Ladies and gentlemen the railroad hour Here comes our star-studded show train Right the Association of American Railroads presents the romantic operetta naughty Marietta Based on the Metro Golden Mayor motion picture with Victor Herbert's beloved music and starring Jeanette McDonald and your host Gordon McRae A choir is under the direction of Norman Lube off and our music is arranged and conducted by Carmen dragon Yes tonight another great musical success is brought to you by the American Railroads The same railroads that also bring you most of the food you eat the clothes you wear the fuel you burn and all the other things You use in your daily life And now here is Gordon McRae Thank you, and good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is your host Gordon McRae Bringing up the curtain on one of Victor Herbert's most melodic and popular operettas naughty Marietta In the character of Captain Dick Warrington I meet and fall in love with naughty Marietta in New Orleans when Louisiana was still under the rule of Louis the 15th of France But the story of Marietta begins much before that and no one is more familiar with it than that lady herself So may I introduce her to you and the person of our lovely and charming guest star this evening known and loved by all as The naughty Marietta of the screen Miss Jeanette McDonald And lived with the memory of it ever after I Remembered only the beginning of that unexplained song And somehow I felt that if I could complete it I could find the answer Not only to the mystery of life, but but to the mystery of my own unhappiness as well It was spring in the court of Versailles and my royal uncle had informed me that the king of France had commanded that I marry a fat elderly member of the Royal House of Spain named on Carlos The thought was intolerable to me So I arranged to take the place of one of the maids in the castle and Marietta Fanini on a bride ship bound for New Orleans And that very night I stole away from the castle and set sail on the adventure of my life. Oh Marietta isn't perceived beautiful. I wish we weren't landing tomorrow. Why Julie I thought you were looking forward to this brand new world in the fine handsome young Cavalier Who would claim you as his wife?  Well, you don't have to accept him You'll have the pick of all the men in New Orleans. What kind of a husband do you want Marietta? Oh, oh, I don't intend to marry But you have to you accepted the king's dowry a casket of gold and a grant of land to each girl Who will go to the colonies and marry well the king can keep his grand and his casket Then why did you come on the bride ship? For many reasons but mainly because of a song a song Yes, a melody that become a sort of challenge to me. Please finish it. I can't Julie Perhaps I never will be able to finish it when you sing it makes me forget how frightened. I am Marietta Well, then I'm afraid it'll have to be another song Julie Well, there's a little prayer I learned as a child. Will that do? Oh, yes. Yes. All right then one song for one smile Oh, yes, Marietta You'll ever so much better now That's sniffling you've been captured by pirates you might as well make the best of it I will camp here on the shore for the night in the morning. We'll figure out what's to be done about you I demand that you set us free. Well, do you know my pretty don't you dare come a step closer to me? I Like redhead the more peppery they are They must be looking for somewhere to the bride ship Captain Dick Warrington's men, huh? Well, no point in fighting two battles today unless we have to John out of that camp fire. Yes, sir. All right. Now you women get down in your faces and keep quiet Good they're passing by I certainly want to thank you your men careful. You're tipping the canoe If you hadn't come along just when you did I I don't know what might have happened to us Well, that's what the governor of Louisiana pays us for Personally, I never approved of you women being shipped over here in the first place The minute women arrive any place there's trouble Why look at my men even in the moonlight you can see the silly expressions on their faces They're not used to having women in their canoes judging from your manners. I wouldn't say you were rather My manners were all right when I was saving your life. Hmm. Didn't you say you get paid for that sort of thing?    Don't you I am I am I don't know whether it's my looks or my voice By the way, what did you think of my voice blue eyes when I heard it? My mind wasn't exactly on musical matters Captain Warrington. Hmm. That's right too bad. It's a nice voice Care to hear it again. No, thank you might spoil the effect of that lovely moon up there Oh on the contrary it'll help it why I'll sing you a song about our southern moon if you like I'm a little bit tired anyway, so if you don't mind, I'll just take a little nap while you're singing Careful, you might find yourself dreaming about me Your future husband That's right blue eyes with your new husband waiting for you on the dock. Come on men Let's give him our song and have the whole town turn off to greet us Let's see that these ladies get arousing. I'm the long the hard. You must marry someone. It is the law What's the meaning of this young woman? I'm told you are refusing to marry very true, mr. Who are you? I am the governor of Louisiana. Oh, well, then will you please tell these gentlemen that I don't have to marry them Oh, but you do Mademoiselle. It says in your credentials, then I shall tear up my credentials Stop stop that immediately young woman. What is your name Marietta Frannini? Well Marietta Frannini something has to be done about you. Yes, your excellency.  I couldn't help hearing your conversation with this young woman I feel a sort of responsibility for her myself after all It's my fault in a way that she's here and I'm willing that you put her in my custody for the time being I'll see that she has lodging.  You are now about to enter one of the main thoroughfares of New Orleans charming, isn't it? What a broad about this sudden interest in my future Captain Warrington. Well, I feel sorry for you You feel sorry for me.  Well, let me tell you something You may not be as smart as you think you are and I may not be as dumb as I look I mean you think I look now kindly conduct me to to wherever I'm supposed to find residence and then then I'll say Not all while Captain Warrington. Just say a lasting good. Bye Well, look ahead there my friend Rudolfo who runs the marionette theater. Hey, Rudolfo Rudolfo Say where's that plump daughter of yours is saying she got married But I'm sure my Suzette that she sings it to come Mrs. Atta singer for the gentleman's Well, it seems like everybody's getting married this day. Must be the season Nice voice, isn't she little ice lady? It's too bad. You can't sing. Yes, it gives the woman out of charm You might take some lessons, but of course, I'd never expect you to sing as well as Suzette The matter of opinion For such a singer with a laser for my marionette there this lady is a prisoner Rudolfo And she isn't interested in helping you or anyone. Oh, but that isn't true Rudolfo the governor has placed me in this gentleman's custody, but they feel permit me I'd be very happy to sing at your theater. Oh Gracias, gracias. You will see that she has lodgings and take good care of my way Hey, this is your man I'll be right there Well, farewell my lady. No, please wait what? You realize what you're saying I'm sorry for a moment. I Well, it was when you turned away from me that moment. I thought I heard Take good care of a Goodbye You say I Interesting to think of the way people lived in America in the time of naughty Marietta Here was this vast continent with every natural resource it has today Yet it could barely support two or three million persons Now a nation of nearly 150 million persons living on the same area produces not only enough for its own needs But enough to aid half the world besides What makes the difference? Well for one thing that was born in this land a new sort of freedom It was not merely political freedom But was the freedom of every man to use his native ability to make the most of every opportunity to batter himself Without that sort of freedom Political freedom could not long be maintained and In that atmosphere of freedom there blossomed mighty inventions creating the machinery which multiplies many foes Man's power of production and they developed a new sort of transportation continent-wide Transportation binding the nation into a unit low-cost dependable transportation which makes high volume production possible and also Makes possible the widespread distribution and high-level consumption without which large-scale production would be useless This essential transportation is performed on the railroads in trains of cars on tracks These railroads handle goods on a scale un-dreamed of elsewhere and they do it at rates which in comparison with prices and wages Are lower than anywhere else in the world and they are lower now in comparison than they were before the war even here in America and So it is that a continent which could barely support a mere handful of people has become the home of nearly 150 million who produce more and live better than any other people on the face of Now back to Naughty Marietta with your host Gordon McRae and Jeanette McDonald as his guest star For one fleeting moment. I had felt as though I knew what my dream melody meant to say That moment when Dick Warrington smiled at me and said goodbye And yet I considered Dick an arrogant conceited egotistical impossible boor I thought it was because he was the only man I knew in New Orleans that I was glad to see him when he arrived at The puppet show the next night Good show blue eyes Say you can sing. Thank you. Come on. Let's take a walk in the moonlight. I want to talk to you Haven't you anything better to do? Well, if I had I'd be doing it here.  Why?  Oh, yes You are you're coming with me and you're going to ride my canoe out along the edges of the bayou Completely out of earshot of anyone on land and then you're going to tell me why the governor has today offered a reward of 250,000 Louis for the apprehension of one Marietta finnini 250,000 Louis for me the governor sent for me this morning and asked me if I knew where you were I told him you had gotten away from me. Well, did he tell you why why they sent for me? But you're going to tell me as soon as we get in that boat. Well, will it be safe to talk there? Yes, my men are all through the bayou right now It's the safest place in the audience for the moment and this is the most dangerous now. Come on. Yes, sir Well, you know, I've I've never given an order to a woman before Now I've never taken an order from a man. Well, let's talk that over when we have time Marietta Yes, when we have time Dick you you do trust me now, don't you? Well, if I can't trust you then then I have no one come on Oh Sweet mystery of life could I but find me The words repeated themselves within me Urgently over and over as I followed dick through the streets of New Orleans And when he helped me into the boat and we drifted out on the moonlit water It had fairly thundered in my ears What the rest of the song was or what it meant I I still didn't know Now tell me blue eyes Why should they offer a reward of two hundred and fifty thousand Louis for a giddy little redhead from our say oh, please Let's let's not talk about it now All this will end soon enough blue eyes. You're in trouble. I want to help you The governor has all the troops in New Orleans out hunting for you. What did you do? I ran away? Away from a man. I didn't want to marry Who are you? Oh? Just someone Someone huh? Someone from somewhere. Well, you know, I have a very strange feeling about someone no pain I hope no I'm a very strange feeling. I never felt before no coming down with something all right a Kind of a grind of depression. I wonder if it's catching. I hope so my heart's acting strangely It feels rather sore at least it gives me that impression Would you marry her with without questions if if you say you love me That's the only question I would ask and the only answer. I'm interested in I Know now. I know now what it means Marietta. Oh, please. All right, Marietta. Whatever you say I have a warrant for this lady used to be returned to the Palace of the governor at once. Why what is she done? It isn't what she's done. It's who she is. She is the princess Marie Daltana a fugitive from France against his Majesty's wishes Princess You were princess Marietta.  I Hope you'd never know. They make me to help you from the boat your Highness Thank you Governor awaits you at his palace if you don't wish to go blue eyes. I have a sword here that will see that you stay men Advance and fall no no, please. I have men of my own in this bayou. I have only to call out and they will be at your service No, I've put you in enough danger already I'll go with you major Shall I see you again? Captain Warington? There is only one answer to that Which I believe you know company Much How charming you look all dressed for the ball in your honor I see Well, I'm afraid the last thing I want is to be resented to New Orleans Society governor His Majesty's most provoked with you your Highness matter of fact another order just arrived, which I should like to read to you And she shall be found and returned immediately under the custody of her uncle on his arrival Anyone aiding or abetting her further escape Shall be considered in treason to me and shall be given the extreme penalty signed Louis 15, how would you like to marry an old fat Spanish Don that that creaks every time he walks? I Should be honored. Well, then you marry him. Oh, no, no, no my dear. Oh, I could hardly do that We'd better go down to the ball You take my arm princess Thank you Princess I thought you might be interested to know that I have ordered Captain Warrington and his men to start for Barataria today He's a good soldier and I should not like to be forced to carry out his Majesty's orders But if he should attempt to help you understand What's that singing? Oh governor, I promise you I won't cause you any trouble or only please don't let anyone else suffer I'll return to Versailles very well that of course makes my position much easier Your ship sails at dawn. I shall be aboard I had known the secret the answer to the mystery of my life and of my song for almost a full day But as I walked down and took my place in the ballroom I realized that but to know the song and its meaning and and to deny that meaning was almost unbearable and Yet it had to be denied forever and Then late in the evening.  But I can't really talk to you tonight with all these people here the moment they find I'm gone there They'll be searching for me out on the bio you started to sing a song for me. I'd like to hear it now Oh, please this this this ball is in honor of my sailing. I should be back sailing. What have they said about sailing? Yes, what are they going to try to take you away? Oh? The day after tomorrow. I mean I mean the day after that Friday. I think Friday Then I'll be back to hear your song right here tomorrow night We'll be camped only about 20 miles from here Governor well good evening your excellency. Can't you receive my orders? Oh, yes, of course. He did Don't magnify something very silly governor. This is this officer saved my life And I asked him to come here to say goodbye Thank you again captain and goodbye Princess Good night Your Highness Everyone is pleading for you to sing for Would you do it? Would you honor us? Oh, yes? Yes, yes, I will sing for you.  A few minutes ago. We were talking about what freedom and invention and transportation Have done in this country in making the way we live in America the marvel of the world Let's pay a little more attention to the third of these mighty forces Transportation and especially the backbone of our transportation system our railroads Production as we know it would not be possible without railroads to assemble the materials used the fertilizers and farm Implements for example for the kind of agriculture which is practiced in America or the raw materials the fuel and the machinery Used in industry and not only would production on the American scale be impossible without railroads It would also be useless without the widespread distribution and the high consumption of goods which railroad transportation makes possible America finds use for other forms of transportation But no one of them nor all of them together could take the place of railroads in furnishing the low-cost Continental-wide all-season service, which is fundamental to the way we make things and the way we use them Here in America our show train will return in just a moment after a brief pause for station identification of Naughty Marietta with your host Gordon MacRae and his guest star Jeanette McDonald I had sung my dream melody and I pledged my love with it and at the same time said bear well to that love forever I Ran upstairs after I finished singing and stood at the window Listening to his men marched through the empty moonlit streets, and I stood there thinking He is with them And they are marching away from me Yes, I Just wanted to say good night princess I hope you'll be quite comfortable. Well, it doesn't matter now governor. Nothing matters I'm going back to marry Don Carlos as the king commanded Sometimes it's very sad to be a royal blood princess But life establishes the rules of our conduct by how we are born and we must obey those rules Well, I thought I hope this was a new country where all of those out-of-date precepts could be forgotten It's too bad princess that we cannot make of the world what we dream it should be Good night Did you call me blue eyes? Oh take oh Why did you come back? I came for you You wouldn't have sung that song to me if you'd ever expected to see me again. Would you know? When are you really sailing at dawn? Why didn't you tell me? Well, if you'd known you you never would have gone and and I'd have seen them lead you away to be what have I to live for Without you.  My men are waiting at the edge of town now hurry Oh, but we can't the palace is surrounded. I got in I'll get out Dick wherever we'd go. They'd only find us again. Oh not where we're going We're heading west blue eyes into a new country a new life together. Will you come with me? No, of course. I will then quick hurry Quick out on the balcony hurry First I'll jump over the balcony. Are you all right? Yes now jump. I'll catch you There you are.  Oh, I knew it We have them governor They won't escape from us your excellency Well, shall we march gentlemen? Oh, I knew it would all be for nothing We uh We know quite a long way to the governor's office captain. Yes, sir through the woods kind of pretty uh-huh now You follow us right out through the castle gates ditch That's safe yet with these soldiers. They're your man, of course. Oh Oh my god, how on earth did you manage that easily they changed places with some of the palace guards who were very glad to get a Night off the horses are just ahead the men are waiting. Well, here we are your highness No more your highness from this moment. There are no titles left in the world. Oh, yes, there are your new one What's that? This is warranted naturally here. Let me help you up We have a long ride ahead of us, but there's a ship waiting and a whole new country And a new life Craig giving a big vote of thanks to our excellent supporting cast Will Ross, Alan Reed, Sheila Stevens, Paul Freese, Polly Bear And Bill Demling for their fine performances and Naughty Marietta with book and lyrics by Rita Johnson young Music by Victor Herbert and adapted for radio by Jean Holloway. And now here's Jeanette mcdonnell again I just want to say how greatly I enjoyed appearing for the association of american railroads in this production of Naughty Marietta One of my favorite roles. We were honored to have you Jeanette and very happy too that you were to join us again very soon Oh, yes the week after next as a matter of fact in another of my favorites Noel Cowards bittersweet and i'm certain that your fans will all be listening. Oh, by the way, what are you doing next week? Well next week the metropolitan opera soprano miss patrice monzel and mr. Kenny Baker will join me in presenting One of america's most beloved operettas blossom time Oh, I'll certainly be listening to that myself and i'll see you all again week after next in bittersweet Au revoir marietta.  Goodbye Naughty Marietta has been presented by special arrangement with the tams with mark music library Jeanette mcdonnell's new motion picture is the sun comes up produced by metro golden mayor whose current hit is words and music Gordon mccray appeared on this program by arrangement with warner brothers This is marvin miller speaking The railroad hour is brought to you each week at this time by 132 railroads of the united states Each one of them has its own operations and services Each one competes keenly with others for business But all of them work together through the association of american railroads for the improvement of all railroading And for better service to you This is abc the american broadcasting company


What's up everyone? It's your girl Kenzie here from waiting sports cards and I remember to personal for Daniel L We've got a 2022 leaf metal draft football hobby. All right, Daniel. Thanks for hopping in. Here we go Five autos coming your way. Here we go up first. We have touchdown Kings of Xavier Worthy Xavier Worthy that is two out of 20. We've got purple armed and dangerous of Dylan Gabriel Dylan Gabriel eight out of 25 Nope, no thunderstorms here. Now we've got silver wave auto of Tanner McKee Tanner McKee auto 26 out of 30 blue wave state pride of Romeo Dobbs nice Romeo Dobbs that one is five out of 25 Nice one to end it here. How about a Quinn yours? That is eight out of 15 nice o'ers There you go, Daniel. All right, that'll do it for your box there Daniel. Thanks again for hopping in congrats And we'll get these right out to you


Right, let's talk about the VR, the AR, the MR, and all the other R's, or shortly XR, I guess. I'm gonna start with some excuses, like I was traveling for the last week and totally exhausted and tired and everything. I had to slap together the slides really quickly. But yeah, it's gonna be fine. Let's start with the most important thing that's always how I start my presentations. It's me, oh, let's start with the gender first. I'm gonna first do a little bit of an introduction to OpenXR, because that's basically the really new brand new standard and that's exactly what we're gonna talk about. Can we turn up the volume a little bit? Okay, I guess. We're gonna start by talking about OpenXR, which is the brand new specification that was released by the Kronos Group. And I think it's important to have a little bit of an understanding about what's going on there. I've been doing a GSOC project on exactly this topic, basically getting OpenXR support into Blender. At least the basics, the basics, it's a little bit limited, but intentionally so. We're gonna look at that in a bit. And then we have sort of like an unofficial XR team now. There should be some people here. But it's basically a group of people that are experiencing that already did lots of experiments with, we are on Blender, and we want to sort of combine forces and try to get something started finally. And yeah, I've been in contact with some people here. Oops, walked too fast. And then we're just gonna do further work. So it's pretty much like an introduction to OpenXR and then like present past, future thing. Now we'll come to my, to my favorite slide. It's okay, I'm doing Blender development for five and a half years now I think. Currently I'm working full time at the Blender Institute since two months now. So now since a month also in Amsterdam. I guess you've all seen and used my work, focusing on the usability side of things. So it's really visible stuff and I guess you've all seen it, I'm not gonna show you everything. Not gonna show anything in fact. Yeah, focus on usability aspects. My personal interest in VR, pretty much non-existent. Like I've never used, I don't think I've ever played a VR game. Well, we do at the Institute every now and then. I don't watch VR movies or something like that. So I'm not really the most qualified person to work on this kind of stuff. But still I care about usability and I think this is sort of a really interesting technology to support and I think it's an important one to support. But also it's kind of like, if nobody does it, well if I don't do it, nobody does it really currently because people are working on all kinds of other stuff and I thought it would be a nice idea to have this as a GSOC project and I really enjoyed that. But yeah, so my personal interest is not so big and we are, even though I do enjoy working on it from time to time, but yeah, we have a great team of people who are really more qualified to talk about VR than I am and I think we complement each other nicely. But we're gonna talk about that. OpenXR. So OpenXR is this brand new royalty-free specification by the Kronos Group and it has this great support by the industry, whatever that is. So if you can visit their homepage for the OpenXR specification or the OpenXR, what is it, standard, you can see all the great, the cool quotes from the industry people and how everybody wants to support it and all the cool stuff. It seeks to solve the fragmentation in the XR industry. So we all have this issue like with all the different devices from different windows and they don't work with, there's horrible compatibility with the software and things just are really fragmented and there's this graphics from Kronos that they always show and especially that's currently the situation, everything is a bit of a mess. You don't really have any structure or something else in there and OpenXR tries to solve this by having layers in between that are standardized and so eventually and hopefully you'll just be able to use whatever device with whatever software and it just works out of the box on Blender. So that's the idea behind OpenXR.  Yeah, so it is really not just about VR, it's also about AR and MR and again all the other R's. So with this we should getting support for things like AR and MR, so even like HoloLens stuff that should be doable in the near future. Like I don't see a big challenge for that, just say two days of work or so from what I can tell now because OpenXR, yeah, I'm on the stage and this is being recorded, this is stupid to say, but like OpenXR does a really good job at unifying things and of course there are all sorts of things that still have to be figured out. As I said, this is a brand new specification. It was just released at SIGGRAPH this year, the 1.0 release and I actually started implementing the provisional spec, the 0.9 release but yeah, now we're at 1.0, there you go. Another thing that's really important is there's lots of proprietary software in the VR world. There's not much that's GPL compatible or that's free and open source compatible in general and OpenXR allows us to still use this technology, still use the modern proprietary code but we have this standard interface now and so this is much less troublesome if you can actually get the best provide or okay, that's stupid to say again, we can actually connect to the best software for the VR devices. What with OpenXR you have this thing, I always compare it to OpenGL. In OpenGL you have the specification which is OpenGL but then you have the driver which actually implements the specification and it's pretty much the same with OpenXR, you have OpenXR as the specification so it's basically just a description of how does the API look and all the types and everything but you still need to have a runtime installed on your system which is sort of a bit more high level than the driver so that means you have the thing like say SteamVR or Oculus or the Windows mixed reality platform and those are the currently available OpenXR compatible ones so there's the Windows mixed reality one which is the one I used the most for testing and for development, it's the most major one when it comes to OpenXR support I guess. Then Oculus released one recently just a few weeks ago or I think it's wrong to say they released it because it's really just they bundled with their software and it's available and you can basically use it but it's pretty much in beta state or I don't know what the exact state of it is, the one they publicly announced and then there's also Monado from Calabora which is a free open source runtime which actually runs on Linux and only on Linux right now. On Saturdays or tomorrow there's in our old speed of when you the Debali there is a conference on free open source XR stuff so if you want to hear more about that, go visit them, give them a quick visit, I'm also going to hold like almost the same presentation there just much longer, I'm afraid. So yeah, this runs on Linux, it's pretty limited right now. They have a great network there and lots of people who can help them out and everything so I do think this is going to be pretty great but right now it's just not ready yet for use really. Like even if I want to close the VR session with the Monado runtime in Blender, I have to actually close Blender because there's no way to exit the session. Like it has those kinds of problems which are not solved yet but I guess it's going to come and then we finally have like really usable VR experiences on Linux, free open source. To long didn't read OpenXR allows Blender to access the state of the art XR technology without being dependent on the device, software, platform, whatever. It just allows us to kind of plug and go. All right, so let's talk about how I worked on OpenXR stuff. So yeah, this year I took a bit of a break from Blender development and wanted to go back and I thought GSOC would be a nice opportunity to really get myself to focus on it again. So that's what I did. But pretty much from the get go, the idea was that we really focus on making it solid and well performing, not so much on having all the features and having tools and having like an initial UI design implemented or so. So we really wanted to focus on the solid and well performing part of it. Which means, if you use it now, okay I should also add, I wanted to do a bit of demoing and initially this one was planned to be just a demo presentation and it just show stuff. But it's a bit difficult because I need a machine and I would have to set it up and I'd try to set one up and then we had driver issues and then I had to leave for traveling and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, can't demo anything now. I think I can set something up for Sunday in the open office day and the institute. So just come by me and I can show you stuff. But the thing is right now it's kind of disappointing because all it does really is you take on the HMD and you can see the viewport and VR which is kind of cool but it's really limited intentionally so. I didn't want to work much on the viewport itself. I wanted to make sure that the overhead we add with the VR specific code is minimal. And I think I did a finished job at that. Like we have an overhead of less than 1.5 milliseconds on pretty much any scene just for the VR stuff. So we can actually get to 100 FPS in decent sized scenes pretty easily. So I think that's kind of fine. With the solid and well performing VR viewport we have some implications. So I did have to define the initial core architecture to get the OpenXR stuff hooked up and to get all that to work. Carefully designed error handling strategy. Like this one I am really, I really took attention to because what I basically want is that if something happens some kind of error because the device isn't plugged in or because OpenXR doesn't find a device the runtime has some issues or whatever. This kind of stuff happens and I really want that there are no side effects to Blender so that the session just closes and you can still continue working in Blender but I want to have like a really useful error message and not just do nothing. So yeah, I took quite a bit of, I made sure that this stuff works well. Yeah, and that's the other thing I said like we really want to void any specific VR draw overhead and just try to get the viewport performance basically on its own and not add more overhead to it. So let's talk about some results. We do have well performing VR rendering-ish like it's always hard to say some things and again I'm on record. For solid mode I think it's pretty fine now. Like I said, we can easily push out 100 FPS also in theory because it's still like limited by the device refresh rate. So we are not actually showing 100 FPS but it's actually the runtime make sure it's only at the 16 FPS or 19 FPS which matches the hertz of the device. But yeah, in theory we can do quite decent frame rates I think for reasonably complex scenes. I don't have any concrete numbers unfortunately here. We can dynamically connect to the OpenXR runtimes which basically means we don't just have one specific runtime that you need to set up or so it's really just if you want to get the SteamVR runtime to work you just install the SteamVR stuff and you may have to enable it as the active runtime on your system or whatever. But that's pretty much it at least that should be it eventually when OpenXR is more adapted. But then yeah, you just open Blender and you can start your VR session and you're good to go. Currently we hide the feature, like this is not in master yet, it's in review and it should go into 2.82, that's the goal. Stella here, yeah, that's our goal at least, right? I'm sorry, you should review it. Anyway, right now we sort of hide the button to start the session in the UI just because if we have this in master and we say, well, toggle VR session and then somebody presses the button and it's just boring. Like there's not much fancy in there, you can just view the scene. So we have re-rupted it into an add-on and it says that it's more or less a preview of it. Yeah, again, the error handling, that's something that I find important. Yeah, I'm quite satisfied with that although there are some issues to rule out. Then there is this big issue. There are, for example, the Windows Mixed Reality platform is DirectX only, Blender is OpenGL only currently. So if we want to use this Windows Mixed Reality platform, we somehow have to give them DirectX data, basically. So yeah, this was a bit of a hassle but I basically got something to work so we have compatibility between OpenGL and DirectX. We basically convert textures at the lowest or pretty low level and the overhead of it is really minimal, like I'm totally not concerned about that. So yeah, that turned out to work quite well. Yeah, this uses some OpenGL extensions and it may be a bit troublesome on some hardware but it seems, I think OSVR, which is another runtime, they used the same code or the same extension, it turns out. And they said it's working quite reliably for them, so good. And I've also added all kinds of debugging utilities like OpenXR is hard to work on and hard to debug so that kind of stuff is important for further work. And then again, there's all kinds of stuff that you have to look for for the architecture to make everything to work. And all in all, I am quite satisfied with the outcome of it. Of course, there's always stuff that you would like to tweak and improve and everything but all in all, I think it's quite nice the way it turned out. So yeah, let's see some screenings at least. Don't have anything to show as a demo so I'm just gonna show some screen shows. So this is the Windows Mixed Reality portal, basically drawing the BlenderView port. This is the same for Oculus. This is a screenshot by LazyDodo or WindowsMainChina. He always tested the Oculus stuff for me because I only had the Windows Mixed Reality kit available. You can check the patch on fabricatordeveloper.blender.org slash d5537, that's where you can check my Google Summer of Codes main patch. I also have the final report and I'm gonna click, oh no. There we go. This is like lots of text and everything and they try to explain stuff really well there. But yeah, if you want any further information on the GSOC project, just check this side. What else?  And of course, there's a demo video by Zymion. He made it for me because I've did all the development like literally on my laptop for the GSOC thing because my machine at home is pretty old.  Yeah, so on the left side you have Blender and he just enables the add-on and on the right side you have the Mixed Reality portal again and all he has to do then is toggle VR session and we are going into the VR viewport. And as you can see, this is not like a totally trivial scene. Like there is quite some geometry in there. I think like three million polygons or so. Or I think it's 1.4 million vertices, yeah, three million trees. So yeah, this is not mine. So yeah, the performance is quite doing quite well in the solid mode at least. I didn't look too much into EV because there are lots of other issues to rule out there, especially like with reflections and all that stuff. But that's something we can look at at any time. The totally unofficial XR team, and I'm saying totally unofficial because it's totally unofficial.  Okay, again, totally unofficial. It's just some people that I'm connected to and Dalai gave me further contacts. And we started writing about stuff. First of Dalai, of course, he's sort of the current coordinator for the development team. And he has done, sorry? One of them. One of them, he's one of them. One of the machines at work. Then, of course, there's Daniel, who's also here. And he has been doing quite some stuff with everything painting related and everything grease pencil related. And they have the MPX project, which is basically drawing mainly grease pencil rights in VR. And he really cares about that workflow. And I think that's a great one to support. Jama, is he here tomorrow? Okay, he's an awesome guy. I never met him yet, or didn't meet him yet. He's also, he's been doing concept art for Jurassic World and everything. And he's also really into the VR stuff. And yeah, I've only heard good things about him. This is me. Then there's Max Grichenbauer. He worked on PlantXR, which was sort of an implementation for Planner to get VR to work and have some toolings and all that kind of stuff. And if you want to check it out, just Google for PlantXR, it's actually quite cool. I'm not too sure if like everything that he's got in there, if that's something that we wanna have in Planner, I think we would do some things a bit different, but it's a really cool project. I recommend to check it out. And then of course, there's Sebastian. Where is he? There he is. He's also been doing lots of industry work for VR. And I think that kind of input is also totally important to have somebody who's actually using this stuff in the industry or for professional work. And he needs a clean pipeline to go from Planner into what are you using, Unity or whatever, Unity. So yeah, that kind of stuff has to work well too. And so I'm glad to have him here and also Simeon who is working with them together. So yeah, that's gonna be handy. But as I said, this is totally unofficial and everything if there are more people who are capable and have much experience with VR and maybe we are on Planner, we can totally extend the team or whatever. But yeah, we didn't do much yet, but I've tried to sort of lay the foundation to kick work off and that's what we are gonna talk about now. I have a couple of thoughts for how we continue this work. I really don't want to just take the UI and put it into VR or something like that. That's not gonna work. William Reines was sort of the lead designer or whatever behind 2.5 and 2.8. I think that's fair to say. He said if we do that, we are just gonna make a new interaction mode for Planner which is much more difficult to use. So I really don't want VR to be a more difficult way to use Blender. I want it to be great and I do think there is lots of potential in the workflows for VR. So let's kind of design a XR UI from scratch. Let's not try to just take stuff and put it into VR. And my proposal was to make this really use case focus, like think about what are the use cases for VR? Where can VR really shine and try to start from there? Flash out those use cases and then say, all right, we want sculpting to work. We want this kind of modeling to work in VR. We want, you know, start from there and not just start in the void and see where things go. But, and this isn't important, but keep things consistent. Nevertheless, Daniel pointed out really early on that he really wants the workflow to be smooth when you switch between VR and pen and mouse and everything and like mouse and keyboard workflow. So there has to be this consistency or not just consistency, but also like interoperability with the different ways of working with Blender. So I think, yeah, that's a really important point. And I think that's actually a quite nice boundary for the, that defines sort of the project where we want to go. And I think we can take it from there. Tomorrow we'll have like a little like closed meeting which is also stupid thing to say, but we're just going to meet up and talk things a bit further through and see if we can get things started a bit further. And yeah, there's this task. And I'm going to open the browser again. This is basically just a big design task that I wrote. It's based on, it's basically the same as this document that I also wrote towards the end of the GSO project. If you want to see the details and all the open questions that we are thinking about and see what's the current higher level stuff that we work on, that's pretty much the place you want to go. So again, we have all those questions like how will navigation work, like key mark bindings, reference spaces and all the kind of, all the things that have to be figured out early on. So yeah, that's pretty much what I hope to get addressed over the next two or three months or so, maybe. And then we can start implementing stuff. And I think my role is mostly like trying to get the framework in there so people can actually start developing tools and that we have the foundation there to further develop stuff. And then I think my role kind of fades away and I will give it to people like Daniel and Jarmar, but also the Max Grishenbauer from the plant XR team. And I think they can just do a much better job at implementing all the different tools and thinking about the workflows in detail than I could do. And I am kind of happy with the team we have now. And I think they complement each other nicely. And I think that's the best way forward for this project as a whole. So that's it for the status update. I hope we'll see much more in the future. I hope next year we can have another presentation with lots more cool eye candy stuff. But this is just lots of information for now, which is where we stand. Thank you very much and enjoy the conference. Thank you.


It would have been a pleasure. Pe llawer na. I see one of two familiar faces from my previous visits to Ireland around the room, and I feel very honoured to have been invited to speak here on Europe Day in a year when Ireland is holding the presidency of the European Union for, I believe, the seventh time, Ac mae'n ddifod am fe ble'r ddweud i ddeugoddig dweud. Rydym eisiau mawr maen nh速mu i ddweud. Mae'r EAA, wrth gwrs, rhan i'w drafod y rhaglen o'r ransol yn amlwg. Mae'r Ddweud i Gwyrddol IEau yn meddwl i'n rhan a ffraegol i'r rhaglen o'r rhaglen yn eistedd. Ac mae'n rhan i'r rhaglen i'r rhaglen o'r rhaglen o'r rhaglen o'r rhaglen i'r rhaglen o'r rhaglen. Mae'r rhagleniadau wedi'i gwirioneddau a Yrland yw'r wych yn ysgrifennu eu chael. A yna'r prif erbyn yw'r cymorth yn rhan fwyaf o'r effriss ffwrdd, ei wneud a'r eu rhan fyddion yn gwneud o'r ysgrifennu eithaf ychydig yng Nghymru yw'r rhai, eich eu ffaluol yn ffain i gael. Yr ysgrifennu'r cymorth yn y gweithio yma mae'n gweithio'r cyfrifir yng Nghymru. I'm now working towards a joint visa arrangement for the common travel area. We're working jointly to promote tourism to these islands. When I was in Belfast yesterday, I learned that the revitalised Titanic quarter is now the second most popular tourist destination on the island of Ireland, second only to the Guinness Brewery here in Dublin. ac ydych chi'n gobeithio, ac mae'n rhaid i mor gweld fel gweithio, dwi'n gweithio'n gweithio yma, yn ddweud o ffrindio cyflogion i gyd-dwylo'r gwahodd i gyd-dwylo'r gwahodd mewn gwirioneddol. Mae'r cerdd o'i llwyth i gyd-dwylo'r cyfleu'r cyfrindio a'r cyfnod o'r gweithio'i ymddangod oherwydd i'r gweithio'r gofyn yn y Ffyrdd Bryddiadol ac mae'n dweud o'r newid yw i'w gweithio'r cyfnodol yw'r rhanuobl gwneud ar ysgol a'u gweithio'r reliant ar ffosil. A, wrth gwrs, mae'r rhaglen yw'r rhaglen wedi'i gweithio'r rhaglen yw'r rhaglen yw'r rhaglen, mae'n dweud bod yn gwybod i'r rhaglen a'r rhaglen o'r past. A'r ystod, mae'r rhanwys i'r camera a'r tyshoc yw'r gwirio'r gofynau o'r cyfnodol ar gyfer y past. The decade between 2012 and 2022 has already witnessed and will witness many more significant anniversaries, particularly the centenaries of the Alster Covenant, the Battle of the Somme, the Easter Rising and the Government of Ireland Act. As we move forward, I know it is the determination of governments in both capitals that we should work together to remember these events in a way that encourages mutual understanding and respect. Now you've invited me here to talk about one aspect of our relationship which is our shared future in Europe. 2013, of course, marks the 40th anniversary of Ireland joining the European community in 1973 alongside Britain and Denmark, bringing to nine the number of member states. Recalling that nine was the total then makes me envious of the people who held my job in those days in terms of the number of countries that they had to get round. A football match was played at Wembley Stadium that year that pitted representatives of the three newcomers against the six existing members and I'm pleased to report that the newcomers won 2-0. In January this year, T-Shark Ender Kenny looked back on Ireland's EU experience when he spoke to the European Parliament. The Irish people, he said, had made a good decision to join and to travel far and well. In the United Kingdom we too need to understand better what EU membership actually means for us. That is why last summer the coalition government launched the balance of competencies review to give us an informed evidence-based analysis of the impact of EU membership on the United Kingdom. Officials will produce 32 reports over the next two years looking at everything the EU does and how our EU membership affects the UK in everything from the environment to education to the impact of EU enlargement. To undertake this task as thoroughly as possible we are seeking evidence from the widest possible range of experts and interest groups in the UK and beyond. From business in particular, but also from think tanks, from civil society groups and others. I want straight away to tackle a common misconception. The review is not designed to end up in conclusions with some list of powers that we will seek to repatriate. The review will not be making specific policy recommendations at all. What it will do, rather, is to provide an accurate and fair summary of the evidence. What the assessment is of how, for example, British business views those things which have been of value about the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union, the single market, the leverage on trade. And where, too, they think things are going wrong, whether that means a particular directive or regulation or whether it means a particular treaty article that they would want to see amended. It will provide, in some, a wealth of evidence and objective analysis which I hope will inform a constructive, serious and better informed debate about Europe within the United Kingdom. We hope, too, that our review will provide an additional contribution to the broader European conversation about the future of the Union. And so we are keen to hear from others both in government and outside, across Europe, on these issues. For addressing the challenges that Europe faces in the 21st century, and coming up with solutions that will work for all, we'll call for the sharpest analysis that we can muster. The Taoiseach has said that it is in Ireland's strategic national interest for the UK to be at the heart of Europe. I agree, and when the British Prime Minister gave his own speech on Europe one week after the Taoiseach spoke, there were some who assumed that they already knew what David Cameron was going to say. Indeed, there were some who went on Twitter, made their press announcements confident in the content of that speech before they indulged themselves by actually reading what the Prime Minister said. And those who studied the speech saw straight away that the Prime Minister was not making some pitch to leave or disengage from the European Union. Far from it, he was clear that Britain's strategic national interest is to be part of the European Union shaping the policies of the European Union, rather than having to adjust to rules, practices, ways of working established by others without us having a seat at the table, a voice or a vote. But the Prime Minister Cameron said too, and this is true, that the European Union is losing public support and not just in the United Kingdom, and we all need to face up to this fact. The Eurobarometer Survey published in 2012 showed that 69% of people in the United Kingdom tended not to trust the European Union as an institution. And some might respond by saying, well, that's exactly what we would expect. But let's look further at those Eurobarometer findings. 69% of people in the UK tended not to trust the EU as an institution. For France, those figures were 56%. For Germany, 59%. For Spain, 72% of the population responded in a way that most fair-minded commentators would have described as Eurosceptic. And in Spain's case, that figure of 72% was up from 23% only in 2007. And recent elections right across Europe have showed an increase in support for movements that challenged the authority of the status quo. We've seen that in election results from Italy to Finland, from France to Greece. And in the worst cases, we have seen genuine public grievances and anxieties exploited by parties and movements such as Golden Dawn and Jovic that can fairly be described as neo-fascist in character. Economically, the EU is seen as currently delivering lower living standards, frozen incomes and few jobs for young people. And politically, the EU is increasingly perceived as inflexible, undemocratic and unaccountable. And what the Prime Minister set out to do was to sketch an alternative vision of a reformed Europe that is more competitive, more open, more flexible and more democratically accountable. A Europe that delivers not just for the United Kingdom, but for the rest of Europe too. And a Europe, a reformed Europe that he would campaign heart and soul to stay within. Now that speech sparked a genuine debate right across Europe. And I'll say straight up, not everybody agrees with our point of view nor do we expect them to. But I think there is growing agreement on the need to pose these questions and a growing sense of urgency about the need for us to find the answers. Both Tishor Kenny and my Prime Minister have noted how Europe has been transformed in the last 40 years. In the United Kingdom in the 1970s, we're in error when we had an astonishing 12.9 million work days a year lost to strikes. At times a three-day working week, inflation that peaked at 25% and we had to go to the International Monetary Fund for a bailout that was then the biggest it had ever given. And those who remember those times in the United Kingdom can remember what it was like to have your freedom of action constrained by the need to please your creditors. Now we live in a digital age. With industries that weren't conceived of 40 years ago, the internet, smart phones, the low carbon economy, computer graphics, online retailing and much more. The single market has broken down borders, unlocked opportunities and helped to bring prosperity to both our countries. Ironically, it took the economic crisis to make people on both sides of the Irish Sea fully wake up to how important our two economies are to each other. Ireland's four and a half million consumers constitute the fifth largest export market for British goods. Forecast to Oxford Economics suggests that Ireland will overtake France as the UK's third largest export for both goods and services by 2030. In return, the United Kingdom remains Ireland's largest export destination. 16% of Irish industrial exports go to the UK, a position that's not changed since the introduction of the euro. And our best estimate is that some 50 billion euros worth of goods and services flow across the Irish Sea each year. Meanwhile, investment from the United Kingdom into Ireland since 2003 has totaled 10.5 billion pounds, creating 55,000 jobs. The Irish Development Agency lists the UK as the third largest source of new investment in Ireland for 2011. In 2010, net FDI by Ireland into the UK was 1.3 billion. And in spite of all this, the single market has struggled to keep up with the pace of change. It's good single marketing goods, but very far from fully developed when it comes to services. And over the years, great snares of regulation have built up, making it harder for businesses to hire people to take on new work and to grow. Economically, we face huge challenges. We must manage the consequences of a decade of irresponsible borrowing and lending by governments and financial institutions alike. And while dealing with that legacy, we have at the same time to respond to an historic shift of global power to the emerging economies of Asia and Latin America, and to a transatlantic balance in which, after a number of years in which Europe appeared to be closing the competitiveness gap with the United States, the Americans have now opened up the margin once again. In Ireland and in the United Kingdom, we both know that there are no easy, pain-free answers. But the basic truth is this, unless Europe raises its gain, unless Europe becomes more competitive, the next generation of Europeans will not be able to afford the standards of living, the social protection or the public services that today's generations take for granted. Today's global race means keeping up not just with Germany or France, but with Mexico or Indonesia or Turkey. So how can we hope to build a more competitive and open Europe? First is huge potential for reform of the single market and the wider European economy. Significant non-tariff trade barriers remain within the single market. Recent analysis suggests that current trade between the UK and other EU member states could be as much as 45% below its potential, equating to untapped export potential of around £80 billion. Development of the digital single market by 2020 could result in a 4% increase in GDP in the EU. We've waited years for pan-European iTunes that could help to bring British or Irish music to an even wider audience. But at the moment, we don't have a continental market in digital trade, either for retailing or in business-to-business transactions. The Americans do. The Chinese, the Indians and the Brazilians are building such fast. And until we get our act together in terms of a common framework for payment systems and consumer protection and the ability of online services to sell freely across national frontiers, we're still going to be in the position we are today where 40% of European citizens each year buy something online, but only about 1 in 10 transactions cross a national border. We need to a deeper market in services. Services make up about 70% of EU GDP, but less than a quarter of intra-EU trade. Effective implementation of even the existing services directive across the EU could add by our estimate £30 billion a year to the EU economy, 2.6% of GDP. Competitiveness also means keeping taxes on employment at enterprise low, a point that both the UK and Irish governments understand. And it means reducing and not adding to the cost and complexity of business regulation.  But we certainly welcome the ambition of the European Council to make solid progress on scrapping regulations for small and medium-sized businesses over the course of this summer. We need action to deliver the exemption from new regulations for micro-businesses that all 27 heads of government agreed last year. Action on the basis of the scorecard recently published by the Commission, which listed the 10 most important regulatory burdens that European business themselves had identified. And certainly speaking in Belfast yesterday I was talking to a number of business meetings there. What came through to me from them and from politicians of all parties and perspectives in the north was that in an economy overwhelmingly based on small and medium-sized enterprises, reducing the cost and complexity of regulation, was one of the most important priority tasks to be tackled at both national and European level. Now it's true that our fastest growing export and investment markets in the future are likely to be in emerging economies. And there are some, one or twos of distinguished former statesmen who argue that the only way to restore growth and competitiveness is to leave the European Union. That is not the view of the coalition government. It is the case still that Europe is the destination for about half our exports and it is forecast to remain Britain's number one market for at least the next 10 to 15 years. At the moment the United Kingdom exports more to North Rhine West failure alone than to the whole of India. We also gain a bigger share of foreign and direct investment into the EU than any other EU member state about 26% of the overall total. Now partly yes this is due to the attractiveness of UK conditions but it is also down to the fact that we are part of that European single market. It's clear too that our best chance of securing ambitious free trade deals with the United States, Canada, Japan and the major emerging economies is through Europe's collective trade leverage. Trade with countries outside the European Union is expected to provide an increasing share of essential jobs and growth over coming years. In 2010 we agreed an EU trade deal with Korea. Last December a trade deal with Singapore was settled. Talks with Japan have started this spring and we hope to conclude a deal with Canada soon. But the largest prize is now within our grasp after decades of waiting and that is the transatlantic trade and investment partnership with the United States of America. I know that this deal achieving it is the highest priority for both Prime Minister Cameron and for Tishok Kenny. It is an objective on which I am glad to say my Prime Minister is also working hand in glove with Chancellor Merkel. We hope to make progress at the G8 leaders meeting in Northern Ireland in June a meeting which the Tishok is due to attend. The European Commission estimates that this one deal alone would be worth 545 euros to a family of four in Europe every single year. If one looks beyond that on a more strategic level by sweeping away not just tariffs but non-tariff barriers we would in practice be creating and shaping global regulatory standards on a transatlantic basis rather than sitting back and waiting probably for some Pacific agreement in a few years time with Europe then having to play catch up and seek to copy that. For the Prime Minister as well as talking about competitive that's talked about flexibility in the EU and I want to say a bit about what we mean by this. David Cameron said that we want to reform the EU for the benefit of all member states. Flexibility within the European Union reflects Europe's diversity, the breadth, depth and variety of the Union's membership is both its charm and its great strength. Now as things stand now some countries are in the euro others are not and for as far ahead as I can foresee that is going to remain the case and it will not only be the United Kingdom that remains outside. Some countries take part in the Schengen arrangements, others including ours have retained their border controls, 24 countries have signed up to the EU patent, three have chosen not to do so and almost every member state has issues that it regards as sensitive whether that's agriculture, shipping or savings banks where national interests have been accommodated. So the EU's flexibility to deal with variety is a strength and not a weakness and our collective future is not about who's joining in and who isn't it's about embracing and mobilising the enormous cultural, political and economic diversity of 27 soon to be 28 different countries. Flexibility doesn't mean that there are no rules. Flexibility is completely compatible with the single market and rule based structures but that doesn't require everything to be harmonised. A point actually recognised years ago in the Court of Justice Cassis de Dijon judgement and the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. Supposed to lie at the heart of the treaties and the working cults of the European Union but too frequently ignored in practice themselves embody the principle that we should not always seek to be prescriptive and centralised but should rather allow space for different ways of doing things in different parts of the Union within a commonly agreed framework of action. So a more effective EU does not have to mean a bigger, more expensive or indeed more centralised EU. At the moment too many people feel the EU is a one way process that more and more decision making is taken from national parliaments to the European level to everything is decided by the EU. That needs to change and if we cannot show decision making can also flow back to national parliaments then the system will become democratically unsustainable. There is one further but very important point I want to make about flexibility. The establishment of the single currency, the search of its 17 members for a framework that will help them towards long term stability and growth points towards greater fiscal and economic integration. Now the timing of that, the scope, the nature of it is something for our friends in the Eurozone to determine and we will not engage in public lectures. But in addressing that dynamic which derives from the single currency we need to find a way of doing so which protects those things that are of value at 27. Whether that is the integrity of the single market or the duty of the institutions to act and speak on behalf of all member states and not just anyone subset. And the arrangements that we reach for example on banking union have to be designed in a way that accommodates the legitimate interests of all and a fair to those who are in the Euro and those who are outside. And it will mean difficult complicated negotiations. We've shown with the single supervisory mechanism that you can do that and come up with a deal which everybody accepts is fair. But there will be many other occasions when we have to confront this relationship between 27 and 17. But I think that single currency dynamic itself is going to require an acceptance of flexibility, an acceptance of a model of differentiated levels of integration depending on which countries or which area of policy we are looking at. Third and finally, one of the key points of the Prime Minister's speech too was the need for greater democratic accountability and the Euro barometer figures I cited earlier show a worrying disconnection between the EU and its peoples. And the latest opinion polls show growing levels of skepticism across the continent. As the EU continues to evolve, as more member states in the western Balkans and beyond seek to join, we must ensure that people continue to be heard. Now I believe that national parliaments remain the main source of democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU. That is not to denigrate the important and hard work that so many members of the European Parliament do, nor to deny that the European Parliament has an important role to play under the terms of existing treaties. But the political reality when we look around Europe is that most people focus upon their national parliaments as the means of holding political decision makers to account. That is where the voices of people across the EU can be heard and that is where the connection of the people to the EU can be strengthened. And I believe that national parliaments need to play a more active role in the functioning of the EU. Now is the time to start thinking and discussing how this could happen. We could improve, for example, the functioning of the existing yellow card mechanism by improving cooperation between national parliaments through COSAC, the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of the EU National Parliaments. We could consider giving COSAC a power or perhaps simply establishing a working practice that COSAC or national parliaments could summon a European commissioner to explain a proposal to national parliamentary representatives. And certainly at national level we in London are looking hard at how we can improve our own scrutiny arrangements. We could look at the existing yellow card procedures under the Lisbon Treaty and ask whether their scope could be broadened to apply in cases where not just subsidiarity but proportionality had been breached. Or perhaps turn the yellow card in some circumstances into a red card where a sufficient number of national parliaments had the right not only to insist on the commission reviewing a proposal, but to the power to block a proposal from coming forward further at all. And of course when it comes to Britain the Prime Minister has said that as leader of the Conservative Party he will in his 2015 manifesto offer the British people a chance to have their own say on Europe after the next general election. Chairman it is clear that the European Union is vital to both our country's futures. And I believe that we face an imperative indeed we have a duty to our electorates to use the current crisis as an opportunity to reform and reshape Europe to make the Union an organisation to which we will feel proud to belong in the years to come. And more importantly to which ordinary voters will feel that they can once again entrust their confidence. Britain is playing a full part in this debate. We are committed to helping shape the future of an open, flexible and adaptable European Union. And we want to work with partners like Ireland to achieve a better deal for all Member States. We are not saying it will be easy but we think that change is necessary, it is inevitable and it is achievable. Thank you very much indeed.


Tadara. We thought we would get on time if we possibly could. I am here on the Chairman of the Icehouse and on the CEO of Spark Home, Mobile and Business. Welcome to our place. We have a pretty cool big day here today. I don't know if you saw TV1 news this morning but they did all the breakfast news from within the forya and out by our café here. We had Sol Mio singing this morning and welcoming us. p decided every year at that. Switch Gee the and looked what E avenues for our very short notice, but with two amazing draw cards. Let's be real, has dragged such a great audience here on a day like this, so keen to hear this full story. The other thing I wanted to talk about a little bit is something Spark's doing to keep doing our part and what has to happen in New Zealand. We are announcing or confirming our partnership with Lightning Lab in Auckland Wellington in Christchurch Christchurch and that we will be the first national sponsor of that program that is getting underway. In fact, the applications have been going on for the last few weeks. So it's fantastic for us to be involved with something that's very real about taking people's hopes and aspirations and ideas and getting them through a really well-proven, globally known process of refining that idea, of developing that idea, and applying for a place in this accelerator program that will, over a very short three-month period, pick them up and then work out out of a ten that make it through to the program, you know, get them to demo day and get them invested and get them growing and going as fast as we can. So we're really excited about that. A big part of my responsibility in this place is the small and medium business market in New Zealand to have a chance to grow some more of those and to inspire many more of those is really, really cool from our point of view. So we're looking forward to today as much as all of you are. Great that we can host you here at our place and that you can look ahead to some fantastic stories and some truly deeply inspirational stuff today. But I'm going to let our emcee talk about who that is and who they are. So it's my pleasure now to introduce your emcee for the afternoon who's going to keep this thing rolling and keep it full of energy and keep it right on time. Michelle Dickinson and I asked, I had a two-page bio for Michelle, which she begged me not to read. So I'm going to go real short on it, which she said, you know, I'm here one because it matters and I care deeply about tech and I care deeply about New Zealand's success in it. And I want to stand for a whole lot of the, especially the woman entrepreneurs and scientists that are making a difference. She's responsible for New Zealand's first nanotech lab and recent winner of the Prime Minister's Science Communications Award. She came here on 24 hours notice because she cares so much about what we're trying to do with this thing. So I'm going to hand over now to your emcee for the afternoon, Michelle Dickinson. Thanks. Hey, thanks Chris for the intro. You're right. So I had 24 hours notice. So I'm really sorry, but I'm going to be using some notes today. What an awesome afternoon. It's sad to be in a basement now when the weather actually finally someone actually turned up. So for those of you who don't know me, I'm Nana Goa. You can find me on Twitter and we are going to have like the most incredible afternoon today. And 2014 has been pretty incredible as years go for our entrepreneurial community. We've had really big successes. We've had Wellington Cloud Storage Company Green Button being acquired by Microsoft. We've had both Orion Healthcare and we've had Vista listing on both the New Zealand Stock Exchange and the Australian one. And so what a better way to wrap up this year by having this amazing ecosystem in one space so we can celebrate entrepreneurship and we can actually pick the brains of some people who've had some massive successes. So it's been pretty exciting, especially as a woman in tech to actually see the formation of Archangels, our first female investment group aimed at women led and managed businesses, as well as a formation of flying Kiwi Angels. And our Taronga-based Enterprise Angels have doubled their investment over the last 12 months, raising them up to 5.1 million invested. And we can't forget Ice Angels have had their biggest year ever with 8.1 million going into startup. So it's a pretty exciting space this year. So we've also got to celebrate things like New Zealand Venture Investments Fund celebrating their 100th investment in early state ventures through our Co-Seed and Co-Investment Fund. And we're really living, I think, in a climate where we're getting massive financial incentives in New Zealand to actually grow. And we're not having to go offshore so much. So what's been happening in the big world for Lanza tech, I don't need to mention that they are just growing and growing right now. So really great stuff from Sean and the team over there. They've managed to raise a start going 200 million US as they get ready to open their first commercial plant in 2016. And Power by Proxy, another exciting one in the midst of raising 30 million from private investors. And it looks like their wireless charging tech is going to go commercial in 2016 too. Talking about funding, we can't forget the important crowd funding scheme. So we've got Snowball Effect, Pledge Me, and the Peer to Peer Group Harmony. And well done to Anna if she's here for managing to raise a 100k in 24 hours. That was pretty impressive. And then we've got these massive groups like Callahan Innovation, NZTE, MB, and Kia. So we actually have this incredible hub now that we can all grow in and some pretty big organisations ready to throw money, experience and knowledge into. So with all that success and investment and with the year coming to a close and the sun finally shining, it's time to celebrate some of these successes. And it's also interesting to bring in investment companies and people from overseas to bring in that knowledge. But I do think you will recognise that we are a very different system here in New Zealand and we're quite quirky. And that whole two degrees of separation seems like quite a high number because you know how it works here. Everybody knows everybody or they know their cousin or they can. And it's one thing I love about living in New Zealand is that we do have this really unique hub where things can grow and you actually your neighbour is probably the guy you needed to help you make that next step. So the goal of this event is to take that two degrees of separation and make it one, right? You're all sitting next to somebody right now. So there's a new network for you right here. To be surrounded by amazing like-minded people to have a space where we can share some insights and experiences in starting companies. And it's a great place you can actually bounce some ideas off some other people and see what they think. It's that little old New Zealand, that funny place, right? It's that little country that has these massive successful ideas. And it's one of the reasons why I love living here. So thank yous. Stuff like this doesn't happen for free. And so we need to thank our important sponsors. First of all, thank you, Spark, for this wonderful room and hosting the event here. Thank you to GridAKL as our network sponsor. And if you haven't been to GridAKL, they're hosted by Bizdojo. Fun, funky space, pretty cool, great coffee machine. Also a really great place to work from to sort of bounce ideas of like-minded people. So thanks, Grid. We have to thank AUT, Creative HQ, Derek Handley, Ice House, Lightning Lab, and Rebecca Mills, and Kiwi Connect. So I thank you all in the audience. Thank you. This stuff can't happen without you. We're going to have a series of speakers with a break in the middle for coffee, and there's going to be a panel session at the end. And with that, it's sort of time for you guys to sit back and immerse yourself in a series of inspiring speakers who are going to share their stories and their experiences with you.