Hey, what's up, guys? I'm going to show you today how to make a YouTube thumbnail from Instagram stories. I think all of us are a lot of people on social media are familiar with TikTok stories and Instagram stories. They're very similar. We all use them and it was right under our nose the whole time. So I'm going to show you guys today. It's real simple.  There I am, guys. Find anything that would be good, you know, thumbnail or something. You can normally just take a screenshot of any video this and that. So I didn't have one set aside. So let's just go with any pictures. All right, we'll go with this one right here. So this is just something that I randomly had to take a second to go and make a still frame of myself, but you could just do it of any video that you want. So there you go. You can kind of arrange it however you want. And then basically from here, the only things you really need on a thumbnail is, you know, a pretty much a picture of somebody's face, like if it's you then your face. And just some sort of teaser with involving words usually helps kind of a bit. Also having like a picture of something as well. For me, those are kind of like the three things. And Instagram is honestly pretty good fonts. I'm not going to lie. So let's do a sample video title. So there it is from right there. It's very easy. You just drag like wherever you want, you know, and if this is honestly a great font, you can mess with all the colors and things like that. You could change it to anything. You could change like the way the background is, you know, you make it so like it's white with the background of a color or you can make it, you know, the main color and things like that. I would always recommend anything to like give it like a shadow. In case parts of the video is hard to read it if it was just one color. So you do that. And then you pretty much go on Google and start downloading images that you want. So you'll hit this icon right here.  Eventually you'll see like the reds for next to that 57 degrees is a picture. And right there, it's like all your pictures you could just add them however you want. You can go crop them. So like if there's a specific picture that you have with that would fit great for the video, you just go and crop it. So it's nice and small. Normally you could just go and crop it out, right? So I could just do this, you know, pretty much make it, you know, a good size. It would look probably a little better if it was cropped and then maybe something else on the other side. Usually I kind of try not to leave too much blank space in mind personally while also making it not like super cluttered. So you kind of can see what's going on. That's usually what I would go for. And then yeah guys, just whenever you're done, there's so much other editing that you could do within this app too.  And then from there you go back to your photos. And there it is right there. And then you go ahead and edit.  You could crop it. So if it's right, sometimes I'm like too close in the picture that I have and I kind of need to back it up or just make it fit just right. So then yeah, guys, I mean, you could pull whatever you wanted on the left there and crop it and you are pretty much done. The only thing you'd have to worry about is that it can only be up to like two megabytes for the thumbnail. A lot of these pictures for some reason, like when you take like screenshots or even these other apps and stuff, it just comes out extremely high quality. We might need to like make the picture a little bit smaller in some instances, but for the most part, it should be great. But yeah, guys, that's how you make YouTube thumbnails easily from Instagram stories. If you like the video, like the video, I'm having a great day out here. Hopefully, having a great day at home. See you guys all the next video. Peace.


Hey, everyone. This is Carlos. I'm the founder and CEO at the Product School. Today I'm here with Michelle Parsons, who's the Chief Product Officer at Hinge. Hey, Michelle. Hey, Carlos. Thanks so much for having me on today. Thank you for getting the show. I know you are very active in the product community, and I love that. And I think it's time now to have you with us and learn more about your own experience growing as a leader. So let's start from the very beginning. How did you get your first PM job? Yeah, I mean, I think even before my first PM job, I think I didn't even really know that product was a role, was an option for a career. Kind of going back to my undergrad years, I was pre-med. I was pretty straight in there on that path. And it was my senior year of college that I was kind of having an existential crisis. You know, should I actually go down this pathway and invest a lot more time and money into this field that I wasn't as, I think, passionate about anymore. I still wanted to really help people. But having kind of spent so many years in the summers working in hospitals and with doctors, I started to kind of get a bit jaded, right? There are some pretty big foundational problems with the health care system that really expanded beyond health care and to education and access and other things of that nature. And so I took a step back and I said, well, you know, I'm not sure that I want to necessarily go into medical school now. So let me see what else is out there. What else can I do? I ended up joining Teach for America and I ended up teaching high school science. Like, well, I know science really well. I was an education minor. And so I said, why don't I kind of take this pathway in? And if I noticed that a foundational problem to medical care and access is education. It's kind of a predisposition there, level of education and level of access. How do I help, you know, really teach the next generation of kids? And so I spent two years in the classroom really starting to realize that, wow, there is a lot of gaps here as well. I'm from South Texas. So I was very aware of, you know, underfunded, underserved communities. I grew up in one. I'm from a single mom household myself and, you know, something that I was very much like in my world view. And so I started realizing, hey, I don't have the tools or the resources to actually, you know, move my students in the direction that we're supposed to be going. So I ended up having to just leverage a lot of things that I created. Started searching online, what tools can I use? What exercises can I kind of download? How do I incorporate technology into my classroom since I don't actually have textbooks for every one of my students? It was then that I started realizing, okay, well, now that I have these resources, I'm constantly going online for. How do I actually track and measure whether the things that I'm teaching are actually having the outcomes that I think they're having? And so I started leveraging basically an Excel tracker. I mean, one of the things I think that Teach for America really instills is backwards planning, objective focus, decision-making, and, you know, education really. And so I basically built a tracker. I put every single objective into this Excel tracker with all of my students, you know, aligned every single lesson in question that I was, you know, that I was teaching to these and would weekly look back and say, all right, you know, are my kids actually making progress in movement in this area? You know, if so awesome, which ones aren't? How do I pair these two together? If all my students are not succeeding in this one area, let me like go back and reflect. Maybe it was something that I did. Maybe it was a way in which I was teaching that in that particular day or that objective. And so all of these little things, you know, how do you organize a classroom?   And really when I reflect on kind of products now, a lot of the things that I was doing in that classroom actually have a lot of parallels into what product management is. So it was then right after I was teaching, I was determining, you know, what's my next move? What do I want to do next? And I found ed tech and I said, hey, this seems like a way to actually increase my scale, increase my reach beyond just a classroom of 160 kids. So I joined a small ed tech startup called Alley Upe. That was an incubated startup within Pearson Education, the big publisher. And so it was a really great way for me to first, like kind of get my first exposure product, but also very much step into it. I really started as a content metadata analyst. And so not necessarily on product, but given that we only had 30 people in the whole company, you know, you're very much able to kind of reach your hand into various aspects of, hey, this needs to get done and who's willing to pick it up. Basically you've been doing product management even before they get you the title. I think so, yeah, absolutely. In certain aspects, right? Definitely not the full product manager job, but things around it, you know, customer interviews, spot analysis, working with data scientists and data to uncover different patterns. And so always around it, and it wasn't until kind of my next role after that startup that I was really able to dig in and start working directly with engineers and solving my own kind of areas. I find your story really inspiring for many reasons. One of them, like you following your passion to help people apply to healthcare first, then education, now technology, but always finding ways to connect your skills with your user. And I think that sends a really powerful message to people out there who are trying to figure out what to do next and they might be hearing messages such as, well, you need to have an MBA from this school or you need to have a certain degree from this other school. Well, I'm sure all of that can help. That's not the only way. And there's a lot of things that someone can do today now and you are a clear example. And obviously now we continue discussing your career, but I love how you actually got started. No, yeah, I appreciate that. And I think that's spot on. There's no one clear path into products management. And I think as a field and as the industry has really taken off and more and more people become interested in it, I think there are some avenues that you can kind of put yourself into to gain that experience more quickly. But I definitely have heard a lot of interesting stories from, I was talking to Ravi Mehta who's the former CPO of Tinder who said he showed up to Microsoft one day thinking he was doing a software engineering interview and he ended up in a product manager interview and it was totally by accident that this happened. But that kind of set his career off in product. And so I think there's many unique stories for how people can get into product for sure. It's funny because Ravi shared that his own story on the podcast and not so long ago. And I was looking at your professional career and you worked at other amazing companies such as Kayaks, Spotify, Netflix. Now you're the CPO at Hinge. And it happened in a relatively short period of time compared to when you started applying your official product management title. So kind of what happened there? How were you able to grow so fast in your career? Yeah, no, I think that's definitely true. It's always a question I get asked like, why did you do this? Look, I think there's a couple of things. So I don't wanna downplay the role of mentorship and advisors and people in my life around me who have really helped me when I have questions when I come with ideas to really support and enable. I think, as I mentioned, I'm from a single mom household. So the first person in my house, my family to go to college. And I really had to advocate for myself. I had to have like the gumption, the dryer to go out there and just knock on doors. Figuratively not literally, but reach out to people and just try and get advice for, hey, this is what I'm thinking I want to do. How should I go about it? Or here's how I'm thinking of going about things. How have you done it before? And I think that all of those things have equipped me with the baseline skills of just asking a lot of questions, which I think is directly tied into what makes a successful product manager or product's leaders. You have a lot of curiosity tied in with the ability to actually execute on that, right? Taking all those different pieces of information and then transform that into a plan and a vision and then execute upon it. So I think that's the initial, the other piece of product that I really love and gravitated toward was the balance of art and science as somebody who is infinitely curious and always daydreaming and always thinking about like the what ifs and the problems to solve. I tend to be very practical and pragmatic in my approaches to things. How do I take controlled risk and not just kind of go wild? But I think those two things that my science background coupled with just the insatiable urge to ask a lot of questions and then take all that input and then go put it into action has definitely helped me in my career, especially early on when you really need to showcase that you're able to execute and get things done, right? You want to build trust in you and I think that's really important and early on I was able to gain that trust. And I think that looking for help, whatever type of help it is that shows your first curiosity in growing but also certain level of vulnerability to say that you are here to learn and that also creates a deeper connection. So on the topic of mentorship, is there anything in particular that you would recommend for people who they've heard this kind of advice before but they don't really know how to find that mentor or group of mentors or whatever that might be that is really going to be a thought partner for them? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there's no one, you know, stop shop or one way to find mentors. I mean, there are a lot of programs out there. So I think that's one, right? You can go into a variety of different already established paths into finding mentors, finding advisors. I think one of the things, you know, those are more restrictive though, right? Cause there's a lot of people applying into those pathways. So one of the things that I did is look for people within my organization. So back when I was in that startup, we were nestled within the larger Pearson Education organization. So I just started looking at people who were in that, you know, in leadership or enrolled maybe one or two steps above me and saying, well, these people seem to be in areas that I want to gain some knowledge and skills in. Can I set up a meeting with them? Right? With very specific questions that I wanted to get to know or learn about. But also I think the key thing that really opened up the door for me with those individuals. So when I identified, I really had a very established, you know, agenda. Here's what I want to learn. Here's what I'm interested in doing. Here's how I'm going to apply it. The thing is really critical when you're dealing with how do you get someone to spend their time on something they don't know, right? They actually want to know that you're going to take this insights and go apply it in some way. Then I would follow up, right? Thank you for your time. And here's how I took all this information and here's what I did with it. Here was the outcome of that. Because I think it really showed people that I was listening and wow, if they invested their time in me, that could pay dividends, right? Maybe not for them as individuals but for the things that I could then go do and go impact. So, you know, that to me is really critical when even when people come to me for advice or mentorship, I really am looking for like, is this time well spent? Is this person coming prepared? Are they coming with questions? Are they coming with ways that they're going to apply this? And then what's that follow-up look like? Because follow-up is actually the hardest part of all of this. Once you've gotten that, do you maintain that relationship and do you add value back and forth, right? Across the table. Yeah, and you come from a teaching or an educator background, which you appreciate what it is to be on the other side. And now that you are a chief product officer and I'm sure you're also mentoring other people. An example of that is what you are doing right now sharing your story. Other than like, how do you go about picking the right mentees? Because I can imagine you have very limited time. Is there any advice you would give to people to find the right mentor and make sure that when that mentor receives that proposal, they pay attention. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, I think, A, it's like, well, when a person comes with an ask or a request with some questions, like, am I actually able to help? Do I have the skill set in the background and the experiences to add meaningful value here? Or do I know somebody else in my network who is maybe better equipped to help in this space, right? There might be things that I am stronger in and things that I'm not strong in, right? Like actually just having picked up this role here, I realized I actually haven't done a lot of like peer monetization work. I spent my life really in my career and consumer and search discovery, very much front end facing explore experience type of roles. And I was trying to get a handle on the whole world of monetization and how that works. I'm like, wow, I really don't know anything.  So I think it never stops, right? I'm looking for people who just have that spark and who are really able to articulate very clearly what they're looking for and what their plans and goals are. That to me is of critical importance. I think my mind is just wired that way. What's your outcome? Like, what are you doing or what are the areas you think you need to like grow or develop in or, you know, where you're struggling and then how can I then really discreetly, you know, pick where I can actually add value. It was just a really big amorphous. Like, I'd love to get into product but that's really hard for me to work with. I don't know kind of where you're starting or what areas you need to level up or refine in. Yeah, I see that all the time. This thing in Silicon Valley would say, but other people say yes.  The reality is the mentor also needs to perceive that this is a true interest in next steps. So there's actually another coffee and another coffee. And I think it's important to recognize that it's better to go deep with a few people and build that relationship and make sure there is a value exchange there rather than just having a first-time coffee with 25 foreign people and really just scratch the surface. Absolutely. In your case, I like that you recognize you're also learning. You mentioned it now. And I think it's also good to recognize how mentorship or the mentor role can change. Like maybe someone who was really helpful for you at some point in your career, now you're at different stage and you want to find different type of help, different type of mentors. That's okay. I think it's part of lifelong learning. You don't have to commit to the same person for the rest of your life as if it was a marriage. Absolutely. No, I think that's exactly spot on. And oftentimes those people in your network and your sphere can oftentimes recommend other people. And so that's been the case with me. I've recently had to dig in a little bit more around internationalization. How do we do that?  And so I think that that's really important just to continue to develop and build in those relationships for sure. So Michelle, for people who are not in the dating market and are not aware of Hinge, what does your product do and please give us an scale of the users? Yeah, absolutely. So Hinge is a mobile dating app. We are kind of in the same sphere as Tinder and Bumble and kind of the other apps that are out there. Our goal is really to drive meaningful connection. I think what sets us apart from other apps is our mission, our goal and our vision really is to be the dating app designed to be deleted. And that might just seem like a catchy tagline on the surface, but we really live, breathe and act with that motto in mind, with that tagline in mind. What does it mean to be designed to be deleted? Well, that really predicates that. We have ways to measure what deletion means and positively. So we wanna ensure that we are getting our users out on well-intentioned, great dates. So purposefully, our onboarding flow is much longer than our competitors, right? We purposely don't have a swipe mechanism that is very popular in other apps. We really make sure that you're taking time to get to know the person on the other side of that profile so that by the time that you do hit yes or no, you're excited about potentially getting to meet that person. And so we are, yeah, I mean, we've been growing exponentially. And so we're very excited about kind of our trajectory. I think that especially with the pandemic and everything that we've been going through as society in the past two years almost, it's crazy to even say that people, I think are looking for more authentic, more real ways to connect with each other, whether that be virtually or in person. And I think that we just have so much opportunity in this area to continue to press on that particular piece, right? You know, where you think about 10 years ago in the era of like Facebook and Instagram and just continuing filters curation and, you know, the facade almost, right? I think we've gotten really accustomed to that. And I think the past two years have like really almost like jolted us to say, wait a minute, like I'm not okay always and my life is not perfect. I'm not okay. And it's finally become okay to just say that. And I think what we're trying to do and what I'm really excited about is, you know, hinge is really well positioned to really own that intention space where we make it okay for you to just express your authentic self and not this curated set of six photos and, you know, et cetera. So that's what kind of we're doing right now. And I'm very excited about, you know, our future here for sure. And how did your roadmap change during the pandemic? Yeah, I mean, well, so I actually joined remotely. So I was a fully remote employee having to figure out everybody in this whole organization and what we were doing and how we were working and really the team had gone through. It had doubled in size during the pandemic which is pretty phenomenal if you ask me. And certainly maintained its core fabric, its core culture, which I found just inspiring and impressive, you know, the roadmap changed in that, well, our goal is to get people out on in-person dates. And that came to a halt, right? And so we really quickly had to pivot and figure out, okay, well, what can we do to still ensure that people are connecting?  So we really quickly had to integrate video and audio as just a core, you know, foundation in our app. And then through that, we're also just learning a lot about what people are looking for, how hard it is to make connection, especially when you don't have really any other avenues outside of your close friend group or family since the pandemic has really, you know, closed down a lot of those avenues that otherwise it used to be available. So I do think that, you know, we've now taken it upon ourselves to say, okay, well, given this and given all the things people are going through, what can we do to actually help not just connect people, but it really improve connection. And so we're really focusing on a lot of these types of concepts and opportunities, more authenticity, more accountability that we do that. So yeah. I'm really impressed with how you were able to turn the situation into an opportunity, grow the team, grow usage of your product and still maintain those core values, as you're mentioning authenticity and making sure that this is a really high quality connection between two humans. At the same time, one of the unique things about this product personally is that you are part of a portfolio of companies, a mass group. And most or at least the ones that I know are also in the online dating space, correct me if I'm wrong. Yeah, no, no, you're correct for sure on that one. So. I think team there is one of them and there are many others. So as a chief product officer, how do you go about making sure that you are delivering a unique experience for your user persona while maintaining certain consistency across the entire portfolio companies? Yeah, well, I don't know if consistency really is the goal here. So I think that was one of the things that when I first joined Hinge and I started kind of learning about the acquisition that happened in 2019. So it hasn't been that long. It's fairly recent for all intents and purposes, fairly recent. I know three years can feel like now, like a lifetime. But the goal really is for every single app has their own unique value prop, their own unique audience, that they're the thing that they're really trying to deliver on, right? I think for Hinge, our goal and our audience is coming to us for intentioned dating to find a relationship. Every app has their own spin on what their user are coming for. Bumble is women make the first move. Tender is more recency, more active, quick connection. So we maintain our uniqueness and our goals by focusing on our users. So the benefit though that I've actually seen and have experienced firsthand is I'm able to just ask other people and other parts of our brand, how are you solving this problem? How are you thinking about X, Y and Z? Are they able to share insights? And of course, we had different audiences and different end goals. And so every insight might not be as relevant in that same context, but it's another data point that I can use and my team can use to make more informed decisions. And so, I think that's been one of the benefits. But ultimately the goal really is not for consistency. It's keep on delivering on your core value prop and do that exceptionally well. Yeah. That's a really unique expansion strategy for me because most of the product leaders, most of the products that I know, they start very specific with a feature, a certain use case and they expand. They try to become a platform with covering multiple use cases. In your situation, you're so clear on your specific user persona. And based on what you're saying, your goal is not for people to now, go to other apps even within the same group, right? Sure. I mean, I guess our users and a user can really change depending on the day, their experience from last week on kind of what they're looking for. So I do think that we do see generally people are, there's some data out there floating around, I think on two or more dating apps. And so that is common behavior. I guess the question is like, what's your primary app, right? What are you primarily engaging with and looking for? And so again, I think what we just try and do is deliver on our core value prop, ensure that every decision that we're making from product to design to engineering is all laddering back up to that core mission, which is we want our dating app to be designed to be deleted. And so we wanna make sure that everything that we're building, every decision that we're making ladders back up to that. So that, A, we build user trust, but we also can deliver on that promise for our users. I mean, I tend to use like the traditional jobs to be done, right? And if our user are coming to us for a relationship and for meaningful connection, well, what can we do to deliver on that? And that's the same way that that guys is like, where are we failing at that today? And that will also help us uncover really unique opportunities that we might not be focused on otherwise. If we're constantly chasing competitors or constantly trying to integrate this or that or that new technology, right?  But again, I think if you are true to what you're trying to deliver and your users and your customers see that, they'll build that trust, they'll build up that rapport with you and they'll come back. So we're just trying to continue to do that for sure. Love that clarity, because it's so easy as you grow, right? To think about different expansion opportunities and lose a little bit of the focus that brought you here. And some cases it might work, but in others they lose the entire experience. So kind of looking inside your own product organization, how do you structure your own product team? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I actually think organizational strategy and structure is not an easy thing. It's actually one of the things you constantly spend a lot of time evaluating and thinking about, honestly, in my own role. That's where I spend a lot of my time. Are we set up the right ways? We have the right tools. Do we have the right processes and throughputs? So, our organization is structured in that. And I literally took a lot of my experiences from Kayak and Spotify and Netflix and kind of said, what do I like and not like about each of these structures? And how might that then be applied to hinge? And I think one of the things that really resonates with me is, I really want to ensure that we create teams that feel fully empowered to come up with the ideas that they think are the most important to leverage and lean into the insights, take all of that and then work collaboratively with their team without a lot of like hierarchy of top-down leadership delivering on what your objectives are, what OKRs you need to go hit. So, I really try to structure the teams with a lot of scope and autonomy. And so, what that means is that you're not oriented around a specific surface or a button or a particular feature. I really try to organize around outcomes. What are we trying to deliver? And what do we think are the really important, big opportunities or big outcomes and big bets that we want to continue to invest in both from a product perspective and from an organization perspective? And then form teams around that. Of course, the objectives in OKRs and problems they might be focused on could iterate, could change as more data and more insights come in. But really, their purview is to solve things around profile innovation and really understand how do we bring people to life and at the core of that, there's so many different ways you can bring people to life. What does that mean? But you have one person who's really able to lead that through and through and really feel empowered to create a long-term vision, a long-term roadmap around that versus here's a feature. Well, what happens if that feature ever hits its lifetime? Then you're gonna have to figure out, well, where do you put that team and that person? So, structurally, I really try to empower the team. I think that I take something from previous organizations where we really treat the PM as the informed captain. You are both responsible for the direction of your ship, but also ensuring that everyone's working together and everyone understands where you're going. And so, that's really the organization there. And then again, one of the things that I've always really has urged me the wrong ways, bring people into an organization and you don't have any staffing for them. That is something I've experienced before personally and it is really hard as a product manager to get your job done when you don't have staffing. So, when you don't have support, when you don't have partnerships around you that can help you really execute on that vision and those objectives. So, that's the other thing is really ensuring that before we bring on new people or open up new areas of opportunity, that we have a plan for how we're gonna fund those because there's nothing worse than being onboard into an organization and then just sitting there, trying to like beg, borrow and steal to get somebody else to roadmap them. Yeah, I know because Spotify is actually very famous for how they were thinking about structuring teams in the squats and tribes. And I know that Netflix is another work-class organization. So, it's always interesting to see how it's product leader thinks about structuring their team and then how it changes because whatever it's working for you today might not be the same formula six, 12 months from now. Absolutely, we're already, we're going to this again, right? So, as we look for 2022, okay, we're gonna keep on growing, keep on scaling, how do we need to reorganize to actually ensure that it can become less about the individual team then. It actually comes about the cross team groups, the cross the organization, right? How do we start to get information across to marketing to our support teams to brand, et cetera, right? And how do all of the teams work together? What processes and principles do we have in place? And so, that's what we've been saying a lot of time now is do we have the right visibility? Do we have the right communication tools to really unlock and enable us to do our best work? Well, Michelle, it's been a pleasure to learn from you. Is there anything else you'd like to add? No, I mean, I think this has been a phenomenal conversation. I mean, and people can feel free to link with me on LinkedIn and I'm always available for questions or thought starters. I love product. I think that that's my biggest takeaway from my past, my careers. I really just love to like dig in with people and solve problems and it's been really fun to be able to do products, you know, a variety of different companies all serving, you know, that direct end consumer. It's really where I drive my passion from. Perfect. Well, thank you for your time. Absolutely. Thank you, Carlos. Bye-bye.


Hi, welcome to People's Dispatch in Globetrotter. Today, we are very happy to have with us Thomas Isaac. Thomas Isaac is the finance minister of Kerala and has been the finance minister for two runs of the left democratic front government first in 2006-2011 and now in the recent term of the government. It's also a prolific author for leftward books having published a book called Building Alternatives and another challenges to Indian fiscal federalism. He has a book that was based on a project which he was very much part of the People's Planning Movement in the 1990s in Kerala which came out in a book with Richard Frank recently reissued from leftward books called People's Planning. Thomas Isaac, welcome to People's Dispatch in Globetrotter. Yeah, I'm very happy to be with you. Well, I know you're very busy or in the middle of the election campaign for the legislative assembly, the new government in Kerala. Polls indicate that the left democratic front is set to break the anti-incumbency history in Kerala since 1980. What do you feel is going to happen, Isaac? What's going on with this election? I feel pretty certain that left is going to be back in power after the election. Now, this will be the first time in Kerala history. There's only one single location, 1977, when the ruling government succeed to come back in power. Otherwise, the power outrage between the left front and the right front, we outrage in power every five years. So it must become an axiom of Kerala politics that every fifth year there will be a change in government. And that I think has caused a continuity in government, caused Kerala lot of social events. For the first time, the left is going to be power continuously for 10 years. That is sufficiently long enough period to leave very substantial imprint upon Kerala's development process. We hope we will be able to design a paradigm of development which will prove to be an alternative, a left alternative within the professional limitations of Indian federalism, which will prove that another world is possible. You see, one of the things that people have been saying is that the government has been very efficient to deal with the floods 2018, 2019, the NEPA virus, the advent of COVID-19 and so on. Let's recognize underneath all that other developments you've put in place. You just said that we're going to have 10 years to chart out an alternative. You've done some incredible things on housing, even on basic infrastructure. I suppose that's what you mean when you say chart an alternative. Tell us a little bit about what that alternative would look like. Okay, it's a kind of hop step and jump. The hope, the first stage is redistributive politics. Kerala has been very noted for that. Our trillion movement has succeeded having significant redistribution of income. Kerala has the highest wage rates in the country. Our present movement has been able to redistribute the land and access through a very successful land reform program. Powerful social movements, big predates even the left movement in Kerala, whose tradition the left has carried forward, has pressurized access to governments which have been empowering Kerala to provide education, healthcare, basic needs of family members. Therefore, Kerala has an honorary person enjoys a quality of life which is much superior to us. Now, this is the situation. But the problem with this process, because we have to spend on social sector so much, there won't be sufficient money for resources for building infrastructure. So, a program of social development spread over more than a half a century, the serious infrastructure deficit in Kerala. So, our present government has been very remarkable as you said in meeting the crisis, ensuring there's no social breakdown, ensuring that nobody in Kerala would go hungry and everybody will get treatment and the COVID times and so on. But we did something more remarkable. It's true, the budget doesn't have the money for the whole infrastructure construction. And we calculated we would require minimum half a trillion rupees investment, it's a huge amount of money. Immediate infrastructure investment in roads, buildings, bridges, industrial parks, transmission lines and so on to come to some 50 to 60,000 crores of rupees. Well, what we did was we, the government of Kerala under Indian law cannot borrow beyond the limit. Even for that limited borrowing, you have to get the permission from the central government. But this does not apply to, say, body corporates which are formed by the states or companies which are formed by the state. So, we have a body corporate, Kerala infrastructure investment fund board, which utilize the new instruments, financial instruments which have been designed under new rules for the corporates to mobilize money from national from the country and outside the country. And we mobilized this money. Therefore, we gave permission for construction of this huge amount of infrastructure. After 60,000 crores of rupees which have been given sanction, only 10,000 has already been spent and realized. Others are all in the process. Only this 10,000 crores has preview such a remarkable change in the infrastructure. But we have been seeing Kerala is through the normal development process it would have required something like 25 years before 60,000 crores would have been mobilized for this investment. We have encapsulated them into a period of five years so that within five years Kerala would have, say, stepped into a quarter of centuries of infrastructure development. So, this has been very remarkable and it has given visible impact upon the development. Now, the third is JEP, Pop Step and JEP and JEP is and that is the program we have placed for the people. Now, that infrastructure is the translational line, artificial electricity, industrial paths for investors to come back to us. We will have K-Form as super highway of internet owned by the state which is available to any service provider, equal treatment to everybody, nobody would have an advantage. And we are going to provide internet to everybody, it's a right of every individual, all the poor are getting going to get broadband connectivity free. And so, all this has provided a background for us to take the best picture. That is to say, we want to change the economic base of an economy. Our economic base is commercial crops which are in serious crisis because of opening up or labor intensive traditional industries, already polluting chemical industries and so on. Therefore, we realize now that industries which are of our core competence would be knowledge industries, service industries, skill based industries and so on. Now, how to make this paradigm shift from your traditional economic base to the new? So, we have a three prong action. One is, it is becoming popular to work from home. He's estimated 18, 1.8 billion persons who will be working from home in another five years. So, we have lost out on the race of IT industry. Our paths are very small and other petropolis in India has taken over. Well, we thought this appropriate time, he will step into the world global environment and say, we will skill our labor force according to the global demand and they will work from home. Anybody from the world can probably, employees can hire the educated unemployed persons who are in skill. This will have a tremendous impact upon women's supply. So, this is number one. Two, we are restructuring your higher education so that Kerala becomes an innovation society. The innovations will be transformed to startups. We are thinking of creating a big ecosystem for startups which will bring a new breed of end-up loads into Kerala. Third, we are willing for any investor to come and invest in Kerala. We guarantee them ease of doing business. Once there is an agreement, we will keep the agreement, we will direct them, we will give them incentives. So, in a period of another five years, our economic base would change. Now, that will create a new Kerala. See, in India, the paradigm of development, there are three models. One is Gujarat, I would say, who are very rapidly industrializing, but there is little welfare and social security people. They have fairly high poverty, illiteracy, ill will, and so on. Then there is this Kerala, where there is very little industry, but we have ensured everybody welfare. And of course, there is whole Bimaru states, but there is neither industry nor welfare. Now, this is the situation. Now, we want to create a Kerala which will assure every individual dignity of life and the security and welfare. At the same time, we will challenge Gujarat in other states. We will be growing even faster than them. And that will be very different. We are going to say, yes, it is possible to have redistribution, yet ensure the growth. And that's the matter. Within this framework, we are not a socialist country. We are part of Indian capitalism. But in this part, within the limitations, we shall design a society which will inspire the whole progressive thinking people in India. Yes, it is possible to build something different. That's the idea of Kerala. So the Kerala model 2.0 is hop, step, and jump. And the second term is jump. Well, one of the books you did for Leftward was Building Alternatives, which was about the Uralangal Labour Contract Cooperative Society. The reason I'm bringing this up is that a bridge was recently completed in Kerala. And I saw that the Chief Minister Pinaravijayan had tweeted about how this society was part of the construction of the bridge. The reason I'm thinking about this is, you're building infrastructure. But the labour practices involved in the building of the infrastructure should, I think, be emphasised as well. Here you have a cooperative society involved. Could you talk a little about that? It's true. See, I just gave you three plans, the welfare infrastructure, and the new enterprises that are going to come. Now in the welfare, which includes schools, healthcare, and so on, do you think participation is going to be key to ensure better service delivery and quality of services? For which we think to ensure participation, we need to have decent-lised democracy, decent-lised national democracy, decent-lised sessions that we have ensured. We have the most vibrant local governments. And therefore, this social intervention, collective intervention at local level, in providing better services, improving the productivity of small-scale industries and so on. It's a fact. That's fine. Second is, now the type of new enterprises that are going to come into Kerala, not to build infrastructure, but also new enterprises. I was told about startups, but we say startups are, we are going to be a stream with a whole lot of other social enterprises, let me put in that space. But corporates are going to play a very, very important role. Corporate is a play, two major roles. One is providing credit. Recently, we did a financial innovation again. We have a three-tire corporate society. Now we integrate the top two tires and then get got it as listed as a schedule plan. And this is the second largest schedule bank in Kerala. And I'm certain this is very soon going to be the largest bank in Kerala. And that gives us leverage to channelize funds into enterprises and so on. Secondly, the corporates are also going to provide a base for agro-processing industries, even say electronic or IT color teams and so on. Model is the society used for Kerala. Now, these are very embedded in the radical history of Kerala. The society came into being in the early 1920s as a partner social movement where some radical social thinkers, the workers, followers were ostracized by the community. And therefore they didn't give up. They decided they started a small credit society and then they started their workers' corporate team, which would undertake contract work. And they designed a democratic way of functioning. All the directors will have to go and work. And in the evening after the work, the director will meet and have a transfer system accounting and so on. So this society from 1920s was then a labor cooperative society. And why the people's planning came, we were looking around for models of social enterprise. And we found we can buy faster contractors having labor cooperative like this. And therefore this became the celebrated model. And many corporates like this came in. And this also gave this chance of property to diversify the group. And within another 20 years became the major enterprise, not just a contractor. They became a provider of models of this. Now they are developers. They develop institutions and so on. They have diversified into various ways. Something like Montregrin, we get the price. And the important thing is efficiency. Most modern technology, they adopted. And they can compete with any major Indian developer or contractor. Recently, this has got the major stretch of national highway from the central government competing with all others. So this is an important part, with experience. Then it is possible to promote social enterprises. We are not going to replace all private enterprises, but there will be a social sector, which will, I think, also give a sense of balance, give a traditional instrument for the progressive forces to intervene in the economic sphere. So recently, as you said, in a record time, in the past government, they built a bridge even before inauguration was falling apart. So we decided to rebuild it. And it was said, rebuilding would require one year, if it reduced to the 88 months, then they did it in a record period of five months. 500 workers working day and night. And constructing and replacing, demolishing and reconstructing is amazing architectural enterprise. So it just caught everybody's imagination, what this society did. So Chief Minister caught and brushed who built all the pyramids, who built the stags. That's right. That's one of Brex's best answers. Who builds the pyramids? Who puts up this? Who does that? Well, in Kerala, it seems to be these labor cooperative societies that are part of the fabric. Returning just briefly to the election, you're like the Poles. Everybody's anticipating the left democratic front will come back into power for another term, five-year term. What will this mean for the Congress front? What will this mean for the Bhartya Janta Party? They are in power in Delhi after all. What is this going to mean for them if in 36 million people Kerala decide to reject the Congress and the BJP? All right. See, politics has been polarized between the left and not so right. The right in Kerala cannot be right outside Kerala. Nobody can say against higher wages or against public education, public health, and so on. So the whole ideologically broad hegemony power, the left has left this imprint upon the right house. But power ordinates between the two. Now, it will be the first time that really the left is going to be back in power for two consecutive terms. The main reason has been, I'm telling you, the performance improvement, the way we dealt with the crisis, ensured welfare, and then brought in this infrastructure revolution and putting forward an agenda. The main jump is going to come and everybody wants a new Kerala. So we are going to be back in power. What are the implications? The right, the Congress coalition has been taking a strange step. They have been telling the minorities in Kerala who come to be around 50 percent of the population. You defeat us. How rank at five is going to be BJP. Therefore, stick to the old pattern of power. In fact, this may look silly, but the very important political move trying to tell the electorate that if you want to keep Kerala free of BJP, you should elect us, because otherwise our rank at five will desert. But I don't buy that. For the simple reason, of course, there will be a rush into BJP for the right, but from Congress particularly. But I don't think Congress will be disemminated in Kerala. For a simple reason, Kerala ethos is secular. Now, our renaissance in the 90s, starting in the 19th century, he has this little reverabilism. It is, in fact, a reinterpretation of the tradition, promissory interpretation of the tradition. And the greatest ideal of Kerala renaissance is a victim by one of the sages, Srinagarana Guru, who said it doesn't matter what religion you are, as long as you're a good human being. This is ingrained in the thinking of everybody. And therefore, somebody from, from North India, coming into Kerala and say, if you want to be a good human being, you have to be a Hindu, he just does not run in Kerala. Nobody accepts that. That's why, despite the fact, RSS has always had one of the strongest units in Kerala. There are percentages in RSS, we have said proportion to population, the highest in the country. They have never received mass support. And even the social composition of Kerala, which is half minority, BJP is not even going to be the main opposition, never in Kerala. Okay, let me put it that very fact. But a defeat of coalition, Congress coalition, do weaken them, which would mean Kerala is going to have no just next five years, I think, more five years in the future, unless it does something very bad, very bad.  That gives us an opportunity, an opportunity of really designing a more democratic participatory and society, which at the same time ensures decent employment and growth. And I think that will be something fantastic. And that is to say, the Indian, there has been erosion of strength of the left in India in the last two decades. If you look at the history, the 50s, 60s, 70s you have seen, it is the left which gained at the expense of the decline of the Congress. But from the late 70s, what has happened is Congress continued to decline, but now it's the right, far right, which is meeting advantage of. But there are new shoots we can see in various parts of the country, states in the small elections and so on, which gives some hope. So, Kerala would be the left pasture, left base, from which we have much hope. There is a, you know, a great book, what is the book by Victor Fick, which has a title, which has always attracted Kerala the Yanan of India. So, I would say, yeah, there has been waiting of left in India, but we will provide the Yanan base. I think Kerala project, democratic project, has something very important for Indian left. Thomas Isaac, I have to say firstly, good luck in the election, good luck to you, good luck to the left democratic front, good luck to the Communist Party of India Marxist, but more than anything, good luck to the people of Kerala. They're going into an interesting election and I hope it will be a safe and reasonable rational outcome. I hope you get time to rest. Thanks so much for being with us at People's Dispatch and Globetrotter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm in Alipi, I'm in charge of the election in the Alipi district and and everybody is waiting for the election day. I think some history is going to be made in death will be back in 1510s, which is the far-reaching implications for not only Kerala's development, but also for rest of the country. That's amazing, thanks a lot. Thank you.


We found a piece. Alright. Good luck on your next mission. Yeah. Have fun in space. Right. Happy Halloween. Let's see. What do we have here? That is so sweet.   I love your hair. That's really sick. Good boy. What do you say? Happy Halloween. So, do you guys have a favorite Halloween costume you ever wore? Well, when I was, I think, in 5th grade, I went as a purple crayon. That was a pretty fun costume. I had crayon earrings. I had a whole crayon dress. Wow. How about you and this astronaut? Probably being an astronaut. This is my 7th year of being an astronaut. I have two costumes because I outgrew one of them. Wow. So, it's your day job and your Halloween costume. Yes. All day every day. And we have a super cute puppy. Oh my goodness. A puppy dog. Hi puppy. Would you like some candy? Do you want candy, puppy? He's got a whole bowl. So how about you, Miss Flapper? What was your favorite Halloween costume so far? I think, probably, that I... Harry Potter. Very nice. Happy Halloween. Oh, she's doing it right. She's all bundled up. Oh yeah. That's hot. I think the Halloween costume still works. That's the way to do Halloween photos. A comfy costume that keeps you warm. One year I made a mistake of being a piece of bubblegum. I think I might do some wizards coming along. A wizard? We see a lot of wizards come out on Halloween. Probably because it's their time to cast a spell. We have chickens. Oh, a nerd. Which wizard are you? Hermione. You've got Hermione and Harry. Do you guys want to wave to the cameras? Wow, that's a work of art. It looks like... Is this a fox? What made you want to be a fox? Thank you so much. Oh, some more wizards. It looks like we have another wizard. Maybe a superhero. Well, she is my favorite character. So that is a great costume. We have Hermione's best friend, Harry. Astronaut. Do you have any astronaut jokes for us? I do, actually. I've been reading a book about anti-gravity and I just can't seem to put it down. Wow. That's a great joke. A real knee slapper. Want to hear a deer joke? Deer with no eyes. What do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs? More trick-or-treaters coming along. Oh, I think I see a witch over there. I'm not sure what they are, though. She looks like a very scary witch. I do see a broom, so... Yeah. Unless she's cleaning. So, guys, how do you feel about the rain outside? You know, it's kind of a... puts a damper on Halloween. Despite it, trick-or-treaters are still having a really fun time. I mean, I remember going trick-or-treating in the snow before, so... Yeah. In Vermont, you got to do it. Hello! Can you tell me what your costume is? Your costume is kind of match. Well, you two look amazing. Do you guys want to smile for the cameras? Thank you so much. Yeah, have a happy Halloween. Stay dry. Who else do we have coming along? Oh, my goodness. I think I see a unicorn. Can you tell me how you made your hair so glittery? That is so cool. Finn will be seeing a lot of Black Panthers this Halloween. I think so. What's your Halloween costume? You look really good. I love your face paint. And who are you? How's your costume? The Grim Reaper. Oh, and we have a very scary person coming along. I am scared. Are you Jason? You look great. Pretty cute trick-or-treaters today. A lot of superheroes, which is always good. I think superheroes are a pretty consistent costume every year. Dressed up as a superhero? How about you, astronaut ladies? No, this is all I got. I mean, I was a banana, but that's not a superhero. Well, I was Batgirl one year. And it was pretty chilly because it was a small dress. So where is the best place to go trick-or-treating in Montpelier? College Street. College Street? I agree. College Street as well. College Street in downtown? Yeah. And there's that one house that does all the decorations at the top of College Street and always looks amazing. I think their electricity bill must be pretty high. Yes, I would imagine so. Yeah, they do. They do decorations for every single season. I'm pretty sure you're not a trick-or-treater, so you're going to have to give that back. A lot looks like we have a princess. Very nice. What's your joke? What is Jupiter where to hold up? Oh. Very funny. Hi, Superman. Superman, you have some pretty big muscles. Thank you for saving the citizens. Looks like we might have some trick-or-treaters coming in through there. Any specific team? After Henry High School? Can you do a cheer for us? Amber, I can see your awesome costume. Getting off in the space? Hello, hello, Miss Fred Riding Hood. Would you like some candy? Yeah, take whatever you want. Some more kids coming along. What are they dressed up as though? I think this year we're seeing a good mix of classic costumes like princesses and Fred Riding Hood and also a good mix of very modern costumes.  Some more candy? Of course you do. Happy Halloween. Is Halloween your favorite holiday? I prefer Christmas just because I like presents. How about you, astronaut? Hanukkah is my favorite because you get presents for a whole week. That's even better. True. Just like getting stuff. I think I see a cat. You're stuck on the ground? Halloween. At least you have a very honest kitty. Were there any years you didn't dress up for Halloween? I have dressed up every single year just because how can you not? Exactly. When you get a chance to dress up you've got to dress up. I've always dressed up too. What about you, Nadia? I have always dressed up as well. What were you last year? That is a good question and now that I think about it I may not have dressed up last year. Then you were lying. I can't remember what I was. It was on. The best breakfast food. We have a bacon costume. I think I might see some monsters? I'm not really sure though. What do you guys think? I think some unicorns. In a robber maybe? A piece of paper? Wait, you're right. That's such a good idea. I think it is a piece of paper. What's the most creative costume you guys think you've seen? Hello. Can you tell me what your costume is? Your Squirtle? Nice Pokemon.  That is really good. Let's see, a unicorn and a unicorn and also a unicorn or a pony? A pony, nice. Of unicorns today. I had a chance to be a unicorn. I wouldn't pass that up. I should just do it anyway. Even when it's not Halloween? I'll come to school as a unicorn. I think I might see some minions? Oh yeah. Pick a two over there. This is definitely a consistent costume. So, Eliana, do all the buttons on your helmet work? They do not. Only two of them. Actually, one of them works. The other one used to have a recording that would play inside, but it broke because I just left my helmet in the rain. That seems a little dangerous for when you go on your missions. I know. I'll have to get them repaired soon. Yeah, you better. Can you tell me why you wanted to be a minion? The buttons are all repaired before my next mission. What's your next mission? It's not going to be for another two years or so because we need to get all the equipment ready again. Ah, okay. We need to have some new astronauts go into training too. Can I be an astronaut and go into space? Do they let animals go? I mean... They let monkeys, so why not deers? I don't know. Maybe I'll let you come. Do you want some candy? Are you happy about Mr. Firefighter? A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle? She's from Frozen. She's my favorite. I think I should be allowed to go into space. Will you put me on your mission suit? Like an extra large... No! Chop off my antlers just to go into space. I think just an extra large helmet would work. Yeah, that would work perfectly fine. I want to go to space. Where is your next mission too? Well, that's boring. You should go to Pluto. Which planet do you most want to go to? How long would it take? That's cool. Which planet do you most want to go to? Reaper. That is pretty scary. What is your costume? That is so scary. Wow. And let's see, is this a My Little Pony? Which one are you? She is my favorite My Little Pony. Wait, so what planet do you want to go to? We will be able to go to Mars. It's more similar to Earth than the others. And the other ones are just way too dangerous. And it would just take a lot of planning to go there. I think you should go to the Sun. If you could go to any planet? If I could go to any planet, I would go to Jupiter. No, Saturn. It's gorgeous. I would love to go to Saturn. Okay, I'll keep that in mind. I'll go to Saturn next time. Where would you go? Where would I go? That's a good question. I would go to Venus. Because it's super warm. So I would never get cold. Looks like we've got a low in the trigger treaters right now. I think you should do your lights bit. I have to save it for when it's actually appropriate. It's like a reaction. It's not just something I can do. Come on now, Eliana. Okay, well, next person who comes in, you better act shocked, alright? Okay. Dears right now. I know, I forgot my vest. I am risking it. You would just have to protect me. And you're orange enough. I'll just put you in a space suit. And I could go to space. No, I will do it for your protection here on Earth. I will not bring you to space. So Nadia, are you actually from the 1920s? Or are you just mocking it? Well, she is ancient. No, I actually am from the 1920s. I traveled through time. You did? So this isn't actually a costume. It's just like your normal look. This is my regular... Mr. Policeman. I see a car. I see headlights. Cars and dears do not mix. You can do this, little kid, but you can. I do not want to get run over. We might have to have a deer trapped in the headlights. Can you see Olaf coming along? What? Olaf? Frozen has been a pretty popular costume. See another Elsa. Again, on the Frozen theme. Movie characters. For some kids. So anyways, what was your favorite Halloween costume ever? What was your least favorite Halloween costume ever? My least favorite was when I dressed up at the piece of bubblegum. And I had these two giant laminated pieces of paper. And it was like I had one here and one here. What did you dress up as?  A piece of bubblegum? Interesting. What flavor? Just like original. It was horrible because it was super windy and the paper would flap. Mr. Knight. Your costume looks amazing. Thank you for slaying dragons and protecting the realm. Happy Halloween. Oh my goodness. Looks like that knight had a sword? Yeah. We're adjusting. Well, thank you candy refiller. Red Sox player. Red Sox player. Do you want to talk about who you just won the World Series? Ah, okay. He's probably talked about that a lot recently. Paparazzi all talking to it. Would you like some candy, Mr. Firefighter? Happy Halloween. Relations unjust winning the World Series. How did it feel? And which player are you? Good choice. Pretty scary dragon. Can you breathe fire me? I should put that on my body. And we've got a doctor. There's some sort of fluffy animal here. What do you guys think? Well, you look very cozy. Your mom is very talented. Can you show the camera your awesome Lego costume? Yeah. Isn't that super cool? I've always tried to make my costumes. It's never worked out as good as this. This is pretty impressive. Have a great Halloween. Happy Halloween. Do you want some candy? I didn't know any of the morning. Okay. Can you tell me what your costume is? Can you have some candy? Can you tell me what your costume is? You guys look super awesome. Thank you. Happy Halloween. Night character. Yeah. And which one are you? What that is, but awesome costume. Happy Halloween. Let's see what are these characters. These look awesome. They're Legos, you think? They definitely are Legos. Are you an ice queen? Elsa? You don't know what you're talking about. So do you have magic ice powers? Showing everyone your costumes. You can wave to the audience. Halloween, Miss Elsa. Those are some cool goggles. Pretty impressive. Wow. He is a mad scientist. Do you want to show the camera your super cool costume? Those are awesome. That is awesome. You look so great. Happy Halloween. Can you guys see through those costumes? Yes, they can see. And did you make your own costumes? You did? Wow. These turned out awesome. Have some candy. Show the camera too. Show the camera your awesome costumes. Don't these look great? That would have been a bad combination. What time did you guys usually go trick-or-treating? In the early evening or later? Well, here's what I did. When I was young, I would go downtown like four o'clock. I'd go for an hour. I'd go to all the stores. Then I'd go home. And then I'd go in my own neighborhood. And then I'd just get double the candy. I'd be at all night. You know, I never went trick-or-treating downtown. And I think I must have been missing out. You really were. I never realized. You missed out on this? I know. I never got to be on TV. I just waited until it was dark. And then I would go out in my neighborhood. Do you usually go trick-or-treating with your families or with your friends? Well, when I was young, I had to go with my parents. But when I was old enough, I would ditch them. I just think it's coming along right now. Cool cane, though. And tell us what your costume is from Fortnite. A lot of Fortnite costumes. Have either of you ever played Fortnite? A whole squad of Wonder Women coming. Yeah. It makes sense after... Can you tell us what your costume is? Yeah, you're just here for the candy. Came out of the ocean just for Halloween. Well, happy Halloween. A secret agent. Some superhero? Beaver. Yeah. Justin Bieber. Can you show the camera your awesome costume? Justin Bieber. That's a good pun. And you. Yeah, you are awesome. Really cool. How did you get your hair like that? Nice. Is he your favorite superhero? Yeah. Yeah? That's a good choice.  That's kind of ironic. Oh, what's your costume? A dinosaur? You're both dinosaurs? T-Rex. Can you do a T-Rex roar? Candy, so you don't eat us. It was pretty scary. What's your costume? I am Jackson Marko. Who's that? I'll just ask who's Jackson Marko. Yeah, we don't know who that is. That's right. Jackson Marko is an M.A.J.S. alumni and engineer. Astrophysics engineer. Astrophysics, that's not a real thing. Aerospace engineer in training. And being Jackson Marko, I love bananas. All I have to say is I can't. Which one's the best one? Twix. Okay. Let's see. I haven't even examined all these. Bye, Jackson. Milky Way should be my favorite, but it's not. So what's your favorite Halloween candy? Twix by far. It's not my favorite. Twix. They're like nerd ropes. Nerd ropes are delicious. I got two one year. That's a little greedy, Eliana. Do we have some Harry Potter character? Hello. So are you a specific character or are you just from Harry Potter? And what house are you in? Would you like some candy? Are you very cool? Maybe you should branch out from Astronaut. You missed out. I don't think. Even though there's rain? Yeah, you are. For cool costume. That looks awesome. Yeah. Yeah. We're showing everyone the awesome Halloween costumes. You want to wave? This is her moment. She's going to be. Looks like it. But where is her sheet? An M&M. Are you from Descendants? Yeah. So which one are you? That looks super cool. I love your hair. It's obviously the best M&M. What about you? If you say anything other than the blue, you're wrong. You can branch out a little bit more. Everything in life isn't orange. It's a skeleton. Can you tell us what your costume is? Awesome. What's your costume? Broken doll. Broken doll? Well in blue. So withstand all the cold. It's going to be about negative 200 degrees on Mars at night. So I'm usually just fine. Is that Draco Malfoy? Do you cast a spell for us? Canadian Leviosa. Which is very likely in Vermont on Halloween. Is that from Legend of Zelda? Very nice. I'm linked, too. You're linked, too. We have two links and you are obviously Luigi. Yeah, do you want to pull out your sword? I have to say it's been very hard not to eat this candy as we've been doing this. A whole bowl of candy. I'm just kidding. So let's go back to what is your favorite Halloween candy? Oh my God. Two Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Two Ruth Bader Ginsburg. What is your favorite Halloween candy? That's got to be the best. Favorite Halloween candy. What about Snickers? Those are my favorite. Ruth, tell us why you wanted to be her. You just want Halloween. My favorite costume. My favorite Harry Potter character. Would you like some candy? Those are some awesome costumes. Another Harry Potter costume. This is a super cool costume. Can you tell us what your costume is? Evil scientist. That is pretty scary. I have a costume where you're just here to protect you from the rain. That is a super cool costume. What team? Oh God. Is that Medusa? Yeah, you are. Don't look at a sorceress. What is your costume is? Relation. My favorite one was the Ruth Bader Ginsburg costume. Yeah, those are good too. Stop. You usually bought mine until I got older and then I started making them. It's an awesome tail. And you have some scaly gloves. That looks awesome. I'm really nice and warm. Can you tell us what your costume is? Your costume is mermaid? And it doubles as a hat, functional and beautiful. Awesome. Happy Halloween. Straight to the camera. Instead of Jackson Marco, as I was early, I'm now Adam Blair because we have the Orca Media sign. And because I spend about 90% of my life here, I think this is accurate to Adam Blair. And the coffee as well. I'm glad that you're keeping us away because I brought the coffee. It's great. Good advertise. Can you tell us what you're dressed up as? It's a stormtrooper. Oh, a stormtrooper. Pretty cool. Got a minion friend over there. Stormtroopers and astronauts are kind of similar. They both explore the galaxy or sometimes are really mean. Do you guys like Star Wars? Of course. I'm a big fan. I have seen it. You've seen all of it? It's not Easter time. She was safe. I didn't want her to have any radiation whatsoever, so I left her at home. Okay, so no bunnies in space either? No, no. Might hop away. Might hop away, right? What are you dressed? A wizard coming along. That is a very popular costume this year. What is that? Do you think a samurai? Your awesome costume. Yeah, look at that. And you have cool swords in the back. Can you tell us what your costume is? Yes. You are too. Are you sure that's going to come out? Yes. You might be stuck like that forever. Rain over here. And the full moon just happened. Dad's jersey and heist. Very nice. Looks like we are all full of candy now. Yep. So have you ever been on an asteroid? No, I haven't. No. We almost collided with one, but... Oh my goodness, that's pretty scary. Yeah, I know. You guys want to show the camera your costumes? Yeah. You can wave at it. Your face go. Happy Halloween. And which one? Pretty costume? You can wave high. We have a spider band. Hey Miss Sheep, do you want to show the camera your really cool costume? You can too. You can wave high at the camera. This cool costume. Can you tell us what you are? Looks like we have the Wizard of Oz crew over there. All yourself? The mouse is running all over the place. So are these astronaut boots comfortable? Boots, I just cover my shoes. But yes, they are comfortable. Are you going to go trick-or-treating after this? I don't think so. My parents would take me. Your parents would take you and you can't go out without your parents. Yeah. What about you, flapper? I don't think I'm going trick-or-treating this year. Our costumes? These aren't costumes. No. This is what we are. Tell us, what's trick-or-treating, what's Halloween like in the 1920s? You know, every candy from the 1920s. That's a good question, you know. Chocolate, sugarcane. Can you tell us what your costume is? Ink from Zelda. Can you tell us what your costume is? Your awesome costume? No, you had honey. Are you Wednesday Adams? Do you want some candy? What's your costume? That was too much work. Which one are you? You dressed up as? Commander Cody. Commander Cody, fair. Oh my goodness, I think I see a tiger coming on. I see Cookie Monster. Cookie Monster, cozy costume. Yeah. A bumblebee? Do you want some candy? It's like our bumblebee is here to stay. Well, she is clearly going to be another movie star. And is that Cookie? Cookies, but hopefully it'll do. Your cookies with you. Is that a cozy costume? Very nice. A DJ? A DJ. A DJ, very nice. Do you play good songs? A natural hair color? I think so. And for next year? Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween. I think I might see some more Harry Potter characters coming on. A whole gang of Harry Potter characters. Harry Potter is a very popular look, do you think? Is that a natural skin color? Of course. The Hulk only turns green when he gets mad. Yeah, true. So clearly he is very mad right now. But be careful. We're going to be angry and throw our candy on the ground. Pretty princess? What's your costume? Oh, you're just here for the candy. It makes sense. Take as much as you want. Oh my goodness. Oh, Frankenstein. Come have some candy. Come have some candy. Oh, these are some very cool costumes. Can Frankenstein eat candy? Find out tonight. I'm sure they'd be happy to eat it. Looks like the ladybug. In their high school, I was dressed up as Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb. And what were you dressed up as? I'm a deer, so I don't go to school. Oh, the deer? All deer can speak. I talk with them all the time. Most deer are way more shy than you are. Why are you such a friendly deer? Actually, if you just get to know us, we're actually pretty friendly. People judge us really quickly after we run away from them. And are you a reindeer or just a regular deer? No, I'm just a regular deer. Reindeer pretentious. So you cannot fly? How do you know? What? No, there's a ceiling. I'll hit the ceiling. Can you fly? Yes, I can. Without a rocket ship? No. This lovely costume. A costume? That looks awesome. Yeah, have some candy. That is a beautiful costume. What are the costumes we've seen tonight? I think we might be wrapping up. What do you think was your all-time favorite? Or was the most creative? Well, my all-time favorite was the grandma costume. She had the curler. She had her yarn. Her outfit was just amazing. I would agree. The grandma costume was a pretty cool one. With Bader Ginsburg. Yeah, those were great, too. Justin Bieber. And Pierre was very smart. And the Legos, too. It seems like it's winding down. And it's time for us to go home and celebrate. Go back to the forest. I have to go back to the 1920s. Yeah, hop in your time machine. Eliana has to prepare for her mission to Mars soon. So we are going to say we hope all of you and Montpelier have a really happy Halloween. Happy Halloween, guys.


Good teaching is good teaching. If we want our students to be involved in good teaching we have to provide teaching opportunities for staff as well. And professional development is really where we need to begin. In order for it to change it has to change in the classroom. Some of our teachers don't know any better. They don't know that there's a different world other than their worldview. They don't understand instructional strategies that need to happen in the classroom and they're not aware of the cultural needs as well. So providing professional development is critical if we want to move forward success for all of our students and we want to educate all of our students about the history of Canada. I listened to a gentleman speak yesterday and he talked about the connect from the heart to the mind and that's really where we have to focus. If we want to move and change mindsets of our educators we have to touch their hearts and we have to touch their hearts about stories about culture. Probably the best professional development activity has happened when they have had an aha moment. When there's been a realization that there's something that they didn't know and now they know better and now they're going to do better. Some of our educators are unaware of the barriers that exist for our students and I think for many of them they just feel why can't they be resilient. I was resilient in my life.  I still managed to graduate and I think there's a real disconnect between what our students the reality of what our students deal with and what the knowledge is that our teachers have. Part of making sure that we have teachers educated is ensuring that we have student voice. So when you have a student that's videotaped and they're sharing their message about what it's like to ride on the bus from Muscochise into Wolf Creek Public Schools. What it's like to come from a very small school on a reserve to come to Wolf Creek Public Schools that is a large school that consists the majority of population is non-first nation. That's an interesting concept for many of our teachers that they've never even thought about. So it's critical that we have student voice present not only in experiencing their stories but also in understanding what they need in the classroom. How do they learn? How do they learn differently from other students? Our wisdom and guidance committee was formed so that we would be able to listen to our parents. They would have voice within our school district and the voice needed to be a voice that they could share openly in a setting that they were comfortable in. Many of our first nation students have parents that are not involved to the capacity that we would like them to be involved because we haven't asked them how they would like to be involved. So part of the wisdom and guidance committee is asking how would you like to be involved? How are we going to move this forward together? How can we work so that we're collaborating with both communities? With the wisdom and guidance committee the greatest lesson I have learned is the passion and the care that parents have for their students. They want what's best for students and they're willing to provide opportunities for learning to staff. They are the most amazing group of individuals who are concerned about all students not just their own. So when we have any initiatives that we're moving forward many of our parents will say is that for all students or is that just for focused on first nation meeting any of its students? No it's for everyone the learning is for everyone and that's I think what brings the forefront for me is the greatest lesson is the passion that they bring and the care and they really want what's best. To have a key contact across the province someone that is supporting us in our work as we move forward and support others and so making change is not easy. Change is difficult for many people. Understanding why they would have to think of a different world view is absurd in many cases. When I think of the children and the lives that we have touched by doing something different in the classroom that to me is remarkable and that comes from your work and your support throughout the last few years. So thank you.


There's been some questions about Hong Kong today, so you can talk about both, I suppose. We should, Terry, answer part of that question raised by several people in the earlier session. So you can say a word about globalization if you like, or you can talk about Hong Kong, he being the one who is perhaps most qualified to address the issue of Hong Kong today. I'll stand up, just in case I might fall asleep. I had prepared something to address the theme of this session, which is China's or Chinese position on globalization. I'm throwing this away now because I heard a theory in its opening remarks mentioning Hong Kong a couple of times, and so did Eric just now. We have had four months of non-stop troubles in Hong Kong, and it's going on. As far as the violence is concerned, it's trending down. The number of rioters and peaceful demonstrators have been going down together. In this trending down motion, we might, if we are not careful or lucky, see some spikes in the degree of violence or the scale of casualties. The police and other authorities in Hong Kong have exercised a maximum restraint. And that's why I listened to you, and that's why we are not seeing the kind of casualties in the streets of Hong Kong as we have seen in other parts of the world. Democracy, Hong Kong is not a sovereign state. Hong Kong is part of China. So when we look at democracy or the process of democratization in Hong Kong, we shouldn't compare Hong Kong to a sovereign state. We should and could only compare democracy and democratization in Hong Kong to those in cities, Paris, London, New York, Tokyo, Washington, D.C. But Hong Kong is not an ordinary city because under the basic law, and under the terms of Hong Kong's return to China, and this was propagated in 1990. After five years of intensive and large-scale consultation in Hong Kong, also in the rest of the country, the basic law was propagated in 1990. Under the basic law, Hong Kong was given not just one country, two systems. It was given one country, two systems, comma, Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong, comma, with a high degree of autonomy. Not complete autonomy, but a high degree of autonomy. And this high degree of autonomy is well-defined in the basic law. And they are altogether 160 articles in the basic law, all in black and white, which has been practiced for 22 years now. So when we talk about one country, two system, or when we talk about democracy, these are no longer abstract concepts for Hong Kong. They are part of our constitutional and legal arrangements. Now China, if I have to make a guess, could straightaway say to the people in Hong Kong that you could have your way of electing your chief executive, the head of Hong Kong government, if the result of the election is to produce a chief executive that has the same degree of autonomy and the same scale of authority as the mayors of London, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, New York, Paris. But speaking as a former chief executive, I can tell you, and you can look at basic law, and the basic law is available in both languages, English and Chinese. It's on the website, you can do it now. The chief executive of Hong Kong is given a much higher degree of authority, and through the exercise of this high degree of, it's given a high degree of authority, and through the exercise of this high degree of authority, Hong Kong attains its high degree of autonomy. Local democratic processes do not produce mayors of chief executives in the case of Hong Kong that has this high degree of authority. And local cities do not have this high degree of autonomy. So where does the additional authority come from? It comes from a top-down process. So it's not entirely bottom-up, meaning a delegation of authority by the electorate to this elected person. In addition to this process, which we have in Hong Kong, the central authorities in Beijing, through the appointment of the chief executive, devolve certain power that normally belongs to central governments, to the chief executive, and therefore Hong Kong as a whole. And therefore in our electoral system, and it's in the basic law again, we have so far the election committee elections, a election committee of 1200 drawn from different sectors of the Hong Kong community. And at the end of the election process, the person has to be appointed by the central government. And this appointment is neither ceremonial nor nominal. And it's a real authority to appoint, meaning the central government in law can appoint or not appoint the elected candidate. So that's democracy in Hong Kong. The basic law also says that universal suffrage election is the ultimate goal in the democratic development of Hong Kong. But a universally elected chief executive candidate still has to be appointed by the central government. And to change from the present system of election by election committee to universal suffrage election, it is in the NX1 to the basic law. Again, you could look it up. The approval of the standing committee of the National People's Congress of the country, not Hong Kong, of the country in Beijing is required. So these are the constitutional and legal arrangements. As I said, if the chief executive in a democratic society representing people of Hong Kong as the, if like a mayor of Hong Kong has only that kind of power, Beijing would have said to universal suffrage straight away. And I could look at the flip side of the question. Now, would cities in other democratic countries, including those in the west, have this kind of high degree of autonomy just through the election of the local mayor by the local electorate without the central government or the federal government having any power and say in the process? Question mark. So these are the manifestations of the principle of one country, two systems that have already been enshrined in the basic law. And it's a legal document. The five demands of the protesters and the rioters in Hong Kong include universal suffrage in Hong Kong. And to them, universal suffrage is not universal suffrage according to the basic law. They want Hong Kong to do it by themselves without the involvement of Beijing. So we are stuck. When our chief executive actually went through a process, a so-called constitutional reform process in 2014 that led to Occupy Central. In the end, the whole movement died down. Beijing actually offered the opportunity of the election of the chief executive by universal suffrage. But some of the young students in certain quarters of the Hong Kong community will not have it because they did not like what's written in the basic law. And they wanted open nomination of the chief executive candidates. So it's a complex, complicated issue, technical. But I thought I should seize on this opportunity. And I'm sure you have your concerns about the future of Hong Kong. We do, too. But we have to go by the basic law. Hong Kong is a law-based, rule-based society. We have to go through a rule of law. Again, one country, two systems, high degree of autonomy. Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong. Democracy in Hong Kong is no longer an abstract notion. It's all in the constitutional arrangements. Thank you.