Okay, we'll give out a try. Nice to record these things, but sometimes things don't go well. You know me? Who doesn't know me? Raise your hand. I'm Lee Lowry. See, you see the two or three people kind of getting up, seeing if they can sneak out? Yeah, they know me. Okay, we're going to do steel design this semester. I like steel design. It's the first time I didn't lie to you, really. I taught you 221 and I told you you could find the reaction on the right-hand end. I was simply supportive being with the concentrated load in the middle. And I remember you asked me, who's going to put the load in the middle? I said, well, it's not easy to get it there. It could be this way, that way a little bit. Say, does that change anything? Lies, all lies. The magnitude of the load changes, and it's various depending on who put it on there and where they put it, and it's, yeah. Then we went to MC over I, P over A, VQ over I, T, and I said, you said, how close are those numbers? I'm right on the body. Lies, lies, all lies. Say, well, have you ever found a piece of steel that didn't have that, the right amount of strength? No, no, lies, all lies. The nice thing about this is, this is truth. Now you say, well, you lied to us in three classes and now you tell us again, tell us the truth. Well, yeah, that's pretty hard to do, but it really is. I'm going to take into account all the variation in the loads, all the variation in the strength of materials, all the variations that they find in the analysis methods themselves. That's all taken care of because they're really going to build these things. None of the things you did before, they were good for training, but, you know, and we still use them to determine the numbers we're going to get now, but we're going to put variations on them to take into account the load may not really go there, the load may not really be that big. Sometimes when that loads on there, the other load won't be on there and vice versa, differences in the strength of the materials. If you use an A36 steel for something, you get different stresses permitted if you weld it versus if you poke holes in it for bolts. As you might imagine, you remember we talked about stress concentration factors and we really didn't do much with them, say we had a stress concentration factor and the stresses were different. That's all taken into account in this class because you really are getting ready now to go out the door and I don't want them to fall down. Wes Cummings is our main go-to person. He will be in room, I think it's 030D, that's what my map shows, but if you go out of the downstairs, go out the stairwell, down the stairwell and turn right, it's the first door on the right, he will be there at these times and he will assist you with 0.446. He's also going to be working with the 0.445 and the 0.444 people. Have you his email on there? Yeah, so you can email him if you want to know when he's really going to be there, is he going to be there at a certain time, something along those lines. When is he less stressed? When can you actually get in line or do not have to stand in a long line? Looking for a book? Click on one of these, it'll give you a relatively inexpensive book. A lot of the aggregators, something like this one here will go out and search every bookstore they've ever heard of, including eBay and Amazon and that kind of stuff and tell you which books where they're going to sell you one that's less expensive. We've been using this for a while, so there ought to be some users out there. I always like used books, I always got good notes in them. I already got the answer to some of the problems written down in the back there. The second book you're going to need is the Steel Construction Manual. This is the text, one of the best. There's about four or five that are one of the best. As long as they pick from one of those, I never do care. Like I say, the longer we run on that one, the better it is because it's got everything we need. It's brought up to the new codes and the new specifications. This is the new specifications, Steel Construction Manual. This one you get, this one you can get at the bookstore or here. This one you ought to get through us or through AISC. This is the thing, some place on there, looking for it's a GUI textbook. Some more down in there it says how to get this AISC book.  You've got to have a code, you've got to email me and I'll send it to you. Catalog description, course objectives, ABET learning outcomes. Everybody has, I take it finished past 345, structural analysis. I'm going to have three exams, ABC or ABFinal. They'll count 30% each. Ooh, yeah, the syllabus is ACT. You can get this at lorry.tamu.edu. Just go down to the bottom and you click on 446. What's available to you to get this class behind you? Yeah, me, the teaching associate that we've got, I think he's in there 20 hours. 446, list server, file server, grade server, all of the stuff that we give you information on. Click there and find out what all we've got available. Homework problems and pop quizzes assigned during the semester. The best I remember all that says is the syllabus has all of these things numbered. So for example, this is assignment 25, one problem in that particular set. It'll be worth 10 points. There's one got a couple of problems, it'll be worth 20 points. So if you want to know what you really should do is you should put the assignment number as well as the problem number on your homework. So we'll know what you're handing in. There'll be pop quizzes. I'll label those p1 slash or minus 13 for January the 13th for the one we'll have today. That's assuming we have one today. So when you take a look at your grades out there, when I find to get them posted on eCampus, you'll know what that heading means. AISC specification codes and standards. There is a piece of the book that we were just talking about this manual. It's free. You can click here and you can download it. It also includes the shapes database. For an example, it tells you the properties of a W10 by 52, something like that. It doesn't have a lot of the user's aids in there that you really need or we wouldn't bother. We would just download the free part of it. But the specifications themselves telling you what they expect you, how they expect you to analyze the structure and what it has to do. That's free to the public. All of the other tables and things, which is about half of it. That's where you pay the money. It's a cheap book. I think you pay 120 bucks for it as a student. It'll double in price immediately every year through with it because everybody else is paying about 300 bucks for it. I'm not telling you how to sell it. But the only book I know that's worth more when you buy it than when you hand it in is more than when you buy it. Free AISC membership. You can fill it in, sign it, email it to them. They've got some benefits to being a benefit and you get to write that on a resume that you were a student member of AISC. Computer software. You already know Excel. A lot of the homework problems you work, you can probably set them up in Excel to check your work and also to help you work the next problem, which is similar. EES is engineering equation solver. That's one of the nifty programs I've seen. I highly recommend you get it. I think you'll use it a lot. You go over to the computer center right next to the place that's got the weather thing on the top of it. What's that called? Building right next to the thing that's got the weather thing on it. That's what it's called. I think if you click on here, it tells you where that is. They'll take them a thumb drive and they'll put it on a thumb drive for you. You can use it. It's really simple, straightforward. It's very much like Excel. The only problem with Excel is you say, this is the, and in this cell you put the steel, and this is the length of the member, and you put the length of the member in there, and this is the, and you put it in there, and this is, and you put it in there, and you put all this stuff in, and then in this cell here you say equals that, plus that divided by the square root of that, times this to the E to the so and so, so and so, blah blah blah. Then you don't really know what you got, but there it is. You put in some numbers and you check it out. EES, you just write down the equation. A is equal to Pi, for them it's a function, times D raised to the two power. It's that simple. Then right underneath it you say D is equal to 1.4 inches, or 79 millimeters, and hit the enter key, and it gives you the answer. It's written down in equation form. It's not a matter of checking this to make sure that you're going to the right cells or anything else. It's really slick. Example video solutions for selected steel problems. I don't remember which ones, but if you have trouble with something, look in there and see. Some of them got asked questions about it so often I just went ahead and made a small video of it. My old exams, you're welcome to know what I have asked people in the past on old exams. You will see that disappear in the middle of the semester. It never fails. Because the only one rule about using those old exams, all those copyright illegal things, is one of you will bring one of them to me and say, I don't know how to work this whole quiz. Work it for me. Show me how to work it. Don't have time. What? 20 quizzes times 5 questions per quiz times 70 students. Divided by, you'll be there an hour. My life's too short. So what I will do with that person is I will show them how, and then I'll just delete those. They're more trouble than they're worth. I don't get anything out of them anyway. I just have to come up with a new quiz every time because they're there. What are your chances of making what grade in this class? I don't know now. Maybe if I looked at your 221, 305, 345 grades, I might be able to predict it. But all I've done with this has gone back all of the semesters I've taught this class and found out if you made, for example, an A on quiz A and an A on quiz B, what was your chance of passing, or what was your chance of making an A or a B or a C or a D or an F in this class? And so it'll say something like 90%, 6%, 2%, you know, whatever the percent's are. Hopefully that'll help you decide when Q drop time comes around. I can't tell you in your case what'll happen. I can't tell you if you'll make a hundred on the final. But if you have an A on quiz A and an A on quiz B, I got the percentages down. If you got a B and a C, I got what they did in the past. Tutoring and using the manual. I don't know if the tutor has a solutions manual or not. You might loan him yours. But I got one. If you say, well, I didn't want to buy one, I wasn't sure it was legal anyway. Come by and you can look at mine. If you got a real question on one of the homework problems, I'll be glad to let you take a look at it.  And when you don't see it, I said, look again and dig out where you have deviated from the truth. You're welcome to do that at any time when I have office hours. My office hours are back here. Office hours go. Office hours, office hours, office right there. Access to the CE apps server. So if you want to run one of our computers from home, they were having some trouble with that. I'm not sure they got it fixed or not. You may have to walk up here in the rain if you need one of the programs off of the computers in the lab. Design aids. They are pretty ratty, really. What I did was when I would be grading your exams, you'll have different problems. And not only would you have different problems, but you would have different ideas about the problem. For example, I would ask you to design this beam to resist lateral torsional buckling and you put the load here to solve for this reaction and this reaction. And then you drew the shear diagram and you said it looked like that. You drew the moment diagram and said it looked like that. What's wrong with this shear diagram? And the original load is a uniformly distributed load. This was 80 kips. This reaction you got right was 60 kips. This was L over 2 and L over 2. This one was 20 kips. This is what you gave me for the shear and moment diagram. What's wrong with that? The shear diagram, whoever it is, left the 80 kip load rather than putting the uniform load back on it and the shear diagram ought to come up and it ought to look like this and like that and then this diagram ought to look like this and like that, yes. But, you know, I got some points from you. I got a few because you did that. Minus 60. The problem was only worth 20, so you can see there was a real aggravation to me there. But then I got to know if you made any new mistakes. So that's what these things are. These things are, if you're trying to work a problem, it's got lateral torsional buckling on it. It's something that I put together so that I could put in your new numbers at each step. In other words, if you went halfway through and then made a mistake, I could just go halfway in this thing and hit a button and see what you should have gotten from that on. Like I say, they've gotten a little ratty over the years. You're welcome to take a look at them if you want to. Summary of the pages we covered last semester in class. I think I got a printout of those. It's, when I say last semester, the truth is, it's also getting kind of ratty. I was using the fourth edition instead of the fifth edition and an old steel coat. The things are still about in the same place and it's still useful. I just haven't had time to update it. If you do, give me a copy. Risa. That's how you can run a structural analysis on a structure and find out the moments. Mastrand is the same thing. It's free. Seating chart. I need to know where you decide you're going to park the wood next time, come and have a seat and hand out a seating chart. You can tell me where you're going to be that way. If you need a seat up front because you have vision or hearing problems, you can go ahead and get it and we'll put you there. Junk. Junk. Excellent idea on how these things work. Junk. Jeff. Cahoodic. Used to be a prof. He passed away. He's got a whole bunch of example problems. So if you're looking for some other problems, for examples on how to work something, he's got a ton of them. Typical point deductions you can count on. ASE publications that are free. AISC shapes and database. I think I already mentioned that earlier. Dine examples. More example problems that would be very similar to the Cahoodic example problems. Somebody noticed that they were out there and they do make good example problems for studying for a quiz. Class expectations, click on it and read it. General information regarding the format for the exams. I'll just say that in this class, I hope by now somebody has made you purchase and use line ruled gridded paper with AISC written all over in front of the page only. I don't care. That's that. Right on the front, if you're right on the back, be sure you put a note on there. Tell me, look on the back on your exam page, especially.  Where to get help? Be the me or the tutor. One of the tutors is about it. Grading. I think I already mentioned the percentages. Attendance, illness, make up exams and what you have to do to prove up that you should get one and what you have to do to get it scheduled. Academic dishonesty and I don't know what that is. But it says click here, so that will probably be on the quiz. It probably says 42. What is 42? What is it? The answer to life, that is correct. So there's some other people in here that waste their time with guide to the universe. H. Hiker's guide to the universe. Okay, so here's typical. The date. Class number. What we're going to be doing and covering. We will if we can. We never can. But this is what we're hoping. Pages 1 through 11 today. Chapters 1.1 through 1.5. Here's what a flipped class is. I'm going to, there's a video on this. The reason these things happen is because I'll give an exam and I'll say design me the lightest white planes to do so and so. 70 people, at least 40, come up. What steel do you want me to use? Say yes. And you say well, can you be a little more specific? I say no, I really never understood that. But they always seem to get the right steel. Well, yeah. The book tells you what steel to use for a wide range and tells you which one to use for a channel and it tells you which one to use for a bar and a plate and that's all very carefully specified. But if you were texting, howdy. If you were texting that day and I asked the other guy, are you texting? And he said no. I said, what are you doing? He says, playing a game. Well, that's even worse, man. Please, at least text. You're getting something done. But he wasn't listening that day. He didn't know how to find out which steel and so it is. It costs you. Well, there's a video on that material. A flipped class is one where I've seen so many people crater and burn because they didn't do that that I went ahead and just sat down and told you how to do it again. So it's important. Whether you view it or not, your business says be ready to take a quiz over it and if it's not a pop quiz and I can assure you it'll be on one of the major quizzes. Assignment number two, so and so, so and so. We don't go to class Monday. Another flipped class. I think that was on materials and I think that one was on... Yeah, just the general... No, this is the material specs. This one says material specs too. That must somebody... I just must have copied that. I'm pretty sure that's not material specs. I bet you that's the layout. I'll have to check that. But it doesn't matter what it says. Click on it. This is really a mess. There's quite a book. Got a lot of information in it. It is broken up into parts, chapters, subchapters, party chapters, chapter parts. I mean, you name it, it's got it in there. It's got specifications. Specations. Specations. There's specifications on steel anchors. That's on section... Focus that somehow. I8, page 16.1-102. Back on the grade pages. That's something different. 16.1, let me see. 3B. Wow, look at that. Now, that'll never happen in 500 years. You see here 3B, Tensile Strength of Steel Head of Stutt Ankers. 3B, Shear Connectors. So this is a commentary on this part. And finding it is the problem. I mean, it's there, but if you don't know where to find out where the material strengths are for the various kinds of steels that we use, or if you don't know how to find the equation for Tensile Strength of Steel Head of Stutt Anchoring Composite Components, well, you've got problems. Because the quiz goes kind of fast. This gives you the layout of that, I'm pretty sure. And on, and on... You will notice that the most used words in this class without comparison be the syllabus. And you say, gee, how ugly, how rude. I read the syllabus. There you go. Why? You watch. I guarantee you, I promise, watch somebody's going to come up and say, when is quiz A? And I'm going to say, I don't know. I don't know when quiz A. I'm not sure if they've decided yet when quiz A is going to be. I don't know. But I am taking the class in reading, and when I get through with it, I'm going to read the syllabus. The second most common is, what does it cover? I don't know. I don't know. What can I bring with me? I don't know. Read the syllabus. It really is. It's all there. After all these years, everything is there. Spring break. Come back alive. I need the money. Quiz B. Final exam. There's your last day to Q-drop. You'll notice, if you happen to look on old notes, you'll find quiz B has been moved up quite a bit, trying to get two quizzes behind you so you have a better shot at whether or not you really need to Q-drop or not. Next time I'll bring that. Somebody's sitting there, so put your name like this. Here's the sheet that tells you what materials to use. It's in the book. It's on page 2-48. You'll notice that pages 16-point, something, have hundreds of pages, like 16.1-101. That's because that's the specifications, and they're all in chapter 16. 2-48 is pretty shy of chapter 16. It's in chapter 2, but it tells you, for example, there's a thing called a 36 steel. It has a yield stress, guaranteed minimum of 36. It may have more than that, but it's right around 36. It has an ultimate tensile stress at which it breaks around 58 to 80. That's a pretty wide range if the guy does not, or the lady doesn't tell you that they have tests on that batch of steel that'll guarantee you it's got an 80 for F sub u. You will be forced to use 58 KSI.  They take a big old chunk of steel, and it's just full of all kinds of little cracks and problems with it. If you roll a wide flange that looks like this out of it, you have rolled a lot of those little problems out, but it's still got a lot of them in there because it's so thick. This is, for example, a piece of A242 steel. I, J, J, J. For shapes with a flange thickness greater than two inches only, you must use 42 for the yield and 63 for the ultimate. If, on the other hand, K, K for shapes from one and a half up to two, it gets stronger. The reason it gets stronger is because during the continued rolling you roll more of the junk out of the section. You line up all the little cracks parallel. Now then, instead of just being all over the place, more of them are getting to be like that where they don't influence you as badly. And when the thing is rolled down very thin, you get to use 50 for the yield. What is that? He says 70. What is it? Ultimate. That's correct, that's the ultimate strength of the metal. The reason we need to know those numbers is sometimes we base our design on stretchiness. What is that? A strain diagram, thank you. See, when I pick on you and kid you, because you said it was a 70, a lot of times I don't hear from you for the rest of the semester. Don't let that happen. What is this? What is this? What is that? Eel stress. We give it the name f sub y. And you and I like sigma sub y because it makes the architects think we're doing something really special and they don't like Greek symbols. But when you get into this code it's called f sub y. And instead of sigma ultimate we are going to call this one f sub u. We will have some material, some things, some pieces of structure that once you get into this region they don't break, nobody dies. But it bends so badly that you do have injuries of all the people trying to get out the door at the same time. And not only that it may have bent so badly they can't get out of the door. That's bad, because when the first guy says I can't get out the door then they start going out the windows. Don't do that. If it's just you then it's okay. But we don't want that to happen so we'll use this as our design criteria. If we're talking about something else then we're really saying under these conditions it might break then we'll probably be going on up to this for our design criteria. We'll still have all of these numbers down in here where everything is really safe. It's just when it gets horribly overloaded unexpected and unintended but it has happened then we want to make sure that we don't go above this number. So this is one of the things that there's a flipped class on it to give you what I just told you again. The result of today's lecture once I get it all if I can even get it done I just lost the 305 lecture an hour ago so I'm not sure this one says it's recording but it won't go on a hard drive so we'll see but I will put the video of it on here go to here we go you go to here probably what you're going to actually see there is last year's stuff because I haven't done anything this one and I'll have to take those off and replace it with the ones we do now you'll see the video and you'll see the class notes so if you really haven't been able to make class today there's still hope here are the notes here's real here's an mp4 for apples and if you want to download the real video that's usually used for people in India who watch this buy as much as you do surprisingly and here's the material that was covered I don't know what we're going to get done today someone take the class from me that day they didn't know how to do this sometimes things just go bad everybody thought because the lights went out we weren't going to hold class no, no, no alright I don't know where this is but it's right underneath my picture thank you, so this is what you get when you click on that it tells you how to obtain this user's manual now if you're going to go in with somebody in the other class, just buy one of them you know that's certainly okay use one, that's okay too the used ones are not if you buy a used one out there it's probably going to cost you more than a new one because you when you sell it into the used market to the general public you know it's going to probably pay a couple hundred bucks for it yeah, all you got to do is email me tell me you want this code and I got one for everybody and I'll mail you yours and you put it some place on here I don't know when you sign on see this is if you're going to mail it in you just go to the website to give them the code your code and you tell them a credit card number and they'll send it to you charge you more if you send them a check I guess because they had to process the check this is what I was talking about this is where I one semester kind of summarize what was going on if you wanted information on tension members, growth section net section, effective areas they were in the manual on page 16.1 days 26-31 but like I said sadly haven't had time to update it to the 14th edition and I haven't had time to update it to the 5th edition of Sugui but they're around there they're better than nothing if you need to know the nomograph for effective links it's on the commentary as opposed to in the in the main part of the manual they're pretty much pretty close to where it's at there's your text I'll leave it for you to read structural design probably say well that's what you told me to do in 345 we did structural design that's probably true too it's good stuff you ought to know it the economical structure requires efficient use of materials and construction and labor and all that kind of stuff also the use of money but read it figure one shows a truss this award is really getting down to the bottom isn't he? yeah that is a truss and he tells you the other intention of compression and you can idealize it as just little straight lines with no thickness to them and it hinges in pins come on man if you even need to read that here's a little bit of truth here's a column bolted to a big old footing what is that called what is it what's an anchor but I mean would you call that a free support pin support pin okay the only thing I got pin is right interestingly enough if you just bolted down like this to just a piece of concrete you can't move it around you probably couldn't hardly move it with a tractor but you get some really good wind loads on these things and it acts like a pin connection so one of the things is the load will require that unless you do I don't know what this for the plate and this for the footing and maybe some piles down here they're not going to let you call that a fixed in because they found out it's just too easy for this thing to do a little bit of rotation which in effect turns it into a fixed I'm sorry a pinned condition up here at the top you can make this pretty much fixed yet to probably put another steel plate in there welded in a diagonal plate to reinforce that web and then if this one rotates 0.6 degrees that one will probably rotate the same but it does cost money to do that and a lot of times people you know will not bother with it long pinned loads we've talked about loads all over the place in 345 345 for example you had beams and beams usually there was no beam here obviously I wrote another one in there ooh thank you I should know I got a big old mark there holler at me when I do that no I guess that beam was supposed to be there because that beam is taking half of the load as his fair share and half of that load as his fair share and so that's the load that goes on that beam you should be able to turn a pound per square foot load into a pound per foot load on a beam we have live loads and dead loads live loads are generally considered don't stay in the same place they can move around that would be people that would be chairs not the chairs you have those would probably be considered part of the dead load when you're working the loads up on the structures the live load could vary like truck loading if they do vary then you may have impact depends on the structure we don't consider impact in here we assume that live loads are in effect static loads they just can move around band loads is considered a live load you already learned how to get pressures on buildings in 345 earthquake loads we don't do not that hard it's just one of the things you don't hardly have time for most of the loading come from SCE American Society of Civil Engineers they did this even though they weren't really a specification group they did such a nice job of it almost everybody just refers to them this is a typical page right here dance halls and ball rooms 100 pounds of square foot libraries back rooms where you really have a bunch of books 150 pounds of square foot there we go this is you 40 pounds of square foot corridors in school above the first floor 80 pounds of square foot first floor 100 pounds of square foot that's in the corridors so if you go outside there you'll find there are deeper beams underneath that then you'll find in here now I say deeper they may be the same depth but the beams in here probably go all to that wall and the beams that go across the hall are shorter so even though they may look the same side if you go down to the basement just to check it out you may find they look the same depth but they are stronger because they have more applied load according to the codes now there are things called codes and there are things called specifications the specifications don't have the force of law to go with them they don't have any penalties codes are the things that have the policemen along with them so for instance if you design something in the city of bryan or college station they'll have a code they may refer to a code that's just a standard code in fact and they'll just say we want you to design to this code except we want this little change the code itself will call to meet the legal requirements of that code you are supposed to use these specifications so the specifications will tell you how to do it and the code then refers to specifications for plumbing specifications for electrical specifications for steel design so on these are actually specs impact loads machinery building codes design specifications have these different international building code to have uniform building codes standard building code most of these have gone out of business they got tired of having three different ones so they all got together and hashed out so they could have a single code these are now kind of going out of style we already talked about structural steel the structural steel this is A-36 here's a high strength steel


Hello, and welcome to NewsClick. We are here to discuss a burning issue today. There have been a series of attacks on the minorities in Bangladesh for the last week or so. The attacks coincided with the Hindu Festival of Tulga Pooja. And today, we have an important guest with us to discuss the issue. We have Mr. Rashid Khan Menon, who is the president of the Workers' Party of Bangladesh. Welcome to the show, Mr. Menon. Thank you. One of the most important things that we wanted to discuss today is why are these attacks happening right now? What is the trigger? Well, the trigger is that there was a complaint that the Quran, the holy book of the Muslims, which is ever by the Muslim very much, was found at the feet of one of the idol, Ganesh. In Nanua Digi Par Pooja Mandap in Kumilla, there was a complaint, and so somebody from there telephoned the police. And the police came, and the OC took the Quran from the idol. And somebody made a video of the whole incident that the Hindus are doing this thing or something like that. And it was the start of the whole situation. It seems from the reports we learn that the person who has been arrested for this particular act actually was not part of the Hindu community. The police have said today a video has been showed to the journalists, and it has been already secured in the television media that one son, Ibarus, and his name as said by the police, he is a Muslim who lives nearby. He took this Quran and put it at the feet of the idol, and took away the border of the Ganesh along with him. And the video said like that. We said it from the very beginning that a Hindu or a man of the Hindu community cannot put these things like this because of the fact that they are having their own celebration. Why should they mark their own and put it in danger? They know that even something is said in their Facebook or that they are always the exception of an agitation expert. So why should they do it? And also a Muslim also who is a real Muslim, he can't just do it because of the fact that it is a holy thing for the Muslims. So from the beginning we told that it is a kind of spicy to start communal agitations and all of these in the country. And it happened like that. How to what extent do you feel that the democratic process in Bangladesh would be threatened by incidents like this? This is not a sudden incident. The anger has been building up over a few years. Secularism has been a part of our constitution. Our father, the nation, when he just came back from his Pakistani prison, he told the people of Bangladesh very openly and very strongly that Bangladesh should be a secular country. And the constitution also embodied this secularism as part of the one of the four principles of Bangladesh, democracy, secularism, nationalism, and socialism. So secularism was part of our constitution and part of our life. But unfortunately for us, I guess it will be a bit long, but I just want to tell you the background is that the anti-liberation forces did not want to agree to this position. And they started agitating that it is anti-religious. But what happened at the time? In 1972, anti-liberation forces tried to mark the do-go's of, again, Enchirong in Maminsing, but they failed. So that was the end of the whole thing. But after Enchirong, after the assassination of the father of the nation and his family, when Geo-Roman took over as a military ruler, he introduced, he introduced Bismillah Ramallah Rahim in our constitution, in the introductory part of the constitution, and also done away with the principle of secularism from the constitution. And that's how it started. And he started to, who the Jama'at-e-Islamic people who were directly involved with the Pakistani army, he brought back Professor Ghulam Azam, who is the head of the Jama'at-e-Islamic with the Pakistani passport in the name of seeing his early mother. And after that, he remained in the country, he remained in the country and never went back. And how this thing started and the communal propaganda started going on. Also, some of the steps by the Indian, Indians or the Indian Authority, also gave a clue to the communal forces to raise the communal issue. As in the name of anti-Indian propaganda, they started the anti-communal, or communal propaganda in the country. Like the Farakha village, like the investment of the Marawaris in Bangladesh, like the low quality of the relic material, so something like that. All the Indian steps were turned into a communal steps by the Indians or something like that. So anti-Indian propaganda has become the main force of the ruling party, a ruling group of that time. And those anti-Indian propaganda was nothing other than communalism. And then after the assassination of the other militant ruler, he just took over power. And when a big struggle was going on toward the country against his rule for about nine years, he all of a sudden in 1988, he introduced one provision in the Constitution saying that the struggle would be the state religion of Bangladesh. So at that time, all the political parties, both our religion BNP, who were then in all the opposition and all the rest of the parties, even all the citizens, they opposed it. And there was a journalist strike in the country. But even then, as he had the hand-picked parliament in his favor, so he got the Constitution amended and it remained. So after a long struggle, after that, Vikram Zia took power in 1992 after the overthrow of General Shat, I want to give you the history because you'd understand that. General Shat, Vikram Zia took the help of Zamat Islami, who were then the liberation forces, Zamat Islami to be in the government. And also, they started, they gave the citizenship which I was taken away from Professor Gola Mazam, the leader of the Zamat Islami, gave back the citizenship. And Zamat Islami was again rehabilitated in the country. And there was an absolute polling of the Petronomists in the country. So he dispatched throughout the country and they were rehabilitated and they started raising many issues, including our national song, our national flag, and the Constitution House. And it continued like this and went to, after 2001, Zamat Islami, the BNP did not only get the support of the Zamat Islami, it now took them, along with them to the power, two of the Zamat, leading Zamat people, Walana Nizami and Muzahidi, they became ministers. They flew the national flag and after 2001 election, there was a serious communal violence in Bangladesh. So I would say that as a communal violence, it was a attack against the minorities throughout the country. And the Hindus even boycotted, they started, they started boycotted the Durgapurja and started Khot Puyya.  I don't know if you understand Khot Puyya or not that. As a mark of protest, as a mark of protest. So there was a big human cry and there was a big struggle against BNP Zamat rule. After the 2008 election, in where we got, in the alliance with the Amalik, we promised that the country would be done on the basis of non-communal and democratic principles. And following that, in the 15th Amendment of the Constitution, which was made in 2013, 2011, sorry, 2011, the secularism was brought back to the constitution. And also other provisions like that, the any religion should not be given, it refers to other religion and the government would definitely, the state would have to interfere in any matter, which is against the religion. But unfortunately, Amalik did not want to replace Islam as a state religion because they thought that angered the people, it would be, it would be opposed by the people, general people because by this time, the communal division and the communal situation in Bangladesh was a big issue because at the same time, beside Bangladesh, there was Islamic revivalism throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East, which had its impact in Bangladesh. And also in that year, the Pujahidins in Afghanistan, they won the, they took the power in Afghanistan. And many of the Bangladeshi Muslim community people, they went to Afghanistan as a side, they came back and they started an underground on outfit organizations, jihadi organizations like Harkatu, Jihadi, like that.  Also during the period of BNP and Jamaat, there was an attack on Orville's mass public meeting where only leaders of Orville including Shekhazena was there and about Ganesh was shown in that. And now it has been found that it is not only the Slavic leaders, Harkatu, Jihadi, but also the BNP, the top leaders of BNP like the son of Khalilazia and others were involved. So this has created a, this is the background of the whole thing. And after that, after 2008, when the secularism was brought back to the prostitution, though state religion Islam could not be replaced. But one very big thing happened is that the trial of the collaborators and about eight of them were sentenced to death and two of those ministers, as I mentioned Nizami and Huzahidi were hanged after that, the verdict of the tribunal. So at that time, Jamaat-e-Islami also tried to re-stabilize the government with the BNP, BNP also tried to re-stabilize the government and there was a big move by them. It was about from 2013 to 2014, Bangladesh was absolutely at the standstill. They started looting Arshan, killing, filling the trees of the road, almost taking the whole movement of the vehicles and stuff like that. But we overcome that, we overcome that and 2014 election took place and the Alliance again came back to power. I need a question. Sir, if I can just do you- But by this time, by this time, the communal division in the country and the communalism in the country has displaced so much that unfortunately for my younger generation, already I'm not in that way, you can only run communal principle. That's how we also find that the present government acts in rather contradictory ways. On the one hand, you're writing textbooks, changing history. Yes, that's right. That's right. They compromise with Hibajit-e-Islami's question. We oppose it. You know, when the amendment was passed in the parliament, it is Barkaswati and the Jatya Swasengal, we oppose that and we put a lot of dissent in that during the voting, but we could not do anything about it. And also during this Hibajit-e-Islami also, it is in our feet of the Komi Madrasas, based on the Komi Madrasas and they have a very big thing. Now the Madrasa education has spate like anything in the Bangladesh. The general, it is now going to surpass the general education even. And unfortunately, all the governments, if you call it, how will you call it, if you call it, the MP government, all the governments, they prefer to say that they are patronizing the Madrasa education. And this Komi Madrasas has become the main of communalism in Bangladesh. And it is the Hibajit-e-Islami and Bangladesh government and now really has come our way with that. Now, one of the things that we are very curious about is how does the Indian policy making and the decisions which India take influence Bangladesh, especially the anti-migrant, immigrant rhetoric, they see it very... Yes, I just want to tell you one very important thing that unfortunately, though I should not say it because it is an internal affair of India, but it has impacted Bangladesh in the sense that the BJP leadership, including Omisha, who is the Home Minister of India, during the election campaign, both in the Lok Sabha and also in the Rajya Sabhas, they just blasted Bangladesh like anything. They wanted to say that it is the Bangladesh who come to Bangladesh as the migrants and they are Bangladeshis in India. They have gone there as an economic migrant. We Bangladesh always denies and we Bangladesh does not agree. But it is the blasting of the BJP's, it hurts very much the Bangladesh sentiment. Second is CAE, CAE, what do you call it for sure? CAE, that's right. CAE. It has also created a sort of feeling in Bangladesh that now the priorities of countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan are being ruled and are being saved and they will be given citizenship. And so it says that it creates an unfortunate situation in Bangladesh in the sense that both the minorities and the majorities have become really very uncertain about the future because that means that the CAE would rather harm the minorities in Bangladesh in the way that Bangladesh's communal forces would always take advantage of the CAE. Number one, number two is the NRC. That's right, the National Legislative Citizenship. The NRC in Assam and in Bengal and also all over India has also created an impact. And also the Kashmir question though Bangladesh has a position that it is a part of India. But when the things happened in Kashmir, you know, here are forces, very much strong forces in Bangladesh because during Pakistan time, Kashmir was always an issue for Pakistan to divert the democratic movement in Bangladesh. So it is embedded in Bangladesh's mind. So people feel that the Muslims in Kashmir has been really under threat by the ruling Indian government. And also the incidents of communal happenings in many places like in Delhi and other places. That's also an impact. You mean that these incidents become a reason or an excuse for the radical elements to... For the communal forces, yes. For the communal forces, yes. I remember when I was a student leader in 1964, I was the vice-president of the university students' union. At that time, the Herzl Ball incident took place in Kashmir, you remember that. And that created a riot in Calcutta. And in that, it is that the riot took place in Kulla. And it was still sponsored riot in Bangladesh and also in Dhaka also. So any incident in India, whether though it is less now because it is Bangladesh, but still it is a serious impact. And now the communal forces has increased their influence in Bangladesh. So it has become... The issues are there in the YouTube, in the Facebook, the propaganda is against these things. If you go through the YouTube, so Bangladesh, the Islamic forces, they are always big propaganda against these things. Do you think these radical elements, these Islamist propaganda, is going to play a more important role in the politics of your country in the coming months? Or will the government be able to find some way to manage this crisis? Well, I don't think it is only a political issue, it is also a social issue because, you know, there is a social division has taken place. A communal mentality has grown up among the young people and other things. So this is to afford not only politically, but also socially also. So it is absolute political mobilization and social mobilization that is. But unfortunately, the government has taken a very strong stand against the government in Kumbhila and also in other places, though there can be very strong action. And also that the Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, is very vocal about it. They have a very strong statement and also directed the home minister and the other ministers and his party people to go and vote for the people and say like this. But this is, but it is going to continue for some time, it is really difficult one. And unfortunately, if the compromising attitude of the government goes on like this, it will be taken after the fall of Kabul, the Taliban, the Taliban's, the communal forces has got very much encouragement from that. And there are many underground outfits are working. The Islamic Jihadist outfits are here, called the ISI, not ISI sponsors, I would say ISI encourage outfits are working, about 19 of them are working. The government has taken a very strong against the Islamic militants, but they couldn't weed out the Islamic militants. So after the Afghanistan issue, Afghanistan's victory, they have become encouraged about it. It will continue for some time. You know, often we find in India, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, these kind of, especially in India, we've seen recently that when there is a communal incident, many people call it a way to distract from other issues. We saw last year in Bangladesh as well, there was a very difficult reopening of the textile industry. People had to walk back to, you know, the deadline was advanced by a few days. Then we saw workers protesting, the teachers protesting, we see a lot of protests, but then we, the communal issues make the headlines. Is this a distraction taking our attention away from something? It is a distraction, no doubt about it, but fortunately for us, now it is not been encouraged by the government or other forces, but the communal forces would always take advantage of this situation. The distraction is made, now it is being said that they want to destabilize the government because the new election will be in 2023 and also in 24. So on the part of the ruling party, they want to say that the issue of the election is there and so they want to create a situation that the minorities get a scan and don't go for voting or something like that. And also other economic issues are there also. But in India, I understand that now in India, the PISEL movement are going on in a very big way, and other movements are going on. This is definitely a distraction. This is a distraction from the issues. In Bangladesh also, the whole issue of other issues like the government's workers, like the youth workers are being subsided by this instance. If I remember correctly, your party had also said that we should return to the 1972 constitution. We also said, we always said, not only said, I told you that... How would it help? That's what I'm wondering. What is the problem that it would solve? When the existence of religion stays strong as a state religion and secularism, it is contradictory. It is contradictory. Everybody is taking advantage of that. Now, not only the Islamists, but also even the ruling party people, the ex-mayor of Dhaka has said yesterday that it is impossible to replace Islam as a state religion. And so everybody is now taking advantage of that. So it is very important that the constitution should be amended. But why before that also, the total people's mobilization, the social mobilization, the Christian mobilization is needed to make the ground for those events. All right. Thank you very much for joining us, Mr. Rashid Khan-Renan. Thank you for watching NewsClick. Thank you for joining our show and please keep watching us on YouTube, on Facebook and on Instagram.


Hi, my name is Simone Neely, and I will be talking today about the future of e-commerce. Of course, this is a very lofty subject. Every slide in this presentation probably deserves to have its own presentation. And we won't cover everything together today, but I do hope that this presentation inspires you to think about new ways to help your shoppers meet their user needs through product and to think about where the direction of commerce is going and how far we've come. So who am I exactly? I'm Simone. I am currently the Product Director of Commerce over at CNN. We run a product review site called CNN Underscored. It's an online shopping guide for the best in style, tech, health, travel, and all of the reviews are written by highly educated journalists who do all the research for you to help you make the best purchase decision that you need. Recently, before this, I was a Product Director over at Food Network, HGTV and Discovery, also focusing on commerce. And in a past life, I also worked on product teams at People, Sports Illustrated, Warner Brothers, and Sundance Now. All you really need to know is that I spend a lot of time thinking about how is the world changing in e-commerce space and what exactly can product managers do to solve user needs. And of course, this chat is called the Future of Commerce, but do I truly know the future? Of course not. No one can predict world events or trends or fads or technological advances or pandemics. And also just because something has worked historically in commerce doesn't mean that it always will in the future. But I consider that the fun of working in product is that you're always growing and changing your strategy based on what's happening in the ecosystem. So this chat is really my attempt at looking at the future of commerce as it stands today. A little bit of context about this chat before we dive in too. I just want to clarify that this is really mostly focused on U.S. based insights. We are coming out of a pandemic. There is a rapidly changing state of the world. The U.S. right now is making a lot of strides in getting Americans vaccinated. I think the last stat was about 42 percent of folks are fully vaccinated. And that number is growing constantly with the CDC. Really lessening restrictions in public gatherings and social events and travel. That being said, I just want to be conscious of the fact that the United States is in a pretty different place than many other countries in the world. For example, India right now, the pandemic is definitely pushing the healthcare system to its limits. So I just want to be conscious that I make a lot of generalizations in this presentation about how the pandemic has altered e-commerce, but it's very, very U.S. based. Also, I just want to clarify, of course, the pandemic didn't invent the shift towards online shopping, but it definitely accelerated it. So in points of this particular presentation, you'll see me talk about where the pandemic has had long-term effects in our online shopping behaviors, but also some of the trends that already were in play before the pandemic took place. So where are we right now in the e-commerce space? It's pretty crazy. 150 million people worldwide bought something online for the first time in 2020. You can imagine this is really expanding the overall addressable market of people who aren't even willing to buy something online rather than step into a store. And just in the U.S., the growth year over year in revenue from e-commerce increased 44% from 2020 to 2021. That's versus the 15% increase from 2019 to 2020. So as I mentioned, still years past, the growth of e-commerce has been undeniable, but during the pandemic, it really exploded as people were stuck at home and needed to meet their needs from home and not at the mall. And definitely worth noting that during the pandemic, there were certain industries that profited and others that were hurt and just wanted to call out some of the differences, places like online grocers, food delivery, video streaming, alcohol, of course, and home improvement. All of the things that we really indulged in, I guess, when we were stuck at home really grew during this time. And we've noticed long tail places like online grocers and food delivery actually have sustained a lot of the growth because even though people are now slowly able to leave the house and go out to eat at restaurants or shop at their local supermarket, the benefit and convenience of online shopping for groceries has become undeniable. And now that people have given it a chance, a lot of them are continuing to exhibit that behavior. On the flip side, of course, airlines, movie theaters, cruises, lodging, anything that included gatherings or travel really got hit pretty badly by the pandemic, but they are making their way back. And we anticipate that there's going to be actually an explosion of travel once the restrictions are lifted because people have been stuck at home for quite some time. So a lot of people will be checking off the bucket list of their lives, all the different places that they've wanted to visit, but didn't know if they would have a chance to. Well, now is their chance to. So we'll definitely be seeing a lot of the e-commerce industries shift dramatically over the next even year or so after coming out of the pandemic. And so it brings me to what are sort of the future thinking commerce trends that I'll be talking through today. There are three that really have stuck out to me in the last year that I imagine having really long tail, I guess proliferation down the line. The first is this concept of bringing the brand to the user through targeting. The second is driving conversion through aspiration. And the third is curing shopping analysis paralysis. And I'll dig into each one of these, but I truly believe that these are some major psychological tenants that product managers are using to think about the new kind of e-commerce shopper. So let's go into the first one. The first one is bringing the brand to the user. We definitely live in the age of aggregation. Social media like Facebook and Instagram shopping giants like Amazon, Walmart have really normalized this concept of brand aggregation on online platforms. So when you have every brand possible in front of you, it becomes ever so much more important for there to be targeting and personalization in a commerce experience to really stand out from in store experiences. This is where online commerce can really, really thrive. There are a lot of, a lot of this is coming from a change in just the way that people perceive brand loyalty and the way that people even start looking for products. So for example, searches today, they typically start with the product and not the brand. 63% of e-commerce searches actually start on Amazon today. And only 22% of those searches include a brand name. You can imagine when was the last time that you looked up something on Amazon like buying spinach, you most likely type spinach and not a certain brand of spinach. So definitely there are a lot of different user behaviors and considerations at play here when you're talking about approaching product purchases from an aggregator standpoint. But this isn't just because of the aggregation platforms. A lot of this is just changing in terms of brand loyalty behaviors across generations. So you'll notice in my nifty little timeline here that boomers have probably the highest loyalty where they show to have the highest propensity for preference between private label and national brands while millennials and Gen Z tend to have much less. Millennials in general have low loyalty to brand names and are more likely to save money or invest more in travel and experiences as opposed to material things. And Gen Z, we're just learning things about this new generation of folks born in 1996 to 2012, but they really have the lowest loyalty so far to brand names and price is a really big driver. To them, we're looking at user generated content, word of mouth reviews, really putting trust in people's experiences versus ads. So what exactly does this new kind of behavior mean for product managers? Well, it means that it's really important to bring the brand to the user and not the other way around. We're no longer living in the age of malls where people can go to the store and check out specifically Forever 21 or specifically, you know, people are going to many different stores all in one place online. So we as commerce product managers really need to develop a strong data management strategy that will allow us to bring these brands to users. One of the very obvious methods of this is ad targeting. We know from Facebook and Instagram that these are highly targeted advertisements and a lot of them are very intricate and sophisticated with videos and hotspots and Instagram direct checkout and more, but what they're really doing is they're looking at the content ecosystem that you live in and what are the commerce products that they can recommend to you based on your behavior. A lot of examples of how product managers can use this kind of ad targeting is, for example, cart drop off retargeting if your customer went through your conversion flow but dropped off right before they actually made a purchase. You can retarget them with the same product and say, hey, you loved this t-shirt previously. Maybe you want to come back and reconsider actually purchasing it and pulling the trigger on it. Also, things like recent purchasing behavior, custom audiences, life event targeting, these are all methods that product managers leverage a lot in partnership with marketers to make sure that commerce products are getting the kind of conversion that they're hoping for. Another one that's very, I guess, buzzword, wordy lately, but growing in methodology across all of commerce is, of course, machine learning. Stitch Fix has a really great example of the way that they leverage machine learning to really meet a user need. What they do is they look at client data so they see maybe what your body type is or what kind of items of clothing you wear most regularly during the week based off of your job, then they will look at merchandise data to look at what are the actual features of the clothes, and then they'll also look at the feedback data. They look through all of the reviews of all of their customers on particular items as well as your particular preferences of how things fit on you. Between this, they use all of this data to power machine learning algorithm that really connects you to clothes that are perfect for you. Some other examples where product managers are using machine learning is for recommendation engines, marketing and homepage personalization, and also sending coupons to folks who might be your highest lifetime value customers. There are a lot of ways to leverage machine learning once you have that data management strategy in place. And then lastly, sophisticated filtering. This is a pretty obvious one, but one that has really grown in not just importance, but sophistication and intricacy in the last few years. So one of my personal favorite examples is Wayfair. They have 22 million products across thousands of brands. And if you buy a couch from Wayfair, when somebody asks you where you got it, you likely will say Wayfair as opposed to the actual brand that Wayfair is selling. And that's because Wayfair really helps you filter down by every imaginable characteristic. Design, color, price, the different features, which direction the sectional sit in, whatever it might be for your couch or chair or piece of furniture, all of their filtering is really built off of very clean product data, review data, pricing data and more. And once you have this kind of sophisticated filtering system, you can start improving search. You can create editorial experiences based off of filters, filter-based destination URLs. There are tons of different, I guess, product features that can come out of this methodology. Let's talk about driving conversion through aspiration. It's no question with huge commerce giants like Pinterest and Instagram that inspiration definitely drives purchasing decisions. And helping a customer meet their goals and live the lives that they aspire to live is definitely a psychological tactic that a lot of product managers and marketers use when it comes to commerce. From a product standpoint, it's really important to demonstrate to your shopper that there's value beyond product metadata. So really appealing to a person's psychological, social, or economic aspiration rather than just their reality definitely sells. This is very clear just from looking at how popular social commerce has become in the last few years. 60% of Gen Z years use Instagram to discover new brands and 48% of Americans 18 to 34 have purchased through social media. That social affirmation is a huge driver. But it's not just social affirmation that demonstrates shopper value. There's definitely the ability to sell products in context. So if you can recreate the environment in which a product would live, such as what it looks like in context to other things in the room or what that product will make you feel or how it will make you look by the end of it, you definitely increase the propensity to purchase. So what does this mean for product managers? It means that it's really important to demonstrate shopper value through aspirational experiences. We've got to go beyond just product metadata, right? What do you do with that product metadata and how do you present it in a way that encourages and inspires people to purchase? So one of my favorite examples here is Target. They have a whole system of 360 shoppable rooms that allow you to see what a product will look like not just in person, but within a whole environment of many other products working together. I, as you can probably tell, don't have a lot of home decor savvy. And I definitely rely on things like this to help me understand how different products can work together, because I don't particularly have the creativity or the skill to be able to match things up like an interior designer working for Target might. Other examples of inspirational placement like this include hotspot videos and photos, which are very popular now, and products that are featured in user reviews and photos to see how other people might style a product. There's also goal-based shopping. So my absolute favorite example of this is King Arthur Flower, partially because I myself love to bake for fun. But it's really easy to say, okay, selling flower could be very boring or straightforward. You just post flower on Amazon and hope somebody buys it who's looking for flower. But King Arthur Flower, this brand has gone above and beyond in this idea of goal-based shopping. They show tons of guides around how to make pies, scones, any kind of dessert imaginable. And then they show you what are the tools that you can buy that will get you to make it. So next time you create your next masterpiece, you can go step by step and actually learn while you're using their products. There are tons of goal-based shopping examples in product management, things like tutorials, learning gamification, lifestyle 101s. You can imagine a case where somebody might say, here are the 10 products that you need in order to successfully become a vegan and let go of meat forever, whatever it might be. It's really helping a user achieve their ultimate goal. And it's so important to understand your user's intent in order to be able to deliver really successful experiences like this. And then there's environmental context. This is really the idea that you might love a painting, but you don't know necessarily what it'll look like in your home. And you want to get context and see if it's something that you might want to wake up next to every day. IKEA does an amazing job at this. They, in their app, have an augmented reality feature that allows you to see an item, how it will actually be fitting in your home. So that helps address a lot of things like size, color, shape, dimension, but also just does it fit in with your life? Does it fit in with your environment? There are a lot of examples of product managers launching e-commerce features like this, such as Try At Home. This is something that Warby Parker became very famous for where they send you the, you know, multiple different types of glasses and whichever ones you don't like you return, but you actually get to try it and see in the environment, aka your own face, does it fit your life? And if not, you can return it. But if so, you get the chance to keep it and make a purchase that you're really happy with. And lastly, there's the idea of curing shopping analysis paralysis. So there is this concept on the internet, which is the infinite shelf. There is absolutely no brick and mortar store in the world that can combat Amazon's entire catalog. They have, I believe, 12 million products at the moment. And product managers can really help indecisive, overwhelmed shoppers confidently pull the trigger on a purchase by providing all of the most important information. There's really an underlining here of consumer education. Shoppers will compare the features of your product against other competitors.  This, as you can see, this is the order of top influencing factors that users have explicitly said they consider when they're making a purchase. So making it as easy as possible for your shoppers to compare products will increase conversion. And this really comes down to a much bigger question of how do we get closer to replicating the in-person benefit of shopping? Obviously, there are certain things that we haven't gotten quite there yet on. So things like try before you buy or physically interacting with a product or talking with an in-store associate to make your choice. Those are some of the greatest benefits of shopping in person. How do we as product managers not only replicate but build on that experience by bringing it online? So what this means for product managers is we have to build experiences that address both this online and in-store factor that drive conversions.  It's super important for your users to know that they are getting the best price. That is the number one, competitive pricing is the number one factor for most purchases and it's only increasing with what we saw earlier in this presentation of Gen Z behaviors. So a lot of this comes down to not only the product value but the communication that you have with users. My favorite example of this is from Honey. Honey is a rewards cashback and coupon service that allows you to get discounts when you finally hit the checkout of many different merchants and their browser extension actually allows you to check out what are the coupons that you can apply but if there are no coupons to apply, they will explicitly tell you there is no buyer remorse here. You have the best price. They're reassuring you saying you no longer have to delay making this purchase because we've already done all the research for you. This is the best that you can do. Feel free to pull the trigger and buy that beautiful coat or whatever you've got in mind. Other examples of instilling price confidence through product management are price drop alerts, in stock alerts, pricing charts, comparing pricing, discount indicators. You would be amazed even if it's not that big of a discount, people will always feel better if they know that there was a higher price previously and they're getting it on sale and a lot of companies are looking at things like pay as you go options for high value purchases so people might not necessarily be able to pay for a couch tomorrow but maybe over the course of four months they can do a monthly installment and pay it off over time so people will feel confident that they can actually make that purchase. And then there's also easy feature comparison. This is kind of the equivalent of the in-store assistant that helps you figure out for your particular needs, for your particular feature request, what is the best product for you. You might not necessarily need the craziest, most expensive, most luxury TV if you're not using let's say 3D glasses or 4K streaming services. You might want something that's better for your price or better for your family, whatever it might be. So a great example is definitely CNN underscored because they feature tons of well-researched charts and reviews that help shoppers find the perfect product or service for their particular needs. In this example, we're talking about the Capital One venture credit card, how does it stack up to other types of credit cards and why might that be the best choice for you. Other examples of these kinds of feature comparisons include testing videos, comparison charts, editorialized recommendations by life circumstance, and one area that's really growing in product management is chatbots and customer service helpers that actually help answer your questions as you go through your product purchasing experience. There are also reassuring reviews and user-generated content. So Rent the Runway does a phenomenal job of showing many different types of users who try on the same dress, but it shows things like their measurements and how they style the outfit so that people who are looking at these reviews can find clothes that fit them best and also can get inspired by how to wear them. Other examples of these kinds of reassuring reviews are social media affirmations and testimonials. There's also sampling. Sampling is essentially giving something away for quote-unquote free in order for people to feel confident in the purchase. So Casper does an amazing job at this. They had a huge problem ahead of them. I guess a challenge where mattress companies, we all probably have been to one before where you go lay on a mattress, you decide, yes, this is very comfortable, I'd like to take it home with me. How exactly does Casper sell a mattress to someone that's never laid on it? Well, the anxiety of not testing it is relieved by this 100 night free trial that they offer plus a free shipping promise.  The reality is most people are A, going to love a mattress that's soft and comfortable and personalized for them and B, probably don't want to go through the difficult process of returning a full-on mattress. This example of sampling has really been the core to a lot of their business, but there are other examples like offering your customers to try multiple sizes or styles at home and only pay for what they keep. We're offering product samples for their next purchase of new products that you're trying to promote. And then lastly, there's contextual sizing. This is really important for kind of removing the distance between the in-store and the online experience. My personal favorite example of this is Away, the luggage company, where they show a gift that literally has somebody packing up that particular version of a suitcase to show you how many shoes can you include in there, how many sweaters, how thick are those sweaters, all of the things that you would really feel much more comfortable in person knowing if you could play around with it, they actually go through the steps of demonstrating it for you, which gives a lot more, I guess, confidence in the purchase you're making for the particular type of trip you're taking. Other examples of contextual sizing include creating photos that have scale to common items or people, showing in-depth videos of what things look like when they're being stored or handled, as well as leveraging AR, VR, and 3D tours. So these are just some of the commerce trends that I think are really important to be keeping in mind as a product manager to suit your user's needs. But I would love to hear from other folks who are listening in on what your companies are doing to really help bridge that gap between in-person shopping and online, as well as really elevating the online shopping experience to provide value that has never existed in store. I would love to hear more about it and I hope that this particular presentation inspires you in whichever industry you're in to really think about different ways of serving customer needs. Thank you and please, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or on LinkedIn. And also, if you need some references to the resources that I posted in this presentation, please feel free to check out the resources section on product school. Thank you so much.