This was an old movie theater, obviously really old near my house, and I would drive by it I used to teach at a Salon-centric distributorship every two weeks for a while And I would drive by it and I just kept seeing it getting worse and worse and fallen apart And then one day I drove by and it said that's all folks. Thanks for 30 years and then I started to think about it and It's sad to think that you know a business like that. It's probably family owned Went out of business. There's all these new movie theaters and all that And then they pop up this sign and I'm looking at it like this business hasn't changed in 30 years. It's the same Right? So the reason it's shutting down is because they stayed the same You have to evolve you have to change You know, there's still people writing on paper appointment books You know, I remember when I first started working at the Sun the owner had a paper appointment book And people just write down.  You have you can order alcoholic beverages You you know, it's a very you have a waiter like this place didn't have any of that So that's why they're closing down and you know and I don't want to see that happen with any salon business And most salon businesses don't last over ten years


Good evening, everybody. My name is Kaushik. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Sugar Cosmetics. I'm hoping by now at least the women in the audience have tried out our products. Please, let's have a show off and say, oh, yes, thank you so much. You know, this is lovely, because now when I ask at least, there are a few hands that go up. Otherwise, I remember those days very vividly when I would be like, should I pull off this stunt with this audience or no? Okay, you know, Google, I'm feeling lucky button. Let me try it. And there have been many audiences where I'd be looking for one hand to come up and no. But nevertheless, thank you very much for... I know this is the last keynote session that's slotted. It's a very interesting topic, one that's close to my heart, and I'll tell you why, because everybody asks us that makeup, color cosmetics, beauties is a comparative category with behemoths from the largest fncg company we've looked up to over the years playing in the space. So how did you guys actually manage to find your spot in here? And, you know, there are two sides to the story. One, I could say, of course, we did amazing work. We did ABCD, but all of that would have amounted to not, unless there was a consumer whose needs were unmet. That is because our consumer had actually evolved over the last decade, and today I'm going to touch upon a few topics which highlight what had changed, what had evolved, which we were fortunate to spot, and how did we cash in on it? So without spending much time on the preamble, I wanted to start off by saying the biggest shift we've seen is that the way brands actually evolve, the way brands engage, reach out to consumers and vice-versa, engage, the way consumers engage with brands have seen a drastic shift over the last decade. Everybody knows that, because today we are all living fairly digital lives. We are connected.  It is because there is somebody who's communicating with us right now, and you know, we want to see what it's at. How has that changed, and what does this do to our attention span? I think for brands, there was a time when the mandate was fairly simple. You have a budget. You have your set channels of television, print, billboards, wherein you have to communicate the same channel, same messaging across. And you put all your eggs in one basket, and you pick a campaign for the year, and you go all in on it. Of course, it worked, and that's not past tense. It still works. The only thing is it's a very unidimensional way for a brand to communicate what it stands for, what it wants to champion, what it wants to talk about, what it wants to be known for to its audience. Then came a period when brands realized that, okay, people are getting to know about me, not just from my distribution, not just from television, not just from print, but from what are these? Oh, these are blogs. Okay, people are giving their own opinion on my products, on my services, and that's when it became important to start understanding that the reputation of a brand, the impression of a brand is not tightly controlled by the brand itself any longer. There are people in the middle who are also putting their own flavor off it. Now, which was great for a while, but the thing about blogs is that blogs had very limited audience. When social media platforms exploded, that's when you realized that nobody had the time to go through and read, spend 10 minutes reading a blog, which is why the term blogger got replaced by influencers fairly quickly, and that's when brands realized that, okay, now it's not enough what I communicate on ATL and primetime television. It's also about what everyday micro conversations are happening on these different social media platforms. How do I even try controlling that? Or how do I even try navigating that? I mean, you can try, but you can never get it perfect, because ultimately, the experience we provide, the products, the agency, they speak for itself. And of course, right now, the number of, the sheer number of influencers, micro influencers, it's easier to be a person, to be somebody who has an opinion on a product or services. What does this do to a brand? This pushes a brand to evolve. So there are two, this basically poses a question in front of a brand. They're, okay, your target consumer is changing. The way they want to engage with you is changing. Do you think it's important to cater to them? Now, for a lot of brands, especially in our category, I realize that this was seen as a niche, that, okay, I remember there was a time when we used to speak to our partners, like, say, Mintha and Ika, Amazon, and they'd always, especially horizontal platforms. And the conversation would be, it's so difficult to get a top navigation category button, drop down for beauty as a category, because it was not big enough. But that's the beauty about India. Today, what is niche becomes very big tomorrow.  But the magic of India lies in the fact that if you can identify a niche and go deep into it, build a reputation in it, I think that's when you can own the category when it becomes mainstream, which is about accurate. This is what happened to us. So I, you know, when I say then and now, I don't mean, I literally mean then and now. It's not that the now has replaced the then, but the way the whole funnel has worked for brands over the years, how do you get the attention of a consumer? Earlier, it used to be very limited channels. Now, there are channels multiplexing each other. There are social media. There's how do you generate interest?  They were very clear and direct and say, this is my product, USB, buy it, or this is my, this is how attractive the price is, buy it. But now the audience wants more. Why do they want more? Because there is no, there is no only Kingfisher in the market anymore. There's Kingfisher, there's Beera, there's so many else. So why, you know, whether they ask you directly on your face or not, brands do ask, why you? Why should I purchase you when I have the choice of so many new brands? So this is when a lot of brands like us, who are able to cater to the audience, that is asking questions. Because, see, let's get it straight. A lot of people don't ask questions. They are the mass, they are the mass. But for those who are experimenters, who are willing to let new brands get a foot in the door, these are the consumers who have evolved. They are also the taste makers. So if we identify these consumers and say, okay, let me create something which this consumer is asking for, and I'll show a slide where we talk about a specific example. That, at least in our category, we've seen goes a long way because they then spread the word about, okay, you know what, this is something that this new brand is doing differently. And that helps brands, especially new brands like us put our foot in the door, observing and applying the fact that consumers have evolved. I want to move on to, I'll come, I'll circle back to this slide later. Because for me, when I talk about brand-evolving, brand breaks into three pillars. How have your products evolved? How has the content around your brand and products evolved? And thirdly, how has your buying experience evolved? But if I were to just talk about product evolution for a change, it's very easy to understand simple example. Historically, makeup usage peaked mostly after 30, 28, 30 age.  So when your skin loses hydration, you're not able to pull off very, very deep matte formulations, which is why you would find that most of the lipstick formulations that were very popular, especially about a decade back, they were creamy mattes. Now the thing about creamy mattes is they're very comfortable to wear, but there's feathering, there's transferring, and you need to keep applying it. Now the audience which we were talking to seemed to have evolved from there, and mostly because they started using makeup at a far younger age. And when your skin is that hydrated, you can pull off and be comfortable with a far matter formula, deep matte formula. What does a deep matte formula do? It lasts longer without feathering, without transferring. And when, you know, I don't quote this story often, but back in 2015, we actually went with this observation to some of the large beauty players, two of them we went to at least, and we said, you know, this is the observation which we are seeing from our other business, also in this space, it was a beauty subscription service space. There seems to be a demand for deep matte products, which are drying, but very long lasting. And the answer we got from the larger companies was that, you know, we can't do this. We can't do this because our core audience, it will antagonize our core audience, because our core audience is the average age, purchasing ages say 32, and this is too drying for them. To be fair, they were completely correct, because yes, it would antagonize the existing audience, but we had very strong data to back that, you know, for the younger audience, this would fly, which is why one of the earliest products we launched was this liquid lipstick product that used. And I, you know, even now if, you know, if somebody asks me which is that one product which helped you enter 100,000 doors, 100,000 families to actually get the brand its escape velocity to start with, it would be this product. Similarly, there were other, you know, if I can take many stories, of course, but in the interest of time, eyeliners, for example. Historically, we've always had very glossy, shiny eyeliners. Why? Because makeup has always been seen as an occasion-based wear. But our customers have evolved, because when makeup shifts from being an occasion-based wear to a regular wear, and I don't need to read an article to say that. It's in office. I mean, there was a time when you'd hear, over here conversation that somebody's come in maybe, maybe not wearing a casual or a cold, which is perfectly okay. And friends are asking, hey, are you feeling unwell today? Or it's become as ubiquitous as toothpaste now. So when we see that, we realize that one can't wear glossy eyeliners to work every day. Makeup has to be more matte, more subtle. But the market didn't have that, because that was not what used to push the numbers, and that was not what you'd find selling in the larger channels, like modern pre-order general trade. So understanding the fact that the need of consumers have changed, one of, and when I say need, I also harp upon unstated needs. This is a review from 2017. It's a very telling review, and we have this blown up at our office just as a reminder. Now, somebody left a review about the liquid lipstick, the same one I spoke about, and it's amazing. They ask for so many things while not literally stating out any one particular thing. They don't want, our audience doesn't have time for touch-ups. They want world-class quality. They want at an affordable price. They don't want a single swipe application. No two applications. It should dry rapidly. Now, you know, there are so many deconstructed needs in this one review that when we look at it, the literal mandate to our product team is that look at this. This is how demanding the audience is today. So if we're able to, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, if we're able to solve for at least half of these, the product is going to be a hit product. So when we, you know, we don't need to guess this right now because historically there's a way in which formulations have been made, gross margins of products have been protected, but the way brands are evolving right now, I think there's enough and more material out There, whether it be reviews of, of course, platforms like nike, amazon, everywhere, or, you know, focus group Discussions, which are, which of course take longer, which Give us cues as to how brands can be built. Similar tangent on content. Earlier content used to be about simply focusing on, okay, this is the product that's available, new and improved formulation available at a retest store and the audience, but the audience is asking why, and when your audience ask why you, it has to be more than just a hardcore product push. So which is why we are cognizant of the fact that there are multiple platforms that have evolved over the period of time. For example, YouTube is great for longer format content, which is maybe five to six minutes, wherein you take your time and patiently educate your audience about what your product or brand does, but, but it's not, it is one of the most vibrant platform, but not the most vibrant platforms for us, especially its Instagram. What do you do on Instagram where the attention span is almost like that of a goldfish? You learn to condense your content. You learn to mix it up with entertainment, not just education, and keep talking about things which hit a chord with your audience. And this is something I think, I mean, we made a lot of mistakes over the years, but this is something I think we've genuinely done well. We've spoken consistently about multiple different pillars that the brand communication has been built on, whether it be inclusivity about how there are 22 different shades in our foundation range from light to deep, about how individuality, metal, being bold and free. So these are not flash in the pan campaign. They've been like pushed out, communicated. We've had two-way communications with our audience on this. And when we leverage social media to do that, that helps us rack up an enormous number of views. I mean, this, we currently get about 410 million impressions through our own channels on social media. And this is not even, if you look at the whole paid earned, owned model, this doesn't even capture the earned media, which happens when others talk about our products. And this is the end result of this is this. When you talk about how brands evolve, from October 19 to this is a little dated till February 21, we kept tracking our followers on Instagram. And this is how the black line is the sugar cosmetics Instagram account. So we are seeing a similar trajectory now in YouTube as well. But this is something which new age brands have learned to do well, carry on the conversation to platform where the brand is more natively, natively trust the brand, natively more engaged. And the last part about commerce, I know there's a question every brand faces that should I, which platforms should I sell on? And for larger brands, the question is should I sell on an online platform? Should I sell on an app? There's this new metaverse store? Should I sell over there? And for brands like us, smaller brands, younger brands, the question is when can we break through to the big boy tables of general trade, modern trade? I think today's there's no either or. I mean, when we look at all the channels that are there, it's a matter of us, it's not a matter of where to sell because ultimately the customer will always purchase from where she is used to purchase from because she trusts the platform. So for brands, if you're trying to maintain trust and saliency across channels, it's a tough to ask to convince a consumer to a, buy your product, b, add to the price that you're selling, see through the channel which you want them to purchase in. It's too much to ask for, which is why as a brand we've shifted our stance from there. We said they're all important to us. DTC is important, but being a DTC brand is not important. Being a large, loved brand is important, which is why I think some of our earlier notions, sugar used to be called a DTC brand, we still get called a DTC brand, but not many people know that 55% of our revenues are actually from retail and not from DTC. So hopefully it'll start showing up in some of the reports. So I'd like to end with this because there's this large, red, zero, I see flashing over here right now. But sugar as a brand has evolved over a period of time through the evolutions we've seen in our product, in our content, in our commerce. And I think evolution is given. Evolution will happen whether we like it or not, because our customers are evolving. And the minute, as long as we remember that the brands exist to serve the consumer, we'll have no option but to evolve with them. So thank you very much. Happy to take any questions if there are, but thanks for the patient audience.


So we can go shopping with people, we escorting people with their needs if they want to go somewhere. We are doing food for them if they are requesting. Sometimes we are just walking in the garden. If it's nice weather, we will be sitting and chatting with them.


Welcome everyone, this is the AgriFoC 2030 webinar on influencing policy and what happens beyond the policy brief. So the question, the big question of this webinar today is we've written the policy brief as we discussed in the last one, if you were participant in that one, we've written the policy brief, what happens now? Is our job over as researchers and scientists or can we do more and can we do additional and scenery things to improve the impact of our policy messages? So in other words, is the policy brief a means to an end or is it a tool to influence policy among other tools or among other processes that we can apply as researchers? Just a rough program for today. We'll have a short introduction by Eva. Eva will introduce himself in a second. He's also with SCI and very much in charge of the AgriFoC project here at SCI. He'll introduce us to the whole program. And after that, I'll introduce you to the lady sitting next to me, Isabel Bannieron, who is a researcher with CIRA, which is a different organization. And the idea of today was to give you a bit of a feeling for how different organizations try and influence policy as well. So that's why we have our special guest here today. With me also is, and you can't see her in the picture because she's just sitting outside of the frame, is Meta Zinong, who is also with the SCI Asia Center, same as me, and in the policy group. And she might chime in with discussion points, but she'll also be reading your chat messages. So if you have a question or a comment, please put it in a chat. Me will read the chat messages so we can respond to that as needed. So without further ado, I'll hand it over to Eva, who is in Sweden, so thousands of miles away, but hopefully the technology won't fail us. And Eva will give his introduction. All right, thanks. Yeah, thanks, Clemens. And hopefully you will all see the first slide on my slide presentation. And my name is Eva, I work at Stockholm Environment Institute, SCI in Stockholm, and so a bit far off from Bangkok. But as Clemens said, hopefully you will hear and see my presentation. So I'll give you a bit of an overview of what I agree to see for 2030 program is trying to do. We're right there trying to bridge science with policy and practice. And the program is, let's see if I can, as there we are, there. It's targeted in SDG 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals. And hangar achieving food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. That's the main target of the program. And it's based, it's a CDA, it's a Swedish international development agency supported program. And it developed by a number of Swedish universities. And we, SCI, we are part of the communication and engagement component of the program. And the program is based on that. We know that small hundred farmers are accounted for some 70 to 60, 70% of the global agriculture production and are increasingly seen as key actors in reaching the SDG 2 at global level. So they're really important, but many of them are facing severe difficulties in many, many challenges, of course, in meeting new demands that are arising and then trying to sort of cope with new realities and improve their sustainability, their profitability and their productivity. And to a large extent, the transformation agenda is needed to enable all these smaller farmers to respond to the accelerated demands and ensure food security. And we also know that such an agenda and all the interventions needed and all the actions and policies that are to support all this agenda needs to be science-based and knowledge-based. So to that extent, science and scientists do have a crucial role, we think, and I think you agree with me in supporting small hundred farmers in meeting future food demands and development demands in the years to come. So this is the basic premise on what the program is resting on, but the problem is, and you know that as well, we have a number of obstacles for linking science and policy and practices in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia where the program is based. But we also have, we have data which usually are insufficient and inaccessible or basically lacking, meaning that that scientist and science has a great role in trying to compile, synthesize data and knowledge in a form that is useful for policymakers and practitioners. And we often have inadequate models for linking science to policymakers and and practices. Let's see. Okay, yeah. So we have inadequate models for sharing for linking science and policy. And we also have a problem in scientists often lacking the capacity, capacity to communicate their science and their knowledge. I'm back again on my screen here. And research in the Agri-Force 2000 target readings and basically also research in my country, Sweden is often primary academic and generally not designed to address knowledge gaps of specific actions by scientists, by policymakers or practitioners. And scientists are usually not trained to communicate their research outside of academia. So we have a disconnect between science, policymakers and practitioners. And then we have this program Agri-Force which is trying to, together with scientists, link with scientists in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, synthesizing knowledge and science in the area of agricultural development, preparing it for communication in the form of policy briefs and reports and media and products. And trying also then to engage and with stakeholders, be it policymakers or practitioners. Then that's the Agri-Force program in a nutshell. So we're trying to analyze and synthesize relevant scientific data. We're trying to communicate these relevant stakeholders and we're trying to engage with relevant stakeholders and co-creating knowledge. And it's the latter part that we are dealing with in this seminar now, the engagement part, which is usually, I think it's one of the most crucial parts of this science linking to policy and practitioners scheme in a sense that usually we do our research, we do our policy briefs and then we sort of tick it off and then we go back to the lab or to our fields doing our research and we rarely sort of go beyond that point. So that we will dig into deeper today. Just to give you a bit more background on what type of area and focus the program has. We have three cost-cutting areas, sustainable and intensification of agriculture. Agriculture being more productive and more efficient use of human financial and natural resources. We do have an urge to increase women and youth participation in agriculture development and try to empower that through the program. And we do think that access to market and value chains for small-scale farmers are key to improve productivity and profitability of small-scale farming systems. And then we have also a number of four themes of the program and that's social and economic dimensions of small agriculture, multifunctional landscapes and increased productivity of cropping systems and also increased productivity of animal livestock systems for small-scale farmers. So that's basically the program in a nutshell and I hope you've been able to see here and see the slides. And I hand over now to to Clemens and colleagues in Bangkok taking this further, the seminar further. Over to you Clemens. Okay thank you Ibar. Thank you very much. Yeah I think we all have to admit this is the first time we're doing, we're applying this technology in the team software. We do not have, we do not have calm support with us today because that all failed through. So we're struggling with the technology but hopefully the attendees that are online at the moment will still get something out of it. We've also prepared a couple of other slides but I'm not sure actually whether they'll work out maybe make and figure it out as we go along. So thank you very much Ibar for giving us that context. In fact I think you know even though agriculture is a sort of geared towards agriculture some of the things that we'll talk about might not be just specific on agriculture but it happens to be the case that Isabel in both my research area as a culture. So Isabel Banyarou is a researcher at SIRAT but based now in Vieng Chan, Laos PDR, Laos People's Democratic Republic and we're lucky to have her here in Bangkok at the moment because she has been attending a number of meetings just this morning. There was the workshop on the Bioeconomy Initiative and last two days we had the Responsible Business Forum which we both attended and it was quite exciting. But what I want to know Isabel, what do you do in Laos and how does a SIRAT researcher get to Laos and what are the sort of the main issues that you're working on at the moment? Thank you for inviting me to this exciting adventure. It's my first time sitting and participating. So my name is Isabel and I've been working in the Laos PDR for eight years now. Previously I was based in Montpellier where the headquarters of SIRAT are. We're about maybe 900 researchers. In Vieng Chan we are maybe four and basically what we do is research and cooperation. So we cooperate with local institutions in the different countries where we're posted. So I started working at the Faculty of Agriculture and then I work previously in a project at the Ministry of Agriculture and now at the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute. I'm an economist by training and my main area of interest is sustainability standards but as there are not so many standards operational in Laos I work also on regional value chains which are quite exciting in the area. We're producers in Laos set up our products to get any traders or Thai traders or Chinese traders and value chains that are mostly regional. So it's what I'd like to know because we're talking about obviously policy influence also creating policy briefs and what to do with that afterwards. What's your contact in Laos with policy actors? How do you insert yourself in the policy process in Laos? So that was very new to me and that was really exciting in Laos because in Montpellier maybe we're more remote in relation to policy makers and more focused on doing research but in Laos we are in really close contact with the Ministry of Agriculture and through NAFRI and faculty that are both also really connected to the Ministry we have frequent interaction and that was something that I really learned that we're not only doing research for the sake of research but there is a demand that is not far and we have and it's very rewarding it's not like you're in a bubble and you're doing this research and maybe one day you'll publish in a paper it's a demand and it's not only the government sector can be NGO and it's interested by having hard evidence or data on a typical subject that they will use in their projects so the line between the end user and your research is much shorter which makes it really rewarding in terms of research because it's not abstract. So yeah mainly we work with ministry people or with people who have to give information to the ministry I don't talk directly to the ministers or people from the ministry some of them but mostly with researchers who are in direct contact with the people from the ministry who really are waiting for information from them. So we're talking about researchers from Laos and who where would these researchers be working at because obviously they're not at CIRAB right? So they would be working at the National Agricultural Forestry Research Institute and also at different faculties of the National University of Laos. Right so that National Agricultural Forestry Research Institute that's a public research institute I think that's important to say because that's also a direct vector into policy right those public research institutes that you have basically I think everywhere right in each country. And they are even under the ministry of agriculture so we're even more closely connected as many research topics that they work on are really in response to a demand from the ministry. Right so the demand comes on to these researchers and they pass it on to you because you happen to be the expert in let's say regional value chains so they want to get your expertise on them. Not always the way we work also with the NAFRI is that the research demand is passed on to them and then I help them with the metallurgical issues so I'm kind of in support they do the research themselves and there's interaction between us that's the way we because CIRAB is also about research but research in cooperation and capacity building and doing research. So there's a strong capacity building element involved. Yes so we have lots of dialogue and interactions about how they can best answer the demands that are made to them from the ministry. Right. And implementing the research and then after in writing their reports and sharing the information and that's where we start talking about these policy briefs because. Yeah that was exactly what I wanted to ask you next. So CIRAB very similar to SCI produces policy briefs as one of their communication outputs. Yes. Right. In CIRAB's view or let's say in the corporate procedure of CIRAB what is the purpose of the policy brief? Oh they're okay so CIRAB how can we say we're okay as many researchers we're like a herd of cats so we are quite independent in the way we communicate our research. Yeah. The mainstream channels through articles and then on burning topics we also have possibility to do those policy briefs. Yeah. And why I say we are a herd of cats is that there is a single format in terms of you know colors and outset and everything. Yeah. But then what the content will be is a bit up to whatever people want to. Up to the context in the project. Yeah. Some people are going to focus on methodology saying oh we do simulation games and that's the best tool to advocate what we do. And some people are more on to sharing the results more like a research brief. Yeah. And some are on more burning topics and are just to catch the attention of donors. So there is a single format in terms of presentation and then in terms of content it depends upon you know what people with the message people want to share. So I'm wondering from the perspective of CIRAB headquarters what is the audience of a policy brief? Can you say something about that and then as opposed to that what do you think is the audience of a policy brief? Okay. So we post them on our website. Yeah. But I think that mostly we use them not at central level in Montpellier but maybe in the different countries. In the local context. Yes in the local context. And a lot of it is maybe not so much to share research with researchers because we obviously do scientific papers but mostly maybe to disseminate our research with donors and also with potential partners because there's a big partnership component so this is what we do not alone but together with others. But it would be the same as the donor. Yeah. So other researchers, donors, potential partners, what about policy actors? Well that was actually okay maybe I'm very not representative in this aspect but until I came to Laos I was not very much policy oriented. I was you know doing the research. Just an academic. Yeah academic. And it's really being in contact that's really what I learned from the Laos context and I'm really grateful because that's really interesting that that's what I really learned when working with researchers in Laos and I say let's do this great paper and they don't care what for and what they want. Yeah. It's difficult, takes so much time and they don't even know who's going to read it and it's not useful for them. But at the same time they have very important demands. They're really demand driven towards the ministry, towards donors, towards round table processes in the country and so that's when we started realizing maybe two, three years ago that we really had to change the way we communicate our research to make it more user friendly and make it useful for the people with who we work and for who they work and to be really part of the policy process. So that was a major discovery for me and I think that was really useful. That's great. Yeah.  So obviously as you say writing articles in agricultural economics journals might not have an immediate effect on the political or policy ecosystem there but nevertheless you still produce I assume in policy brief so who are those people who now in the Laos context, who are those people who take them, read them and maybe act upon them? Those would be mainly people working at the ministry level and also donors and NGOs, people in Laos. Yes, maybe in Laos. I would say that okay maybe that resists the question of what do you want to do with what you want to achieve with your policy brief and I think that without being pretentious and thinking that we're about to be able to change the world, I don't know how much we can do that, but the objective is to bring change in the way things are done and to back that with evidence about what's not working currently and how things could change. It's not also maybe not about giving the best solutions but bringing people to think about the solutions that we propose but are among a set of options. So you don't have all the answers but you want to give possible scenarios or expectations, something that might happen. And maybe attract because in Laos there's so many issues that are being discussed and so maybe bring to the fore what we think are priority issues or issues that we think should be taken into account. Well okay so that would be the way we would do as foreign researchers but in Laos also there is this demand driven so most of the time the topics are also given to us. What do you think about developing the t-center or so we have both topics that can be that go this way and then the idea is to share this information we have and bring people around the table because maybe that's what's interesting with the policy brief. The objective is not only to show how good and how clever and how interesting our research is but to bring people together to discuss the policy brief and I think that's the next step that we really want to achieve. Yeah okay let me just interrupt you here. May if there are any questions in the chat room then let us know okay you can interrupt us anytime. Thanks and what I wanted to get onto is something that you said before which is you're learning how to communicate research differently. So obviously not the traditional academic route and there is research that's actually demanded from you within your context. How can we let's say you're doing your research on regional value chains? How can you insert your knowledge into ongoing policy processes? I mean what I'm getting at is is it enough to write a research brief or a summary of your research or a policy brief and then send it by email to the Deputy Director General of Planning or is there an additional sort of effort needed to really get those messages across? There is. Oh yeah there is. I think the whole idea of trying to foster policy dialogues or try to have places I don't know how you call it where you can really exchange about the policy brief, the policy brief being a starting point where you can engage people. What do you think about this? First for fact checking is this also important to you and is what we're talking about or writing our diagnosis? Is it a good one?  Yes that's revalidating just making sure and then once we're all on board with the same or maybe different views but then we agree on the landscape of that problem. Try to discuss with people the solutions or the options, their pros and cons and how to move from there and I think that's maybe that's the most important part of the policy brief. It's not only about advertising what we're doing but also to launch some kind of discussion with people so that's when it's important to really know well the landscape that you don't get only one type of person like okay maybe policy makers but also maybe NGOs, farmers if it's possible, if they're important in the issue, maybe private sector people so that you have a balanced view of the issue that you're talking about which makes it richer because you don't represent only the interest or the viewpoint of research or across e-makers or government or NGO because that's what you want to achieve. So basically the policy brief is the start of a dialogue. What I'd be interested in is okay we're starting a dialogue now and we've written a policy brief to start a dialogue. How does this dialogue take place? How can we imagine a policy dialogue to take place? Is this like a big formal event where we give tons of PowerPoint presentations and everybody's bored to death or falls asleep or plays with their phone or is this something on a much smaller scale where we try to interact with various policy actors and try and have discussions with them and influence them thereby. In your case what are the various sort of venues of a policy dialogue? I guess there could be to be imaginative and creative. You could have maybe a big forum. Maybe you could keep the big forum for the final part when you substitute the interactions you can have. If you could imagine stakeholder meetings with different kinds of stakeholders to validate for the different perspectives. I was just thinking earlier about maybe we have had instances where we organize games and we have through the policy brief identified scenarios to cope with different problems and these scenarios can be played in participatory games and then we could feed the results in these games and have something different formats are possible I guess. Okay and I'm also wondering whether the dialogue also takes place in the form of like informal like using your network and having informal conversations with policy actors to sort of plant plant seeds of ideas in their minds something like that. Yeah that can happen also. Yeah the thing is that as many avenues as possible it's really what is interesting with the policy brief is that it's something that you could just carry around and share with many different kinds of people because it's supposed to be very simple addressed to a broad audience and it's something that you can carry on and it could be the basis of discussion for many different types of stakeholders. We're talking about simple messages. I mean I guess in your research you know there's a wealth of data that comes up and it's all complex and there's so much interesting information that you come up with. How do you select those those key messages you know often in the policy brief you have like three or four these are the key messages you should change that or whatever. How do you select those messages you know is it according to the government demand whatever they want or yeah how do you prioritize? Yeah I guess that's that's when it gets a bit complicated because everyone okay I'm thinking about one type of research that we've been doing with with Oxfam and then we think about this research and the results could be useful for and how it can be used for the final objective that would be for example access of all to organic farming and then you can think about okay who can use it who would be the end users and how they could use it yeah but I think it's a it's a complicated issue for researchers to stay simple and be simple. In Sierra we participate each year to this big agri fair in France and so each year we have a booth of lots of display and people who go there are ordinary French citizens and they go to this huge fair where they can see big animals and factors and they they stop at the Sierra so hang on they see big animals and tractors and then they see the Sierra group and they ask you where you're selling and what's where you're doing and so we say you know in French we say research for the south and they go south of France what are you doing so I think it's it's a every day yeah are you working in Mies or Marseille okay and I think it's um I think this is a very good exercise that we had because first we had to help you know make the booth with all the posters and and we have a tendency to use jargon and we had people talk to us and say oh what are you talking about and what really are you doing I think for us it was a fantastic exercise to um to take this um yeah take the habits of explaining simply and that's always like so students and young researchers the way I work just pretend I'm your grandma and explain what you're doing and it's not because you're explaining it simply that it's stupid but I think this this is um a duty that researchers have to be able to express in a simple way for many people to catch on what they're doing and it's not necessarily dumbing it down but it's using the right language exactly so that people understand that you're not working in Mies but and you're attacking problems that many times are not aware of because you know ordinary citizens don't care about nutrition sense it's a value change for example they don't even know what it is exactly and so and and you just wonder why you're doing all this stuff so and another thing that we discussed yesterday actually may brought it up is and that might be culturally very specific but the tone of the policy group so not just what the message is but how do you convey the message and and you know how do you strike the balance between oh I'm this serious scientist that invested a year of my time in coming up with this genius solution and also on the on the other hand you you have to present your work as an offering rather than rather than sort of a paternalistic type of yes you know you got to do this now because because I sacrifice my time and I guess you know a the tone might be different in Laos Thailand in France or wherever yeah we it's funny because I put a lot of emphasis on the titles trying to have you know catchy and appealing titles and subtitles in my policy briefs and then when we you know try to translate them into Laos people are horrifying because that's not the way titles don't work no it doesn't convey the message the same way and so one of the problems we've had is translating the policy brief that we initially I initially or collectively we initially wrote in English and translating it and having in the end something that's appealing and where there is a message and where people see the importance of your message in Laos with the extra difficulty that I don't read now so I'm not so it's kind of like Google translated translated to Laos and then back into the first time who was translating was a person doing research in Laos okay okay so they're researching but it's still difficult because when when we did this this workshop about policy briefs with the people from the research institute and the ministry and we looked at these different policy briefs and there was our policy brief that we shared in Laos and at the ministry people looked at it and said doesn't make sense and I was a bit crushed because I thought it made a lot of sense in English and so I and so I think there's it's not only about translating it's about conveying the messages the right way so that people yeah people and that people want to read it and trust the message if it's too you know type of messages that go through in English might not be the same type of messages that go through in Laos and also maybe the degree of detail people said oh we're not detailed enough in the recommendations but we didn't feel that we were legitimate to make these you know very detailed level of message of recommendations and that should be further discussed so yeah what exactly are people waiting from the policy brief and and how receptive are they to the way you write the messages yeah okay cool and over to Mei who has a question so we have a question from Elizabeth who is from Kenya and she going back to your earlier point about speaking to farmers and an audience that's easier to not policy makers she says she she wants to know if farmers are engaged through the policy brief at all if any and how farmers issues might be presented to policy makers okay like the perspective of the farmer to the presented to policy to the policy makers okay okay thanks Elizabeth for the question um where's one in that policy the latest policy brief we were talking about the consumers okay they were they were not directly engaged it was really maybe because it was about consumption so it was more the downstream part but there was something on farmers but they were not directly in the process I think that's okay so now we're in for example we're in a project where we're really working closely with the farmers and I don't think the policy brief would be uh the tool that I would use we would yeah we would probably take the results from what we're doing and then we're trying what we're doing is we're going to do some games with them yeah with them but also with traders because it's it's a multi stakeholder yeah along the village exactly and we're what issues we think are the important issues for you know this is about diversifying out of maize so we're the issues that we spot as the relevant issues we try to make them pop out of the game but so that you know farmers and other stakeholders discuss directly I don't think there's a need for a policy brief in this case I guess yeah different different types of different tools are going to be able available for different audiences it's a big question the question of audience I think that's a really good point because there's this thing that we call policy brief now do we produce this for policy actors specifically or are we trying to cast a much wider net as you said before to encompass donors other NGOs research partners the academy uh the academia and perhaps farmers or uh or or do we segment the market so to speak and say we're producing policy briefs so that policy actors can take up some of the messages that we're trying to convey to them and perhaps to communicate with farmers we need farmer briefs or we need games or we need short video clips or whatever the case may be I don't know what the farmers in Kenya like to what kind of media they consume or maybe like little Facebook videos or whatever um in Myanmar for example may you know that um there is a farmer TV channel where research tries to convey messages through that TV channel I don't think it works 24 hours but but there are certain times of the day where sort of news from farmers come up and a lot of messages for them and I think probably the messages to the farmers are different messages than what we're sending to policy actors obviously the messages to farmers might be more behavioral behavioristic I don't know what the word is exactly so how to change their practice when to use fertilizer one to apply what's the right time to apply irrigation so on whereas policy actors might not need to know all this stuff but might might have to know if they change if if a thousand farmers change their their agronomic practice what kind of a large scale effect would that have on the landscape or on the water quality or whatever so maybe thinking of Kenya but also Asia another type of way to engage with farmers is having on-site cross visits things that might be more speak than just handing out leaflets or sharing information that you so instead of saying oh this is how you should do this this is how it's done elsewhere just try to have farmers when we discuss with farmers in different locations and and about you know recent um project activities they're always very happy because they went to this farmer's place and they learned this and they exchanged on this problem and they were able to relate that oh maybe these farmers in Vietnam they're very far away but they have the same problems as they do so yeah and it's actually sometimes good even to take policy people along to these kind of businesses so they see what's happening on the ground may you have another question or com yeah we have a question about monitoring and evaluation if you'd like to talk about that now basically monitoring the impact of the policy brief on the policy maker so how do you ensure that there's feedback into your process of policy engagement which could be the policy brief but which could also involve other things yeah it's a great question like how do we actually measure the impact of a given policy brief personally I don't have an answer to that you know obviously if it's online you can measure them a number of clicks and so on but that's not really impact right that's just how many people happen to click on your policy brief and probably if you pay google enough money you'll get more clicks so that doesn't result in behavior change and like you said before in the end what we want is to affect change yes so personally I'm not sure I don't know do you have an answer to that well I mean the policy change would be one but it takes time and often you don't stay enough time to see those policy changes exactly but maybe going to various meetings in Laos when we say that some of the words that you've been using and trying to promote are increasingly used it's not because they're being used that they're going to translate into change in practices but you know some ideas that you're trying to make up take are actually taken up by the stakeholders is something interesting also maybe one engaging with the private sector or NGOs having activities the thing is that the policy process is so long it's difficult to see right when if you have different bits and pieces of projects or short term activities stemming from what you've been able to showcase but it's true that it's that being able to see that's a sharp one yeah and being able to see the results of these policy views really rewarding and but it's something that doesn't really yeah I mean I think I can give an example also from our work in Laos where we were we were supporting the ministry of agriculture on developing a sustainable agriculture policy and while we were doing that the government was developing its national green growth strategy so there was a request from the prime minister's office to the ministry of agriculture asking them to comment on the one of the initial drafts of the national green growth strategy document the because we happened to be there at the time the ministry said well you guys from SCI why don't you comment on it first obviously they're offloading some of the extra burden of work that they have but they happen to be working with us as experts it gave us the document to read which was which was I think not exactly due process because these were confidential documents at the time we weren't allowed to get electronic copies I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to say this now so we only had paper copies on gave our they gave our comments they received our comments did whatever they needed to do with them and then submitted the comments back on back to the prime minister's office and I think while it is not while we're not able to prove that we have actually had an influence I think notionally we did have an influence because some of our comments were taken on and now can be found in the national green growth strategy maybe I have another example I was remotely involved in that but just to show how ideal the setting is in Laos there was this big problem with bad banana investors in northern Laos people who were leasing land in Laos and growing bananas in a very unsustainable way and so that copy the year of the minister who asked the NAFRI to do a research on those bananas and what they unveiled was astonishing and so they didn't do a policy brief at that time but there was this round anyway the result was that there was this policy dialogue and they really shared and they really created a buzz which was what they wanted to do and that was followed by a ban a ban of these banana investors temporary ban but you know the message went through there's a problem we have to stop it now and while we're stopping it we have to think about how to foster responsible agricultural investment in Laos and then their work or their works carry down not only with bananas but perennial crops in general to see what are the rules of the game that we want to be set in Laos for investors to come to grow rubber or bananas or whatever so I think that's maybe that's a fairytale of a you know everything going very smoothly the demand coming to the research research providing some answers recommendations and all those solutions options that are discussed with the with the policy makers and then then something happening in yeah yeah I think I think we have to work with these kind of impact stories yes very often we won't be able to to you know to show the proof in black and white but uh but uh I think sometimes we do have influence yes may there's another question yep um this question is on accountability given the political reality of working there how would policy recommendations ensure at least broad responsibility of consumers producers local authorities farmers yeah I think it's something that you already mentioned a little bit and sometimes the information that we came we come up with can be a bit sensitive as well yes right and we what we don't want to do is damage the relationship yes between all those actors that you just mentioned may the producers and the industry perhaps on you know antagonizing the the farmers and the other way around and so on you don't want to bring mess bring the head on yeah what you want to bring is dialogue and then each of these actors also being accountable for their actions and perhaps the the effects that they that they produce on other stakeholders whenever they change their course of action I think the objective is not it's okay when we're working on these issues of investments not blaming and shaming but trying to bring evidence to change in a positive way yeah yeah yeah one more question about the policies of relying on the policy itself that you are trying to influence so that we have so far from Cambodia who believes that if the policy itself doesn't sustain change of farmers practice farmers or practitioners yeah action so can you talk a little bit more about maybe the method of relying on the policy process so yeah I think so far has a very a very a very good point which is that policy often doesn't even impact the behavior here the behavior of the individual farm right but I think nevertheless we shouldn't discard policies and say always just talk all these people and just talking and actually doesn't relate to to the reality of the farmer because I do think that policy can provide a certain environment for farmers to to to to work in or to to produce in what do you think about that over the past two days in these different conferences we've been we've been talking a lot about multi stakeholder dialogues and I think this is something important not to rely only on policies but also on the different voices of the different stakeholders could be private sector it could be it is mostly also the farmers and geo civil society and okay so it's more less easy to do in different areas but for example when we're going when we're doing these simulation games that we're going to organize it's typically with you know by making people play for example their own situation that you have traders and farmers engage and and identifying problems together so it's the private sector and our staff of the government at the local level because of course we have this other problems that the policies are divided to find at the central level and then goes down to the province goes down to the province to the district to the village and by that time either the message is diluted or they don't have the means of implementing or and so it's it's it's not only a top-down thing and and I think it's very important to see how these policies and and the way they are implemented on the ground makes sense also and and there was this other policy brief that we did with the T and we had this interaction with the different levels district province or province district and I think this is very important to take into account the fact that there might be discrepancies between the you know central level and you know decentralized areas where the policies are actually used so it's a as a researcher basically you don't have to just focus on the subject matter of your research but also how to get this policy dialogue going and how to influence this process of policy dialogue with positive messages about your by your research and and I think in order to wrap this up here now the policy brief is not you know it doesn't stop at the policy brief right the policy brief is one tool of many tools that help us to communicate with the people that we want to communicate within a multi-stakeholder dialogue and policy actors are very much a part of that multi-stakeholder dialogue but certainly not the only ones that we need to talk to and even governments are not the only ones that we need to talk to but but but I think nonetheless we can use policy briefs as a vehicle to communicate certain messages to summarize research and to sort of validate some of the some of the things that we say in these various meetings we have this training ourselves on policy briefs because we also needed to be trained and the trainer said something I remember is that if you just write a policy brief and then you stop then you you can just save your time and don't like the policy if you're just writing it and and and doing nothing with it just go play golf or cook do whatever you want but don't do that because that's just a waste of time if you do the policy brief you have to take it all the way and then take advantage of all the wonderful thing it labels to do with the dialogue that you can engage with. Okay well I think that wraps this up thank you very very much Isabelle it was great to have you here at our first webinar for all of us as a special guest thank you thank you mate for being an excellent producer that was really really great thank you Eva for your excellent introduction to Agri Fossey he's waving through the computer and hopefully everything's still okay with your farm and you're going to change behavior on yours and thank you to the audience for listening to us and watching us and I hope that asking questions that was that was very good and I hope you found this a little bit useful but from us from Bangkok now thank you very much and see you next time


In this module, we would look into a very interesting product being offered by Islamic banks in Pakistan. This in a way is unique to the Pakistani Islamic banking market. This product is called Running Musharka as a replacement for overdraft facility. We would cover this topic in two modules. So this one, we would be looking into the basic structure and then we would further explain this product in the next module. Running Musharka product as an alternative to overdraft financing facility is unique to Pakistan. This is only in Pakistan that Islamic banks and other conventional banks are offering Islamic banking services. For example, Mezan Bank determines the amount of the facility to be offered to the client. So this facility is given and the client has an option to draw down as and when the client needs the money. So that money, one crore rupees is there in an account whenever the client needs this money, he would draw down money from there. Similarly, once the client has used this money and he is no more in need of that money, that money would be put back into that account. This is called overdraft. When money is needed, it should be used. And when the need is over, the money should be returned. In an Islamic context, this kind of overdraft facility was a very difficult structure. However, Islamic banks in Pakistan have come up with an alternative which actually works very well both for the banks as well as for the corporate clients. During the period when the client is using an amount drawn down for that time period, Mezan Bank or any other bank which is offering this facility and the client, they would become partners or they would be deemed partners. They would not become partners legally but they would be considered as partners for that time period for which the facility has been drawn down. Based on this running Musharaka, the bank and the client will distribute annual profit according to a pre-agreed format. Now it is necessary to understand with great caution that the amount of Musharaka which the bank gives is also known. And there is a formula which is going to be used for distribution of profit that is known as well. And hence, there should not be any serious problems with this kind of product being offered in the market. I mean a problem from Tariya viewpoint. Legally and from banking regulations viewpoint, this is an excellent product anyway. Let us try to understand this with the help of an example. Like our previous example, our company A is seeking an overdraft facility of 1 crore rupees and Islamic Bank is willing to offer this facility based on a Musharaka contract. Let's see how it works. Now the bank as I said earlier would make this 1 crore rupee amount available to the company A. It would put that amount into an account. And the bank has got this targeted profit of about 14% in mind. It could be anything 10%, 9%, 8% depending on the market. We are using 14%. So this 1 crore amount is now available to the company to draw down whenever it needs. It can draw down all 1 crore rupees or it can draw down a smaller amount depending on the need of this company. For example, if the company draws down 10 lakh rupees, 1 million rupees draw down for 30 days. Then for these 30 days as I said earlier, the company and the bank will be partners with the ratio of 99.99 and 0.01. In this case, there would be this thing 99.99 and 0.01. So this would be the partnership ratio of the bank and the company. Now if the company draws down on numerous occasions, for example on May 31, it draws down 1 million for 30 days. Fine. Next draw down is on 11th of May for 10 million for 20 days. June 5th it draws down 2 million for 10 days and so on. So this amount of money is available for the company for one year. Whenever it needs the money, it can draw down the money. So this draw down schedule happens to be like this for one year for this particular company A which has received an overdraft facility based on running Musharaka from an Islamic bank. Now these points, they are very important. So this structure, this product works on this point system. So when an amount of 1 million is drawn down for 30 days, the 1 million multiplied with 30, that would give rise to 30 million points. We call them 30 million rupees days. May the 11th and so on. The total points which belong to the bank according to this draw down schedule would be 615 million points for the whole year. The bank has got its own equity capital of 1 billion in the business anyway. And that money is there in the business for the whole year for 365 days. Hence the bank's points would be 365 billion rupees days. These points used to determine the investment shares of the company and the bank in the business during this one year. So according to this schedule, the company's share in the business during that one year on average would be 99.83%. And the bank's share would be 0.17%. So this is the investment share of the bank and the company during that one year on an average. We would continue with this one in our next module.


These are really good. They're cheesy. It's like they're extra, right? Yeah, enchiladas. Yeah. Good stuff. Hey y'all, it's Tammy with Collard Valley Cooks. Today, we're making one of Chris's favorites, beef enchiladas with homemade enchilada and cheese sauce. Making the enchilada sauce. This is one of Chris's very favorites, and it's in the second cookbook along with the enchilada recipe. So we're going to start with the sauce, and the first thing you do is you use a quarter cup of oil and get it hot in a sauce pan because then you're going to add a little flour to it. So we're going to go ahead and put in a quarter cup of cooking oil. This is just vegetable oil. You can use corn oil, whatever you want to use. So we're going to I'm going to use my big thing of chili powder in this eight cup scoop. And we're going to scoop out a quarter cup of chili powder because we're going to be adding garlic. So make sure you got a garlic clove handy. I'm going to use a press for it, but I'm not going to press it until it's time to use it. And so we got that ready. We've got eight ounces of tomato sauce. Now, this is Bacchante tomato sauce, and I just happen to have this in the pantry, so it'll have a little heat to it. So I'm going to use it today. We'll be using some cumin as well. So right now our oil is getting warm. We're going to go ahead and put in our two tablespoons of flour, and that's just regular all-purpose flour. I'm going to let that mix up in that oil. We've got our flour in our hot oil, and now we're going to put in our chili powder. That's a quarter cup of chili powder. And a lot of sauce has a lot of chili powder in it. We're going to add some garlic. So we'll dice a little bit right quick. Diced is really small. So I'm cutting the lungs really small, not like chopping them. And it really thinned this way, and that's probably about a tablespoon. Right, we're going to put in this tablespoon of diced onion. We're going to put in this eight ounces of tomato sauce. I'm going to turn it down. All right, we're going to add one and a half cups of water. Here's a cup and a half of water. Now we're going to put in a half teaspoon of ground cumin, a teaspoon of salt, a half a cup of ketchup. So all we got left is ketchup. We've got in cooking oil, flour, chili powder, garlic, onion, tomato sauce, water, cumin, salt, and now it's just ketchup. A half a cup of ketchup. Now all we have to do is let this simmer for 10 minutes, and then we'll pour it up and put it in something to pour it out of the serve. Okay, so we're just going to flip over in the cookbook page 29 where the enchilada recipe is. You want to have a nice casserole dish. You can go ahead and spray it with cooking spray. I'm going to go ahead and pre-heat the oven. I don't even tell you what temperature to bake it on, so we'll just go with 350. So you might want to put a note in here on page 29. Bake it 350 degrees. All right, so for that, for this you're going to need enchilada sauce, which we have prepared. We're going to need a cheese sauce. You're going to need some corn tortillas, and which Chris went got some really nice, soft, fresh ones today. So the next thing I guess we can do is make our cheese sauce. All right, while your sauce is simmering, you need to whisk it well off the bottom of the pot so that it doesn't stick, because it's nice and kind of a creamy sauce. It's not real thick, but it's a really nice sauce. So you don't want it to just sit there and boil the whole time without stirring it. All right, we're going to jump over here and make our cheese sauce. You're going to need two cups of shredded Mexican balloon cheese. Two. Okay, all you're going to do is have two cups of this cheese in a batter bowl or something that's microwaveable. You're going to put in a quarter cup of water into your measured cup and then fill it to the one cup mark. So you'll have a quarter cup of water and three quarter cups of half and half. If you don't know what half and half is, it's half regular milk and half cream. So you can mix that up yourself. Half regular milk and half cream. You can use whipping cream or you can use evaporated milk for your cream, either one. We're going to put this in here and we're going to microwave this on one minute intervals and mix it and whisk it in between. All right, with this cheese sauce, you've got to microwave it until it looks creamy because at first it's going to look all lumpy looking. So you've got to get it hot enough to really get that cheese mixed in good with the milk or it's going to look all lumpy looking. So just remember that. I think this looks good. We're going to set this right here and now we're going to pour up our sauce into a jar. I'm going to use a pint jar to put my sauce in. So I'll mix it good. Get it off the side. It's good. Then we're going to pour it in this jar. Nice and hot. It's not all going to quite fit in the jar. We're going to use what's in the pot used for our enchiladas tonight and then I will have this much sauce reserved for the next time we want to have something delicious. And of course you can use it on other things. You don't have to just use it on an enchilada. You can use it on burritos or whatever you want to make.  So just keep that in mind. These are on the website for sale if you want to get one and they also have them at your local Walmart. So I'm going to put the lid on this. Enchiladas. Now for our enchiladas we have ground chuck that's already drained and cooked. And so now all we have to do is put them together. All right I just warm these up a little bit. You can wet them a little bit because these things are prone to want to just fall the pieces on you. So do it really really fast after you heat them up. I just stuck them in the microwave for 30 seconds and so I'm just going to go fast. One more beef and then I'm going to make a couple of cheese. See they're already wanting to split up on me. It just takes them a second and yeah you can wet them but I just don't like to get all the trouble. All right so we're going to do a little bit of cheese in a couple. Now we're going to that's all I'm making for us because it's just a few of us. Now what we're going to do is pour our cheese sauce over the top of them and then I'm going to pour this enchilada sauce over the top of them and you can make more. You know of course there's enough cheese sauce and enchilada sauce to make as many as you want. Now we're just going to top them with a little bit of cheese and get them in the oven and bake them until they're hot and bubbly and then we're going to enjoy them. These are nice and bubbly so we're ready to get them out. We're going to dip some out for you. This is Chris's favorite. I don't know how hot that sauce is going to be. When you tasted it Chris was it pretty hot? A little bit. It looks nice and bubbly on it. So I had these on 350 and then right when I about 10 minutes before I got them out of the oven I turned them up to 375 just to get them nice and bubbly. All right so I'm going to get Chris's out of the middle because he likes the beef ones the best. See what it looks like up close? Sure. These are really good. They're cheesy. They're not too spicy. I tasted some of the sauce before she put the ketchup in it and it was a little more spicy but this is good. Not spicy at all. You still like the recipe? It's as simple as it is. I'm surprised you like them so much but it's the sauce I guess that makes them right. Yeah you put some sauerkraut and it's just like the extra right. Yeah. Good stuff. All right he likes them. So thanks for watching y'all. Thanks for watching Colored Valley Cooks where we cook like mama did and sometimes the Mexican restaurant. Bye y'all. Love ya.


There's one of those interesting times where we got two talks actually, two talks in one hour, but this next talk we were like Remember I'm reviewing the CRPs like this is a talk that we really want to bring in. It's something that is actually not discussed discussed often enough and Megan Rodie is here. Is it Rodie? Rodie, so Megan is going to be talking about neurodiversity in Setcoff teams And this is you know one of the things that's a nice thing about the packet hacking village is we can have many different conversations Yeah, it doesn't have to align with any of the track any certain tracks, but It's something that's you know, these are the issues that we can't need deeper conversations with and as now my pleasure to introduce you all Megan Rodie Thank you So as Ming said, I'm gonna be talking about how to strengthen your Setcoff team by welcoming neurodiversity into the mix specifically I'm gonna talk about my experience over the past year working in Setcoff's with Asperger syndrome and how I benefit my team through the the special bait brain chemistry I have with high functioning autism and also how my managers work with me And certain difficulties I face in my day-to-day So today I'm gonna talk about a group of people who are highly productive Have extreme attention to detail our logical Calculated passionate about the work they do and are hyper focused which are all skills that Come greatly as a great asset to Setcoff's teams this group of people are High functioning autistics So right now there's a lack of neurodiversity and high functioning autistics in the general workforce not even specifically Setcoff's or IT Research has found that only 15% of people with autism in the UK are employed full-time There's no stats for the USA yet. I'm guessing it's similar, but um In reality a lot of these people could be working. They just haven't been giving the chance And they should because they can add valuable skills to your teams So then we ask why why are these individuals not working when they could be really succeeding in certain fields and so to begin with Due to social disabilities these individuals often do not Interview well due to lack of social skills Communication skills and so that's a quick cutoff for them when they're interviewing there's also a stigma surrounding autism and typically interviewers or anyone who when you think about autism you're thinking about the disabilities and difficulties of those individuals and is rarely rarely talked about the Abilities that come with having a different mindset and being able to work with that And my last point that I think is why we're often overlooked is because we behave uniquely So some of the things that I do that would often turn people away from considering me for a job or Being a friend even I typically talk very loudly I am often told to use my indoor voice like a five-year-old so that's one thing I realize I I Understand I do it in general But I don't often realize I'm doing it till somebody tells me to be quiet and often they just think I'm annoying It's really something to do with my brain chemistry that I don't understand Secondly I tend to be very blunt with people and so I often say things that easily offend Or nor people because I don't think about what I'm saying or I do think about it and just my brain's saying Oh, yeah, that's totally cool to say.  I don't handle them well So I find it hard to be a adult despite having almost two degrees now But having said all this there is evidence of certain companies and organizations that are working hard to Bring these individuals into their workforce. For example, many tech companies are Discovering that autistic individuals their mindset provides valuable resources to their team SAP for example has an autism of work Program and is working to get their workforce up to 1% Autistic by 2020 because they found that these individuals do great with quality assurance reviews and their attention to detail allows them to review software and work on application development And this is the same across the board from Microsoft New Relic HP. They all have programs specifically focused on Hiring autistic individuals to work in their companies Secondly, we have the Israeli army everyone knows the Israeli army is a pretty strong military force very admired military force and they have dedicated a whole division called the visual intelligence division to Work with high functioning autistic individuals who were previously turned away from military duty They found that a lot of these individuals were high functioning enough to want to work it because every Israeli Adult when they turn 18 serves in military forces and they found that these high to functioning autistic Individuals who could do the work were getting disappointed that they were turned away So they created the visual intelligence division where these individuals sit in screens all day Looking for slight differences in satellite images that may indicate enemy movement Explosives or anything like that. So they found they're good at hyper focus high attention to detail seeing those differences over long periods of time and Even further what really shows how this is working out is a lot of these individuals are now moved being moved into the general population of the military because The commanders are and leaders are now learning how to work with these individuals and realizing There's not really much difference if we move them into the general population Lastly my me working for the past year at the Texas Department of Public Safety, which has led me here I believe is proof that this really can work. So I was great in academia. I did Four years got my math degree at 18. I am currently working on my master's degree should get it by the time I'm 21 and I actually had never even touched cyber security until one year ago decided to Jump in on an internship. I didn't really know what was it it was about But I didn't have anything better to do in my summer and now a year from now I'm speaking at Def Con about my work in cyber security. So I think that's pretty good evidence that it worked out Okay for me So I listed a few things that make me difficult to work with so now I'm gonna tell you How you can work with these individuals? Despite their disabilities So the first thing is awareness both the co-workers and the managers need to Understand that these individuals though they may have challenges associated with their condition that They they bring benefits and that's why they should be hired So you will need to adapt to the employee because their brain does work differently but that shouldn't scare you it's not a bad thing and I'll as I'll show you in a few minutes There's not much difference, but there's some and so like any other disability or ethnic difference or gender difference Don't let it be a Weight on your decision to hire an employee So like I said Neurodiverse individuals, especially those with autism have a very different brain chemistry And so you can't manage them the way that you'd manage all your other employees Because everything you say to them and every way you interact with them is gonna be taken a lot differently than would with a neurotypical employee So I'm gonna start off with some examples First example is maybe an employee. They high functioning or a regular employee They've got this great idea for a project. They want to work on a plan. They want to implement They bring it to you and you you don't have the bandwidth for new projects at the time So with a neurotypical employee you'd say sorry, we don't have the time. Let's bring it back up when it's when we're less busy However with an HFA employee you want to be more specific and say bring it up to me again in two weeks or two months or two years It doesn't really matter what amount of time but the term less busy is very difficult for and high functioning autistic to interpret because It's very vague and it's very subjective the term less busy. Well, some people can easily handle subjective Concepts we can't so something like two weeks makes it very Set in and so this comes from experience as I've heard the term when we're less busy and I start worrying about well if I bring up in two weeks Is that too soon and now they're mad because I'm bugging with them something that I brought up two weeks ago Stuff like that and so having it and also when when that I didn't get frustrated and act out I'm like well, why aren't my projects being considered blah blah blah and so then I've seen as selfish and Impatient whereas really I just need something more solid when you tell me bring up in two weeks I mark it on my calendar and done is gone for two weeks. So being less vague more direct so like I said a couple changes of words instead of saying less busy say two weeks and You've made a huge improvement in that employees work its experience second scenario is Every analyst usually has a series of projects a series of tasks and their day-to-day capabilities Day-to-day tasks and so you assign these to an employee and with a neurotypical employee All you need to do is hand them the stuff and say this is what you're currently working on The difficulty with neuro HFA employees is you need to also help them identify priorities And I'm not telling them everything you hand them give them a one two three four What this means is that you teach them to learn how to prioritize their work Because though we can work with a long list of jobs I'm not gonna understand what what is it on high priority for the organization again It's more of a subjective or conditional type thing. It's not me knowing right away So that's a kind of thing to help them learn how to identify Importance based on the work they're given So So the common theme among these things is these individuals need structure routine When they can clarity don't use vague terms and then the biggest thing of all of those is patience and understanding I Probably piss off my managers more than they'd like. I say a lot of things. I shouldn't I do a lot of things I shouldn't and luckily there they've learned that that is due to my slightly messed up brain And they've been very patient and understanding with that but they keep me around for some reason and I figured out it's because Even though I am By far not the smartest person in our office. I have the least experience probably the least technical knowledge of cybersecurity By bring productivity and efficiency even though I'm not the smartest I can typically crank out work at four times the speed of any other individual So I'm very thorough with my work. I have extreme attention to detail So I get to do get to do so the stuff isn't as fun But I do very well at things like requisition orders when we need stuff writing policies and procedures Writing Different documentation for our office because I can be very thorough with it and then also it dedicated a passionate employee Which is very important across any careers. You want to have a passionate employee not someone who's just there because it's a job So just to go a bit deeper like I said be as specific as possible But as time progresses also teach the employees how to enable themselves I also don't want people to just tell me what to do every time I want to learn how I can Interpret what you're saying myself instead of constantly having to have someone hold my hand I don't love having someone hold my hand. I sometimes need it, but I also want to learn how to enable myself and also individuals with HFA Typically when they show interest in something they become slightly obsessed. I have this issue many times in my childhood where I enjoyed something and then became obsessed and then spent Every afternoon out of school Focusing on that thing. However when you're employing an adult with this characteristic, it's the perfect opportunity I suggest what you do is with these individuals you identify With a topic if you see them getting really interested in network forensics Encourage them and help them find resources to learn more because they will dig in in their evenings after work and read All they can and become an expert on that topic and be completely happy doing it You're not forcing them to do it. They love it So that's why the things I do suggest is you you pay attention to what they're interested in and help them gain The skills in that area because they'll want to And lastly, I think this is one of the most important at least to me is you need to be a mentor So one of the things I found most helpful is every few months getting together with my manager 30 minutes at lunchtime and just discussing what where I need to improve and So it takes a little time out of your day, but it's probably I would say it's worth it for the manager Like I said, that's probably one of the most helpful things I've had Throughout throughout the past year is every few months just saying down 30 minutes because a lot of the time the things I do that are quirky or strange or inappropriate I don't realize I'm doing it and so that's I'm gonna sit down one-on-one Very and just be honest to say, okay, you need to stop doing this. You need to improve in this area It's it's definitely very helpful for me and some how I improve in those areas Usually I've seen that when I come back again and spend another 30 minutes I've ticked off the things on the list from last time. So I want to thank you all for attending my talk I know it wasn't the technical talk that are being given in most rooms But I hope it was some insight into an often not spoken about area and I'd like you all to definitely consider integrating the HFA community into your workplace more