State health officials have forced the temporary closure of two Bemidji Burger King restaurants. Doug Schultz from the Minnesota Health Department tells Lakeland News that both locations in Bemidji were closed today because of recent cases of Salmonella. Schultz says there are 27 confirmed cases of Salmonella at the Burger King restaurants with another four considered probable cases of the foodborne illness. Schultz says the majority stemmed from September, but some additional cases this past week caused the health department to step in. Schultz says the outbreak does not appear to be related to a specific product. Instead, the Minnesota Department of Health believes the illness was spread by an employee. Health officials are requiring all of the restaurant's employees to be checked out and cleared by doctors. Schultz says the Burger Kings will likely be closed for about a week. He was not sure if there were cases of Salmonella at both locations or just one of the restaurants, but both have been closed temporarily. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Hi, my name is Ted and as you just heard I am I'm a storyteller turned Investor so seven years ago. I took the step from building my own products and my own companies to start investing in in companies so Today I'm talking about how to pitch your company and I figured I would use my company as kind of a metaphor or story anchor for For this presentation and my company is actually a part of an even larger company. I was part of setting up eqt ventures, which is a VC but also the VC arm of of eqt and Eqt is is one of the largest private equity companies in the in the world more than 1100 people When I joined seven years ago, we were 250 people so I think it's almost like a startup journey We're on in in scaling a blitz scaling investing We're now this world's third largest tech investor combined with our growth fund and and mid-market fund and equity fund and and so forth and on the venture side we invest in Traditional tech companies like vault we're in Finland after all so I have to to plug vault where we let the series a An amazing exit to door-dash a couple of weeks ago But we also do an increasing number of deep tech investments So companies with purpose-driven founders Approaching maybe slightly larger problems that we're facing in front of us And as mentioned, I figured I would use our own pitch as sort of an anchor for this for this presentation So just like you we also have to to pitch to investors and the investors a VC fund pitches to our Various types of institutional investors sovereign wealth funds insurance companies Family family offices and stuff like that. I think the main difference is that when we raised our first fund I think we had more than 300 meetings with investors to bring in our first fund Which was 570 million euros the second fund went a bit faster because we had more track record And we had some nice exits and stuff like that, but still meetings in the I know 70 80 or so so meetings In the end we we closed the 660 million euro fund after I think six months of fundraising something like that Which I think should be considered pretty fast for such a large fundraise One big caveat here was that we closed this fund in 2019 before Covid obviously and it's interesting to see how the format of pitches Have evolved back then I would say that most presentations the really good ones were pretty visual They were designed to be enjoyed on a big screen like like this But now we present our pitch more and more via zoom So it's as if this kind of like display format idea Visual speaker support with slides like this and and the leave behind In in the venture world, that's called the private placement memorandum Would slice like this have kind of merged into a new type of presentation a new type of format Which is visual, but it's it's designed not to be enjoyed on a big screen Behind the conference table, but on your screen in front of the zoom. So that's kind of interesting With that being said here are five principles or learnings that we have iterated upon and evolved while Developing our own pitch and also seeing I know hundreds thousands not millions But at least maybe the tens of thousands of pitches from people like people like yourself The first one here is about establishing rapport So the first thing you do when you enter the room with the investor the physical room or the or the virtual room and One piece of advice here is that we're human beings, too I mean a lot of founders have rehearsed her pitch so much so they go in and they're just like come on Let me start pitching so you kind of forget the person on the other side of the table I think those first minutes in a zoom call or in a room when you I know tell a joke or Try to figure out if there is some kind of joint passions or something you you you you share You went to the same school or something. I think that's extremely Important that small talk. So even if you prepare the pitch, you know exactly what you're doing take that time So in the presentation, I think you could use the same trick So I call it three nods to lower the guard. I've heard other people refer to this as the yes slide so the idea is to start the presentation with something you agree upon and Sometimes you don't know like who is this investor on that side of the table? What do we agree upon? But there's always something I know the weather or that's something that happened yesterday's crap or or or whatever But if you use this kind of like as an anchor you nod you agree on something Then you can use that force and take the investor kind of like on a mental journey onto Deeper waters where you might not agree So in the end of the pitch the investor might have changed their mind about something that you are you're presenting and When we raised each adventures to the second fund that these three nods were about the macro climate So we started to talk about that the digital transformation is touching everything We we see and we're only in the beginning of the digital transformation So kind of like agreeing upon that everything that can be digital will be digital not very controversial It's something that everyone can can agree upon Then we anchored around talking about how hard venture capital as an asset glass is We know that a lot of investors into VC funds. They think about this So if we say it first, it's kind of as if you have like a checkbox It's as if we as investors or investment managers understand their perspective as well And then the third one was kind of dynamic So when I when I met with European investors, I was talking about how amazing European tech is when I met with Asian investors I spoke about me amazing Asian tech is and so forth So the third one was kind of kind of dynamic. So this might seem kind of weird Why are we dedicating time to talking about things we already agree on agree upon? We're here to talk about new stuff, but I think this is kind of like an important psychological anchor to take the investor or whomever you're presenting to on on a journey and a mental journey journey towards deeper water and Looking at this kind of slide view We dedicated quite some time to to this anchoring or sort of agreeing to to to agree So that's the macro chapter in this in this presentation So that's the first one three nods to lower the guard or the yes slide or have you want to you want to do it? Then the second one is also pretty obvious tell a story But there are so many pitches that we see that are just a bunch of fact glued together in a in a presentation And it's it's kind of interesting to think about how we how we think about information It's as if we group information together in a sequential order, even though there is no sequence That's just how we operate. I like this quote We are as suspicious addicted to stories even when the body goes to sleep the mind sees up all night Telling itself stories. So stories are extremely powerful and even if the story is Simplifying your product or offering or maybe even exactly what happened. I think that's fine Peace together these things into into a story with with ikit eventures. We were inspired by The hero's journey or the the monomyth, which is this archetypical story that that that we see both in these sort of holy scriptures and and in in entertainment It's interesting how similar this story is to the typical startup story It's it's a it's a hero the founder going out to to change something into into the unknown and there's often hardship There are mentors on the journey. There's transformation and then it circles back into I think it says Gift of the goddess. I know exactly what that what that means and I think this can be applied onto everything to pitch to a presentation and I Like many visual storytellers I I was pretty obsessed with Steve Jobs's way of of presenting and I I I started looking into who who crafted his his magical and very iconic Keynotes and I stumbled upon this guy who who worked with Steve Jobs at Apple But also at both next and and and Pixar His name is Wayne Goodrich and this is what he says about the story arc of Apple's keynote presentations What few people realize is that just like Pixar movies There's a color scheme throughout the 90 minutes an emotional ramp and yes There are heroes and villains action sequences humor and plot twists yet to be careful not to wear the audience out You have to manage building to a climax and Steve understood is better than anyone else So I think it like being inspired by movies and books and stuff like that Even if it's a boring pitch deck you're presenting to investors is kind like an interesting twist This is the format we used for ikid's adventures. It's kind of like a slightly like Lighter or easier or more bootstrap version of the hero's journey We talked about a premise or a goal like the point of the story protagonists obstacles Transmation and and and mentors and for ikid's adventures and this was actually not for the second fund But already for the first fund This story that we were telling is a story about how Europe is happening from a tech perspective About how Europe is now the protagonist of course being the entrepreneur the obstacles being the lack of European smart capital Could argue maybe that that changed now. There's a lot of European smart capital Transformation that this shift is happening now and and ikid's adventures as a catalyst and then the mentors of course being us and The advisors we have we have around the table Another thing I'm sure you've heard about is this start with with why you're a start with your your purpose and And and this of course is Simon Sinek who who made a very you know very famous Ted talk I think soon 15 years years ago, but it's starting to become mainstream only now, which is kind of interesting So in the beginning of the presentation don't be afraid of to talk about your ambition Especially technical people sometimes think it's scary to talk about ambition because what is an ambition and what is a lie? Or what is sort of truth from that perspective? But I think it's fine to project your ambition out into the future early on and one thing I really like in dex is when the founders have like a picture from when they when they got going on their thing and and And talk about the the moment when the idea came or the origin story or when they experienced the problem themselves or or something like that So start with why and if you haven't seen it watch this this Ted talk even though It's 12 years old crappy sound. It's still worth worth a look So looking at at the sort of layout or the the balance between slides That one is here not super prominent for us We realized that we we were communicating to so many stakeholders We decided to piece together this story or this journey Into something we call a mother story and we've got external help to do this so this is our internal mother story about how Europe is now and we We talk about how how we ourselves were one's founders and and introducing what we do and blah blah blah and it's kind of kind of good to have a document like this. This is not external So this is something we use internally and then we can take pieces and bits and stuff like that and and put into presentation Stuff like that. We spent quite some time on aligning around this So that's the second point about telling a story also obvious, but a lot of people forget about this Third one make it visual Tell it to me like I'm a smart five-year-old This is what many slides still look at especially internally at EQT where we're working with McKinsey and BCG and and stuff like that a Lot You know this I mean, this is not how human beings work. This is like a snooze snooze fest So keep it simple and I've always been inspired by by news graphics I mean, this is very American and very glitzy but if if if CNN can make something as boring as Pulse for an election interesting of course we we can too because start-up journeys are are interesting and and Engaging and for EQT ventures one and two the two fund raises we we worked a lot on a couple of visual metaphors To tell the story and and one such visual metaphor was about us having the opportunity to not just invest in seed or series A or series B, but because of our big fund in our multi-state strategy We could we could invest throughout so we use this as a visual metaphor kind of weird with it with a baseball player for European fund maybe but then we were talking about how we get three swings of the bat before we're out and this is one of those one of those Slides or visual metaphors that really stuck and I usually ask that after I present something So tell me that like the top three slides that stuck in your mind for some reason and it's usually the more visual ones It's where you don't try to cram too much into into them and this can go the other way As well so in in the first fundraise we had the very famous Make Mike Tyson quote about that everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth And we had this video behind it and you could see how the investors just like ah They didn't want to look just like too strong of a negative Reactions we realized after three or four presentations. We got it. We got it kill this this video because it hurts So we replaced it with With this one and then also when when choosing your visual metaphors making them a bit absurd Usually makes them makes them stick so sometimes when I present and you mean there are so many people and so many names I'm sure you may be already forgot what my name is but here it is My name is Ted Ted on a Ted talk stage with Ted dancin behind it. I'll remember so those absurd Combinations piecing stuff together often makes things makes things stick So make it visual that's the third one number four is is iterate also pretty pretty obvious But people forget about this they start creating their their deck like a week before they're pitching and of course that deck won't be Won't be good. I mean have have a deck if you're raising a serious a you have the seed deck iterate on that Dec and try to keep it up to date for For our journeys. I think for the first fund. We had more than 140 iterations of the same deck and for ventures three Two sorry we had more than 43 versions of of the same deck and back back to Apple Maybe also more for for later stage companies if you're the founder It shows if you created the presentation if you really know the slides back to Steve Jobs Apparently created his own decks which a lot of founders don't do especially around a series of B and onwards And then it's just like you're in a room with it becomes almost like a PowerPoint karaoke, which is not what this is about and Yeah, some some more some more Apple. I guess one more thing saving the best for for last in in our fund racing's This was kind of like the main menu our strategy or our four pillars We're talking about how we're purpose driven when we invest we talk about how you could ventures bring scale We have like radical support through our operating partnership And then that were data obsessed and this data obsessed piece That's when the when the investors closed down their laptops Stopped looking at their phones and really leaned in and you could really sense that this was what they had been waiting for In in our sense is that we have an internal 25-person development team developing our own AI enabled tooling for us to find good good startups for you It can be something completely different but figure out what that extra thing in the end of the presentation could could be Mother rain we would develop this in 2015. We can do all sorts of cool things with it all data sets and data sources and and stuff like stuff like this and and I think this chapter and Sort of create the story arcs. It feels like the presentation is all almost over and then you do this thing in the end I think that's very very very powerful And looking at it here. That's this that's this chapter Um, so that was one more thing. Um, here you have them the um The five commandments or observations or or learnings. So the yes slide or three nods to lower the guard Tell a story of course make it visual Don't don't start the night before you're you're you're you're pitching to your best the investor you you want because then you will fail I mean this takes time and then and then one more thing of course And speaking about one more thing of course I had to have a one more thing in this presentation as well So I figured I would I would share with you the 10 or 11 pieces of advice we give our portfolio so after we have investors in a company And when they're going out to fundraise again, this is something that we have It's kind of like our fundraising playbook if you want and this is kind of stupid for me as an investor to To sort of give away but uh, but here it is. Uh, I think they're 11 And the first one here of course is that you're always fundraising. Um build relationships early and um Preemption is the holy grail.  That is the most amazing way to get more more investors engaged in your in your fundraise Do your homework set it before uh build your story. Um Get feedback from existing investors So when you're halfway through or you have something that you like Then you force your existing investors to to uh to pretend they're new investors and and give you give you feedback Uh build your investor long list and prioritize that long list. These are the investors I want These are investors that I would accept And then you start from the start from the bottom So you practice on the long tail and then you iterate so you get feedback And the best thing here is if you practice on the long tail like the investors You don't want and you get a term sheet That's the best because then you can use that term sheet to get term sheets from your your best investors So start from the bottom and don't forget the person about the person on that side of the table as I as I spoke about early early on Then when you've done that you engage with your preferred list to the top of the list And and here we've realized that intros If if if a founder in our portfolio Wants an intro to another investor It's way better if that intro comes from another founder Because if we make the intro to another investor, it's like, yeah, what is this turd they're trying to pass us But if it comes through one of the best Performing portfolio company co's then I said, oh, holy shit. Let's put stuff aside and let's really really work on on this Some intros the entrepreneurs are way stronger than intros the other other investors Then then this one is kind of like mimicking the way tv chefs work So let's say you start engaging with with a with an investor And then you say we believe that in a couple of weeks time in two weeks time, we will hit these targets Maybe you'll really hit them And and then what you do is that you feed the investors with with reinforcing information Dropping nuggets. So they're like, oh these guys they're they're they're really delivering on what they're what they're saying I think this can be very powerful a bit harder now when when fundraising processes are so Short, but I but I still think you can do it and especially has to bring relationship build relationship with with with investors Um Number six get an early backstop term sheet know where whatever the terms are So if you have a term sheet you have a term sheet and you know VCs operates according to their in our case Monday meetings And the hottest deals are covered in the Monday meeting If you have a term sheet is if there's a company that you have like Looked at or something like that and and that company gets a term sheet That's when you zoom in and that's when that company is becoming hotter and it's interesting to see Like how information spreads from VC to VC We're in many cases the junior ranks people start trading information So if if something is considered a hot deal in one VCs Monday meeting It will spread so the next next week more and more VCs So it takes maybe three weeks if you're doing this right to be on sort of everyone's everyone's lips And you use this to create momentum and then use that momentum to get your preferred investor On the hook and you use that backstop term sheets and the nuggets dropped to uh to get on the hot list of of the VC If us funds are on the radar then this is when you go you say sorry now It's hard to travel obviously, but sorry I can't take any meetings right now because I'm in Silicon Valley and then all VCs in Europe freak out um And then number nine here I hate this one heard the VC So you're the one enforcing deadlines. You're the one saying we accept term sheets here and blah blah But don't overdo it because if you overdo it then you say I'm expecting term sheets on this date and you get no term sheets Then the fund raise is kind of over then it's not a hot deal Anymore but do enforce deadlines and be a bit strict make the VCs dance a bit And then the tenth one here is on on advisors Generally speaking if if we get an intro through an advisor And it's not like a series b or series c fundraise We're a bit like okay, but can't the ceo or the founders funders themselves Why do they do they need an advisor and then you put put that Fundraise into a different different lane a worse lane and for some reason this is not entirely true in france in france advisors has a different status And then uh number 11 the most important piece of advice here Don't put a date on the cover page goddamn it because no one likes Old milk we see this in many cases.  So don't don't have any dates on the on the cover page Three books, I think you should read uh designing for emotion, which is a very very short book I really like it and then this one might not be super relevant anymore But uh win bigly scott adams, you know the founder of of dillbert. He was talking about how How don't trump actually is or was uh a pretty decent storyteller and then yes, uh Cialdini's Very famous book about Influence he also has another book called called called influence and then another Resource that I think is great. This is uh a template for For a seed deck that um a vc called j12 Stock on based created luka here used to work for Ikid ventures before and he has on his first slide Uh the yes slide there as well. So I think this is a great Great great template So with that that was my 57 slides in uh 23 minutes. Thank you


Yep. Yeah, hello everyone. Welcome to our session and I know there's only a few people down there But before we start the session, I would like to know if anyone here is a local community organizer Okay at this one. Yeah, okay and welcome to our talk so We're here today to talk about our experience in covering open source Community and some problem we have faced and some of our solution to them and our future steps So first, that's do a quick introduction. So my name is Jin and I'm one of the co-founder of Our community which is cloud native Taiwan user group, and I currently work in random Japan I fear from Taiwan also one of co-founder of cloud native Taiwan user group Current position is a ground solution architect at Microsoft Taiwan If you are interested in Taiwan, please feel free to contact us offline later Okay, so let's first give some background for our community. So This is a picture six years ago during our first meetup We held it on Christmas Eve. So when we started this group and we have around 80 attendees in person on that time and for years we have been growing and So we're established in 2017 and our goal is to be inclusive group and To share our technology passion in technologies and our knowledge on cloud native openly and Some of our key figures that we have we have hosted to two currencies community days Since we've started and have organized more than 50 meetups both offline and online so we have been growing our Main Sort of place to communicate is on Facebook. We have a Facebook groups. We currently have around six hundred six 800 members With around to 2,600 post reaches for the posts on there For more real-time communication. We have also have a telegram group Which have around a thousand people and we have we have pretty active active communication each day and each week So our main language for communication is traditional Chinese as The English proficiency average in in Taiwan isn't that high and our Members come from different backgrounds. So we have people from the government's from the manufacturing industry financial service and tech Okay, so this is all around our background so let's dive into our main topic to talk about the challenges and the projects and solution we have works on to tackle these challenges So I hand over to feel Hi everyone, I want to explain that it's very difficult to maintain local community operations Especially in every one when the main language is not English So you can see today's order station is a all English, right? So it's very difficult to us if you know you are not speaking English you very well but why You can see this photo You can see the photo just last two weeks ago. We co-hosted a cloud native sustainability week event with green software foundation in Taiwan although the event only show three hour It was actually filled with many different challenging here One speaker is from UK United Kingdom and many speak English While the other two Taiwanese speakers many speak of traditional Chinese before the meeting all communication is mainly based on English to ensure That everyone is one It's on the same page Where is a Agenda speakers staff finance and so on it all require resource and Preparation to make it happen Based on our experience in management of the cloud native Taiwan user group community We have these five top challenge for your reference firstly Language as you can hear I'm not using English as my primary language either therefore Both pronunciation and writing can be challenged for me secondary finance It's actually cost a lot of money to hold events. I think everybody pay their ticket and fee and maybe like fee in here and It's very difficult to sustain without proper financial support Let the same time is also important to ensure financial transparency Look at the booth in the in this picture This is is a photo from our Kubernetes community day Taiwan 2023 event this year with table full of Considerable amount of swag is all about the cost of the morning and In addition to the financial support needed for these items the event venue also require payment To ensure the smooth running of the event There are also issues of manpower and knowledge transfer From my perspective it is actually not much different from operating a small company Because you need marketing or finance and governments We talk about the language first in Taiwan we mostly Communicate in traditional Chinese while most of our native technical posts or news are right writing in English In the past we have tried to share English posts on social media But the effect was not significant significant Few people would want to spend Time reading on familiar language Therefore we adopt a method of writing in both traditional Chinese and English So that readers of either in language can quickly understand the content of the post But there is a technical challenge here How can we ensure that the meaning of the post In both language is the same the The answer is that I suggest using Open AI or other translation tools or to assist to multi-lingual translation If you are if you have noticed Kupakong And they actually provide online service for Captaining and a processor translation To be honest, I think it is really very useful For real-time meeting it is highly recommend to use a speech to text technology as It become more mature to enhance the efficiency of the meeting That being said the technology may not be very accurate in translating proper type pop sorry proper type sorry Translating the growth service such as the name of a numerous connecting with project Which may result in aspect words or sentence We use this technology at Ku Brings Community Day Taiwan 2023 this year and receive very positive feedback from the audience In the future we hope to improve it by integrating it with tools such as OBS external voice APIs To make it better I Think that best on the current path of AI development the level of the participants in cross-border conference may increase next year I Would like to ask everyone When you join new company and see a lot of our global service What do you do first? Based on my experience as a former employee of Rehe Taiwan and be aware of Taiwan Usually new staff would want to look for the conference internal grocery web page To see the meaning of those terms I believe everyone has had the experience of looking at At these words but having no idea what they mean That is also true in the war over the crown native in order to lower the barrier for our membership who use Chinese to join the crown native ecosystem We gathered a group of a contributor to join the Crown native grocery project at the beginning of this year At the same time Through this project. We also try to bring up new contributors to open source projects as the overall difficulty of this project is beginner or friendly and Good thing is last week With the efforts of many community members final support for traditional Chinese was added Yep, so next let's talk about funding So as bill mentioned like funding is very important for a community to work so we need funds for event locations for speaker travel supports and By squags to encourage people to come out and speak or ask questions and For funding we highly recommend to have a local nonprofit organization if you don't have the capability to deal with the monies so This is to ensure that's The process of the funding Is financial transparency and meet local law regulations and if and many any members have doubts on how you spend those monies You will have a list of spendings for the community members to view and for this we have been collaborating with Open Cultural Foundation, which is one of the foundation in Taiwan that's help support open source open technology and open data communities in Taiwan and So all financial transaction transaction will go through OCF and So we can ensure that's the process is standardized and we have Details for every transactions including donations and the spending we make Next is probably one of the biggest issue we have so which is the lack of technical contributions. So as Community that's works around sharing technical information We actually strive to find speakers every month Healthy meatballs. So you you might find it strange as if you come to Kuva Khan, you can find that Usually they are more CFP's than the number of sessions But in our local community, we have a hard time finding people to share their knowledge and experience To face this issue first, we have tried to lower the bars For people to share. So our sharing principle is very simple. So The talk can be at any level. So we think that even beginner level talks can help other people's a lot because The quality of landscape is really large. You cannot be an expert in every field. Yeah And but there is a very strict rule inside our company. That's Your presentation can cannot be a sales presentation. So we do not want people to come here and sell their products and Yeah, so that's one of the Solution we come up with finding speakers Next since the pandemic we have start we have switched to more and more online events but actually we found out that In-person events still is still better for a person to connect to each other and Communicates after the meet-up ended. So currently we are trying to help more in-person events For more communications between our community members Well other than or in the bar for the members to share We also tried to start a mentoring program To cultivate new talents in into the cloud native world. So We have a collaboration with OCF together to find people who are interested in open source and cloud technologies and Our community organizers try to spend their free times Leading those these mentees and Help them learn new technologies and Since last year we have one graduated mentee and currently one still in the program So this program is currently highly limited by the number of mentors as as we talk about we have lack of manpower and All of our mentors have their own full-time jobs. So they have to spend their free time doing their mentoring Also, we didn't have a very complete process from onboarding the mentee and To graduating the mentee. So we're currently working on that to make the process more thorough. So things like What's criteria the mentee has to meant to graduate from a program so in addition to actively reach out to people and Mentoring them we've been passively during other projects to help people Learn cloud natives Such as we have a project called info lab. So this project is basically we provide computing resource for the members who doesn't have the Resource to run those cloud native technologies So once they apply for to the to the project, they are free to use the resource we have so they can run different projects test out different things and Once they're done with using the resource There's a criteria that's if you use the resource you have to contribute back to the community So we think this is when when situation you can use a resource learn new things and you can contribute back to community to help others learn new things and The contribution form is not restricted. So we have people who do share talks in in our meet-ups And you can also write a blog post about your findings and experience using the resource or Learning cognitive technologies or you can even contribute back to the upstream code base if you are very technical capable So so the resource is currently funded by our organizer and some donations through OCF and We're currently trying to maintain it We think this Project is running really well right now. So we have a lot of people using it with People sharing back feedbacks So other than Limiting the resource to our own community to use we have been sharing the resource to other open source community so They are free to apply and utilize a resource to do things such as hosting their Community websites or do workshops for example, there is a community who have done Capture the flag so a security kind of workshop With our resource so we think that it's a really success so So there are difficulties on technical side from finding people to share There are also difficulty from non-technical side, which is finding volunteers to help Organize the events So since the beginning of our community we have been in tight main power as currently all of our core co-organizer had their own phone type job and In order to lower the efforts needed by us We have been collaborating with larger communities for some events for example there's conference in Taiwan called coast cup, which is A conference for open source contributor users and promoters. So they have a very large resource that's They can help us Held a very large event So we have been held increments come the community days for two years under coast cup as a track Which we found it a lot better than trying to do all do all things for yourself So in this case all we have to do is to review the CFP's to support the speakers and Set up the booths on onsite. Well other things such as sponsoring the event venue or the Like other venue stuffs are handled by the coast cup community That's one that's one of these we have been encouraging new members to applying to the CNCF ambassador program, which We can gain more recognition in the community which will probably help us find more volunteers That were willing to contribute it in our community To make us grow further So I hand back to Phil to talk about some difficulties in knowledge transfers and some of the next steps We are going to take in our community Based on our status Most members in Taiwan are primarily use fast book for communication Well, the number of people using LinkedIn or Twitter Former former name is a relative law Therefore, if there are plans to promote technology or your company brand in Taiwan up to this day Facebook is still a better choice to you In additional as mentioned earlier language is a challenge in Taiwan Actually, we cannot Translate each post into traditional Chinese before reposting It is suggest that post can be summarized and Summary can be read write written in the familiar language You can see the summary part is the green green green bus green bus and Original policy is in the blue box This will make the pause more easily accepted by the community The point is that we hope the readers can receive correct information Rather than testing the language ability In order to support the local community We still need to continuously find a new sponsors to support Local community activities, you know, there will be expensive for everything I mentioned before We hope that this week can have the opportunity to allow everyone to have in person meet up from time to time or provide some financial support to Taiwanese open source contributors more over to Ensure transparency. We also hope to provide annual reports to the public for reference on the status of the Crown native Taiwan user group community in the future We also hope to start trying to communicate with neighboring countries such as South Korea Or like Hong Jun in here, Japan and so on Although I Personal think it is very difficult The main barrier is language Followed by culture But let's try our best to and see how it goes Finally, we have come to the summary. I highly recommend Everyone to use AI towards now if you have difficulty with language commerce Conversation like me The translation effect is very good For example using features such as speech to test STT or translation tools Of course, this is not the limit to English usage you can also try Translating into traditional Chinese to communication communicate with us and Effect will be quite good Even for non-profit organization Do not Underestimate the financial support as it will Directly effect how much and how well you can do Finally continue to Come in now knowledge is very is a very important thing Open source share knowledge influence everyone Thank you for listening. If you have any interesting in Taiwan or community governments Now for non-English region or and would like to contact us We would be happy to communication with you My name is fear from Taiwan and he is Jean also from Taiwan. Thank you for your listening any questions Yeah Yeah, it's a governor now a government organization So they're been using Kubernetes and they have shared in One of our KCDs and you can see there's a lot of people filling up the room Yeah, not much currently so No, so so they have been submitting talks, but so officially we don't have Any connection with a government right now? Yes So I will personally say that's the average English proficiency in Taiwan isn't that high and People still prefer to use their own mother language to learn new things If they can so we actually have a co-organizer in our community that's do Kubernetes lessons in in Mandarin which it sells really well and For adoptions, I will say that It's still kind of a barrier as like our Knowledge to the actual like cloud native ecosystem is actually like one year behind or two year behind the audience and Like North America or Europe where their English proficiency is better. So like as Phil mentioned that's most of the new new new post is like technology post new features those are written English which we don't have Manpower to translate all of those so people may not knew. Oh, I can do this right now Yeah, so as for a cultural side, I think I Personally think that in Taiwan people are more shy to share the knowledge So we've been having a hard time to find speakers as I mentioned and Yeah, so we're We're organized are both trying to like Bring back knowledge from from the English world and try to share it back in our local community. Yeah Yeah, actually we don't have a research on it because we accept all all the Female male into the conference. We don't try to identify the gentle Yeah, so basically Like we don't we don't block anyone from joining our read of We did find out that the female participant is a lot less in than the male participant and Yeah, so we're still working on that. Yeah, it's it's kind of tough as like it's Normal to see that in in tech field that's in in Asia at at least We have a lot less female workers than male workers. Well, we're trying to attract more new talents that's his female or Minorities to join our community. Yeah, I think that's your our community day 2022 have a few of female as our speaker so But we I think when when the call for paper, we don't select any Yeah, so so when doing call for papers that Like we do like equal of opportunity. So we don't identify we only identify by their topics and their descriptions on what they want to talk instead of Identifying their that their male or female or Racist or other stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, cool. Oh, so So we have around 11 but for the very active ones around four to five Yeah, so like like people's people sound sometimes When we held in bigger events they help out but Normally, they don't show up much. Yeah Yeah, so kind kind of working hard Yeah, so for communication we usually do online seat cups like each week or we just have a telegram group and So do you I think? Communications. Yeah. Yeah, so we we we we are looking for how to bring up lost the members to become a contributor So that's why we are trying to do Maybe we can share the Your experience of flying with because I think Korea and Japan is all Is it the similar situation? Yeah, I think that that person do you have questions? Okay. Okay. So any more questions For contributions if you if you are talking about like more broad contributions, we do invite speakers from overseas. So Like this recommends coming today. We have one speaker from Belgium and and I've been able to speak her from India and from Korea and also for online events. We also invite Speakers like you can speak English. There is no problem speaking English in our meetups. Go ahead Anyone I think it's a little Maybe you can try to submit your Proposal to the Yeah, yeah, personally I think yeah try to engage our monthly meetup because we are trying to increase our visibility in the in the in the war or Community or global community. Yeah. Yeah, and yeah We also accept like international speakers if you want to speak online to share your knowledge in areas of group And we we are trying to use the STT to improve our We bury bury over the language. It's a very good good tool for everyone if you are trying to Do the closer Translation Yep, I think we're running out of time. So if you have any other questions, we'll be around here for a few minutes Feel free to Come and talk with us


Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Welcome to this unique program in which we are exploring a pertinent and important contemporary question that affects an increasing number of our Muslim communities. And that is how can we help new Muslims, those people who choose to accept Islam to feel that they are a part of the community? How can we help them to have a positive experience with Islam so they become thriving and flourishing members of the community and are able to not only benefit from the community but contribute to the community and help our growth as an umma?  Some of you might remember the secret. The secret was what we're talking about is not exclusive to converts and reverts to Islam. Good advice is good advice and much of this advice is good for people in general. We never know the situation of people in our community or in general, people in general but in the Muslim community which is what we're talking about here we may assume someone has family, someone is educated in Islam we may actually not know that they may have just decided to return to Islam they didn't know about it growing up they may even be learning the basics such as how to pray so we can never make assumptions about people and so much of this advice will be good for many people albeit in particular the topic we're discussing today may be particularly relevant for people who convert to Islam because people who convert to Islam tend to get a lot of special attention so today I would like to bring up the controversial question of whether or not people who convert to Islam whether we should ask them to share their stories publicly should we encourage converts and reverts to go on TV to go on TV and explain how they became a Muslim to go for example to the mosque and give a speech on how they became a Muslim to produce written accounts of how they became a Muslim on websites to do media interviews with the newspaper and so forth should we do this or not this question may not have occurred to you because it is taken for granted that this is something normal there is so much interest nowadays in conversion to Islam that people take it for granted that converts even very new converts to Islam such as people who've only been a Muslim for a month or two are asked to go and not only on Islamic media but even mass media in general CNN, the BBC, NBC and so forth and speak about their experiences but is this really something we should be doing I'd like to bring up some points to give a different perspective on this first and foremost I believe that when we are dealing with human beings it is very important to put the best interest of the human being first both psychologically, socially and in any other way as well and one thing to consider is that when people convert to Islam the path is not always easy in particular as we know there may be family problems, if they're married there may be marital problems, it may even result in a divorce one of the very frequent questions that people convert to Islam get asked is how did your parents react this is a very personal question and can involve publicly sharing information which is deeply personal and in addition to that may not necessarily be information that the other parties involved want to be shared for example if you became Muslim and your father kicked you out of your house or your wife left you or gone forbid the courts took away your children or something happened like that which did not paint other people in a good light it might not be respectful to them to go on television and say yes my father yelled this and that at me and kicked me out of the house and my auntie did this and so on and so forth especially in our communities we do believe that one should have a certain amount of respect for one's family and even if things happen that are not very good we don't always share it in public and yet sometimes there's an expectation that people convert to Islam will be very forthright about these things so there is that issue of privacy to consider it's not only the privacy of the individual convert but also their friends, their family and so forth who may not like it if the convert comes out and speaks about them on television especially nowadays Alhamdulillah we have YouTube so nothing ever goes away you give the speech at the mosque one day it goes on YouTube the next day Alhamdulillah and there's also just the general reality that speaking about something very deeply biographical and personal because it involves opening up a lot of yourself to the world and some people who give these speeches sometimes regret it later they contact YouTube and say can you please take my speech down because they find that they've said things that maybe six months later or you're later they think back and they say well I really wish I hadn't shared that with the world and indeed, Amir al-Walminin, alaihi s-salam he did say that silence is better silence that clothes you in the garment of dignity is better than words that bring you remorse that sometimes it's safer to be silent now I'm not saying that people should never speak about these things but just there are certain considerations I think it's important also when we are inviting converts to speak about their journey to Islam to consider what is the goal what are we trying to do because in my humble opinion there are good reasons to invite people who convert to Islam to speak about their experiences also there are less good reasons what are some of the good reasons for example we find it inspiring we all like to hear inspiring stories whether it's about religious conversion overcoming a challenge maybe accomplishing something great although you have a disability or some great obstacle in your life inspiring stories are beloved by all so maybe we find it inspiring maybe some people who are thinking about converting to Islam might empathize with your story and be motivated themselves to come closer to Islam maybe it will help people in that regard also to be fully candid there are some people who do academic studies on converts to Islam some of us might have encountered some of these researchers and it is a choice to decide whether or not one wishes to participate in their academic research which at the very least it does put converts to Islam and first generation Muslims on the map even though it can be a bit weird to be someone's research subject so these are reasonable uses but then there are what I would call bad uses things that aren't quite as good one big number one like big flashing giant number one agendas some media organizations like the big media organization in England and I'm not talking about a Muslim one they sometimes have agendas when doing coverage of Muslims some of us might have seen the documentary on new Muslim women or female converts some of them very new converts the people who were in that documentary said afterwards that they were completely misrepresented that they did not at all say and tend to things that were shown on TV so this is something to be careful of there may be agendas involved also there is a view among some people I swear to God I was told this to my face myself someone told me once, Amina you are shirking your responsibility to the West that as a Western Muslim and as a white Muslim it is your responsibility to help Eastern Muslims have more self-esteem because they're all looking up to the West and feeling bad about their culture and religion and you have chosen this religion although you are white so you have to help them improve their self-esteem by talking about how you became a Muslim what is wrong with this picture first of all self-esteem is an inner thing you can talk until proverbially as we say in the states until the cows come home about how wonderful Islam is but if someone has low self-esteem about their religion it's not going to work self-esteem needs to come from the inside no we can nurture it, we can help it grow but if someone appreciates the religion it needs to come from the inside not from someone who they're being looked up to because of their skin color or their culture it also again sends the message to the convert that they are different they are not like other people in the community sometimes even this praise oh you're so wonderful, you're so good this awe if you were of converts can push them away from the community because at the end of the day first of all we know we're not any better than anyone else second of all it makes us feel that we're not really a sister or brother in the community that we are something different and we're always going to be different and excluded so we don't want to do that and I think ideally the best time to have people who convert to Islam speak publicly about their stories is when they themselves want to do it when they feel they have something to share that they think would be positive and valuable when it comes from inside indeed conversion can be a challenge and talking is therapeutic and it may help them to sort some things out to speak about them or some people who've been through challenges may want to express these challenges to the world if they've discovered new things they may want to express these things to the world they may have unique and valuable things to say these people will oftentimes find ways to say it whether they're invited to or not they may write a book and there are books for example Martin Ling's books or a sister in the US named Diana she wrote a very nice book about conversion to Islam which is very useful for people who may be interested in this conversion has the desire in their heart to speak about it then by all means please do give them a platform and inshallah you and I will benefit from it but if they're reticent or they're not quite ready to we don't want them to do it just because they're being pressured to being socially pressured to share very deep and personal information can have a negative impact on someone and we don't want to have a negative impact on them with respect to the Muslim community ultimately for those of you who are being asked to share your stories are you a new Muslim? are you a convert Muslim? are you a long standing convert Muslim who's been Muslim for 30 years and is still being asked to share your story ultimately you should feel comfortable saying yes or no to the question you should feel that if your heart and intuition says yes then please do share your story but if you don't want to accept that too you are under no obligation to share personal information and the same goes for people who are returning to Islam so maybe you're a born Muslim but you didn't practice for a long time it's your decision whether or not you wish to share your story the thing that I think is important to keep in mind is it's particularly important to be sensitive to genuinely new Muslims new Muslim is the new euphemism for convert which makes no sense someone calls me a new Muslim I've been practicing Islam for more than 20 years I don't know anything else I'm not a new Muslim in fact people who are much younger than me sometimes call me that however there are genuine new Muslims who've been a Muslim for say 3 months or 6 months it's not always the best idea to ask them to take on these public platforms for one thing it puts a lot of pressure on them public attention it is stressful it does cause social pressures having your life shared with the entire world can be difficult for people especially if they don't have experience in media and being in the public eye additionally these are times of their life which are very critical they're finding their way they're changing honestly they're going through phases there's a number of phases of conversion that many people go through and this needs to be respected and it may be that 6 months or 6 months are not going to be the same things that they say after 5 years or 10 years so it's important to respect this development time like a butterfly growing in a cocoon not to push people too early now again if they want to and they have a desire to do it then by all means please but inshallah this is something that can also be taken into consideration so I hope that I have brought up an interesting question to ponder maybe some of you have never considered before and I hope inshallah this helps to shed new light on the question of how converts are portrayed in the media whether or not they should be used for media purposes and inshallah will help us to be sensitive to the personal growth and best interest of all people in the community stay tuned for another exciting episode


In developing countries, the informal workforce represents anywhere from half to 90% of the workforce. And we also estimate that the informal economy generates probably 40% to 60% of the GDP. Of course, creating more formal jobs would be ideal, but the trends suggest that that is not happening, that there's economic growth often not accompanied by as much employment growth. And so we need to focus on generating new jobs, but we also need to focus on preserving existing livelihoods if we're going to address poverty and inequality. What we know from the official data is that if you take the share of women workers who are in informal employment, it's always higher than the share of men workers in informal employment. It does not mean, however, that the majority of informal workers are men or women because there's often a lower labor force participation rate among women. We also know, and this again is official data, that within the informal economy, the higher earning segment, which is informal self-employed who hire others, women tend to be underrepresented in that segment and they tend to be overrepresented in the lower earning segments as unpaid contributing family workers in the family firm or the family farm, or many of them are industrial outworkers, subcontracted workers who are paid by the piece. We are very concerned about cities because of urbanization, the fact that more than half the world's population lives in cities now, and also the fact that often cities are de-industrializing at the same time that they're growing in terms of population. And this means that employment in the cities is often informal, but then you add the urban renewal schemes, the cities that want to become modern world-class cities, and often that means the destruction of the existing livelihoods in the informal economy. So we've got a real choice as development specialists of what kind of cities, what kind of urban economies we are going to promote. Capital is global and labor needs to be global as well, the workforce, and they learn a lot from being organized in their own settings, but also from learning from other organizations, particularly organizations in the same sector. So waste pickers in Latin America learn something from waste pickers in India or in South Africa. Domestic workers learn that the problems they face, they felt very isolated in a private home, are shared by millions of domestic workers around the country and the world. And they learn strategies from each other. They learn how to negotiate with employers, how to negotiate with the city. So a lot of shared experience.


so i'm recording all kind of footage and i have yet to upload anything but y'all gonna see this when y'all see it i just got out of my acupuncture appointment hence the line in my forehead but um why come i here to do or see uh i don't remember y'all like my earrings these are so gorgeous um what did i come in here to say oh okay so here's the thing right i have a lot of footage to edit and upload so y'all are probably going to see this video before i upload anything in fact i actually have two videos i believe a therapy thursday and another video from like last year that i still gonna edit edit and upload as well it's just that through christmas season and then january i was traveling and i even have that i have a video from that too january was traveling and then a fair like everything was just back to back to back so youtube definitely took a back burner in my life because i had other things i had to put my energy into as well as you know taking care of little children and keeping myself up and going so i'm going i'm getting back you know in the swing of things i'm starting to pour my energy into other areas now and youtube is going to be one of them so for now i actually while i'm editing those videos because i'm i my plan is to like designate a date where i just go in on just editing all my videos and then schedule all of them to upload so that i'll be back on track and y'all will see things that are more current versus old things but there's still videos there's still things that happen it's still content that i want to and need to upload so i'm gonna do it regardless however i have some videos right from 2022 of like right when i gave birth and after i gave birth is uploaded to youtube as unlisted so nobody can see them because these videos were more like there were more vulnerable videos you could say or videos that i i initially thought that i would make create a patreon and have it there but all of that scratch all of that i am actually thinking about making those videos public because i'm at a point in my life now that like like it don't even matter like i don't know how to put it but like i am definitely thinking to just put those videos public yeah i don't know so while i'm uploading the current videos and getting my life organized and getting back on track putting myself on a better schedule for youtube and all of that i think i'm going to make those videos public it's like i one of the videos is actually like more some footage of when i actually gave birth um i don't know if i could upload i don't know if i could make that one public because there's some nudity in it and i don't want youtube to flag my videos um but i'm thinking i gotta go back and watch it to see if i could make that public i don't know if i could blur out anything but it's some of the footage is is of me actually in labor so um there's that one and then there's one of me naming the baby there's another one of i have like three postpartum blues videos of me just venting and explaining about just stuff that was going on in the moment that i was struggling with and so forth so i would say there's probably maybe five or six videos that are unlisted that i can make public and i think i'm gonna do that because they're there they're they're literally already edited they're already uploaded nobody just can't see them right now so i'm going to post this video first and then y'all will see and i'm gonna put dates on the upcoming videos the ones that i'm going to be editing right now so y'all know you know when it was when that was taking place but yeah i just came out of my um acupuncture appointment and i was talking to my acupuncturist like we be having these conversations because he's big in chinese medicine so i'd be asking him all kind of question because i just i love learning about the things i'm passionate about and holistic health wound wellness fertility all of that that is where my passion lies so we we had a whole long conversation today um while he was poking those needles in me it was good though um he gave me some this book recommendation that i i'm really really excited to buy and start reading or start listening to because i'd be listening to the audiobooks these days i'd still buy the physical book buy to listen to the audiobook because your girl is busy but um i'm excited just about everything that i have in store i'm a that's not for this video right now but i have a lot going on that i'm excited about and i can't wait to just blossom in that this year however for now i am recovering from the fear fear was amazing so amazing by the way today is thursday so this would have been a therapy thursday video but i didn't have therapy today so i guess i think i'm so accustomed to just filming on a thursday that this just happened but um i digress so i'm still recovering from fear it was so amazing i had a great i did so well so well like i have no complaints and although i was still like in the back and not on the main attraction stretch i still did so well like i did really good um i did more than i made more than twice what i made last year okay fear for me last year was not it but this year it was extremely good like and my energy was different too so that has a lot to do with it in terms of just how i um how i went about doing things so i'm excited i'm recovering right now i just which is why i did acupuncture today i have a 90 minute massage on saturday and i have a reiki session the following saturday if there's one thing i'm gonna do is take care of myself okay i'm gonna look 16 forever because it takes more than you know eating healthy and drinking herbs to really keep your body in balance and that's why i like to focus on the whole so i do my acupuncture i do my chiropractor adjustments i get my massages like i do not play um there's so much things out there that's against our health eating is a big one is like one of the biggest things that's against our health but like just your environment you know the daily stress of just having to go to work and you know not me but like going to work every day and um dealing with people and different energies and the stressors of bills and i have obligations and responsibilities like you have to take care of yourself so i make sure i get my self-care in and my self-care is definitely um acupuncture chiropractor adjustments massages you only steaming you know wool massages just things that's really going to keep my belly my body healthy and in balance but anyways i don't want this to be a crazy long video so i'm gonna end it here so stay tuned for the videos that i'm about to publish on my channel know that they are old videos i don't want nobody thinking that i just gave birth today because that is old okay and enjoy those until i get the other footage up all right so yeah i cannot i'm so obsessed with these earrings i am so obsessed with these earrings anyways um to all my melanated woman watching protect your womb by any means necessary and to everybody watching protect your peace by any means necessary i wish you all love light and prosperity and you will see me in my next video peace


We are trying to find the reason so very honestly at Let's Venture when I started founded Let's Venture over the last six years we have about 6,500 investors on the platform from 55 countries and less than probably 25 women investors right so really a very great question and you know if you look at the ecosystem there are about 33% women founders there are about 7% women in the CXO levels and organizations women run the finance at home so that question continues to baffle me and but we at Let's Venture are trying to change that and we will be announcing a product soon around that space where we really want to encourage more women to start investing more women to become lead investors and I think personally it is just the lack of lack of priority right I don't think it is the lack of priority because as a woman you can actually do either run a company run a home or you know try to look at investing right so trying to juggle all of that together I personally think is one of the reasons why we see less women investors. Let's Venture was formed in 2013 and at that point of time there were a lot of events even today there are a lot of events in the ecosystem but most of them were founder focused right there was no conversation space for investors there was no one event where you would find hundred investors and ten founders right so really the intent of Let's Ignite was to ignite conversations around angel investing talk about trends how do I become an investor what are the what are the challenges of being an investor how do I become a lead investor so really talk about everything geared towards encouraging people to become investors because if you look at the stats in India there is for you know there is like 0.2% of I mean there is a very low ratio of investors to start ups right so and we want more people to get into this asset class at Let's Venture we also believe that the private market asset class is not something you can ignore anymore as an investor but you have to set aside an allocation because this is the private markets are becoming as big as public markets today and how do we create a forum or how do we create a platform where we can encourage investors to understand more details of the nuances of investing and Let's Ignite is really that platform for us today so you know it is about providing a mechanism to unlock the alternate capital in India and that's exactly what Let's Venture's mission mission is right where we are looking at how do you look at alternate sources of capital beyond just the funds you mentioned right and there is enough money in the country it's just that there is not enough awareness around this asset class awareness around angel investing awareness around investing and in a very small way in the early stage we are kind of creating that awareness exactly like events like Let's Ignite but there are also a lot of today home funds right which are actually rupee funds like IDG I mean Chirate being one of the examples right who are actually looking at tapping into the Indian kind of the Indian capital to bring them into startups so I believe it will change in the next five to ten years but it's good that you know the startup ecosystem is getting bolstered by foreign capital coming in because it does help to get the larger checks for the startups who want to look at a much larger play in the market I will not talk about in the context of global IPOs I think it has been over discussed over analyzed I would rather look at what does it take for companies in India to go IPO I think the time it takes for a company to build a good business in India is much longer than what it takes to build globally right so if you really look at you know historically it takes about eight to ten years to build a good good business right not venture funded this is good business you know eight ten twelve years to actually build a business which can go IPO right and I think things will change right numbers have changed in terms of the number of unicorns which have now come in the market and like I said I think the next five to ten years will see a lot more of the startups wanting to list right wanting to go public because there is a need for liquidity in the market second is there is a lot of awareness around the asset class thanks to startup India and thanks to all the government initiators you know Niti Aayog they all have been doing a great job in providing support and providing a platform for startups I think if you look at sectors it is clearly healthcare fintech right it is consumer brands because they have a very large addressable market in India there is a lot to be done in that space right so that that is still very much at a very nascent state in terms of solutions coming I think there is a lot of lot of kind of startups coming up in the edtech space right so really even on our platform right we are seeing a lot of lot of startups and consumer brands actually just coming back to the same thing consumer brand healthcare fintech we are seeing a lot more in B2B like the business models are changing so less of B2C but more of B2B2C right so really kind of so things are evolving right and you know like an investor said yesterday I was on an interview and we were talking about trends and he said let's not talk about trend let's talk about what are the gaps in the ecosystem and how are we going solving gaps right because trends is very trends is a very you know a very a very not a very deep word right because it is trends change every six months right but can we as a startup look at what are the gaps we are solving through the startup ecosystem and then really kind of so when you look at gaps it is again clearly education healthcare other gaps today and there is a lot lot which can be done by startups in that space


Who says you can't have it all? Not Appalachian Wireless, we know what you want. Appalachian Wireless offers the hottest smartphones and unlimited data plans, all on the region's number one network. The non-profit organization, Rule Up, is at the University of Pikeville this week, teaching computer coding to teens in eastern Kentucky. Twenty middle and high school students attended the week-long camp. The kids learned how to make their own websites, mobile apps, and video games. Some of the students came in with a little bit of computer science experience, maybe they've taken a class or two or dabbled on their own. Some students were brand new to it. For all the students, it's a chance to learn about the code, about the software that goes on behind the scenes and all of their favorite computer programs and games. The camp was free for those who attended. Today is the last day of our camp, so we've had a four-day camp here. These three days we're all learning and then today is our project and presentation day. So the students will make presentations to their peers, parents, friends and siblings. Such says learning computer codes is very important, even if you don't necessarily plan on going into a coding career. This is a generation that's grown up around computers, around smartphones. Computers are everywhere and so the impact of computer software on their lives from healthcare to finance to manufacturing is huge. For more information or to schedule a camp, visit rollup.org. In Pikeville, Shelby Porter, EKB News.


I know I always do that with my face. I suppose it's to avoid things. Ha ha, avoidance contingency, you get it, bad joke. So, really bad joke. So, ha, you know what? I figured out a wonderful avoidance contingency. As long as I tell jokes to the camera and not to real people, I never hear the non laughter. So, it just, it actually works for an example if you think about it hard enough. So, avoidance contingency, it's when you engage and basically it's when a behavior is maintained through negative reinforcement and you either avoid altogether or delay or postpone the presentation of a particular stimulus. Oftentimes we would call that stimulus aversive but you're kind of reading into things a bit when you do that but it's a safe-ish bet, right? So that you avoid or postpone or delay aversive stimuli. However, there's a lot of reasons why we don't want to necessarily assume a version but anyway, gosh, I'm just talking myself into a hole here and I've got less than a minute to go. So, avoidance contingencies, when you're avoiding things or postponing them. That's all there's to it. See you, bye.


This is weird. Ooh, that's a hot mug, guys! Hey guys, not exactly gonna spend a lot of time editing this one because as of the time before I'm recording this, I've gotta be at work in five and a half hours, and I gotta drive for an hour, so it's gonna be a bit rough. This movie is unique. I do like aspects of it. I don't like other aspects of it, and there's a lot to go through in this film. First off, I'll say I like its aspect, and I like its ideas, its idea of what the near future will be like, not just in terms of space travel, but in terms of how humanity structures and how humanity functions with things from the emotionality tests, like the whole stability tests to how we interact with each other in terms of going to different planets, the means of space travel and its entirety. I did like those aspects. I did like Brad Pitt's character and his emotional lacking, his distance from humanity. He's verging on a psychopath almost in terms of his disconnecting from the world because of his father abandoning him to go off and be in space and whatnot and never returning. And we see his character try to emote and go through these struggles internally throughout the whole film, and I'll admit the first half of the movie is different from the second half of the movie. The first hour is some pretty cool stuff. It's kind of staying in the realm of realistic space stuff. It's building this world, this means of space travel and whatnot, but it's got some pretty cool action scenes. Like it's got a kind of scene on the moon and then it leaves the moon and then the movie changes into something else entirely. It's still staying in that realm of believability and attempted at realism in terms of space travel, but it just goes bananas, bananas. Keep that in mind when you see the movie, you'll understand what I mean. And then it starts to get a lot of vibes from Interstellar, Stanley Kubrick's 2001 space Odyssey. Oddly enough, Blade Runner 2049, especially with how it's shot, and what happens with the Brad Pitt afterwards, starts to get really, really weird. And it's kind of cool if the movie just would keep its pacing.   And I was desperate to try and stay engaged in the movie considering the tonal shift. And you will feel it a lot because some of the stuff is just so bizarre yet it still somehow moves so slowly that it's jarring. It's absolutely jarring to me. I did like the visual aspect of the film, I did like how it was shot. It's shot by the same guy who shot Interstellar from correct, so that's obviously some bonus points in it. He basically was like, yeah, I did this space stuff already, I can do it again. And again, I did like aspects of this movie. I did like its attempt at being unique. I did like its ideas and it's definitely a movie that's going to be kind of decisive with some people. And the part that probably is one of its biggest attractors to me is that this movie isn't holding your hand either with the world building, what's happening with the characters, what's happening with all the space stuff, and especially the ending.  There's a point where something's happening and people are scared, it's like they're scared.  There's a scene that literally exploit the characters, struggles, hardships, and the goals that they need to attain to overcome them. And I just didn't like that part, I thought that part was really really silly. I'm not entirely a fan of this movie. I will say that it's still well made, I do like aspects of it. It gave me some good interstellar vibes, but it almost put me to sleep. So in the end I'm going to give Ad Astra a 4 out of 7. It will definitely be decisive. Some people won't like it, some people will really like it. It's an art house movie in space, so give it that. I saw a lot of different inspirations to Sunshine was definitely an inspiration in this movie. There's the idea of madness and loneliness in space that they talked about, which was also really cool. But again, it's not my kind of movie, I do appreciate aspects of it, but I'll never watch this movie again. Holy shit, if I wanted to go to sleep I would watch this movie to put me to sleep. That's my honest opinion. Anyways guys, I hope you enjoyed this review. If you did leave a like and if you're interested in more, maybe subscribe. Otherwise, I'll see you guys next time. Thanks for watching the video. To see any and all updates about the upcoming Undergrads movie, be sure to check out and like the Bring Back Undergrads Facebook page. And with any luck, we'll see you guys soon.


Turn In Poachers, Inc. held their first annual Shooters Challenge today at Northland Regional Shooting Sports Park. Turn In Poachers aims to create an avenue for reporting natural resources violations. The Shooters Challenge was a fundraiser for TIP. It involved five-person teams competing and trap shooting for a registration fee of $400 per team. Visitors could also buy raffle tickets for $5. Raffle prizes included a gift card to read sporting goods, a Winchester shotgun, and, of course, the Grand Prize. The Grand Prize will give away some lifetime license, which ranges in value actually between $500 and $900 depending on which license we purchase for the winner. For more information on TIP, you can check out their website, turninpoachers.org. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva where we're joined today by Professor James Larson who is Vice President for Academic Affairs and Chair of the Department of Technology in Society for SUNY Career. Dr. Larson, thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you. Good to be here. Great stuff. Now I'd like to start off by talking about the fact that this year we're celebrating the 25th anniversary of ITU's development sector. The ICT landscape as we know has changed tremendously in the past decades. ITU is also launching a study on ICT for SDGs and I wanted to ask you how do you think that this study will contribute to responding to many of today's challenges? Well, as you mentioned the information and communication technology revolution or the ICT revolution is a fairly recent thing and it was traceable to the mid 20th century when three things happened and the year I was born the transistor was invented the same year in the same place Bell Labs Claude Shannon wrote his famous mathematical theory of communication He's the founder of information theory and those two developments together made it possible in the ensuing decades for engineers to develop digital switches and put them into existing telephone networks so what followed that was exponential increases all around the world in the amount of the human ability to compute store and communicate digital information so I had the privilege of living and working for two years in Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer the early 70s and then later and I've been there living there continuously since 1996 and the pace of technology change to those of us who've lived back in the 20th century Industrial mass media era and now in this rapidly unfolding digital era is really something to behold So this is an important study because policy makers citizens academics everyone is faced with the challenge of fast-moving media and technology landscape Now there are several studies and debates on how ICT's Key enablers for economic growth and innovation perhaps you could tell us a little bit more about the main outcomes In particular of this study and it's added value to existing discussions Specifically its contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals Yes, well the Sustainable Development Goals are a relatively recent development compared with the digital revolution and You have a situation where in the 1980s Which coincidentally is is when Korea began digitizing its networks, and it's not widely known around the world, but Korea had the most modern public switch telephone network one of the most modern in the world as of 1987 before the 88th Seoul Olympics and These have spread unevenly around the world But we are now at a point where it's imperative for people concerned with sustainability all environmental sustainability the sustainability of the planet need to talk with people in the ICT sector because ICT has developed so fast and to the point where it's difficult to conceive of effective ways To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals without utilizing the internet mobile broadband networks and other digital technologies Now I know that you've been involved in the specific chapter chapter 7 of this study It covers the dynamic role of Education and academia for sustainable development And I know it's one of the most crucial chapters of this study Perhaps you could explain to us the different aspects of the role of ICTs in education and the SDGs. Yes, I After returning to the United States from Korea after two years in Peace Corps I did my doctorate in communication research at Stanford and became a university professor for about 15 years Then I strayed from the straight path and Did executive training and worked with the Fulbright Commission for about 14 years, so I was not teaching I returned to teaching in 2012 so I feel like I've got one foot back in the 20th century one in the 21st and Information and communication technologies ICTs have changed everything when it comes to university education. They change the way you prepare for teaching What is done in the classroom? They've changed the nature of scientific research scholarly research and publication and they've changed academic administration everything is digital and so There are three broad ways in which we can think about Education the first is the what I've alluded to the role of ICT in transforming the processes of education the second is the use of education and the important use of education to Teach people about ICT and how to use ICT so that citizens and consumers will actually Utilize these new networks and technologies that are evolving and finally there's this important question of how ICT driven education Can have an impact on the sustainable development goals and there you can think of First-order impacts if we take the example of climate change the ICT industry itself these large data centers emit two to three percent or more of the carbon emitted in the whole world, so first-order effect would be to control the emissions and the At effects of the ICT sector itself second-order effects can cut across all the other economic sectors agriculture health Manufacturing industries and ICT has the capability to make all of those sectors more efficient finally There is the long-term Structural and social changes which are probably more difficult because it involves changing people's attitude attitudes Garnering political support and so forth so and how will people be able to get hold of this study? This study is going to be published by the ITU Hopefully with an academic press, but possibly alone and it will be the easiest way We'll be to just do a quick Google search on the internet. It'll be widely publicized and available Professor James Larson. Thank you very much indeed being with us today And we look forward very much to the outcomes of this study. Thank you


I'm delighted to be joined by Professor Kenneth Armstrong, who is Professor of European Law here at the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge and Director for the Centre of European Legal Studies. Kenneth, you've written a paper basically analysing the Vote Leave campaign proposals. They've published a roadmap for withdrawal. As part of that proposal, they've talked about alternative methods of actually leaving. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and what your analysis of that is? Sure. In one of our other videos, we talked about what's called the Article 50 withdrawal process. This was a mechanism introduced in the Lisbon Treaty to actually allow a member state to withdraw from the European Union. It sets down certain rules and timeframes for that process. The Vote Leave campaign and their roadmap have suggested that that perhaps isn't the only mechanism for withdrawal and they've suggested two other possibilities. One is to use what is Article 48 of the Treaty, which is the normal method for revising the treaties. The other mechanism that they have talked about is to invoke general norms of international law, particularly the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. If we just take those two in turn, looking at the first one, the use of Article 48, the analogy that they have drawn is with when Greenland was brought out of the European Union through a renegotiation of the treaties. There wasn't a formal withdrawal mechanism in place at the time under what is now the Lisbon Treaty. The Vote Leave campaign used that analogy to say, well, there's another mechanism for us to do, but there's two reasons why that's not going to work and one for the reason why it's not a really good idea anyway. Well, I don't think it's going to work is that Greenland was, of course, part of the territory of Denmark. It was simply renegotiating the boundaries of Denmark's membership. It wasn't the withdrawal of a complete member state from the European Union. So I don't think that analogy works anyway. But the second reason is that, of course, we now do have a specific mechanism in the treaty that is Article 50 and the European Court of Justice made it very clear that when we have a specific provision in a treaty that lays down the ground rules for an activity, then we need to use it rather than on any general legal provisions. So I don't think the Greenland analogy works. It's also perplexing that they would think about using Article 48 anyway because the voting rules are different from Article 50. That is to say every national government has a veto and potentially every national parliament has a veto in that any renegotiation of the treaties under Article 48 requires ratification in the member states. So I don't think the analogy works and I don't think it would, in fact, be more desirable to use that mechanism for the UK because of the possibilities of veto rights. The other mechanism then is the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties, which lays down, if you like, the general international law framework on treaties. Yes, there are provisions in the Vienna Convention that might allow for withdrawal from a treaty in a much shorter space of time, so you might think that might be desirable. But the Vienna Convention itself makes clear that its provisions only apply to international organisations to the extent that the rules of those international organisations themselves don't lay down more specific rules. And of course Article 50 is the more specific rule in the case of the European Union. So I think the arguments that suggest that the Vienna Convention can be invoked are somewhat implausible. And my experience of reading many judgments of the European Court of Justice is that it would be unlikely to support the use of a more general international law framework when there is a much more specific European law mechanism laid down in Article 50. So you said there about time, that's a very interesting point, because something else that the roadmap actually identified was a general principle of trying to get the withdrawal complete before May 2020. And how do you analyse the possibility of that? I think one of the interesting contributions that the roadmap makes is to say that following the vote on Thursday we then need to think about then what will happen both in terms of domestic law and European level over the course of the next Parliament. And the suggestion in the document is then that over the course of the next, what will be the next four years taking us up to May 2020, the withdrawal agreement would be negotiated and finalised and this would be a realistic time frame. Now the one important thing to say about that of course is that the time frame that matters is the time frame in Article 50. Article 50 itself tells us that once a member state notifies the European Council of its intention to withdraw, then the clock starts running and there is two years to negotiate the withdrawal agreement. So it's the two year time frame that is in fact more important. Now the vote leave campaigner suggesting perhaps that there is no urgency to triggering Article 50 and in fact there is no automaticity to triggering Article 50 if in fact the vote is to leave the European Union. That said the Prime Minister and indeed the Treasury have indicated that if the vote is to leave then it is likely that Article 50 will be triggered fairly quickly. So in that case it's a little unclear to me why is that the end of sort of May 2020 is the relevant deadline rather than the two years from the moment when Article 50 might be triggered. It is true to say that this two year time period can be extended. It could be extended for a further period of time but that requires the unanimous consent of every government. So while each individual member state doesn't have a veto over the deal, they do have a veto over extending the time frame. And that really changes the UK's bargaining position I think in this withdrawal agreement because if the Article 50 is triggered relatively quickly and time period starts to run then the closer we get to the end of that time period for an orderly withdrawal then the greater the pressure is on the UK to do a deal. And if what it wants is to extend the time frame it's going to require the consent of all the other member states. And it's not necessarily in their interest to offer that at a time where they fear that they have a stronger bargaining position. So I think that it is entirely plausible that a withdrawal agreement can be done in this time period but the rules of Article 50 don't necessarily work in the UK's favour in terms of bargaining power. But also in terms of the substance of the deal of what is capable of being negotiated in two years. I think everybody now accepts that Article 50 is ambivalent in that in essence there are two elements to it. One is if you like the divorce, the withdrawal in and of itself which could simply be done and dusted without too great difficulty. But the other element is of course the future relationship of a withdrawing state with the European Union and particularly if it wants to agree rules on trade and access to the single market etc etc. And so in order for all of that to be done in a two year time period using the rules of Article 50. That tends to me to suggest a relatively limited type of agreement including the divorce and including a relatively more like a Swiss style EU free trade deal. We've talked before about the kind of models that there might be out there whether it's an EEA style agreement or other types of future relationship. My reading of the Vote Leave roadmap is that it's pushing towards a very minimal Swiss style free trade agreement. Maybe with future agreements after withdrawal, negotiations using the normal EU rules on trade, on sexual issues over time. So I think the thrust of the roadmap is interesting in suggesting that perhaps that's what they have in mind, a Swiss style free trade agreement supplemented by bilateral arrangements over time. The time frame is really going to enforce on us a very lightweight agreement at this point. I think it will be to get into some of the more difficult procedural rules the more dense the agreement is including areas that are outside of what we call the exclusive competence of the European Union. Those areas which are shared powers between the EU and the member states. Then we end up with something which is called a mixed agreement because it involves not just the powers of the EU but also the powers of the member states. Article 50 tells us about the negotiation on behalf of the union therefore in terms of its powers and competencies. The more we add in elements that are also within the powers and competencies of the member states and they are relatively extensive, then the more it might be a so called mixed agreement. There is that will require unanimity and those elements will also require ratification. So in order to avoid those elements of potential veto power, whether of national governments or of national parliaments, one might understand that the vote leave campaign would push for something within the trade policy competence of the European Union, the common commercial policy that is in principle at least the exclusive competence of the European Union to allow that negotiation to go ahead and be carried out within that time period. So once we start negotiating this position within the UK, how do you see that process happening within the constitutional bodies of the UK? There are a number of unknowns about this in terms of what the negotiating teams would look like, the road map sets out the idea that there should be a cross party negotiating team, I think that's understandable. What it doesn't say anything about though is the involvement of the devolved institutions, particularly the governments or parliaments or the constituent nations of the UK. And of course that might be particularly important as we begin to see how the voting patterns shape up across the UK. But also in constitutionally it's important that in as much as any of the legislative changes that are being suggested that might happen in this next parliament might impact upon the prerogatives and powers of the Scottish parliament for example, the recent amendment to the Scotland Act 2016 makes clear that the consent of the Scottish parliament may be required for some of these changes and it may not be likely that that will be forthcoming, therefore posing a potential constitutional crisis with the devolved administrations and I think there are other risks of constitutional crisis in this road map. There is a suggestion of introducing a bill into parliament immediately to limit some of the scope of application of EU law in the UK in relation to aspects of deportation of criminals. There's something about the limitation of the application of the Charter Fundamental Rights and something a bit more ambiguous about restricting big payouts to big business. I'm not entirely sure of what that has in mind. But particularly the idea that this legislation prior to the UK's actual withdrawal from the EU would lead the UK into conflict with EU law to no longer be abiding by its EU law obligations is of course likely to then lead to litigation for the national courts and I think it would be to put our judiciary into an incredibly difficult constitutional position forced to choose between the will of the UK parliament and the UK is what it still would be continuing obligations under EU law. Now it may well be that this legislation will never get passed. It is not clear to me that there will be the necessary majority in the House of Commons for this proposed bill to ever get through and of course the House of Lords may end up blocking for some period of time that legislation. So it may well be that it may not come to pass but I think it is potentially very risky for this to be proposed in a way that would provoke a constitutional crisis which would in reality end up with our courts potentially having to challenge the sovereignty of parliament at exactly the point where the leave campaign is arguing that there will be a restoration of sovereignty to the UK parliament. So I'm not sure that it's even in the vote leave campaign's own interest to propose the bill that they've laid out in the roadmap. Thank you very much indeed. That's really extremely helpful.