Welcome back, it's time for a first hot topic. President Borla Tnubu's tax regime is set to take off as inaugurates a committee on fiscal policy and tax reform to be headed by Taiwo Onyadili. Multiple taxation have over the years stifled business growth with the organized private sector asking for review of unfriendly fiscal policies of the past administration. Nigeria ranks low on the global ease of paying taxes while the country's tax-to-GDP ratio is one of the lowest in the world and below the African average. We're going to take a look at this right now and I've been joined by Frank Eliania, Technology and Media News Editor, Business Day newspaper. Good morning to you, Frank. Good morning. Happy to be on the show this morning. Glad to have you join us. Mr. Frank, it's 57 days in the life of this administration. Let's start with the level of faith you have in the direction of the economic plans of this administration so far revealed. Yes, so there's a bit of optimism in the market about the president's policies so far. It has been swift and it has been back to back and coming. So therefore, a lot of people have expressed optimism that maybe the economy might soon be on its path to growth. Also, the recent appointment of Taiwo Yedale from PWC to head the task committee of the presidency and have also sounded a positive note, if you like, with the market. So it looks as if there's a lot of movement happening. The only challenge is that that movement seemed not to be translating down to the man on the street. Every other person out there don't feel like anything is happening but it boils down to impact of the policies, how far reaching. So I think we have to give it time to see what happens but there's a lot of optimism and we expect that this might translate to the general well-being of the citizen. So this committee have said that they do not seek to impose new taxes but they are concerned with improving on collection and compliance management. However, public perception is key in them being able to achieve whatever they're seeking to achieve and indeed there is need for them to be swift and very effective as you have said. But also you have the FIRS plans to introduce VAT for the informal sector. So put this side-by-side. How is it going to work? Correct. How is that going to work? I think there needs to be a lot more clarity with the communication of the government or there needs to be an alignment, so to speak. You can't be saying something on the other side and then the other side of you is doing something else and that's why on this show we've always, I've always said, there needs to be a perception that the president is walking the talk. Sometimes his policymakers are saying something else. He is saying another thing.  I think the direction that we have seen so far with the government is revenue generation. They want to increase the amount of money that Nigeria has, which is why one of the first policies that he looked at was the fiscal policy measures where he removed some taxes and also approved others and all that, that fiscal policy measure should be implemented swiftly. So that gives you a sense that this government is after increasing the revenue and there is a sense to that or it is something that should be done. We should increase our revenue, but then the question is always at the expense of what and also when you're increasing revenue, what is in it for the business community was in it for the consumers who are going to be assessing these services and products that these businesses are coming out with. So there has to be an alignment again, I repeat, between what the government says and what it brings out there. So I think that sometimes the government looks at the wrong picture. For instance, if you're looking at the banking sector and some of the profits that they have been reporting, I think it was this morning business they reported that the UBA has increased its profits. If you look at it from the financial sector, you will think that this economy is making a lot of progress or something is happening that is positive with the economy. But then you look at also the manufacturing sector or the FMCG sector, that's where you see the real picture of what some of these policies have done to the revenue of many companies. For instance, Union Lever just reported the other day that it lost about 72% of its profit. And its operational cost has increased significantly. Where it was aiming, say, about 200 million as profit, the operational cost has increased to 3.2 billion naira. And for me that is massive and that gives us a better picture of how some of these policies have affected the sectors that help us make production happen. Indeed, the organized private sector are struggling to stay afloat. And as you have rightly alluded, Nigerians are overwhelmed, presently overwhelmed. We saw the protest and been in city yesterday. And there is no doubt that this government has its work cut out for it. In signaling its intentions in building this economy and providing making job opportunities available. So whatever this team being set up has to do, as I said earlier, they need to be very swift and very effective about it. How swift do you think they should be? Okay, so they need to, the swiftness should have started a long time ago if you ask me. But then I worry that no matter how much good intentions the people that are being employed to do some of these things have, their speed will only be determined by the speed of the man at the center of it all. If the president is not running as fast as he should, looking at the current state of the economy, those who he has employed to help him to run alongside him will not be able to run as fast because he will be dragging them backward. Look at the fact that it's over 50 days and we don't have the ministerial lists yet to go to the National Assembly. We don't know the make of the people. We don't know who they are. We don't know what vision that they are coming with. We don't know what direction that they will want to take us to. That for me is a concern, in fact a very real concern. Because I was thinking by now, we should have a minister of petroleum, a minister of education, a minister of a Greek and other ministries. So it should have happened a long time ago and I've argued in the past that the latest that I expect a government or a president that wants to work to release ministerial lists is a month into office. You don't have any business waiting beyond that. You don't because already you have spent about three months before you were sworn in to know who it is that's going to be your ministers. The governors that you were waiting upon have already been sworn in. So they already have their own list of people that they want to bring to you and you have to vet it, you have to ask questions or go back and forth with them. But by now we should have seen the ministerial list. And I'm also very, very disappointed that the focus appears to be on revenue. The focus appears to be on how to boost oil sector and all that. But we are not doing much about human development sector. The education sector has no plan yet as to where the government wants to be except the increase in school fees that we heard during that time and all that. I think that's not even what the focus should be at this moment. You're not thinking about increasing school fees. No matter what the argument is that this school should end better so that they will increase their infrastructure and all of that. No. What you should be thinking about first of all is what reforms should we bring to the education sector and that should have led to the speed of bringing out the person who will lead the education sector. So by now we should be thinking about how do we reposition our young people because that is where the asset is. It's not in the oil. Oil will be there. But if you grow your people, look at what we're talking about now. We're talking about Jack Barr. We are talking about people who are living the country and many of them don't have any hope of coming back or even contributing into the economy. But imagine that we were intentional about growing our people. We were intentional about their welfare, their education. Even if they leave the country, many of them will want to come back because they know that there is something being built up for them. But right now we don't have a direction in the education sector. We don't have a vision for it. And so for me that's a very big minus for the government already. So the speed, talking about the speed again, will only be determined by the direction the president goes. It's not about who he employs. He employs a first class graduate from Harvard. But if he does not move at the speed of that first class graduate, nothing changes until that happens. Constitutionally it has 60 days to give us the list of ministers to let us know those that are going to work with him. And today, as I started, 57 days. So he has three more days to go. Why do you think he's been this slow? One, those who voted for him had said that, oh well, the kind of things he did in Lagos and being an economist himself, that he would hit the ground running. Do you see, have you been able to pinpoint the reasons why it's taken president Tnubu this long to show us his team? Okay, so talking about what he did in Lagos, did you still out on that? Because for me, I think the only thing he did in Lagos was about just raising revenue and taxing and taxing and taxing. I don't see any significant infrastructure that's happened there. But did you still out on that? But looking at what is holding him back, I think it's just mere politics. I think it's politics and I think it also speaks to the fact that perhaps he wasn't so prepared coming to office because it looks to me like he was more entuned with the politics all he did was trying to get himself there by any means necessary. So he got himself in there. So whatever happens, it just happens. So he's just running along with the crews. The tide is coming so it's now time to do ministerial appointments so he needs to do that. I also heard people who said that the delay for ministers was also delaying the appointment of commissioners in Lagos. I don't know how true that is, but if that is the case, then him delaying the ministerial list is also affecting governance in other places. So what I think is that whatever his reasons are, this is not even the time to even play politics right now. We have said before that what is needed are people with the mind to work, people who are ready to roll up their sleeves, people who know that there's an urgency, that there is a crisis, in fact a deep crisis in the country. People are suffering and it is a real suffering. It's not just something and given the fact also that right now we know that there is no refinery that is ready to refine any crew at this point, then it becomes more urgent for him to start thinking seriously about who is going to head the ministries. You know, I heard yesterday has been shifted to 2025. I don't know how true that is. And then of course the three refineries that the government, the past administration said they were trying to complete by March 2023, March has come and gone. Maybe the gold post has also shifted to another year, another we don't know about that. But if we don't get crude into the market, the price of crude will continue to go high and that's also how the price of products in the market will also continue to go high. So there needs to be a cushioning for people who are bearing the brunt of all these hash policies that the government is reeling out day by day. And what that requires is somebody at the helm of affairs to work the talk. We have said before it is important for him to show us that he is also making the same sacrifices. He is not making it at this time. We are not seeing that sacrifice. We are not seeing the cut cutting and cut cutting goes beyond just saying let us merge some ministries because you can merge ministries and still create a lot of portfolios for people to come and reap benefits from. If you are merging ministries, what you should be thinking about is how do you then reduce the personnel cost from merging. So that is what we are expecting.  The lawmakers, the ministers, the president himself, we need to have an account. Let us know exactly what you are earning. And I have also been asking myself why is it that the president has not declared his assets? We need to know how much he got into office with and how much he has currently so that we know how much he is going to live with. These things are clear. So if you want to lead this economy to the part of growth you have to be transparent about it and then you have to be accountable and make people who hold you to account. All right. Well, these reforms that this committee, as I said, they've got their work cut out for them. The four executive orders that were signed recently that have been uploaded are temporary. Temporary. The organized private sector have been under heavy burden of multiple taxation. Local manufacturers are crying to the heavens. What would you say is the best way to encourage local production, increase internally generated revenue and push the economy forward in addition to this committee that has been set up? Okay, so the first thing that should have been done is looking at the transportation. Let's start with transportation because I don't want to start with electricity because there's a lot hanging in there. So you may not be able to unlock it immediately but look at transportation, for instance. Can we provide a means of transportation for people or for businesses that helps them take their products from one end to another because right now what appears to be one of the biggest costs for businesses now is transportation because the removal of petrol subsidy lends itself directly to hike in transportation. And that takes me back to the auto gas fund that the past administration wanted to start in 2020. That fund essentially says that the government plans to convert about a million vehicles, a million vehicles that includes buses, that includes different other vehicles, most of transport, to become gas-driven. So what that means is that they are also renewable, they are clean, but then it reduces our dependency on fossil fuels. And when that happens it means that the costs that businesses are having to bear right now reduces. So the plan was that by 2021 we would have had at least 500,000 vehicles converted till today that you and I are talking that plan has yet to be implemented and what are the issues? The issues is that the process to assess the fund, the process to assess the fund, the fund is about, I think about 250 billion Naira fund, the process to assess that fund is very tedious and also the CBN has not helped matters because of all the documentation that they require for businesses to submit, manufacturers to submit before they assess the fund. So first of all, go out of the CBN and ask them what is holding back this policy? Can we roll it out in the next few weeks? This is like a low-hanging fruit. You can start converting immediately. If you can convert about 10,000 in every city and deploy it, you would have done a lot significantly to reducing the cost of transportation for both people and for the goods and services that will be carried on these vehicles. So it is time to look at what are the things that you can do quickly and do them immediately and then face electricity as well. What are we going to do about our electricity? We need to increase the capacity. If we need to increase the capacity, let us increase the capacity. If we need to galvanize some of the governors to start investing in the electricity sector, let's do something. There needs to be some urgency towards energy generation. We need to start doing that. But first of all, start to transportation, reduce the cost of carrying goods from one place to another. Then you look at electricity. All of that can go side by side. Nothing states that you must first of all finish one before you go to the other one. But if our focus is first of all how to make tax, generate tax, how to do other work and all that, we are not looking at the right focus. Because look at people like Unilava that has lost significantly their revenue. How much incentive do they have to pay tax for the next quarter? This is just a half-year result that they have and they've lost so much. So how many more businesses are in their shoes and how many more businesses will want to pay the tax that you are organizing for? So the first thing to do is how do you ginger production, how do you make people productive again? And transportation is a big thing to do right now. Then you do electricity. Then you can take it off from there. There are other things to do. Human, they had DI needs to be done so we need to do something about it. All of that are things that government can look at at the interim, what they do, all they do to bring out the ministers that we've been waiting for. Thank you so much, Frank, for your time on the breakfast as we discussed this matter this morning. Thank you so much for your time, Frank. Frank Eliana, Technology and Media, News Editor, Business Day has joined me to take a look at our very first hot topic. We'll take a break and come back for our second hot topic. Just stay with us.


Alright, last episode was rough and it better not start hitting me with those out of nowhere because Ores got introduced like an episode ago and that was still really depressing. But we'll go back to the channel, we have one piece episodes 465 and 466 today. And yes, Ores Jr is falling, I believe he's fallen in battle. Trying his hardest to get to Ace and just making it there but again it's so futile because of the power the navy holds. We also got introduced to Akainu's power finally the last admiral and he is strong to say the least. If you're new to the channel drop a sub so you don't miss any of this and let's hop into these ones. They all have like Ores mask things like the joys.  Stop. Dude if Ace is able to get out of these chains he's going to unleash hell on the navy. I swear to god. Oh he is, I can just see it. He is just, I don't even know how to describe it. I believe an unending rage inside of him right now. You just know it. The leg. Like how did Dovo Mingo cut it so cleanly too? Like he's in one motion. Gekko Mori is like, I peace guys. I'm back to Thor Mark. What does Whitebeard think? Like I said, I figured Whitebeard was like he knew Ores wasn't going to make it. Ores was on a mission one way or another. Oh, destroy this man. Yeah, don't even give him a chance. But he got his skull crushed.  That was his unbridled rage. He's nothing for Whitebeard. It's for him now too. Everybody we've already lost in this war. Dang, you can't let his death be in vain. They're using him. Yeah, this is what Ores would want though if it means saving Ace. Oh my gosh, all the men on him just gotta keep pushing forward. Dude, these red intercuts are just jarring. I don't know. I'm scared of Dovo Mingo. This guy's a psycho. That's true. Yeah, this is this is history in the making. Oh no, buddy, you are so done. Oh yeah, you say that. Dude, he just seems way too OP. Like Gekko Mori is strong, right? Kuma is strong. Mihoch is strong even, but Dovo Mingo scares me. He's unhinged by the looks of it too. Hope he's not the thing he's not built for this life, man. I guess every sort of soldier here had this sort of awakening moment that Kobe's having now at one point in their life for another. Oh, is he running? Yeah, he's just leaving. Wait, that voice is familiar. Wait, that voice is really familiar. Oh, that's the guy I knew.  He seems like the just like at all cost type. Dang. Oh, for a second, I thought he was just gonna let him run.  He's like, you best turn back right.  I was joking. Oh my god, I'll keep you would not do that. He's the rule. I think it'd be 50-50. Oh man, I kind of was savage. Holy. Yeah, that's still in the back of my mind. The fact that Ace is Roger's son. Don't worry, Sho, I have not forgotten. Dude, where is Luffy in that entire ship? I guess Whitebeard's reinforcements are just slowly getting here too. Who is this? Another, I guess, Captain. Oh my god. Oh my god. An ice cutter ship. Whitebeard? Oh my goodness. Has an enormous ship. Looks like the same size as the Moby Dick. His voice is so good, man.  Like, what weakness is there to that?  Oh my... His laugh. Well, he's genuinely psychotic. That has been rewritten. Yes, he's like, he's just like here for the chaos too. That's why he's having so much fun. He doesn't care who wins. In true warlord fashion, a government dog that doesn't like the government. Dude. What a shot. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh no, what is it? What is it? God, what? Okay. What is going on? What is happening? What is this? Why doesn't it look shaken? Buddha? His nickname is Buddha? That's worrisome. Oh my god. What is Garp doing? What is Garp doing? Maybe he'll try to free Ace. He does care for him, man. Dude, he does. Not as his own grandson, but probably close. Wait, maybe he actually is going to free him. Oh my gosh. I thought that's what it's alluding to. What are you doing? He's sitting. Oh, so Ace isn't alone? Aww. You do not want them to be pirates, man. He got up to defend Luffy. Where did you learn that curse? Oh man. Oh, so this is where he got it from? But it was under the assumption that he'd be in the navy. Dude, he was cracked when he was a young baby. So quick. Dude, these moments are too sweet, man. Now look where we are. You would stand where you think that happened to him. That's why. That's why I thought. What? Don't even know like how close it is to... Wait, what is in the sky? What is that? It's going to interrupt them executing him at least. It's Crock. Oh, buggy. Oh, buggy might be fine too. This is how they arrive. Buggy has a marine hat on, but everybody sees them.  That has to be one of the greatest entrances into anything I've ever seen ever. Dude, when Garb said, what do I do? That was heartbreaking. He's been a man that up until this point, like every action, it's just been kind of lighthearted. He hasn't seemed like he cared that much about anything. He's just going through the motions and he's just having fun with everything. But he's at a point where it's like his entire life versus family. Like he said, all these values and everything. That's why he was like, why didn't you just join the Navy? So we didn't end up here. He's so conflicted with that. That was rough, man. That caught me out of nowhere. Whatever he said that. Episode 466. Let's go to the next. Make wax or something. I don't know. Make a slide. Yeah, what do they do? Okay, it will be explained. Sick. I love this bit. Oh, okay. It was the sea quake that was moving them. I see. Oh, it was a giant wave that took them. No shot. Oh, they got caught from the beginning of the tsunami. Oh, that was from white beard though. Jimmy is like, I'm going to swim. You guys, good luck. Right on the tsunami. Stop, buddy. Look at Croc. So stoic. I love how cold about it he is. I love that he's here. I've said that many like a million times at this point. But dude, I love that crocodile is a part of all this. Oh my God. He just sort of rowed the tsunami. I love how it didn't show us what was happening until that point. And then it went back. Look at these two together, man. Who would have thought? Wait, what froze it then? Oh, was that one? Oh, that was when Alchegi did freeze the tsunami originally. Oh, I see. And they sort of got trapped. Yeah, Jimmy knows. They were that high up. Oh my gosh. They were on the top of that. No shot. I like how just intuitive Jimmy is. Yeah, Luvia, there's been a change of plan. They're trying to do now, brother. But apparently they just straight up went the other way. But on the way they were talking, it sounded like Ivan blinked them like down. Luvia's talking to Jutsu is just so strong. The target is TOTTZ. His operation three to speed it up advanced the preparation. I feel like out of anyone, Jim Bay would know what that means. Okay, never mind. They should have just said it at a time. I'm not super shocked. They made that move though. Oh no, they straight up all this jump and destroyed that. Oh my gosh. Now we're caught up. Makes sense. And that was how it happened. Oh my gosh. What a site. What an entrance. Such a Luvia-esque entrance too. Dog, so many of those like random prisoners from and built down are going to die. They just straight up fell. They're like, man, this drama is heating up. Yeah, it came from Skaipia. Okay, okay, bum the brakes. Water from that distance is like concrete. Oh, it was the section where he threw the ice out. I mean, I guess it's really high. I mean, I don't know. What do I know? Where's Luffy? Oh no. Oh my, let me guess. Oh, for the double for users and Jim Bay is going to save all four of them. Oh my gosh. Crock and Mr. One, Buggie and Luffy all want to just drown right there. Jim Bay continues. Oh, and Mr. Three. Jim Bay just continues proving himself, man. He's going to snap into him any second where he is and why he's here. I missed having the straw hats with him though, man. This is such a big event. Where is he? He's so far. Brother. These nameless Navy men. Get out of the way. This is going to be a moment where they see each other. A million percent. Yeah, Luffy ain't pulling no punches right now. No time. This lighting is very interesting. It's like a certain style. Oh, this is the right side. Right there. Wait. Yeah, he should see him. And Garp. Oh man. I'm so anxious. And Ace now sees that Luffy is here too. He's probably just freaking out, man. He's going to yell to him. He's here for you, baby. Oh my gosh. Luffy just got here. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Gear two, gear three. Just do whatever it takes, baby. Who's in that l- Yes, sir. He got goddamn buggy, baby.  Garp honestly is probably just more just mad because he's worried about Luffy now too. So Jim may assign me part of the Revolutionary Army. Or is he just saying Ivan of the Revolutionary Army? Me hawks probably like, where's Zorro? And then Gekko Mori, this is PTSD. My lover and Kobe sees him. For real, some heavy hitters. They're all establishing who he came with. Smoker's better for you guys. Like, goddamn Luffy. No shot. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Yes, sir. I'd like to see you try it, Kaidu. Look at this group. Ragtag as it is. Yeah, I think this is where Jim bait. Oh yeah, this is where he loses his job. Okay. I don't think it's that odd. Oh, there's Wybger. Wybger's still just witnessing it all. Commanding his men. That's who Crocodile wants. I guess that's why Gart brought that up because that's Crocodile's target is to take down Whitebeard. What? What is that? Brother, he is just terrifying. Wait, did he already book in for Whitebeard? No shot! Oh my God. Oh my gosh. Crocodiles better get clapped. Damn. Luffy said you stay the hell away from him. He didn't bring you here for this. Oh man. He got some water on him. Oh my gosh. Back when he referred to him as Water Luffy. Yeah, your deal's done. Crocodile, I'm sorry. There's no way you take down Whitebeard as I thought. I like how this is Whitebeard's first experience seeing Luffy.  A straw hat. This is kind of a big moment too. Whitebeard's seeing Luffy for the first time. Oh, shoot. Where is Shanks throwing all of this? For a new generation. It's basically like Shanks' word. A Luffy. Like, I would think Shanks would fight with Whitebeard. This is the generation Shanks was talking about. Oh, he's well aware. He does not care. He don't think Luffy is tough enough. Spent Luffy. That's what he wanted to hear. We're sure. Me too. Damn. It takes some gusto to stand up and do this because Whitebeard like that. See, he likes that. He likes that. That like energy, that fire. I guarantee it. Oh, maybe not. Wait. Whitebeard. We're on the same side, man. That dude just fell over. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. As he always has. He's competing with Whitebeard. You fought that guy, Mr. Three? He's just so close, but so far. But, dude, seeing these interactions, like them even pointing out, like, why is Crocodile with him? The first like big, big, big antagonists of the show. Yet we had others like our long buggy. But Crocodile felt like a just like all out. Just this has to happen type threat. And now he's come with Luffy to take on the government or more specifically trying to kill or take down Whitebeard. But like I said, he's not going to stand a single chance there, especially since we know now what Whitebeard's powers are. I don't think Whitebeard is touchable by anyone at this point. And I think that's why he's kind of like hiding his hand. He's letting a lot of fight go on so that he can step in at a moment where it's like punching down and rescuing Ace. But like the interaction between Luffy and Whitebeard, I feel like that's a monumental conversation because Whitebeard literally thought back to Shanks saying I gave it up for the next generation, which he saw in Luffy. And whenever Luffy talked back to him like that, he was like, oh, yeah, no, I'm maybe I do see a little bit of what you were talking about. But now it's really going down now that the MC has arrived, baby. Guys, that's been it for episodes 465 and 466 for a one piece watch through. Do drop a sub on the channel if you knew. I can just tell it's just going to be heat from here on out. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace, peace.


I'm Doreen Bogdan-Martin, and I'm Director of Telecommunications Development at ITU, the UN Agency for Digital Technologies. ITU has a long and proud history as a major international forum for developing global technical standards for broadcast technologies. And at this time of unprecedented global crisis, the role of broadcasting in disseminating accurate, up-to-date information on public health and safety has never been so critical. Radio and television remain the most inclusive and accessible information platforms worldwide, reaching many millions of households that still lack access to the Internet. In a climate of public pandemic, rumors are rapidly born and even more rapidly spread. On online platforms, we've seen a rising tide of misinformation and disinformation that threatens to undermine public health measures and exacerbate the social and economic impacts of the crisis. That's why I want to pay tribute to the invaluable role played by public service broadcast media around the world in helping to ensure people everywhere have access to trustworthy, reliable content. The importance of public service broadcasting to counter the COVID infodemic was recently underlined by the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, on which I serve as Executive Director. The Commission's call for action emphasizes the need to empower people with quality journalism and evidence-based information, to promote media and information literacy, and to better educate people on the dangers of sharing falsehoods. Information and communication technologies can be an extraordinarily powerful force for good in rapidly disseminating accurate information across communities in an emergency. We've seen some really innovative applications. In Rwanda, they've been using drones to broadcast public information about COVID to keep local communities safe, while our sister agency UNESCO has been partnering with radio stations to make COVID information freely available in multiple languages. The high-quality, reliable and trusted news that public service news organizations produce is a powerful and important weapon in global efforts to fight the COVID pandemic. From our teamwork to create new guidelines for child online protection, to our technical collaboration and our work to promote digital inclusion, ITU is proud to partner with EBU to ensure that the transformational power of trusted and accurate information is put within reach of all.


So next we have Dr. Annette Vegas and Annette and I go way back where we're resins together in the Toronto program. Annette is a vital force behind the Toronto perioperative echocardiography symposium. She is an attending in the CDICU at TGH and she has devoted a considerable part of her career to developing web-based educational materials of teaching both transesophageal and transthoracic echocardiography. Annette has extensively published journal articles and book chapters, authored textbooks and co-edited textbooks related to echocardiography. She's a professor of anesthesiology and an elected fellow of the American Society of Echocardiography. The title of the Dr. Vegas presentation is Pathophysiology and Assessment of Functional TR. Greetings and welcome. My name is Annette Vegas and I'm an anesthesiologist from Toronto, Canada. This session is entitled Pathophysiology and Assessment of Functional Tricuspid Regurgitation. I have the following disclosures. I received book royalties from Springer International and a speaker on Arrarium from Abbott. This talk will focus on the mechanisms and assessment of functional tricuspid regurgitation or FTR. We will begin by looking at some definitions, identify conditions that cause FTR, examine the pathophysiology of FTR, and highlight some key echocardiographic features of FTR related to the tricuspid valve. And finally look at FTR disease progression and management. Primary tricuspid regurgitation results from tricuspid valve leaflet disease and is uncommon. Functional tricuspid pathology or FTP is geometrical distortion of the normal spatial relationships of the tricuspid valve structure that may lead to valvular dysfunction. Functional tricuspid regurgitation follows from functional tricuspid pathology related to right ventricular remodeling, tricuspid annulus dilatation, and leaflet tethering. Functional tricuspid regurgitation can be categorized either by the mechanism associated with the morphologic abnormality of the tricuspid apparatus or by the etiology. Mechanisms that cause functional tricuspid regurgitation include left heart disease causing post capillary pulmonary hypertension, pulmonary hypertension causing pre capillary pulmonary hypertension, right ventricular dysfunction, or idiopathic that is unrelated to any of the previously described mechanisms, but often results from atrial remodeling. There are many potential etiologies associated with each mechanism. Left sided heart diseases include systolic and diastolic heart failure, aortic or mitral valve disease. Those causing pre capillary pulmonary hypertension include chronic lung disease, pulmonary thromboembolism, and primary pulmonary hypertension. Those causing primary right ventricular dilatation and or dysfunction, such as large left to right shunt, primary right ventricular dysplasia, and right ventricular ischemia or infarction. And finally, idiopathic associated with long standing atrial fibrillation and or heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. This 2015 paper by Dreyfus et al is an easy read and nicely summarizes the development assessment diagnosis and treatment of functional tricuspid regurgitation. This talk will focus on the first two parts looking specifically at structural changes in the tricuspid valve and the echocardiographic assessment. We will not spend time talking about tricuspid regurgitation assessment or the surgical management, which are ably covered in other sessions. Though the pathophysiology of functional tricuspid regurgitation evolves from many etiologies. It revolves around common mechanisms that remodel the heart, specifically the left heart, pulmonary vasculature and right heart, right ventricle and right atrium. There are changes in the 3D geometry and dynamics of the tricuspid annulus and leaflets, which we will examine more closely in the upcoming slides. In the presence of pulmonary hypertension and increased RV afterload. The first casualty is the RV, which remodels in the longitudinal direction, leading to mild eccentric tricuspid annulus dilatation and leaflet malcoaptation. Further dilatation distorts the RV, which undergoes a spherical deformation causing leaflet tethering and papillary muscle displacement with loss of leaflet coaptation and incomplete leaflet closure, worsening FTR. Without pulmonary hypertension, there is often right atrial enlargement. The right atrium dilates and remodels. This is leading to market tricuspid annulus dilatation along the RV free wall. There is mild RV remodeling with widening at the RV base and retention of the conical longitudinal shape. There is no leaflet tethering and leaflet length is normal. We have now conducted an elegant in vitro experiment on porcine hearts to determine the effect of annular dilatation and papillary muscle displacement in functional tricuspid regurgitation. Isolated annular dilatation moves the anterior and posterior annular segments laterally creating a gap between the three leaflets closer to the subdom. The anterior leaflet tries to cover the enlarged gap, but residual leaflet length is insufficient. A 40% increase in annular area occurs before coaptation reserve is exhausted and regurgitation develops. Papillary muscle displacement either individually or combined can lead to significant tricuspid regurgitation in the absence of tricuspid annular dilatation. Right ventricular dilatation displaces the anterior papillary muscle, left ventricular dilatation displaces the septal and posterior papillary muscle, and by ventricular dilatation displaces all papillary muscles. In septal or posterior papillary muscle displacement, the septal leaflet mobility increases creating a central malcoaptation because the septal leaflet is too short. In a mixed picture of annular dilatation and all papillary muscle displacement, the coaptation line alters towards the free wall. So what about humans? Utsunomaya examined the changes in tricuspid bell geometry and functional tricuspid regurgitation using 3D trans thoracic echo in 51 patients. He found that patients with idiopathic functional TR have a larger right atrium, more tricuspid annular dilatation with modest increases in RV dimensions and papillary muscle displacement causing poor leaflet coaptation but less leaflet tethering. In torrential TR with AF, there is an extensive right heart remodeling with apical displacement of the papillary muscle tips further dilating the tricuspid annulus with leaflet tethering at the free edges. Contrast that in patients with RV dysfunction in sinus rhythm. The RA is not as large, but there is RV remodeling with displaced papillary muscles and leaflet tethering. Thus, patients with idiopathic functional tricuspid regurgitation have leaflet coaptation at the annular plane. In contrast to those with RV remodeling, we'll have tethered leaflets that co-apt below the annular plane. We have already heard a bit about normal tricuspid valve anatomy and function, but to emphasize the tricuspid annulus is not discreet and lax fibrous tissue being composed of endocardium, epichardium and adipose tissue along the RV free wall, which is where the tricuspid annulus dilates. The tricuspid annulus is a complex dynamic 3D structure that differs from the more symmetric saddle shaped mitral annulus. The tricuspid annulus is elliptic with 3D echo data confirming a non-planar shape with two high points, antro-septal and posturalateral, and two low points, antro-lateral and postural septal. The tricuspid annular area and perimeter changes significantly during the cardiorespiratory cycle, decreasing by 35% to a minimum in systole and increasing to a maximum in late diastole. Tricuspid annulus circularity is augmented during systole, with the tricuspid annulus returning to a more oval shape in diastole. There are no age related annular differences, but women have greater indexed perimeters and long axis dimensions. Novel artificial intelligence based semi-automated tricuspid valve alert analysis software called Autovalve Analysis can analyze the tricuspid annulus in real time. Echocardiography provides a robust option for assessing both the etiology and pathology associated with functional tricuspid regurgitation. Specific assessment for functional tricuspid pathology involves determining tricuspid annular dimensions and the degree of tricuspid valve leaflet tethering. I will leave the assessment of right ventricular function to a talk later today. Remember that functional tricuspid regurgitation is less about the amount of tricuspid regurgitation and more about the underlying structural changes. Surgical intervention may occur even in the absence of tricuspid regurgitation. Tricuspid annular shape and size is a surrogate marker of severity and ethnicity of functional tricuspid regurgitation. Like the mitral valve, the fibrous trigones fix the septal leaflet, so the tricuspid annulus primarily dilates along the free wall at the anterior and posterior leaflet attachments. Thus, with functional tricuspid regurgitation, the annulus becomes larger, more planar, circular, with a larger septal lateral distance than anterior posterior distance. The normal annular shape with high and low points becomes intermediate in shape in functional tricuspid regurgitation with only one high point anterior and with advanced functional tricuspid regurgitation has no distinct high point. It may be demonstrated using CT that in healthy patients during systole, the entire annulus is flexible and moves vertically towards the right ventricular apex, reducing the tethering height, thus permitting adequate leaflet co-optation. In functional tricuspid regurgitation, the tricuspid annulus was less flexible with restricted longitudinal movement, increasing the distance between the annular plane and the ventricular apex, increasing the tethering distance of the tricuspid leaflets. Utsanamana compared these parameters for atrial and ventricular related tricuspid regurgitation using 3D TEE. 3D tricuspid valve parameters in atrial related tricuspid regurgitation had a larger AP diameter, annular area, and annular orientation from a more dilated and posteriorly displaced annulus. In ventricular related tricuspid regurgitation, tending volume and all leaflet tethering angles were larger. Current guidelines recommend measuring the tricuspid annulus in diastole from the 2D apical 4-chamber view. Normal tricuspid valve annulus diameter in adults is 28 millimeters with significant tricuspid annular dilatation defined by diastolic diameter of greater than 39 millimeters or 2.1 centimeters per meter squared. 3D echocardiography provides a more robust method to evaluate dimensions and geometric changes in the tricuspid annulus over the cardiac cycle. 3D TEE can obtain a short axis plane of the tricuspid valve accurately measuring various tricuspid annular axes. The maximum dimensional change occurs along the postrolateral androceptile axis at end diastole, which 2D imaging cannot reliably measure. Specific custom software is available that creates tricuspid valve annular models that help understand pathology and may provide additional information. Though I have to say even mitral models have a limited role in clinical practice. Normal leaflet co-optation occurs at the level of the annulus or just below it with a co-optation length or height of 5 to 10 millimeters. Recall that the two major mechanisms in functional tricuspid regurgitation relate to right atrial and right ventricular remodeling. Compare normal right heart size and function to patients with predominantly atrial enlargement and tricuspid annular dilatation. In the setting of primarily eight annular dilatation, there is less right ventricular remodeling allowing better leaflet co-optation at the annular plane. With right ventricular remodeling, there is leaflet tethering, resulting in leaflet co-optation below the annular plane in the right ventricle. Quantitative assessment of the degree of tethering includes measuring tethering height, area, and angle. Tethering height is the distance of leaflet co-optation from the plane of the tricuspid annulus. The area between the leaflets and the annular plane is the tethering area. The tethering angle is the angle between the annular plane and the leaflet. Significant leaflet tethering is present if the tethering distance is greater than 8 millimeters, tenting area greater than 1.6 centimeter squared, or the angle is greater than 28 degrees. 3D echo can estimate tenting volume. A significant value is greater than 2.3 cc. There is a growing appreciation that functional tricuspid regurgitation is important because patients are symptomatic with a poor quality of life from decreased cardiac output and right heart failure. More importantly, the presence of functional tricuspid regurgitation, no matter the severity, reduces survival with increased mortality, independent of age, 5-ventricular systolic function, right ventricular size, and pulmonary artery pressure. Functional tricuspid regurgitation can progress over time and can be described in stages, though these are not linear. Patients are heterogeneous with varying degrees of leaflet tethering, annular dilatation, and right heart modeling. Treatment options need to take into account these findings. This algorithm approaches the management of tricuspid regurgitation based on severity and symptoms. There are 3 management options, medical, surgical, or the growing fields of percutaneous intervention. The presence of moderate mitral regurgitation may allow the patient to be considered for surgery provided the surgical risk is not high. Previous 2014 AHA guidelines suggest surgical interventions for tricuspid regurgitation in patients undergoing left heart surgery. For all grades of functional tricuspid regurgitation from mild to severe with pulmonary hypertension and tricuspid annular dilatation. Updated 2020 guidelines are based on the presence of severe tricuspid regurgitation or progressive tricuspid regurgitation with tricuspid annular dilatation. We know that functional tricuspid regurgitation may progress over time. There is no guarantee functional tricuspid regurgitation will improve despite an intervention. After mitral valve surgery significant functional tricuspid regurgitation can develop late after several years. The most important risk factors associated with a higher probability for the development of late functional tricuspid regurgitation involve clinical echocardiographic and surgical factors. In addition, these are some of the predictors that have been identified for unsuccessful tricuspid valve repair. Importantly pre-op and non-interoperative tricuspid regurgitation severity and the degree of leaflet tethering are key risk factors. Surgical technique also factors in. This is a nice segue into the next talk. So in summary from this talk one can appreciate there are many causes of functional TR the mechanisms relate to right heart modeling. Tricuspid annular dilatation leaflet tethering and papillary muscle displacement determine the presence and severity of functional TR echocardiography is a robust assessment tool. Tricuspid valve models are not ready for prime time. Intervention depends on functional tricuspid pathology and not just annular size or the amount of tricuspid regurgitation. Thank you very much. And thank you and that is a beautiful segue into our next talk.


This is David Fleuer back at the Open Power Summit here in San Jose. And with me, I've got Albert Mu, who is with Tain computers in Taiwan. So welcome here. OK, thank you very much for having me here. And today, you've announced a new processor. Can you tell us something about it, how it differs from the first one? And I think so. Yes, I think the first one we developed and also launched last year, basically it's a 2U machine. But as we all know, I think in the data center, they are looking for the density. So I think this year we announced a 1U machine with one socket, also 2U machine with two socket, targeted for higher performance application. So those are two machines we introduced in this conference. Great. And I heard you put an awful lot of memory inside those machines, is that right? What's the markets that your customers are looking? What problems are they trying to solve? OK, so I think nowadays we know, I think it's OK. So a bigger memory footprint. Basically, people want to put a lot of application in the memory to do the analysis. So in our machine, I think the standard we have is 32 dim. Means, OK, with 32 gigabyte of DRAM, you can totally have a 1 terabyte of memory. So you can basically put a whole database, a whole problem in the memory. And then with CPU, you can have very fast access to any analysis you want. So we are really shooting for this type of application. 1 terabyte. Wow, yeah. It's a bit different from the 1K I started with. I'm sure you did many years ago, yes. So what are your customers, what problems are they trying to solve with this system? What are they asking you for? And why are you using power to solve these type of problems with your own input? OK, mainly for several areas. It's a data analytic type of application in memory analysis and also high performance computing. Those are the three areas I think most of the customer approaches request the power machine for them. Right, yeah. So what's the arrangement you have with the CP1 machine? I've never heard of the CP1 machine. Can you tell us more about it and how you interface with that? OK, I think IBM has a very smart strategy. I think it's OK. Because if IBM is the only company manufacturer, the power processor, still the only game in town. So IBM licensed the Power 8 architecture to a company in China called China Power Core. They developed their homegrown Power 8 processor. They call it CP1. I think CP1 stands for China Power 1. China Power 1, OK. And how do you interface with that? Our machine, we develop both are compatible with both CP1 and the Power 8 processor. So I think in China market, if a customer really want the homegrown processor CP1, we install CP1. For other territory, if they prefer the Power 8 processor, we install IBM Power 8 processor. So we have such a connectivity. So you can use either of those two processes. It's a very interesting strategy indeed. So where do you see power going in the next few years? What's your ambition? What's your vision of where you see the open power foundation going, the open power products going for you in your company? I think, OK, so of course, now IBM is talking about the Power 9. I think the Power 9, I think we expect several major improvement. Probably IBM will drive down the cost curve so they can touch really the volume market more. And also on the performance-wise, I think it's OK. They probably will add more CAPI, the PCIe, those type of thing. So we are pretty excited. Because open power jumping in the middle of Power 8, because IBM already have a Power 8 and they found the open power. Now Power 9, I think the open power can start working with IBM on the Power 9 from the beginning. So we can have more innovation on the system side, create a more variety of machine to serve more market needs. Well, thanks very much indeed, Albert. Thanks very much indeed. And over to you. And thanks for watching.


Hello everybody welcome back to another Adobe Photoshop CC 2021 tutorial. This one I'm going to show you how to do double exposure and I'm going to show you how to do it very very quickly and thoroughly. I've got a really quick mock-up here I did here with a french bulldog and a nice little mountain scene and you can see the mountains and the the cabin kind of bleeding through to the pupper and I'm going to show you how to do this in like yeah a couple minutes max. So let's just go ahead and start from scratch I'm going to delete all of this stuff and yeah I've got some stock footage so here's the picture of the pupperdew that's a good looking potato hey all right but either way let's get going let's go ahead and start dropping in the images the first one I'm going to drop in is this puppy dog here and I'm going to put him on a new let's do a new one all right so I'm going to go ahead and click open and bang we've got our puppy dog I'm going to unlock it here just in case and the second image that I'm going to use is this fancy dancy cabin in the woods looking thing I'm going to drag and drop that on top of the puppy dog and it's a smaller image than the pupper so I'm just going to go ahead and expand it out and because it's going to be used as the double exposure it's not a big deal if it's a little bit if it's just a little bit not super super super high res because it is the backup use one so I'm just going to move it over here and I'm going to let's see where would I want the puppy uh do I want yeah let's go with this we don't want the puppy we just want the mountains maybe because it kind of has this huge it has this bright to dark look so we're just going to put the mountains inside uh as a double exposure for the pupper so I'm going to place that hit enter and now you're going to see here I've got the top image and the bottom image I dropped that off puppy dog on top of it is the mountain and the lake and all that and that's going to uh go through into the puppy all right the next step that you want to do and we're going to do this in color but you can also do this in black and white we'll do it in color but if you wanted to do it in black and white the first step would be to left click on the adjustment layer down here and go ahead and create a black and white adjustment layer and that would make it all in black and white but let's do it in color first all right so the first step is on the top image you want to suck the blending mode and instead of normal we want to go all the way down to screen and as soon as you do that you can tell that we are in business so we are rolling guys the next step if you're following along with me if we now want to go back to the original layer which is the pupper dog and we want to go up here to select subject we want to select the dog and it's going to select the puppy as you can see here it's selected the puppy and now we're going to go back to the top layer here so make sure you're on the top layer which is our pleasant little landscaping cabin thing and we're going to left click on add layer mask left click there and boom now you can see it's starting to bleed through to the pupper and we are completely on our way after that if you want to continue like this could be bang on for some of you depending on the colors in the background and how bright and how much of a contrast there is but what you want to do now is by making sure you're still selected on this left click over here on the brush tool i'm going to select a brush i'm going to keep the flow around like 20 in 19 20 21 percent whatever something like that and we're going to go ahead and paint in some of the bits now you want to have the foreground color here set to black so because this is we're working with masks here and now watch what i do i'm just going to blend this in because like this is a pretty rough like this you could see that it's quite a rough crack here so i'm going to go ahead and paint this in a little more than i would normally so i'm painting that in i'm going to paint in some of the eyes here and i'm going to paint i don't know some of these clouds look a little bit rough to me so i'm just going to paint that in again this is totally up to you what you guys want to do and don't want to do i'm just going to show you the technique i'm going to paint in a little more here so we've got some more more puppy we're basically painting in more of the dog and taking out a little less of the background image but again this is completely up to you how you want to do it this is however the technique now i'm going to do it one more time i'm going to delete this mask and we're going to start from scratch i'm going to actually going to delete the top image and i'm going to show you how we can do it in black and white and this gives you a better or more realistic look because sometimes if the pictures aren't if they're using completely different colors like those two were it doesn't always look right so i'm going to drag and drop in the background image on top here like i did last time i'm going to hit okay i'm going to make this nice and big i'm just going to hold down shift so that it expands expands proportionally i'm going to move it to the left here because we're going to bring in we're going to bring in the we're going to bring in the log cabin looking thing there and bang it's on top perfect now the next step if we're going to do in black and white as you like i said do you want to create a new filler adjustment layer and now we're going to go to black and white this goes to the top this is going to make our job a lot easier and it's going to look a lot better now we're going to select on the second image which is the one the top image and we're going to select the blending mode and we're going to again move it back to screen and boom now puppy dog and we've got that lake image all sort of bleeding into one the next image like we did last time so we're going to go to the bottom layer and we are going to select the subject so we go to select subject and it's going to pull in the pupper most of the pupper and now we're going to go back to the second image the top image and we are going to create a layer mask and boom now we are on our way now if we want to drag it and make a little bit more work on this again let's go back to the brush making sure you are on black and i've got a normal i got a soft round brush and i'm just going to brush in a little bit here and as you can see here i'm bringing in some more of the puppers and yeah and yet you could still say i know that last little stroke didn't help much yet you could still see the mountain coming through and presto we've got a pretty cool looking uh double exposure effect there i mean that's all there is to it if you wanted to go one step further go back to the original layer i'm going to turn the first two off go back to the original layer if you don't want this white stuff in outside of the pupper go to image go to select subject like we did every time and of course it's going to select our pupper but now we want to go to inverse select inverse so we're selecting everything outside of the dog now and now what i like to do is i go to edit and then i cut it so we're getting rid of everything outside the pup and now if we turn if we turn it back on we have just the dog with all that white background and if you wanted to see it a little further you can go ahead and go ahead and create a solid color like i just did here so i'm gonna right click on the adjustment layer solid color and then we would put them up against uh oh not a background holy smokes uh we'll put on the white background we'll move this now to the bottom so i'll move this guy up that's easier and boom we now have our puppy against a pure white background that's it guys that's double exposure in a nutshell thanks for watching i got a ton more stuff coming up stay tuned


Hello friends, welcome to the session I am Malka. We are going to discuss pair of linear equations in two variables. A given equation is solve the following pair of linear equations by the elimination method and the substitution method. Our equations are x plus y equal to 5 and 2x minus 3y equal to 4. So let's start with the solution. We first consider the elimination method. So let's see elimination method. In this, our given equations are x plus y equal to 5 and 2x minus 3y equal to 4. So this is our first equation and 2x minus 3y equal to 4 is our second equation. Now, we multiply equation first by 3, we get 3x plus 3y equal to 15. Let's name this equation as our third equation. Now, we will add equation number second and equation third. We get x minus 3y equal to 4 is our second equation and 3x plus 3y equal to 15 is our third equation. Now on adding, we get 5x 3y 3y cancel out equal to 19. This implies 5x equal to 19. This implies x equal to 19 upon 5. Now, we will substitute the value of x in equation number 1. We get our equation first is x plus y equal to 5. This implies 19 upon 5 plus y equal to 5. This implies y equal to 5 minus 19 upon 5. Now, this implies on taking 5 as LCM, we get 25 minus 19 upon 5. This implies y equal to 6 upon 5. Therefore, x equal to 19 upon 5 and y equal to 6 upon 5 is the answer. Now, let's see the substitution method. Substitution method. So, in this, our given equations are x plus y equal to 5. This is our first equation and 2x minus 3y equal to 4 is our second equation. Now, from first equation, we get equal to 5 minus y. So, let this be our third equation. Now, we will substitute the value of x in equation 2. 2 into 5 minus y minus 3y equal to 4. This implies 10 minus 2y minus 3y equal to 4. This implies 10 minus 5y equal to 4. This implies minus 5y equal to 4 minus 10. This implies minus 5y equal to minus 6. This implies y equal to 6 upon 5. Now, we will use the value of y substituting value of y in equation 3rd. We get our equation 3rd is x equal to 5 minus y. This implies x equal to 5 minus 6 upon 5. This implies x equal to, on taking 5 as else, we get 25 minus 6. This implies x equal to 19 upon 5. Therefore, x equal to 19 upon 5 and y equal to 6 upon 5 is the answer. Hope you have understood the solution and enjoyed the session. Goodbye and take care.


Hi and welcome to our session. Let us discuss the following question. The question says, find the equation of a sphere passing through 3 0 0 0 minus 1 0 0 0 minus 2 and having center on the plate, 3x plus 2y plus 4z equals to 1. Let's now begin with the solution.  Now add 0 minus 1 0 0 0 minus 2. Therefore it must satisfy this equation. Right? So let's first substitute 3 in place of x, 0 in place of y and 0 in place of z in this equation. So we have 3 squared plus 0 squared plus 0 squared plus 2u into 3 plus 2v into 0 plus 2w into 0 plus d equals to 0. This implies 90 is equal to 0 and this implies equal to minus 9 minus d divided by 6. Equation of sphere. So we get 0 squared plus minus 1 squared plus 0 squared plus 2u into 0 plus 2v into minus 1 plus 2w into 0 plus d equals to 0. This implies v is equal to 1 plus d divided by so we have 0 squared plus 0 squared plus minus 2 squared into 0 plus 2v into 0 w into minus 2 plus d equals to 0. This implies 4 4w plus d is equal to 0 and this implies w is equal to divided by d minus w having equation as u plus 2 into minus v plus 4 into minus w is minus 3u minus 2v minus 4w is equal to 1 plus 4w is equal to minus 5. Now we will substitute d divided by 2 divided by 4.  This is equal to now v is equal to divided by 2 is equal to minus 1 so we get v as d divided by 2 minus 1. So we have 4 minus 1 divided by 2 and this is equal to required equation of spirit completes the session bye.


Good afternoon. I think Sam has covered everything in such detail that my presentation might as well, I could just as well skip it. But a boss of mine in Unilever used to say many years ago that there is something common between butter, budgets and knowledge or dhyan as he called it. He says the lesser you have the more you spread. So with that thing in mind, I think the little that I know about out of home, I will share with you today. Presentations broadly in two parts. The first part I'll cover from an advertising continuum standpoint, I think Sam was making the same point, that it's rarely that people make decisions based on one kind of stimulus or consumption of one type of media. Usually you are continuously getting stimulus from all nature of media from a variety of channels and much of that sinks to the back of your mind. And then when you are in the mode of making a decision, everything starts to come back to mind. And I have noticed, I began life in 1999 with Hindustan Leaver and over the years I have noticed that I think deliberately marketeers as well as agency partners have overdone the rationale and the logical part of it. And I think they have started giving, I would say second hand treatment to the magic and the creativity and the value of building grand ideas on a large canvas. So that's really what I'll attempt to do. Let's see now. Sam was mentioning Japan, meanwhile I'll figure out how to use this clicker. But the only one occasion I had there, if Japan is at 12% as Sam was mentioning, I would not be surprised if it's also the most technologically intensive out of home because if you are in any doubt try and use a flush toilet in a Japanese hotel room, you'll know you need to have a BTEC and comm science to be able to do that. Okay. So the first thing I wanted to say was the oldest form of advertising that we encounter every day that's on all your tables is a flower. Pollinating flowers have been around for 30 million years and bees have been around for 30 million years as well. And the reason why evolution has created a flower is to be able to attract the bees so that they can get nectar and they pollinate. So the very reason there is a vast diversity of colors and of types of petals and of the combinations with which a flower emerges is actually advertising in its most pristine form. Now the question is what happens if a bee goes to a flower and discovers there's not much nectar there whereas they've done the job for pollination. The short answer is the bees will discover this and will stop going again. So no matter how grand and how attractive your advertising is at the end of the day it has to be a reciprocal arrangement and so I think corporate life and human society in general is very similar to a beehive and I think pollinating flowers are the representation of what is attractive in advertising but it's also that when there is an investment there has to be a return and this shortcut in terms of why targeting is important is again like I said we have over rationalized and we have over optimized for what has worked for us in the recent past and we sometimes forget that the grandness of out of home of which I have traditionally been a believer is something that creates magic and it cannot be decoded with logic. When I was a young summer trainee in Hindustan liver I used to have a venerable group born unionized salesman Bhagwan Singh his name was he was an ex-army man which was a rarity and in Bangalore I was working on a project for Kisan at the time they had proliferated a number of brands Tom Chi, Tom Imli and so on and he told me that you know we should put large hoardings across Bangalore and I was a freshly minted MBA and I said you know why why it's an attribution me or whatever I told him something like that he said yes but you see you look up to the brand and it's larger than life and I think after so many years I think back to what he told me and I think there is deep logic in what he was saying once the brand makes you look up to it once there is grandness I think a lot of what follows is just decision science there is a reason why we happily go to a restaurant but we differ when we go to a hand card is because that upfront investment that they have made in putting together an air conditioned hall in hiring a chef and so on and so forth most of the times that I eat off a hand card or street food actually turns out to be a lot tastier than what I get at large hotels but the reason why your decision making is easy when it comes to large investments is because there is a commitment upfront and I see a few young men and women here the same thing works when you are proposing right try to do it with a very small diamond and you will see upfront commitment signals the depth of the relationship and also that you intend to stick to it so there is some logic in the largeness of the medium okay it's going back for some reason I need help with this just so that you think I'm not a neanderthal there is only one arrow and it points backwards so I don't know what to do with it they have abandoned me alright meanwhile let me continue to talk to you about the other part which I wanted to speak about was this which is you know there is in the markets that are intensively contested for by out of home advertising there is a superfluous amount of messaging that's happening at every available nook and cranny so the point is people very often say it may be effective but it is not efficient and here again I have been thinking about this and I have a feeling that we firstly very synonymously use these words conversationally and secondly we tend to rank efficiency above effectiveness because the marketer has to talk to the finance person he has to talk to the sales person he has to show results and to my mind it is myopic to think about the short term efficiency at the cost of the larger effectiveness which may not work through in numbers let me give you an example efficiency is a matter which can be downloaded onto an excel sheet and in our line of work and I keep some of my team members are here I keep telling them you should try and use effective jargon because the challenge with marketing is our business is done in sunshine and it's spoken in ordinary English so the guy who comes with the excel sheet intimidates everybody in the room saying oh my God he has all the results now and there is no way in which a creative logic imagine trying to contest an ROI which is detailed out to the last penny we spent with a story board it doesn't work that way some creative people have to go to rational people and get their sign off but vice versa happens very rarely have you ever heard a CFO telling a finance person to go and say I like your excel sheet but go to some creative people and bounce it off them and see what they say I think some wacky ideas might help your return it doesn't happen that way it's a one way road and so therefore efficiency has been rated much higher than effectiveness and I think that is an incorrect posture to take why do I say that? because when you are being efficient you are forced to look to the past you are forced to look to a rhythmical model you are looking at rational constructs which logically everybody can solve for so if logic was winning the battle and magic was peripheral then every logical person should build a great brand but we know that doesn't happen it doesn't happen in significant theaters of human activity say you were just to pick up on the example of romance the most efficient way to go on a date is to go to a cheap restaurant to share the cab fare and to talk about work but that will not be a successful date because the effective way is to show commitment by making it a special evening in say if you are in a battlefield and the most efficient way was to use a sniper now you have to be elevated you have to be able to see the enemy instead people rely on artillery bombardment which isn't technically the most effective the most efficient way of going about it but it's effective because a sniper's bullet has to see you square in the eyepiece and hit you in the middle of your eyes whereas a bomb if it's a big bomb and an idea is like a bomb even if it lands two or three hundred meters here or there it will still do the job so I think effectiveness has been compromised by this collusion or this over emphasis on rationalization impact advertising to my mind is a bit like that if you see a lot of grand creative expression it starts to sink to the back of your mind but then it starts to crystallize there and I have worked in Alcobev worked in financial services and in FMCG and all of those cases the time cycles and the decision frameworks may be different but broadly there is a deep evolutionary signature to this when people are unsure they do two things either they continue to do things that they have known of in the past so I had that green liquid and I didn't die green liquids are safe to consume or if on that given day I can't find a green liquid then I look around me and if everybody is having the purple liquid and surviving then it's safe to have the purple liquid so there is a large evolutionary logic to going for things that are larger than life I was presenting recently to our board and I told them that when I get any kind of escalation from consumers they always write I didn't think this could happen with Tata so even though we are Tata Motors and commercial vehicles conversationally they tell each other Tata Ki Gadi and so everything that they think positively about 155 years of leadership with trust country building, integrity, pioneering all of that distills through in every vehicle they are buying and so it's a very important point that let's go away from the microscope and start to look at things through a telescope I got it now I have understood what you need to do now the other thing is signaling and the whole concept of dual audiences it works in two ways one is when I am not concerned I am still an audience member of the audience because it's addressing the universe and the other is when I am the recipient of a message which is most relevant to me and it happens to all of us if you are looking to buy a car all that you will see is car advertising if you are looking to sell your apartment all you are wanting to do is to find brokers or people who are wanting to buy an apartment now the way it ladders up is those people who are not the directly interested audience but are in the universe once they are immersively soaked in the idea that this is a brand worthy of respect that it must be a big deal to them which is why they are putting up hoardings everywhere or it is a big deal to them which is why I see the television ad reflected in print and then I see the print ad in a mutant way up on an outdoor hoarding then that signals to them that you are serious contenders that it is worthy of respect and trust and trust building can happen only with largeness let me give you a parallel example when I got married my grandfather who was a very social person in a feudal mindset in Rajasthan for nine days before I got married every day I had to accompany him to meet some old colonel or journal and he would go and say you know my grandson is getting married and you please come and I said you know if you send them a card or make them a phone call they'll still come but he said no no it tells them that we are delighted it's an important social occasion and it is for social reciprocation they came home when their children were getting married it behoves upon me to go when you are getting married and in this context I was thinking about it yesterday you know you don't go and get married at everybody's house my grandfather didn't say you have come to your house let's do it here and then we'll go to the next place you get married at one place you call everybody there and that is the addressing of the universal set and this is pretty similar to what advertising at scale is trying to achieve and you know while I am an equal adorer of digital advertising I find that this measurement before creative is like putting the card before the horse in my opinion and this is by the way not true only of advertising money any resource that is scarce inside a company if a brand matters to you you will put the best people on it you know if there is a scarcity of money you will prioritize and ring fence that budget if you find creative you know which can do humor rarely and if you are you know if you are intending to do a very humorous line of advertising it signals to people it matters to them and that's what I think out of home achieves another thing that I wanted to and soon I will come to the out of home part which will then get done very quickly like I said Sam has told you everything about it you see in our line of work as a marketer I am saying this and it's true for advertising just as much unlike economics or physics or many other lines where there are universal laws in marketing there are no universal laws in fact very often in sciences they say it works in theory let's experiment and see if it works in practice in marketing in my experience very often it turns out that what was not intended works out in practice and then you say how the hell does this work in theory let me figure it out and if you are doing that you are on to something good you are on to something which others are not doing and you must put that under a microscope now imagery like I said all imagery all stimulus gets consciously absorbed but subconsciously triggered in fact after 24 years in this business my belief is that consumers are by and large subconsciously driven and our active mind is like a lawyer we are trying to post fact to rationalize why we took those decisions and if you look back in your life if you are changing a geyser you will talk to people who recently bought you might talk to your building superintendent so on and so forth but in decisions of which line of work to choose which company to join which person to marry which holiday to take many of these things are purely subconsciously suggested to you which you then all your life consciously rationalize then I did this because of these reasons the reasons are being suggested to you after the impulse has arrived now let me pick up at random these examples let's take life boy life boy through the 20th century more people in India had access to life boy which was a leaky red colored metabolic soap then had access to tap water or electricity or toilets and frankly it went from being a problem solution brand a body order brand to being a germicidal soap to being a mission brand which is saving lives any soap that you wash your hands with will broadly do the same job but it is because of the power of associations for decades they ran life boy which is now preserved as a musical note at the end of their advertising and it became an iconic brand and it remains an iconic brand let's take the case of Nespresso can I get a bottle of water please Nespresso which I discovered in some of my journeys abroad first if you take the coffee powder that Nespresso uses and if it was sold like a Nestle jar I would certainly die of a heart attack given the kind of price it would be but a Nespresso machine costs you 10 to 15,000 rupees and that pod last that I checked costs you about 80 to 100 rupees so if you're having five cups of coffee over five years the average price would be in the ballpark of 70 to 80 rupees a pod now your mental framework is comparing it to Starbucks or an expensive barista and then you feel like wow you know this is something which is great because the quality is not compromised and I'm actually ending up saving a hell of a lot of money take the case of Red Bull if as a marketer I was given a brief that we need to quickly take share from Coke or Pepsi what would we have done if I made syndicates in this room and said I'll come back after half an hour let's deliberate on how to take aggressive share gain from a Coke or Pepsi I can bet you the sequencing may be different but broadly the answers would be make an excellent formulation that tastes better than Coke and Pepsi give it at a price which is cheaper than Coke and Pepsi and give it in a serving size which is higher than Coke and Pepsi the rational mind will tell you deliver greater value and deliver better quality but Dietrich Matashitz who was a middle-aged Austrian tourist roaming around in Thailand tasted what is hyper caffeinated some people find it obnoxious and he said wow I will license this product he goes back to western Europe gives it in a can roughly half the size of Coke at a price roughly double the price of Coke or Pepsi and since 1987 he has sold 100 billion cans last year they sold 12 billion cans they own a formula one team they made a man jump from space to earth if this was being done with logic you know it wouldn't get done and a lot of this advertising rationalization works in exactly the same way and I am not opposed to method purity I am not opposed to return on investment in fact my life depends on it but I am saying between the short and the medium term and between the large term between the immediate impact and the larger impact we must own this dialogue and as marketers we must go to our management committees to our boards and aggressively ask for doing the right thing last but not the least everybody knows this case you know a copywriter and an art director at DDB got a brief for a small awkward looking ugly car which had a Nazi pedigree in post-war America and this was a time when big was beautiful in America you know they used to sell the Lincoln Continental the Cadillac and the Ford Thunderbird and Helmut Krone came up with think small so they completely changed the dialogue on the category code and sometimes when you are doing disruptive things when you are doing things which are going against received wisdom you need a canvas that can justify that splash or that impact and I think Out of Home provides that so now let me stick to my business what are the problems in the commercial vehicles industry it's a very large industry in India it's a bedrock of the economy every part you know the LPG cylinders that you get at home this water came to this hotel the construction material that built this hotel carpeting everything here arrived on the back of a commercial vehicle commercial vehicle businesses are highly rational the consumers are business people but our category has made a presumption that the consumer is only and only value driven so they only think of specifications, comparisons they are only seeking return which is not true so soon after I came to this business I told one of my senior colleagues I said I have never seen in India somebody decorating their car no matter how expensive that car is with full pati and with writing slogans on it but you see any small commercial vehicle or a large commercial vehicle in India after buying it they will take it to a secondary market where they sell specialty stickers or there are artisans at work to decorate that vehicle if they didn't have a deep emotional connect why would they be doing that why would they be embellishing it so the first category issue that we had is that over a period in time the creative codes became a bit like tofu it's colorless, odorless, tasteless everybody's tofu is the same as anybody else's tofu so how do you break away how do you pivot away from this and make a larger impact happen secondly in commercial vehicles there are all modalities business to consumer so small commercial vehicles are brought very similarly to passenger vehicles or to two wheelers then there is business to business which is as you go up to larger fleets and then there is business to business to consumers take the case of vans or buses so all three modalities are alive but there is no singular way in which to advertise and appeal to them so naturally you have to talk about the mother brand so the reason why for me out of home works is when you have displayed creatives with a difference you break away from the category code which is quite precious we are a large company at last count we were about 60 to 70,000 crore or rupees top line but within the business there are several companies so each one small commercial vehicles intermediate commercial vehicles heavy commercial vehicles passenger business services, spare parts and the digital businesses all are housed within what is called say Tata Motors and then we have large numbers of managers who are in specific professional streams engineering people think like engineers design people think like designers sales people think like sales people but there is the need for a brand wrap around so whose responsibility is that and how do we elevate all of this as a bundle how do we elevate this to a magnificent brand there again I think advertising in particularly out of home advertising helps and the best way in which to discover it the best way in which to discover it is to go across one of the issues with consumer research and a lot of the post facto attribution research that Sam was referring to also is while you can compute the whether you got your dollars worth what consumers tell you and I am a voracious consumer of research so I believe in it both call and quant but the fact is how do you know what consumers tell each other so we were in a positioning exercise for the last year and a half and what we were increasingly paying attention to was what they tell each other and what they tell each other is safe secure statements like you can't go wrong with this and there are people who are standing at a NACA or at a union stand 30-40 of them they have a majority presence of one brand in our business a brand unlike a sachet of shampoo or a bowl of soup doesn't come in and get added to the repertoire and drop off again it stays for 5, 7, 10 years so if a fleet owner buys two trucks of another brand he will buy spare parts from that brand he will go to their service center he will have an annual maintenance contract his drivers will be trained on that brand and so on and so forth so the stickiness of share is a very big deal so we need to keep investing in the brand we need to keep growing the top line which is where I'll skip the segmentation part but it's important again from an out-of-home point of view we talk about north market or east market or where have we lost share to whom but the fact is only the proportions vary there are people who are adorers of your brand or adopters of your brand or available to your brand in every geography just the proportions are different and marketing has over-invested marketing generically in the top right where my brand aware intenders are also category intenders that top right box is where all the energy is for people who are category intenders but not brand aware or for people who are brand aware but not really thinking of the category we don't have stimulus that works them up that key doesn't exist because all our plans are based on rational analysis of the top right so we try to do where does this sit in the funnel and in the funnel I believe it sits right on the top which is do I know you are you big enough are you constantly beeping on my radar am I being able to look up to you the same way as 100,000 other people are because conversationally brands they are democratic constructs you know and I'll just take a leaf out of I think what Anurag was saying elections are approaching I think politicians by and large are very acute marketers all marketing can learn from how politicians change their narrative and so while they are invested in digital while they are doing a lot of you know attribution rich and return specific media there are still these rallies happening there are still the outdoor hoardings happening and they are absolutely grounded in terms of having that consumer contact on a regular basis now I don't have time left so what I'll do is I'll show you one creative and then skip through we have been patiently trying to apply out of home married to the core creative so we first take a creative thought we make advertising which is a more recent phenomenon we are trying to adhere to new category codes so in the case of our large pickup Yodha which competes with Mahindra's Bolero it's a distant number two at this point in time we have changed the category code to make it more macho to make it more aggressive to showcase its terrain credentials because nobody gets into brochure wear and spec to spec comparison so first you make the advertising then you take it to a large canvas let me play this ad for you sorry my bad this this is the Yodha that was the Intra in the interest of time let me play this one cement? how will it reach the school? if it can reach the school then why not cement for the school Yodha is there so we are trying to show terrain we are trying to show gradability we are trying to show load carrying capacity in this business every drop of fuel matters every centimeter of deck length matters every hundred rupees that increases in terms of EMI payment matters but at the end of the day they want to be proud of the vehicle that they drive they want to have aspirational values attached to that vehicle once we do that we take this messaging across whether it is hoardings, whether it is digital advertising, whether it is attribution rich, form filled media we just try and place this at relevant points and we are doing that programmatically I'll skip through this each facet and feature has to be presented like one facet on a diamond we are talking about two things at the same time the vehicle does not get addressed as one lump sum people are interested but you can't showcase all of that in one outdoor hoarding or in one ad so we try and break it patiently as far as we can and I don't think we are quite to Sam's prescription in terms of having five words that's a training I got as well very early on this business is different but with its own devices we would end up having a share prospectus here so we are much better than what we intended to be but we are still on the journey of making it sharper let me show you one interesting campaign that we did some of my colleagues who are in the room today have done this there are safety features there are technical features which people don't understand so we decided let the brand get promoted out of home and print and we sold through storytelling so let me show you this ad now even if one life is saved on the road that's a very worthy thing to advertise but it's also actually a very effective means and there are a host of technical inputs to vehicles which cause less fatigue which take you safer which can track and trace greater number of trips the reason I am showing you advertising in an OOH forum is I don't see them as divorced I see them as together so the messaging has to be led by one and elaborated in a myriad number of ways through other means OOH being primary for us now state specific campaigns we must take care of context because what works in Andhra is very different from what works in Assam so far as possible we have tried to superscript it we have tried to go across a variety of languages same is true for category dynamics between passenger, CV passenger vehicles cargo vehicles mining tippers one is not the same as other and these are very highly involved purchases a top-end truck would cost you 50-60 lakh rupees the advertising will only bring it to the front of the mind it's not going to do the deal by itself so a lot of that negotiation happens across the table and at that time when my dealer sales executive or the territory sales manager is sitting and negotiating on a deal with a fleet owner or a tender with a state road transport corporation this positivity must exist in their mind now one of the other reasons I prefer out of home advertising is because people keep worrying about what's changing in consumer lives marketers must be interested in what is not changing because if you build on that you're on good foundation so now I'll skip through the rest of this portion very quickly yes we are doing data and logic we are doing it programmatically we want to build the right context, the right framework we want to understand the customer touchpoints because my business is different where do truck drivers congregate they're at NACAs at boat nuggers at union stands at places where they play octroy they're at road barriers where do they drive they drive night and day so what we see conventionally as out of home advertising is a very different world where the truck driver is concerned and we are addressing truck drivers but we are also addressing fleet owners financiers shippers or shipment providers and also the logistics universe because a large number of trucks are being sold as captive trucks to corporate owners say an Amazon or a Flipkart would buy thousands of mini trucks we want to be able to tell them at the right places and remind them at the right places as well we are doing audience insights through a variety of ways but I think the largely the four or five filters in the last years and we did a pitch as well so the criteria was do people apply the right filters on a heat map to say where is the fuel station where is the octroy booth where is the large cnfa hub where does warehousing happen where are the arterial roads where are the sub roads you know every time I go back I live in parel when I go back from the airport unmindful of google maps the driver always asks me am I from Dharavi or from dadar this is like one of the toughest questions for humanity to answer it seems every third day he asks me this because in his mind taking a side route is actually more effective because it might actually take a longer time or longer distance but he does not have to exert the effort of waiting or navigating through thick traffic so the consumer rationale for navigating traffic or traveling a longer distance is very different from a programmatic rationale for deciding google wants you to reach in the shortest time but my driver wants to go with ease and comfort so there is a critical difference I think we will we will already be fairly educated about the data layers I think what is important for me is the planned campaign has to rest on identified target group movement where do people come together and where do they branch out from yesterday I was in Bangalore and from Whitefield my driver took me to a state road on the he called it the Hoskot road and I saw two of our large hoardings and I was very happy because that's the road which all the cargo movements happening before they get on to the main highway one going to Kolar and the other going back to Bangalore and going onwards to Hosur that's the kind of placement that's important to us Mondies, Toal Nakas the kind of places you have never been to that's where my business gets done we have been doing this heat mapping for customer connections the more the density the greater the placement logic but also the flow so it is a combination of where they are and how they move both not only one we are using tech in villages we have a program called Neve in three states in the south in Telangana in Karnataka and in AP we have moved both trying to place things digitally but also wall wraps where the Neve the foundation rural sales promoter has an opportunity to showcase our product and immediately do solicitation so the form fill sits very close to the stimulus being absorbed because in villages it's not very contested and I think Sam my view is that rural is another great opportunity because now with road connectivity the way it is I think transit will be much thicker traffic movement will be much thicker and this hub and spoke arrangement between approximate rural geographies and big cities will increase I grew up in Rajasthan there was a concept of a village or a small mofassil location and then sheher now it's kind of seamless between the small village and of course digital has reached everywhere so I think that's another area that we must pay close attention to so in ending why do we as in Tata Motors commercial vehicles do outdoors but also in my individual capacity why do I believe in it one is like I said it's a role in creating impact and increasing brand awareness and I don't think brand should be subjected only to the stencil of an excel sheet brands have to create magic it has to then work via logic not the other way around if you started building brands purely on logic we would all need a PhD in computational theory to arrive at great brands and some of the greatest brands in this world have got built in the period between the two wars when there was no digital and I think outdoor and print were the oldest and heaviest used media back then as well I'm not a Luddite and I'm not so old that I should have nostalgia for a period between the wars but what I point I'm trying to make is let's not try and put immediacy in front of importance but I made a mistake across brands the second thing is we can marry data and insights with creative but this big data piece has to lead to big insights when the titanic sank there were 10,000 data points which were being monitored from boiler pressure to number of people who have eaten their food etc etc the only one data point that was critical was that in the dark night there is an iceberg ahead and that's the data point that they missed and the rest is history so I have great respect for data but I think we must also be mindful of how to lift the brand to greater and greater heights and in that there has to be a conspiracy a collaboration I would say a conspiracy between the right brain and the left brain between the creatives and the analysts between the digital voters and the traditional media voters if we do that we'll be in a better place in industry as a universe of brands and certainly out of home will grow by leaps and bounds in this country thank you very much for your time