both in fauna and flora that exists in an ecological system. So it's important that the framework and the work that is being done and how the system is being used after it's going to be restored is in a pace and in a way that will not degrade the ecosystem once again later on. So the huge part of our work is going to take part in making sure that these communities that we are going to work with and ourselves will make sure that we somehow have a guideline. These are still very new things and these are things that are not, how can I say, we are not, we are at the beginning. We are at the beginning of this work and it's still a process of deciding do we go this way or do we go a bit both ways and meet over here. So and this is perhaps what still makes it very interesting also for many people. So after point one, point one collaborative need assessment with local population. So from day one that we settled the camp with the setup there will be open facilities, oh yeah, to finish about the facilities. After research and innovation there's going to be facilities for wood workshop, metal workshop, electricity workshop, music for dance and for the culture to stay alive and again for people to be able actually to work and build and innovate. And also we envision a very big gathering space so we from day one can have people staying there and working with them and collaborating and really creating, well how can I say, basically creating a community with a community in the community. So we do not want to separate ourselves from the people that we work with and we don't want to stay, let's say, in the capital. No we want to be straight there at side every day, work side by side and both share the time and the space and not have this separation which you may see for example United Nations when they go and do development aid and they build a small castle around 5, 10, 20 kilometers away, at least this is how it has happened a lot of times traditionally. So next step is to start to do the water harvesting, that's basically what I told you about with the earthwork and one thing is to catch and have enough for rainwater and for watering the plants in the nurseries and in the soil but another point is to we must start to fill up the aquifers again so in the area where our pilot site is, where the picture where the white building was, they have now to dig around 200, 300 meters deep to find any water and this area is still range between 100 and 150 millimeters so if you calculate 15 hectares the initial pilot site is 15 hectares big and if you calculate 15 hectares with 100 to 150 millimeters of rainwater you have a couple of million liters of water so if you can just catch a small percentage of this in underground wells or with the rainwater collectors on top we are already pretty good off and again we must fill up the aquifers. Then we set up the mobile research training and innovation center for ecological restoration and next step at a certain point so the two main points of the RISO camp is to on one side do the ecological restoration from day one and on the other side start to design and think to build a permanent center that will stay at the place and from that process starts we want to involve the local community and different people who may be interested both globally and nationally to take over and run this permanent center so we in this way can start to create a network globally of these centers and camps where this innovation and work is going to take place. Well I'm sorry to say that I was rather unprepared for today because my computer broke down in France some time ago and was first able to get a computer yesterday and I had to move a lot of stuff because on the 20th of September I'm moving myself to Jordan so it's a bit it's popping in and out a bit the things and a bit messy but I hope you can follow and it makes sense to some degree. So here the people we need to involve in this work we need to involve both the educational level we need to involve research at the moment we are establishing collaborations with universities in Holland some collaborations are established in Jordan and the deal with this is to bring students in and lectures in for one two or even three semesters to work with ecological restoration but also to do master thesis PhDs and to do their research on this and the interest is huge we are having many people every day that contact us from all around the world asking how they can come how they can take part and this is going to be one of the key elements in this work not only to make sure that there's hands to work but also because this topic is still so new and there's so many how do you call it there's so much we still do not know what happens when you apply this type of fertilizer for this land what happens with the soil within what time period when you plant this tree so there's a lot of things to learn about then there we need to involve a lot of organizations we need to involve corporations also we need to involve culture and art and the creative scene we need to have volunteers we need to involve the government and we need to involve politics and we need to test a lot of things we need to do a lot of things and we need to work hard because most of the places where you have the certified land it's funny enough very warm and very hot so it's you're going to get brown and hot and warm and sweaty but you feel great so here's another picture of the land where we're going to start the initial work and here is another photo here we have a picture of me and one of the families of the Bedouins who live there they are presently now grazing with around 600 animals so you can say that their animal are doing terraforming but perhaps unknowingly what the consequences are of it and when we have been there a couple of times and talk with them about the project they are super happy to take part and they are super happy to know what's going to happen and what should... oh sorry okay I'm going to freestyle a bit so I would like to read you this poem that was made by Artur in Sweden at the summer of soils also so every minute of our life every breath we take is made possible by the food we eat bread, vegetables, meat and dairy products all come originally from crops that grow in the soil today we are seven billion people who share the planet in 30 years time planet earth will have perhaps two to three billion more mouths to feed we face the double challenge of at once feeding a rapidly growing population with sufficient amounts of wholesome nourishing food and economizing with finite resources in order to stop the depletion of the basis of all other resources the fertile soil and the plant life it sustains it is the flow of energy from the sun that regenerates the planet's ecosystems and creates the renewable resources on which our existence depends agriculture and forestry imply production but also custodian ship of the basis for our existence arable fertile soil the way we go about farming and forestry are crucial to the ecological future of the planet thus their matters of life and death so there are two things that there are too much of in the world at the moment perhaps there's several other things but in this matter there are two things that there are too much of one is the certified land which is not used and is standing passive and to illustrate another point of when it comes to the certified land so when it comes to climate change when you have a certified land the sun's energy is not going to be used in its proper way because instead of it creating the photosynthesis with the vegetation it leaves the sun rays on the earth as heat and we increase the temperature of our planet when you have trees or other types of vegetation the heat is transformed for energy for the growth and well we are way better off that way so one thing is the empty land and the other thing is an extent and a huge amount of people who live in bad and terrible situations in starvation and political exile and refugees and so on and well it's shit now in Jordan there are two and a half million Syrian refugees and they live in tent camps where they are killing each other and they are not allowed to go outside and they are well it's fucked to say it in a bad language but it's this situation is crazy and it keeps on shocking me how we can let these things be I'm not talking to you as we but as a humanity and as species that shares basic everything on this earth we share the joy, we share all the same organs we know we share all feelings research has shown that the dreams we have is basically the same if you are from Africa or here or there and it is terrible that we have not yet managed to combine this and these are some of the efforts that we want to move towards so we are at the moment discussing possibilities in Jordan to rehabilitate a piece of land which is 1000 hectares big instead of a money exchange the exchange would be land where we potentially can start to grow and establish new communities for people who have no home and for people who have no property and who have lost everything in a war or civil war but we might be able to provide land and provide work and actually provide value for those people and there has been done some projects in Colombia Los Gaviotos perhaps somebody have heard about it where after 20 years it was possible to increase the land value with what do you call it by 30 by 30 so it is extremely interesting if we are able to connect let's just focus on refugees because this is where we have our focus in Jordan now if we can get some of these people that we can start to cultivate and grow these communities where they actually can start to get a new heritage and start new lives and because who knows how long they will stay and most people stay often in these countries where they go so now I have 20 minutes left and I want to leave some time for questions stuff like this but I want to show one more small clip by a happy guy from India who has grown he has been growing I think some 500 or 800 hectares by himself well and the help of villagers and family and he has a few words to share about his life and how he is feeling and here he gives he is a pasto engineer and he is the superintendent of Planting and Sheldex after 30-40 years he has been living in the jungle and now he is happy he is not living in the forest now he is happy he is not living in the forest he is living in the jungle and he is the most beautiful person in the world and you said that you are the most beautiful person in the world and you are the most beautiful person in the world If you have questions, please line up at the microphones and for all the newcomers on the stream, please remember that translations are available via deck extension 8011. So, do we have any questions? Okay, left microphone, right microphone? Do you know there is a lot of people thinking about the permaculture and it's the same kind of stuff you are doing. Do you know the permaculture? If I didn't get your first question, yes, I know about permaculture. And what you are doing looks like some kind of extreme permaculture, isn't it? Sorry, it's a bit unclear up here, could you say it one more time? What you are doing looks like some extreme permaculture, isn't it? Okay, now I got you. Yes, I mean a lot of the, when it comes to the earthwork and working with the soil and the plants and these techniques are basically all from permaculture, you are right. We want to extend it and bring the culture in and to make sure that the community, well how can you say it, that what we are really trying is to create, to mix the restoration work with, how can you say it, with the spiritual work and cultural work and many people who live in lands that are very desertified and it's a hostile life and it might, well basically we want to bring smiles in there and really create a platform that provides all the basic necessities and tools and machines and room for this to happen. And I still have one question. Do you have a website where you share your techniques and stuff like that? Yes, we have, there is this blog where the process of the work is described and different project description, you can find our project plan and also some of the techniques, but if you want to see the techniques I would like just to refer you here and to look under dry land, dry land agriculture and permaculture because this is basically where we get the knowledge from. Then there is a Facebook group also where the discussion is going on, at the moment we are setting up an official home page and we are setting up the foundation and we are now at the moment setting up the fundraising strategy. Okay, let's microphone. Hello. Hi. This sounds quite expensive and there is a lot of dry land. How do you think this idea is going to scale? So it's going to be expensive and then you said something I didn't hear? I mean there is a lot of dry land, dissatisfied land which could be terraformed and that would be great, but how much do you think can you accomplish? Well I think we can make the whole world green again if we bring enough people along and if we are able to make a setup that is so simple that we can replicate it quickly everywhere else. So the initial setup that we are looking at now we have just made an establishment budget. It looks to be around 150, 170,000 euros and this includes a space that will be able to host up to 100 people, 50 to 100 people and electricity, water, like I said functioning metal workshop, wood workshop because we are not talking about the necessity of very high tech solutions. We are focusing on as low tech as it can be without being super slow in the work. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Any more questions? Some of these questions are still a bit difficult to answer because we have not launched the pilot project yet. So we are in a design phase, we are in a thinking phase. We have the land, we have a fundraiser with a great experience, John D. Liu is on board as the project designer and initiator and things are rolling. But there is a lot of things to think about. And my mind is also how do you call it rather because it is the first time to work with a big task like this after finishing education this summer and coordinating in Jordan moving from Denmark and doing a new, doing a talk for the first time and so, and it's the same many of the people who are joined this process are students who are eager to work with this and know that there is a different way and a smarter way to do things and know about the issues. We have a great dream in RISO and it is to create the ring of Ashtar. Ashtar is an Egyptian god of fertility and the ring of Ashtar is basically a huge stripe around the whole world where you will be able to walk and never need to visit a supermarket because the place is so beautifully grown with berries and fruit and vegetables and animals are running around freely and happy and you can camp at every side because you will find shade wherever you go and you will find fresh food and fresh water. And when we have made one around the world we can make it on the other side and we can make many rounds and in the end it's all encapsulated and we are actually able to create what is described as paradise in the holy books. It's not far away. The pictures you saw from China was a difference of eight years so you can imagine ten years more. So most of us in this room will be able to see this change even. It's not grandchildren accomplishment. Okay next question. Over there. Over there? Yeah. Well you showed two examples of two countries that are a bit top down organized. China and Jordan. But how do you engage other governments that will have a lot more to lose or are a bit reluctant to go after these ideas? So your question was how do we engage other governments that are not? That are reluctant to these ideas. So at this point we have not engaged the government of Jordan. And it's still going very fine. So the land we got, the 15 hectares comes from her Royal Highness Princess Basma Bent Ali who is connected to the Royal Botanic Garden in Jordan. Don't call that government. Sorry? Don't call that government. I didn't hear it? You said the Royal Highness. That sounds like government to me. Well yeah you're right. In a way you're right and in a way you're not. Because well I'm not sure that even the official government is so happy for all the work that she might do. So I think there exists people with a title that we look at as established but who have extremely good and pure intentions with the work and separate themselves as a person also. Okay next question. Hi. You showed us some pictures of people in Jordan and my question would be how did you actually get in touch with them and learn about what they want?  So there's a kind friend of mine who go with me and many first times we did not really speak about much. Just walking together and have a coffee and talk about life in Denmark and at some point you start to talk about the environment you're in and at some point you start to hear their life story and what's going on and what is needed. So my approach is a very slow and consistent contact and we need to feel the readiness before we can do anything. And well it's the most sensitive point you touch upon because if we cannot manage to create trust there's no way to start anything. There's no reason for this. Now when I go back in September we're going to go there weekly again and like I told we're going to build up this riso camp as an open hacker space. I think this is a good terminology at this place for everyone to come and take part in. So the local community will have access to everything that we have access to. They can go and sleep in our bed if they want to. All the tools, all the machines, all the equipment, all the internet, all the water, all the computers is open source, open access for everyone to take part in. And we envision to arrange sport, recreational events, also cultural events, music to create more relationship basically and also not to get stuck in this one particular topic. Okay, do we have another question? Yes, we do. Hi, I really have a question. I just want to say that I really admire your approach and your enthusiasm and I wish you the best of luck. Thanks a lot. Go ahead. As I understood it, right now you're only talking about restoration, right? So bringing back the plants to areas where they have been extinguished in the last, let's say 100 or 1000 years. But if I understood you right, the big plan is to transform the whole world. Don't you see any dangers that might arise when we do so, when we change in such big... You will know that you asked me, I will think about it once more, but I have never seen any threats before. I cannot see any negative implications in having green areas instead of an area with sand and dryness where no life can exist basically. Yeah, I think in the first place that's absolutely right, but humanity has often tried to do big things and did not know the consequences from the beginning. So I guess if we do a change in big scale, I think the project in the beginning in the pilot phase is no danger. Sorry? The last sentence? I think the pilot phase is really no danger. But if you are going to, let's say, transform the whole Sahara, that's something that has been there for maybe millions of years, I could think of a negative aspect that we do not incorporate right now. Yes, you're absolutely right. I'm not an oracle and I cannot look in the future and I don't know. But the man-made deserts that we have made within the last couple of hundred years, maybe five, six hundred years, I think we would be way better off if we bring that back to a very well functional state. Because at the moment we are not able to feed the people. Well, we are, we produce enough food that could feed everyone I read that we throw 40% out and stuff like this. But if you look at Chad or you look at Rwanda before, millions of people were running away because their trees and their crops and their vegetation was taken away and destroyed within a century. And the effects of this are very obvious. I mean, many of the refugees who come to Europe now, they all come from areas where ecological systems have been broken down basically. And some of them would probably love to be in Europe. I think most of them they would like to go back to their home and to their homeland but it would not make sense for them to go home now because there's nothing to go back to basically. When you cannot drink water in your area you're really screwed. So, but I agree, there was another guy once he was talking also about the Sahara. He also mentioned the Sahara. I don't know how it would change the global ecology and atmosphere and the elements and so on if the Sahara became green for example. I don't know. Okay. Thanks for the considerations. We have time for last quick question. So, any takers? If not then have another big round of applause for Robert please. And one last thing. Tomorrow at eight o'clock in the White Dome in the evening it would be fantastic if some people would like to join a discussion on how to move along with this and how we can so to say strike root more places and how we can basically get further. I would like to give a more detailed view on where this project is at the moment and scope in on the kind of more pure practicalities and not talking so much about the ecosystem and functionality but look more at the project and how to move along with it. So please join for this or tell it to your friends or your neighbors or anything. So it's eight o'clock in the White Dome in the evening. Thank you.


and CEO of Verst. Today I'm going to talk to you about a person that used to refer themselves with four numbers. Today we call them this. There's 3.4 billion of them. They play anything from Candy Crush to Baldur's Gate to Fortnite. And together that industry is now worth $187 billion. 20% of them play role-playing games, RPGs. That makes it the number one genre in terms of earnings. But we're going to zoom in a little bit more. We're going to zoom in on who creates these games. You probably can't see it, so let me zoom in. That's 0.01% of all gamers. And just to give you an idea of what that's like, that's 10 times less in Hollywood compared to how many people consume versus create. Stories are stuck. The default for a story now is that it's passive. It's a movie. It's a book. It's something you experience. But games offer something more. And it's easy to understand why it is like this. Because games are hard to build. They take years to develop. But not on First. With First we empower anyone to create their own video game, their own role-playing game. We're essentially a no-co-tool for game development. And we use AI to create this new kind of interactive medium. Fan bases are changing. You don't just want to read about something. You want to live in it. You don't want to see Game of Thrones. You want to sit on the throne. And so First is really about that kind of interactive experience. And as a creator, how can you offer that? How can you follow where the consumer is going? Where your fan is going? So on First you do something a little different. You do write your story. You just do that as if you were writing a screenplay or a script.  We then use that to generate a fully 3D immersive world. You just use a really simple syntax to create these episodes. And you keep writing episodes and editing your scripts based on the feedback of your players. It's a really great way to involve your community in your creation. You do not have to be a game designer either. That's us. That's our team. We have spent decades doing that. My co-founder Cat Burton, for instance, our CTO as well, she used to work at Unity and Mindcandy alongside some of our other team members. And so we've shipped great games to millions, hundreds of millions of players, and we're going to do the same for all the creators on First. There are a lot of text-to-game startups out there. And respectfully, I don't think it works like that. I think you need to be designing for fun, designing for engagement of how to engage players, and that's what we're doing. AI is also something that's inherent to our team. I myself, for instance, started my first AI startup when I was 20 years old, which got acquired by GFK. And later I joined Google as a product manager in AI. We use AI in a very ethical and intelligent way. We don't generate writing. We let you do that. But we help along the way. We use decoupled LLMs to basically do things like procedural generation. And yeah, we also don't generate any 3D art based on public works. We do that based on our own art that is modular and parametric and can respond to any story. Any story can be as detailed as you want. We will generate a world from it. Then we publish your game on our platform. You, as a player, buy an episode for about $2 to $5, and it gives you a few hours of playtime. Half of that goes straight into the creator's pocket. That means for the first time ever, and this is major, you can earn a living as a games developer. So to show you how we empower creators and not replace them, here's a brief introduction. Let's play the video. I have the ability to make gameplay choices and interactive choices as the writer that I haven't experienced the other time. It's so accessible. Seeing how the technology is expanding and seeing the demos and building with these syntax to realize like, oh my gosh, this is going to be like something that tons of other people can play. The whole video game creation of it all feels like pinch me. Am I really doing this? A real video game, me? First as a whole, when it opens up and people can become verse creators, you now have yet another avenue where you can showcase your skills as a storyteller. I think this will spark a larger conversation in the games industry. This is going to be chills, and I don't think it's Helsinki's weather. These are our first creators, our first eight, before we open up to the public. And these creators, they've been telling their stories, building their worlds. They've written comics for DC. They've produced television shows for Comedy Central. They've written tabletop games for Dungeons & Dragons. But for the first time ever, they're releasing a creator-owned game on verse. We also ended up being joined by some really great investors, some of which are angel investors from companies that you might recognize. I'm going to leave you with something very important. Something that keeps me up at night. And that's the fact that games as a cultural medium cannot be left to only developers, to bigger studios and to publishers. How we tell our stories, how our folklore evolves is important, and we're here to power that evolution using video games. Come talk to us afterwards. We'd love to hear your feedback and give you a demo. And the next time you're playing a video game, ask yourself, not am I enjoying this, but can I make something even better? Thank you.