Hello, everyone. Good day. We're going to wait a few more minutes to allow folks to join us shortly. Hi, folks. Good morning. Amy, do we have folks to get started? 23, which is pretty much our usual number to be able to get started. So. Okay. You're ready. All right. Let's go ahead and get started. Thank you all for coming today. It's May 2nd. This is a TOC public meeting. Let's go ahead and move on to the agenda. So we're going to be starting this one off of very differently than we usually do. We do have an in memoriam. That will be led by tag contributor strategy. Let's go ahead and just move forward with that. Hey, everyone. Hi, everyone. Hi, everyone. Hi, everyone. Some of you will have already heard that we lost Carolyn Vince like over the weekend. The she was in a car accident. Carolyn was the tech lead. For tag contributor strategy. For the past, I don't know, two, three years. She joined tag contributor strategy soon after we created this, which was characteristic of her as a contributor to many projects. I first met her through the go community. She went out of her way to be welcoming to new go programmers. That Carol and I knew for the next, you know, six years of just really working very hard on making open source welcoming to newcomers and to everyone. She was a terrific contributor and a collaborator and all around fun person and we're really going to miss her. Thursday's normal tag contributor strategy meeting is going to be mostly a remembrance of Carolyn. And there's also a link to be able to provide any of your recollections of Carolyn. And we welcome being able to take those contributions. So thank you all. Last piece in here. There. We are working on being able to put together a memorial around keep con cloud native con North America. planning to come again. This is all pretty sudden for all of us and we want to be able to make sure that we're doing all of the right things. So let us know if you'd like to be involved. And thank you, Josh. Thank you so much, Josh. Let's move forward. We now come back to our regular business as well because we do want to be able to acknowledge all of this and also be able to celebrate the work that we've just done at cube con as well. Folks from tag storage on the call today. Yeah. Yes. Hello. Hi. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's kind of hard to change the subject. Sorry about the big loss for the community. I hope Carolyn resting piece. So switching subject to a given update about text storage. So at cube con, we had a panel with some members from the data on Kubernetes community, talking about Kubernetes database operators landscape. And that room was packed. We were so thrilled to see so many people who are interested in this topic. We have a draft by paper that we are collaborating with the DLK on the database patterns. The draft is out for review. I included a link here. Please help review it. And we also had a good tax story session at cube con. There were some great questions from the audience. We also got some ideas for some future projects that we could work on at the tag. And after cube con, we had X line project who presented at the tech meeting X line is a geo distributed key value store for metadata management. It's compatible with it city, but it uses a different protocol called serve. Supposedly it has a better performance in geo distributed environment. The project is still very new, but it's an interesting technology. They have applied for sandbox project. We also have a future topic about the storage and sustainability. We're going to invite hua min chen to talk about that in our future tech meetings. And we're also preparing to nominate a new tech storage co chair. This will be a replacement for Quinton who has not been active for a while. We will bring up the nomination in the next to see meeting. That's all for tech storage. Thank you so much. Anyone have any questions for tag storage. Thank you again. Next up is security tag has notes that they've updated in here, but I'm not sure if they're on the call. Doesn't look like it. I'm happy to be able to come back. We'll come back to this one. Okay. Hi, everyone. I'm here and I will represent that grant time today. So, for the time presentations and community communities, Katie proposed for graduation in progress, as well as the initial lady review for Kermada. So, we have saw the OT and Kepler projects that present the integral time. And we already have a very basic schedule for the upcoming meetings. Many projects have already been signed up to present. For example, the cube marine and laser. So, in addition to these two projects. There's a couple of other projects were already reached out and we are finalizing the exact time that they will come to present to take runtime. For the activities keep calm EU was a successful time. It was a very good event, especially the in person meeting. They had over 25 people, people from K native cat cat a container come out of our mother, other other projects and other companies showed up, and they have a really good conversation, which is a couple of of projects like K serve and bottle rocket, the case of. They would like to start an ML ops working group and we are discussing this with them and see how how it goes. Also, the bottle rocket project they would like to start an OS working. And then this came out of interest after the in person. Also, it was a good time for Ricardo to to meet to meet up and network with many folks during the coupon in all different working groups. And the next next thing that finally, we had our website, the tag runtime website and CNCF up and running, and we are updating it making it better but we have all the information related to tag runtime already now in the website. And finally, the wasm working group. It's in progress. We had an issue that trying to collect the interest of other folks if they are interested in you know like joining this working group and we found lots of interest and now we are doing for a charter draft a charter for this working group. We have a lot of elimination from different companies and from different teams and even individuals are interested in, you know, like being a coach at a tech leads and members, which we find it very promising. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. Thanks so much. Anyone have any questions for tag runtime. Thank you for the question. Thank you for the update. I was super interested in the MLOps group because you know there is an whole area of discipline and observability, which is also looking at MLOps. So, again, I'll bring you offline to perhaps get more details maybe we can collaborate on this group together. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, thank you. Cool. Any other questions. All right. Next up, tag observability. All right. Hi everyone. Good morning. Just wanted to give a quick update, I think they're all fresh from back from cube on you. So just wanted to give a quick update on a couple of moving areas where we are working with the to see or interacting with the to see closely. So the question is the request for the query standard word group, we have already filed a request. Chris Larson, I think is also on the call here. We have requested a word group be created for a common query language specification. So I have been commenting on the issue so I was wondering what the next steps are from the to see and seek guidance on the timeline. What are the next steps in an approval process so that we can go ahead and set up a word group there's a lot of interest from the end user community and more defining at least, and having the research done for what it would take to define a common query language spec. And that's the focus and the objective of the word group is clearly defined in the issue. So seeking guidance for that. Emily did you. Yeah, so I was actually just going to respond. The, you're so your to see liaisons are the ones that'll give you the approval for doing that so make sure that you meet with them. Once they have the approval, you should be good to move forward. Awesome. Awesome. Will do. Thanks. Thanks. Then the other area that's in progress and as many of you know pixie, which is a observability tool and open source observability project under the CNCF, which uses ebpf for collecting Kubernetes telemetry is awaiting a to see sponsor for incubation to start. And just wanted to bring that up again. Did I understand there's a delay but would like to kind of also understand what the timeline for that is. Moving on. And I'm assuming that this will be something that the to see will respond to on the issue itself. On the request itself. Any comments on that. You'll see members. So we do have a backlog of projects waiting on sponsors for moving levels right now. At the end of today's session there's a slide where we're providing updates on where some of these things are at so we're aware of the long backlog and we are working. Deligently to try to clear some of that out so that we can have new new projects with sponsors coming in. So I'm working on it. We're aware that there is a backlog. Apologies for the delay. No, thanks. Thanks. Thank you for the update. Meeting meetings again I think we only had one meeting in April. And we had a, you know, updated and reported to the to see earlier in the previous meeting in April. On the query language were group charter that discussion has continued there's a lot of good feedback that has come in from the larger community. We ran this and that also dovetails very well into the maintain a track session we had at keep calling you where there was a lot of interest also from the larger you community to participate as well as get involved so looking forward to the word group being reviewed and getting set up so that we can leverage some of that pent up energy to get get folks to get involved, both end users from and vendors who are working on various observability projects within the CNCF. We also did had a lot of full house on all the tracks that we presented in April 18 for the observability day that was in addition to keep calling you this time. Well attended lots of discussion around what the tag does as well as some of the initiatives that you know we cross collaborate with the projects open source observability projects on working closely on some of the initiatives that could be addressed in the work group rather than the projects themselves again, differing to the projects on implementation. They were also several observability project meetings where tag members did participate, as well as the tag to the C chair meeting which again was also an April 18. Another interesting area which was a project, you know area of discussion at keep calling you and this is especially very much an topic ongoing in the observability space is again the the development of a baseline set of metrics for project health tracking more actively which you know the obviously the tag as well as the projects can use as well as you know can be leveraged by the TSC. So, I just wanted to call that out, but again, all in all, great to see everybody in person at keep calling you. Thanks. Does anyone have any questions for tag observability. Great question about the project health is that. Yeah, could you say a little bit more about the metrics that might be tracked they're not necessarily the specific ones but just the genre is is this about the community around the project and, and how, you know, the trajectory of the projects how healthy they are moving or is this more about the technology within each project and how observable each project or how observable that technology is how observable the, not the project as a community but the project. Actually, it is, it is about the community of the project and and you know specifically. There have been several cases as you know in the observability space where you know the projects have either lost momentum or are on the verge of you know, having pure number of maintainers and participants. So, again, moving towards you know better understanding of the metrics that actually can be looked at from a diversity standpoint of maintainership as well as encouraging new maintainers to new contributors to graduate to becoming new contributors are have been discussed. So, Don thanks for the guidance I wouldn't definitely follow up with you and would love to share that with the different project. Projects under the observability space. So, over to working together actually if there's an opportunity to work with the contributor strategy team. Again, that would be an awesome collaboration. Actually, that was my next question is a leader where these discussions are occurring on project health and what some of those metrics look like where can community members and project maintainers or even to see members that are interested in contributing to that discussion, participate. And actually, so far these discussions have happened partly in hallway conversations and also somewhat in the tag meetings but what we will do is I'll create a proposal on under the tag observability repo on the repo and then, again just share that so that you know the discussions actually and key items have been can be captured right and key suggestions but as Amy said it's definitely been organic. All right, well let's let's create that issue that way folks that are interested in it have a place to go to and provide those comments or at least determine whether or not it's worthwhile to put together a working group to focus on this because this has been a hot topic as of late across multiple projects and tags and to see members and just general community members so we appreciate you taking that on any any other questions for time observability. Okay, next up is tag network. All right, good morning. We, we didn't have representation at cube Connie you, although we've been very consistent having representation in each of the cube cons prior. So not allowed to report from cube Connie you. We do we are tracking Istio as a project supplying for graduation. We've had a few projects as potential future presentations for a while. And, and I don't. And so there's just kind of a question mark as to what some of these might be, which is also to say that we don't have project presentations lined up at the moment or we're, we're at a queue of zero. Yeah, whatever that means, are we, you know, we should we want to be proactive there by we I guess I'm anybody that wants to help please do. I'm also pointing the finger back towards myself. But yeah, we'd love to get some more presentations we should we should we're going to go reach out. Some of the working groups have been active since we last spoke. We've given updates on well the initiatives around service mesh performance. There's a dashboard for service mesh performance that is essentially a phase one complete or is is up and ready for people to digest generally. There's also soliciting input from any interested parties that would like to see different types of tests run, either different scenarios or under different loads are using different workloads, different configurations. So there's so there's some stats that are published on the dashboard that you that's linked there. And feedback is most solicited. And one of the other initiatives that's been going on is well an effort around a cloud native playground to allow people to visually explore actually each of the CNCF projects that have custom resources. There's some projects that have operators or custom resource definitions. There's a playground that lets users go through and explore each of the projects and so I think I'll lead a there was something of an initiative I think, or demoing is it hotel. Yes, yes. There is a playground on the hotel. That also exists to demonstrate the capabilities and a feature set in hotel, very similar to what this playground is, but definitely would love to take a look at this there's also the landscape graph project that you know we've been working on on the side in the tag observability itself. And again, I think it's worth looking at this. Yeah, that's super excited. They're both of those are so is, I don't mean to have a separate conversation but is there a, did you recall the URL to the, to the hotel demo. Yes, I can share it just let me just pull it and share it. Perfect, perfect. Other items. Well, part of some of the learnings from the working groups here. They've been these working groups have been using the CNCF labs are using a few servers inside of equinex. And, you know, on occasion, this is a, so this is sort of a question out loud as to whether or not there's an existing published resource for network centric security best practices around exposure of cube API, and or from the cubelets to the internet, which is probably just a no no unto its own that statement but but it seems also like an opportunity to potentially publish something or for the tag network to to assist in some guidelines around and maybe uplift works that the security working group has already done or or existing guidance but but there's been particular pain that these working groups have experienced around port scanning and just network centric security of cube API. Does anyone, anyone know if we have existing guidance out there from the CNCF perspective. I know that it's been collated in quite that way, but there's a ton of guidance out there for not doing it. Yeah, just yeah just don't don't start the question. Okay. Okay, fair enough that it's maybe something to double click into for tag network. Makes sense. I'm sure that we ensure the tech security probably also has like, you know, that might be a good place to collate some of the content because that's I think we're a lot of it sits at the moment. We're going to continue to make a connection. But that's, that's the update. Thank you so much. Anyone have any questions for tag network. Okay. I definitely dig in with tag security and collating a lot of that together so it's one more accessible and more prominent for individuals. The other thing that I would like to suggest is there are several networking projects that are currently sitting in sandbox and incubation would recommend reaching back out to them. Having them come in and do a presentation, maybe do a quick status update on where they're at how they're progressing and seeing if there's some opportunities for collaboration between those projects. If you just go to the scene, the landscape.cncf.io, there are several of them that are listed there. Great suggestion. Thanks so much. All right, next up is tag environmental sustainability. Hello, so we have published a little bit silent silently the first version of the landscape document which you can see. There's like a diagram below. So this is like a zero dot one version so we know there's a lot of blank spaces, and we need more time and more contributors and more expertise from other folks to like get this to like a stable version, so to say. But this has been a very great discussion point at KubeCon with the contributors and also now it's a little bit easier to contribute so we have like a structure, you can add new sections to it. So I think this is great. We had at KubeCon a maintainer talk, which went great, I think. And we also had a project meeting which was awesome. We had a lot of interesting discussions for hours without any problems. We could have probably talked for another four hours. So this was great. Because we have a lot of new folks showing up. We have organized for next week, 10th of May, a getting started meeting. So a special, special meeting where we just talk about how to get started and answer maybe some questions. And also for us, a session to improve the onboarding process because there's been quite some discussions around this and I think we can improve on that. So it would be interesting during that meeting to observe also ourselves and how we can respond to that and how we can help out and also again then detect some blank spots in this case on our onboarding process. We had, I think this is like more or less now a month ago, but I think this was also our last meeting. A project demonstration from Kepler, which was very interesting. I think a couple of tags have now a demonstration or a demo from the Kepler project. So I think this is very exciting. We have another one about a similar tool, Scafandra, tomorrow. So the curator of this tool is presenting us for 20 minutes or something. The tool, which is very interesting. It's also a tool to collect energy metrics, but this time from bare metal and also community. So it's related but a little bit different. So pretty cool. And next week, a couple of the folks at the tag are organizing a meet up. I think this is very awesome, especially because none of the coaches or tech leads are organizing the meet up somebody from the members is organizing the meet up. So I think this is pretty exciting. And we have also started the discussion more or less internally about how we can now move into pushing more contributors who are very active and great into more leadership positions that we have project leads. And I think we have quite a solid, more or less solid foundation where we know our governance we have like a team more or less and now we can push more for leadership and we are in the process of of getting into this topic. And also one thing I, which is missing on this on this slide, but I added it on the other ones is that we started also at KubeCon and also a little bit before brainstorming about a sustainability week. So we have all those community groups and the CNCF. And I asked a few organizers from the community group if they're interested in organizing at their chapter. We have like some sustainability related event. So we have like a week of sustainability. And we, I think this could be very interesting to get this, like, first of all, we don't need to organize an entire conference so we can leverage the organization from from these community groups. And it would be interesting to just identify where, where we add in terms of environment sustainability, because this, this is like a new topic, more or less for all of us, or for the industry so getting to know where our companies at and so on this, I think, very, very interesting and we need that. All right. Thank you so much. Anyone have any questions for tag environmental sustainability. Okay. Leo, a quick question on the global CNCF community group sustainability week that you just mentioned, is there an issue open for individuals that are interested in learning more understanding the scope and the intent or maybe some of the outcomes associated with it. There's no issue right now. This is currently a discussion in Slack. So we had, I think, two, two threats in Slack. And also I reached out so there's like for the organizers, a group in Slack. So I reached out over that just to, first of all, get like feedback if this is like something we can pursue. And there was also an open spaces session at KubeCon with a few folks showing up and giving input into this. And I think this is a great hint. I should open up an issue. Yeah. In the interim, while that issue is being filed for folks that are interested jump over to the tag environment sustainability Slack channel for those discussions. So next up, Amy is going to cover tag contributor strategy for us. Yeah, Tech Inscript Strategy had a wonderful KubeCon, including a keynote by Don Foster, a great maintainer circle and really kind of like a lot of people being interested in like participating with the tag. And they're looking forward to being able to do a new maintainer circle on May 29. So be online and kind of focusing on participating instruction mentoring programs. The contributor growth group is actually going to be meeting next week at Open Source Summit North America. We're working on being able to find out details. So watch the tag contributor strategy channels for that as that happens. The mentoring working group is also kicking off into Season of Docs and the governance group is also still getting docs for the last governance template around creating a steering committee. So we're delighted to be able to see the good work they've done, and they'll be back in a couple weeks. So if you'd like to be able to join for Thursday, we'll be sharing our memories with Carolyn. Thanks so much, Amy. Thank you. Next up, tag app delivery. Anyone from app delivery on the call today? Okay, let's see here. We have to move on to projects. So let's see who from the TOC members are on the call. Let's see. I know Dave is currently working on Artifact Hub. Aaron, do you have an update on Strimsy for us? I don't, unfortunately, hopefully for the next meeting I will. All right. Thank you so much. Cube flow. There's, we have been having meetings and interviews are moving as well as each other. There's been a little progress in the last couple of weeks. Awesome. Thanks Ricardo. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I met with the factory team at Kubecon. We had a pretty good conversation with them. I think the next part is going to be like any user interviews. I need a schedule one with. Somebody at Adobe, but I wanted to understand like, do we have a framework for. And user interviews already in place. We, we have some started. Yeah. We're going to talk about the next meeting. We're going to be talking about the next meeting. We're going to be sharing that with you. Okay. Projects applying for graduation. Justin. We're going to talk about your PC at the next closed to you. See meeting. Do you have any additional updates beyond that at this time? Not at this time. Okay. I know Kathy is out as is Nikita. Okay. And then we can open up for public comment. Sillium is currently undergoing a license review. We're waiting on that to be finalized and then we can open it up for public comments. Falco. We're working with the project on defining some focus areas. We had a good conversation with the project at Kubecon where they raised some concerns. So we're working closely with them on getting them on track for over our initial set of comments and reviews for that project. I know that Richie is unable to make the call and it's currently not on here but Richie is also going to be looking at Open EVS and getting that kind of refreshed moving forward. Does anyone have any additional questions? Well thank you so much everyone for coming today as a quick reminder. I would like to invite you all to the Tag Contributor Strategy Meeting on Thursday to remember Carolyn. She was an incredible force of good for the community and even if you did not have the pleasure of interacting with her or meeting her, you will feel her impact at any point throughout your cloud-native journey. So you have the time and the capacity to attend and listen or share. We would welcome that. Thank you all so much. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks Emily. Take care. Bye. Good to see all of you. Bye all.


Well, good morning everyone. We have 45 minutes to redo the world. So thank you first of all to our panelists for being here. So we're trying to talk about the risk of a recession in 2023 continuing to loom over major economies. We'll discuss over the next 45 minutes on how maybe some of these recessions can be abated, what kind of things we can do to make it better. There was growing consensus that we're really at a defining moment in the global economy and with the major trends transforming our economies, maybe could change course, maybe not. Yesterday we had a pretty discouraging survey and the Web's annual meeting began with corporate executives an economist warning of a worldwide recession this year and this is a Pricewaterhouse Cooper survey finding that 73% of 4,410 business leaders predicted global growth will decline over the coming 12 months. The worst insipole began in 2011. So that's our framing. Remember everyone you can do hashtag with 23 if you want to post on social media or ask questions and then there's Slido. Slido will be your best friend because if you look at that QR code you can then send questions and I will weave of course all the questions that you have for a wonderful panelists and I will ask them as many questions as I can. So I am delighted to be joined on the panel by Mario Centeno, governor of central bank of Portugal, Laura Cha, chairman Hong Kong exchange and clearing of Hong Kong SAR, Axel Lehmann, chairman of the board of directors Credit Suisse and Douglas Peterson, president chief executive officer of S&P Global. So thank you all for joining us. Axel, let me kick it off with you. When you look at the global recession, when you look at some of the huge worries that we have across the world, can we avoid a recession in certain parts of the world and what does this all mean for Europe? Well, of course, there are a lot of reasons to get worried. We have war still in Europe, will be discussed in doubles. You have energy crisis, we have inflation, but I think, no, I think the world is probably fundamentally changing and we are entering into, I will call it a multipolar world. So it's not a global recession, not you need to look to the various parts to the east and the west. Hopefully the US can avoid a recession. I know there are a lot of voices that say it will be or not. Europe, I trust we will talk about it. It's much more challenging in particular also for the energy situation. But when I look in particular to China, China is reopening and what have we seen when the western world was reopening? Forecasts were that and real growth was that. So I think when the growth forecast now for China is four and a half, I would not personally be surprised when that would be top. We have, I think, you just look to the fundamentals of growth, its population, you look to population growth, aging of the population in China versus what is happening in India. There's a huge growth coming out of India. So I think there's a lot of hope. And then secondly, what we also will see and that is unprecedented, uncharted territory. You know, for many, many years, interest rates are coming down. Now we have inflation, inflation is coming higher and the trust will talk about it.  So, Laura, how do you see China, first of all reopening? And one of the pitfalls or dangers is that when China reopens very quickly, then commodity prices go up because there's so much more demand coming up, inflation goes up. And that's again quite a difficult time for the world economy. Well, I think if we look at the key event this year so far, definitely the reopening of China has to be the major event and it will be a key driver for growth. I think the survey came out instead, it's 3.5 to 4.5 percent. And as XO said, it might top that. But in any event, it's positive growth. And I think the lockdown over the last three years has created pent up demand domestically. So I would see increased domestic consumption and of course the manufacturing sector will pick up. All those will be good factors for the global growth. And then at the same time, you know, the commodity prices may go up, they may drive inflation, but I think the world will, as we develop, will find its equilibrium. In other words, I think Asia is where the growth factor will be. You know, not only China, India, Indonesia, these are all emerging and very strong economies. So I believe that Asia's portion of the world GDP, which was 20 percent in 2010, 35 percent in 2020, and it's going to be 45 percent in 2027. This is according to the IMF survey. So there's a lot of hope. There's a recession, I think in some part of the world cannot be avoided, but the area of growth is really China and Asia. Douglas, how do you see this from a global perspective? And I want to come back also, what kind of reopening you're seeing in China, whether it's stop and start or whether it's, you know, trend that continues. But what do you see? We see that there is likely to be a very mild recession in the first half of the U.S. in Europe and in the U.K. But when you look at the full year impact, it should be very mild in terms of total growth. As Laura just said, there should be strong growth in Asia. China's ability to reenergize their economy after having two years of total lockdown. There's pent up savings. There's pent up demand. So we think that China will see very strong growth, especially as you get later in the year. There's a couple of really important factors we're watching, clearly interest rates. There's a resetting of the mindset of interest rates. We went through 10 years, 10 plus years of basically zero negative interest rates around the world, and we're seeing a reset into what used to seem like low rates, 3, 4 percent, and now those seeming high, but the markets will have to reset to a new level of rates. And then there's clearly other important issues, environment, how we're going to be seeing energy transition, environmental change starting to come into markets, new factors which will be impacting markets in the future. But to your question right now, we expect there will be slowdown and light recession in the EU, EU, UK, and the US, but strong growth around the rest of the world as it rebounds. So net net growth globally this year. Marie Centeno, how do you see a recession or not in Europe? Shallow or profound? Well, I won't change the mood. I also think that the economy has been surprising us quarter after quarter. The fourth quarter in Europe will be most likely still positive. Maybe we will be surprised also in the first half of the year, but we also see a pick up through 2023. The slowdown is all too natural. We recovered from COVID. We have a war in Europe. Sometimes we don't recall ourselves from that. And we have an energy crisis that eat Europe quite hard. Contrary for example to the US, we are much more exposed to the energy crisis than other parts of the world. So with all these ingredients, the growth even if low that we see in Europe is kind of reassuring. What worries me the most are the confidence levels. We didn't recover yet at all from the shock of February last year. Contrary to COVID, this has taken a much longer time. It is eating investment a little bit. The labour market is very, very strong. It's the biggest pillar of our economy these days. So if we can change this sentiment around businesses and families with all the pent up savings and demands that Doug also mentioned, I think we are adding to something that will not go to negative territory. I'm going to do a quick poll actually for those listening. Who thinks the panel is a little bit too optimistic? Raise your hand. Too pessimistic? Raise your hand. You're getting your tone quite right. By worry, Marie Centeno, is that central banks are trying to do something which is lower inflation. And we hear time and time again that it could come down quite quickly, we could have reached peak inflation from 9% to 6%. If we're going to reach that 2% target, are central banks going to put us in a recession willingly to make sure that inflation doesn't get out of control again? Well, inflation usually it comes down quickly when we are at that stage. Maybe we are beginning that in Europe. In the US we see much more figures that can tell us that gas inflation is coming down. I won't subscribe to the idea that it will be central banks that will start the recession because inflation is also not good for our economy. That's why we find it. So the trade off really sometimes does not exist. So we will continue to fight inflation because that's our mandate. I am confident that given what is happening with international prices, energy costs today are much lower than a year ago. Most commodity prices are also year on year negative. We don't have signs of second round effect in Europe. The labor market, even if very tight, it is performing amazingly well without very significant pressures on wages. So we again can help on that. And the normalization of monetary policy was really needed in Europe. We had to get rid of the negative rates. We must also create scope for interventions if we have to in the near future. So I think we are in a comfortable process. My question was a bit harsher. It's your job. You have one job to keep inflation. So it wasn't like you're intending to put the world in a recession. But how much do you worry about this adjustment? The end of cheap money and the fact that actually if we don't see a recession it's going to be tough for many people. It's that kind of growth that is uneasy, that will sit uneasy with central cash. Look, I'm with you. I hope we can really, let's say globally, somewhat avoid recession. But ultimately there are fundamental changes. I was speaking about when interest rates go up, risk-free rate goes up. Let's not forget that it's good for savers. So people that couldn't save can save again. So global inequality might get balanced. We saw last year when you look to the super-rich of this world, most of them have lost on their net assets due to the asset inflation that is coming down. You see then what is happening else. It's the readjustment of the economy. So a lot of countries in particular in Europe, but basically globally, need to increase their defense budget. That is sucking up resources when costs of capital go higher. Profit margins will get under pressure. So we might be up in that new multipolar world where we still have growth, but not that great. So it's not a question for me about short-term recession is the outlook for the next three, four, five years, where we probably have a little bit subdued growth. Interest rates getting up, cost of capital are higher, rebalancing of global imbalances. Yes, on one hand, that's when you look to aggregate data. But in situations like that, innovation is so key. And I think we need to disaggregate the data. And there are certainly sectors where you can grow or even can outgrow energy, healthcare, and others. So I think it's a time for true entrepreneurs these days. Douglas? Yeah, also a couple of points. First on the question about central banks, we expect that rates still need to go up. We're not a point yet where we think that the rates have gone up high enough and fast enough. In the EU, rates are still quite low, 2%. In the U.S., it's 4.5 to 5%. It should go up a little bit more, maybe another 75 basis points or 100 basis points, so that we believe that the rates will continue to go up central bank rates. But let me shift to maybe some of the positive factors as opposed to saying, will there be recession? Why won't it be as bad as it could have been? We talked a little bit about labor markets. Labor markets are very strong, which is a little bit odd to be talking about recession when you have zero unemployment rates around the world. In the U.S., there's more people, more jobs open than are people looking for jobs. And I don't see that change anytime soon. We're coming into a potential recession when consumers have pretty strong balance sheets. Even the bottom quartile has much stronger balance sheets than they did pre-pandemic. And then the corporate sector globally, especially the investment-grade corporate sector, is very strong. They raised a lot of liquidity before the pandemic into the pandemic. They've been quite cautious about their keeping a strong capital structure in their businesses, strong cash flow. And then the banking sector is particularly strong. If you go back 10, 15 years ago, we had the great financial crisis, the banking sector, there was contagion in the banking sector. This was a serious part of the financial crisis. Now the banking sector has gone through a true stress test with the pandemic. The regulatory regime globally is quite strict. We've had now 10 years of stress testing, of sea cars, the banks themselves. So I don't see the banks becoming a source of problems going into the recession. We just saw last week that the large U.S. banks all issued their earnings reports for the fourth quarter in the outlooks. They did, most of them predicted, some sort of a light recession. They also increased their loan loss reserve. But there was not one question about the viability of any of those issues. The banks are very strong, which I think bodes for, yes, some sort of recession shallow, but a lot of strength around it. Yeah, a lot of the banks also announced big job cuts and, you know, they're definitely expecting some kind of slowdown. Are you, Lauren, then I'll ask the same question to everyone, actually. Are you surprised by the resilience of businesses in your region, but even across the world? Is it normal that after we've had such interest rate adjustments, we're not seeing more companies going under? Well, I think it's not surprising for us in Asia. As I said earlier, because of the vibrant economy growing in the region, not only China opening up, but India has done tremendously well in Indonesia and the ASEAN countries as well. Our market in Hong Kong has seen the resilience, definitely. We had, you know, 2022 was a challenging year for everyone. And we saw liquidity coming back. And that's always a good sign. I think the investor sentiment is improving. They're looking into 2023, maybe with the recession in mind, but still the investability of some of the corporates are coming back. And investors are always looking for growth. When we see increased liquidity, that means increased sentiment more on the positive side. So for our second, for the Hong Kong market, our first half of 2022 was not good. And the second half almost doubled that of the first half. And in December in particular, we have seen gradual return of positive investment attitude towards China. And I think that was in anticipation of the opening up. And I think that has to be a key improvement for us. Mario, were you surprised, I guess, about the resilience of a lot of these businesses given the 12 months that we've had? Well, given the size of the shocks, it's hard not to say that we were a little bit surprised. But let's get back one step and see how we were prepared or not to face this sort of crisis. And especially in Europe, we're talking more on Europe and an example in Europe, Portugal. We were much, much better prepared this time for the sort of crisis that we faced than in 2008 or 2011 in Portugal with the sovereign debt crisis. The deleveraging process was quite effective. Risk reduction was kind of across the board. Businesses were much less in debt. The numbers for Portugal are quite telling. In 2022, businesses are less in debt than in 2019. They actually accumulated more buffers, more savings than debt during this period. So, yes, I will say that we have the instruments, both within businesses and also politically, the economic policy in Europe is a source of stability today. Contrary to what happened in the past, no one worries about fragmentation in Europe. The euro area is much stronger today, much better instruments, the institutions that we set up during pre-Covid and during COVID were quite, quite important. It's not very often mentioned, but the issuance of common debt by the European Commission is one of the greatest lip of integration in Europe. And this is part of Europe today. So, I am very positive in the sense that the signs that we send to the businesses from the policy area are much stronger than before. We don't show signs of anxiety, which is great. We learned our lessons. We are much more positive in that sense. And businesses have responded quite positively. The economy is still growing a bit. I already mentioned that the environment is very, very difficult for Europe. But I think we are on course. I'm getting some great questions also from Slido. So, please keep on sending those questions through. Axel, what are you seeing amongst your clients? So, what are they telling us? I know Credit Suisse has also another set of issues. But overall, are people confident about the future? Are they investing real estate, mortgages are going up? And this is a great question after a potential recession this year. When does it rebound? No, I think when you look to the entrepreneurial side, corporates, and then also high networks, there's still a lot to invest. They obviously last year went back a little bit more to cash, but everybody is really looking what and where to invest. And that's what I tried to say. There are huge opportunities out. And this is a time where also innovation, we will see happening innovation. And we need to focus very much on the innovation agenda. On the shorter term, sure, we hopefully can avoid the recession. But that's a shake off of the economy. Supply chains are going to change. So, ultimately, that means costs go probably a little bit higher. But how quick you can adjust and how the way you can do it is really important. What are the future technologies that will improve economic growth going forward? So, I think the smartest people looking for opportunities, where to invest and how to invest and look for ultimate for growth. And if you look, Douglas, at the energy complex and the mild winter that we had, frankly, that's helped a lot. Yeah, oh, that's been a huge positive. It's an offsetting factor to some of the risk, especially in Europe. But following up a little bit on where the investments are for innovation and the demand for capital that's coming through, you mentioned energy. The energy complex is going through a transition that there's a lot of demand for battery, for net grids, for all types of different approaches. In the U.S., there's going to be a large investment in chips. And there's this theme of reshoring, near-shoring, off-shoring, friend-shoring, et cetera. We think there will be a big shift of where capital is deployed. Last year was one of the weakest years for M&A, which is one of the reasons you saw some of the, in the U.S. and some of the other banks going for the downsizing. And so we see this year there should be some sort of recovery in M&A. So there's not a lot, a lack of capital. It's more of the uncertainty is putting the capital on the sidelines. So Laura mentioned liquidity. We think that there's ample liquidity, but it's on the sidelines waiting to see where interest rates settle, what are the growth rates, what's going to happen with energy. So it's not a lack of capital, it's a lack of certainty. Laura, can you talk to us about how you're expecting the China reopening to pan out in terms of timeline, how bumpy it will be, and what we can expect in the next quarters? I think the first and foremost is that with the opening of the borders, there will be more tourists coming out. The Chinese have always been composing a big, large number of tourists. Certainly in Asia, everybody is waiting for the Chinese to come and Hong Kong, no exception. So that will stimulate the consumption aspect. Within China itself, I think the manufacturing sector would have to pick up. There will be, and it has been because of the disruption in supply chain, there might be some adjustment. But I think the bright spot in China is really the innovation part in technology, in healthcare. Hong Kong stock exchange, for example, we are now in a short period of three, four years, we have become the second largest fundraising centre in the world for healthcare companies. And a large number of these are from the mainland. And the investors have a big appetite. And of course, AI and other technology, exactly because of the chip situation, they will spur more domestic research and development, and that will create more demand. So I think how do I see the trajectory? I'm not sure whether it will be completely smooth, but definitely it's in the right direction. And I think China, given the size of the economy, once it pick up, it's going to be very fast. We have seen it in past experience. Either they don't do it, if they made up their mind and they want to do it, I think the speed is something that will surprise us. Do you think that it will follow a similar pattern of what we saw in Western economies of goods first and then service spending? Yes, I think so. Yes, I think goods and service, I think basically is the consumption, the domestic demand. I want to move on. We have a great question about actually how stakeholders can advance some of the things that are important to our societies. But first, given we completely misread and misinterpreted a lot of the economies and inflation in the last 18 months, could I each ask you to maybe explain some of the data points? So when you look at the economy and given the predictions, what do you look at to be sure that you're looking at the right thing? Because we've had so many shocks that sometimes we didn't see inflation coming and then it was a supply shock, but it was also something a little bit more underlying. Mario. Well, if we are to pick correctly the speed of the recovery, I think we need to look at soft data such as confidence indicators because they usually are quite helpful to understand the macro cycles, but we didn't see much there yet. So that will be the theme. On the opposite side, to build self-confidence, it's the labor market. We have to be very careful when we look at the labor market signs because this is the biggest pillar of all. Let me pick a little bit on this idea of ensuring and offshoring and the idea of recovery on Asia. We are redesigning globalization. I don't believe in the globalization. I rather prefer the name re-globalization because we are setting up again hundreds of millions of interactions in the global economy. And I really hope that this time we can make it in a more inclusive way. We are at the World Economic Forum. In the qualities in the world are very important. I think we must really take the opportunity this time as we rebuild globalization to make it in a more sustainable way, also in a more inclusive way. I would rather prefer to see growth spread across the globe than looking at, for example, cost factors and be very greedy about the short term instead of spreading the goods of globalization around the world. What does that look like? So concretely, is it redistribution of wealth? We have not done enough yet. We need to do more. We need to focus on broader perspectives instead of just we recovered from COVID. The levels of economies are already at the pre-COVID level or above, but the economies are not the same. The composition of our economies are not the same. So we really need to take the next step with a broader perspective in mind, not self-focusing on what is going on in our closest neighborhood. Are we underestimating actually the profound change that a lot of the economies are going through partly due to interest rates, but also partly these changes in the economy? I believe at least partially underestimated. I really believe it's some of the fundamental shift, what I said, energy costs. Europe will have the highest average energy cost globally. That has an impact on competitiveness, not in the first half of this year, maybe not in the first second half of this year, but for the next 5 or 10 years to come. Then income inequality when interest rates go up, hopefully in some countries, we will see somewhat rebalancing. We all depend. We were asking for economic indicators. I think even more important is the geopolitical situation. I mean, the world will develop depending on what is happening. Russia, Ukraine, in the Middle East, China, Taiwan, whatever can happen, we all still read the lips of central bankers. They blink a little bit with the eye and then you get depressed or you get optimistic. But it tells you how fragile the overall is. And then, you know, we said supply chains will get adjusted. We will have a multi-polar world. So not everybody will move in the same pattern. China will be different. India will come Middle East. That's a huge growth support. It will be a center of growth. It's the energy center. And when you look what's happening there, people really look to craft their strategy for the next 50 years. It's unbelievable the change that is taking place. So I really believe we will see a reconfiguration of the economic growth patterns. And that is the real topic rather than the shorter-term impact on this year. You asked the question about what sort of indicators would we be looking at. And there's the traditional indicators that are just traditional growth of economic growth, what's happening with interest rates, what we see in different sectors. There's the other leading indicators like PMI and looking at electric consumption, et cetera, what you see around economies. The two factors which have been not consistent with the recession. The first one is what's been happening with the labor markets. Strong labor markets are not consistent with what we see with the recession. And the labor markets are strong almost everywhere in the world. China's labor market has been quite weak. We've seen reports of unemployment levels as high as 18 percent of youth unemployment. But once the economy starts opening up and fast food and services open up again, that should absorb that type of youth unemployment quite quickly. So unemployment levels are not consistent. And then the other is what we watch with markets. What do markets believe? And we've seen incredible volatility. Last year there were more days of the VIX over 20 than there ever had been in the past. So the volatility makes it harder to read what the markets are thinking. Although right now we do see that the spread in the U.S. between the 10-year and the two-year is very negative, which could actually portend to recession. That's what the market typically thinks when you're seeing that. But on the other hand, the 10-year has gotten so low it's actually bringing back credit to the market. People are issuing again. They're starting to invest again because the 10-year has gotten so low. So there's a lot of conflicting factors that we normally watch and they're not all going the same direction. I mean, so I'm not a labor economist, but there's a lot of studies saying that partly it could be long COVID people dropping out of the workforce. So not even looking for a job anymore, it could also be explained with a skill shortage. So are we too optimistic about the kind of jobs, the quality jobs that we are or not creating? Well, it's partially that there is a shift in the types of jobs. So there is some of that. The labor participation rate has dropped. So that is part of the explanation. But let me give you a structural question for the U.S. economy again where I'm coming from. And that is that if we want to have a huge investment in semiconductors, if we want to invest in the energy transition, which is coming, do we have skilled labor for pipe fitters, machinists? People are going to be able to do that kind of construction. I don't know if we do in the United States. So that labor pressure could continue and we could see the need for a much more comprehensive immigration reform to bring in the kind of skills we need. So it's not just technology skills and stem skills. We're also going to be seeing the need for basic manufacturing and skilled labor. Lorecha, to Axel's points, do you see a shifting of the economies of the center of gravity actually shifting maybe from the West elsewhere? I definitely see that as Asia's growth engine performing. I think that will counterbalance some of the recessionary pressure elsewhere. As a market operator, the data point that we have is one, the companies that are on the way to market, we have, on the Hong Kong Star Exchange, we have a strong pipeline. We have over 100 companies lining up to want to go to market. The second data point is the liquidity. We see liquidity coming back. So both on the demand and the supply side, these are very positive signs. And on the re-globalization, I think it is very important to remember that if we call it, however we want to call it, globalization is not going away, but it's being reshaped, being reimagined, being however we want to say, it is very important to be connected. And I think in Hong Kong, we pride ourselves in being the connector. We connect China with the world. We connect today with tomorrow with the new companies. And I think that's very much so in Asia as a whole. It's that the younger generation, the population is a young one in Asia, India, Indonesia, Vietnam. A lot of the Asian countries have, while China has aging population, Japan has aging population. The rest of Asia has a very young, growing one. And that has to be a very positive source. I also have a question on the African continent, which we'll get to a second, but Mario. So this is a great question from Slido, from someone in the audience. So how can public and private stakeholders advance financial literacy, but also anything else really to try and mitigate the risks that we're facing? Like, how can we work together more concretely? Well, that's a very good question, indeed. And very hard to answer in concrete, in such a short period of time. But we can look out there and use all the instruments we have in policy terms in Europe, in the US globally, to promote growth in other parts of the world as well. That will help alleviating the pressure on prices as well, on fixing the supply chains. We don't need to undo all that COVID did to us, but to construct something something more sustainable. We cannot forget about climate change that we need really to tackle. And the only way to do this is to reduce the pressure on specific areas of the globe that are today already overcrowded. That's my point. And we have the instruments. We have the development banks. We have funds that can be directed to that. We have, of course, the private sector that needs to also give an answer to this global challenge, which is not specific of a given jurisdiction in the world. Let me pick up very, very quickly on the labor market issue, because it really is key. And just to say that in contrast with what happened in the US, in Europe, we did not destroy as many jobs as the US did during COVID. That made our recovery much simpler in some sense in Europe. We did not have the pressure to rehire millions and millions of workers in the European labor market. That reduced very much the pressure on wages. And we were very successful at doing that in Europe this time around. So usually, Europe is much more stable across the cycle. This time, we got it better, I guess. Yes, usually, it's more difficult for Europe. It is, because Europeans often do not really believe on their own strengths. I think in terms of private-private partnership, I think education, training, upskilling will be a key, key theme even for the global economy. US, you have migration, but you don't get the specialists you need for technology jobs and others. I look to Switzerland. Switzerland has, for the last 20 years, basically, a population growth of nearly 1% of the population. This year, 2%. We have labor shortages in terms of engineers, software engineers, some financial specialists, healthcare partners. So we have a lot of people that want to work, but not the right skill sets. So it's not only done in looking for more migration. It's not only done in Europe. Most people are used to retire between 60-65. One day, we will all be used to retire with 70-75 or whatever. But that's not yet done. It's really the constant risk-killing. And that's, I think, a big, big opportunity. It starts at kindergarten. It ends when you're close to retirement age. That constant partnership, I think it's a key theme to make sure we can avoid more inequality, bring people into the labor market, because people in the labor market, they are integrated. They are engaging in society. And I think that's, I think, a great theme. But this is what politicians or leaders have to focus on. And again, a problem with Timeline is that this takes 10, 20 years, but politicians get reelected every couple of years. So maybe they want a quick fix. Yeah, but you know, there are examples in Switzerland. We have that apprenticeship system. That's why we fare quite well with the workforce. We have, we see that partially happening in the US. We see that partially happening in Germany. I mean, there are some models that can be used. And with you, this is not something that can you do from one day to the other. It's five, 10 years. It's 15 years. But that's a big, public, private, I think, thought-leadership activities that need to happen. Douglas, who do you see as the post, if not recession post, slowdown winners in all of this, either by country or companies or industries? Well, first of all, we talked about Asia and Asia's growth and Asia's opportunity. I would add an element of the demographic dividend. What countries still have young populations? Where will you see the natural growth coming? And will those countries and nations have the ability to educate and move the populations into the new areas? We haven't talked a lot about climate change and energy transition and what we're seeing in the financial markets, but those that are able to move fast to think about energy transition, get ahead in terms of how they look at moving into new types of energy, the energy grid, et cetera. So I think that those will be very important factors. There's another factor which, coming back to the US, which we've always seen the resilience of the US and the entrepreneurial spirit, even things like the tax code help that. You can write off something very quickly so people are willing to take risk. They're willing to fail fast. And I think bringing this type of a mindset to different countries around the world will also be beneficial. So I do think that we will see the winners will be those countries that are resilient, that have education systems that can adapt to a future market where supply chains are going to be changing. Let me just mention two seconds about Africa. I was going to ask you if this was a decade for Africa. Africa does have those benefits of the demographic dividend as well as the types of minerals that are going to be necessary for the energy transition as well as some of the conditions for producing some of the new energy sources. So Africa has a lot of opportunity to play a much bigger role in the world. Laura, when you look at the post-recession or post-lowdown winners, who do you think they are and can other corporations or can other regions emulate what they're doing to be in a better place? Well, I think the winners will be the innovators. Not by that, I don't mean only the new economy company but some of the old economy company, they have innovation as well. I think that's very important in terms of the mindset, in terms of training the next generation of the engineer in the workforce, basically upskilling the workforce. Those will be the winner. And healthcare and technology, definitely. And ESG leaders, I think those are the three areas that I would see as winners. Who do you see as winners? Yeah, I agree. I agree with what Laura said and also on the education dimension. I think if we have to bet on something that is pro-development, it will be education. I can give you very quickly again and publicize here the number for Portugal because they really mean a true transition in education terms for my country in the last 20 years. It will still take further 20 years because we start the century with very low level of education. Only 40 percent of young people graduating from high school. Now it's 85 percent. We are on the top of the numbers for the Euro area. This is a true transition and this is what we need to the future. The same thing is true for Africa. I think there's a massive need for education in Africa. We need to invest in that. It is a global issue. It's not an African issue. I think it's very, very important for all of us to understand that. Okay, I have one minute each for each of you. What is the one thing that we're, even if we're positive, we could be underestimating? Is there a challenge for a lot of the leaders listening to us and watching at home and on TV? What's the one thing that we could, if not getting wrong, certainly underestimating how challenging it is to overcome? Well, one thing that I haven't talked about yet from one of the internal views from S&P Global is the credit risk in the markets. I talked about some of the positive aspects of it but over the last 10 years there's been a lot of issuance of high yield debt in the corporate sector and we don't know what's the behavior going to be of that once we see the resetting of interest rates, when those companies have to come back to the market to renew their debt, when they have maturities, as well as many of those types of companies or industries that will be more negatively impacted by the recession. So is there a question mark? Is there some sort of a debt bubble in some parts of the economies? That would be one of my questions. Yeah, Laura, what are we underestimating? I think the geopolitical instability is something that is out of our control. It is the hands of the politicians and the different governments and it's truly for the corporates you have to navigate and for market operators we have to navigate very carefully but it is not something that we can have a say or have a hand on. Mario? Well, I think the geopolitical tensions are certainly probably for Europe, especially the biggest thing. I will cite a British philosopher, John Lennon, give me a chance. Is there anything that leaders can do today to try and mitigate that? There's a lot and we have the instruments. That's why I have this confidence that we can avoid recession going back to the first question and looking to the future with a bright spot. We can do it. We are improving a lot, institutions across the globe. We need really to put that in practice. You also think they have the tools? Yes, I think it is up to the leaders to work out what would be the best for the world in taking into account obviously their own interests but I would say that for the market, for corporates, it is something we have to learn, to live with, to deal with but very little that we can do. Axel, what are we underestimating? Very difficult to add something but I think to foster innovation, entrepreneurship, to get flexibility, freedom for companies and individuals to develop, to prosper. It's one key theme that we should really be very focused and the second one we didn't touch really is, even in Europe or even in the Western world, there are a lot of people that struggle these days. The topic of social unrest, we didn't touch upon it but to make sure that people can follow the development of the world, the economic development and can participate in that shift into that multipolar world that is very, very important and that brings me back to what you started out on the geopolitical and all the tensions that we are seeing. So I think that question of growing inequality, how can we start to balance that and then innovation will be key. Is there a danger that politicians don't tackle that head on? I mean, Mario mentioned this and it could be through redistribution. I live in the UK where child poverty numbers are really shocking. I think the jury is still out. Okay, on whether we can do something. Thank you so much for a wonderful spirited panel. So thank you all and we will see whether some of this positive optimism comes through. Mario Santé, Laura Cha, Axel Liman and Douglas Peterson. Thank you and have a great day, everyone.


Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Sustainable Sheboygan Spotlight. My name is Heather Cleveland. I'm a member of the Sustainable Sheboygan Task Force and your host for today's show. And today we'll be talking about natural resources as it relates to water, water quality, wetlands and land conservation. And our guest here to help us talk about this today is Sarah Majaris. Sarah and I know each other from our previous lives working at AEcom. Sarah was part of the Natural Resources Group, and she currently is an environmental scientist with Miller engineers and scientists here in Sheboygan. She's also on the land team and was a former board member of Glacier Lakes Conservancy. Thank you so much for joining us, Sarah. Thanks for having me. Could you tell us a little bit about your background and your education and get folks up to speed on what brought you here today? Sure, sure. I guess I come from a childhood of lots of time in the outdoors and did my undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I've had multiple professors and classes that inspired me to pursue wetland science and conservation. And from there I ended up doing some environmental education work. Worked for DNR for a few months, rather, and ended up in the environmental consulting field where I am today. And at Miller Engineers we do a lot of field surveys, sort of baseline environmental work, and then from that work we design solutions for stormwater management and water quality, a lot of what we're talking about today. Awesome, thank you. So another reason why we have this program today is because the city of Sheboygan does have a sustainability plan. You can find it on the website. And they have a natural resources section that cites waterway protections, stormwater management and flood control, and also native landscaping. So I just want to point that out and folks can find that on the city's website. So to relate it back to everybody at home, it's summertime, it's summertime right now, and everybody wants to jump in the lake. And most likely they have seen the water quality signs. What do these signs tell us about water quality? Well, these signs came from legislation that was passed in 2000 by U.S. Congress as part of the Clean Water Act. It's an amendment to the Clean Water Act called the Beach Act. And it's an acronym, and I'm not exactly sure what it stands for. But basically it requires all coastal counties to, or states rather, to adopt standards, water quality standards at their beaches and monitor for those. And the main indicator that they test for is E.coli, which we've all heard a lot about in present day. And that's what they use as the indicator to put up the signs. And what E.coli is basically is it's used to, well, high quantities of E.coli suggest that there's fecal matter and other disease-causing bacteria in the water. Could be caused by algae, could be caused by wildlife dropping, stormwater inputs, high water temperatures, sewage spills, all kinds of different things contribute. So if E.coli levels are high at your beaches, you will see the red signs that are shown on the slide presentation. And you should probably stay away. There's also a website which we'll post at the end of this that you can check.  And maybe you'll want to choose another place to go. So that helps tie into why people should care about wetlands and what we're talking about today. So are there any other ways, I guess, how that bacteria or E.coli can get in the water? You touched on a few. Are there any other ways? Yeah. Any transport that carries stormwater into our waterways can deliver contaminants. So we need to be careful about what we're doing on land as well as what's happening in the water because every time it rains, it washes off into our waterways. Stormwater inputs like sewers, gutters, any overland flows, swales, things of that nature, especially those that are channelized in concrete.  So every time it rains, those elements are washed into our gutters and storm sewers. So stormwater treatment is very important.  So we always want to make sure we're picking up after them. Agricultural runoff, also very high contributor to water contamination, water quality. Nitrates, obviously, from spreading a manure and phosphorus inputs from fertilizers. And then there's always your sewage overflows you need to be careful about. So lots of different contributors. Right. So in Sheboygan, our stormwater system discharges directly into Lake Michigan. So we can probably easily say that the highest risk would be after a rainstorm. So that's the time that you should probably make sure to check, like you said, on the website. Yes, yes, absolutely. So what can be done to keep contaminates and bacteria from polluting our waterways? Well, there are lots of different things we can do. And anything from land conservation to creating engineered solutions for stormwater. Wetlands natural buffers can be a huge improving factor on water quality. If there is a natural buffer, which would allow for sediments to settle out and contaminates to biodegrade naturally within these wetland systems, you'll have the output or the water quality coming out would be much improved. And similar to that, engineers have been using those natural systems as examples for what are called biofilters or bioswales, rain gardens, which tend to be a little more aesthetically pleasing. Utilize a lot of native plantings, and by native I say, I mean plants that are indigenous to Wisconsin. Many of which thrive in our soils and our environment can handle the cold and hot cycles that we have here in Wisconsin. And now that we have legislation, the city of Sheboygan has pretty high stormwater management requirements for any new projects. We can use these natural land conservation examples or wetland examples to engineer solutions. And they are being used today. A lot of which you'll see on the slides that are being presented. So it sounds like there's options to treat it at a micro level, like a residential or a company for that matter can do bioswales on the property. That's right. Or have things like that, or can have impervious pavement. So pavement is another thing that is another place rather than being absorbed in the bacteria, taking care of the bacteria, it will wash away. So things that people can do, I think, on their own property. But then another part is how the city looks at it. So a client of yours may be a city or a county or a state for that matter where they would build it on the output of it. So yeah, you can treat it at the source or you can treat it later. Absolutely, anywhere along the line, actually. Right, yeah, yep. So what are some examples of land conservation projects that aim toward improving water quality? Well, something that I can think of specifically and back to our talking about beaches, Miller engineers and scientists has been working with the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh to improve water quality at beaches through stormwater management. So we've been working on beach nourishment projects, which essentially tries to minimize the amount of stagnant water that is sitting on the sand beaches, which encourages waterfowl, geese, seagulls, etc., to congregate in these areas and go through their natural cycles. And then that fecal matter can contribute to the bacteria counts at the beaches. So a lot of it involves grading of the sand and then implementing those natural plantings. One example is Red Arrow and Manitowoc. I believe it's just south of their power plant. There are some before and after pictures here on these slides that might be kind of impressive when you look at them. They've been installing boardwalks and these native plantings and they're actually micro rain gardens all along this area to still maintain that stormwater function. So they are allowing for water to drain there and for the sediment to settle out and then for it to drain into Lake Michigan. So Selner Park in Two Rivers is another example of a beach nourishment project and then Egg Harbor in Door County as well. So another example might be that I can think of in my experience with Glacial Lakes Conservancy on a larger scale. We've been working to preserve properties that contribute or have a potential to contribute to better water quality. Our new mission is to focus on water basically. And so we will be selecting and on the land team what we do is lots of baseline survey work. And so we go and we meet with property owners and we look at all of the different functions that that piece of property might offer to the environment. And we're putting a high priority on waterways and properties that are adjacent to waterways. Because in preserving these plots of land, we will essentially be creating a natural buffer without any engineering. We're just preserving it and letting it do its thing. And it's a great, great habitat for wildlife, local wildlife and encourages floral diversity. There are so many benefits though. Just land conservation in general is very important. Excellent, so how does that work? So you say land conservation or land protection. What's the technical process a little bit of Glacial Lakes Conservancy and how they operate to protect the land? Well, what Glacial Lakes Conservancy does is we will protect land through easements and we'll also protect land by actually purchasing a preserve and managing it ourselves. And easement is something that is still owned by the property owner and managed by the property owner. But there's a legal document associated with the deed called an easement that protects essentially the property into perpetuity. So that legal language carries on to the next property owner and future generations. So it's a bit of a restriction? Yes. So when you go to pull a permit they might say, no. Yeah, yeah, there are certain requirements within the easement that dictate what you can or cannot do on that property. Some will limit development. Some will allow development but only at a certain scale, it just depends. It's great. Yeah, yeah, it's a fantastic opportunity for people to make sure that their land is protected into the future. So if you could tell us a little bit about the technical piece of a wetland. So what is a wetland and why should people care about wetlands? Sure, well I brought with me the official definition of a wetland for Wisconsin. A wetland is an area where water is at, near, or above the land surface long enough to support hydrophic vegetation, which is any vegetation that thrives and will grow in water, and has soils indicative of wet conditions. So when we look at soils, we look at usually the top two feet and will either have very high organic matter or they will be depleted of their nutrients, and then there are certain reactions that we can look for in different colors and things. But I'll let us know that there's a water table there, at least for a certain portion of the year. Okay, and it has to do with the drainage of the land around it and the topography. Exactly, exactly. And what are the values of wetlands? Between the Wisconsin DNR and the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, they've come up with a list of wetland functional values. And these values are different for every single wetland. It's just a list that some wetlands will qualify for some and some won't. But I have the list here in front of me. Floral diversity is a big value. We need to have a diversity to support our insects, our pollinators. We need to have a diversity to inhabit different levels and different zones within a wetland. You have wet meadow wetlands that tend to be a little drier, can be ephemeral, when we only see them in the spring, they may appear like a dry prairie in the fall, or you never know. So we need to have that diversity to take on all of those different zones. You also have a shallow marsh, and you may only see cat tails and burred reeds and different species in there. Wildlife habitat, they provide muskrat homes, which we may love or hate. Fish spawning, all kinds of insects, invertebrates. The list goes on and on. Songbirds, migrating birds, all kinds of different animals. Flood protection, we're back to our stormwater. They're storage basins for when we have these excess amounts of water. Big sponge. Big sponge, exactly. In a place where it's a chill out for a while before the rest of the environment can kind of catch up. Water quality protection, like we've been talking about. Shoreline protection, wetlands along the edges of lakes and rivers, for example, can catch some of the wave action. And some of the, from large rain events or power boats, whatever it happens to be, and reduces erosion. Groundwater recharge and discharge. We always have the, we have to think about our groundwater. That's what we're drinking, back to the water quality issue. And then to think about, wetlands are beautiful. You can look at pictures of wetlands and see the multitude of species, plant and animal. Open water versus sedge meadow, marsh areas. So they're beautiful to recreate in. Even if you don't have waiters, you can still look at them from uplands. Some people don't like the mosquitoes aspect of it, but they have to go somewhere. And then education and science, wetlands can offer us, like I said, in stormwater treatment. They can offer us a lot of examples of what we need to be doing in our urban areas, in our rural areas to help treat stormwater before it gets into our waterways and our drinking water, so research and science. Very cool, that's a good stuff. So they are important, I think we've established that. Can you give us an overview of the current regulations regarding wetlands? Sure, there are a lot of things happening right now, especially in Wisconsin and recently. Basically the Clean Water Act seeks to protect waterways and wetlands. And section 404 is what requires a permit for any impact on a wetland. Any dredged material or a fill that would impact a wetland. And then further, the Wisconsin NR103 establishes water quality standards, upon which our permit system has been established. So for any wetland impact, you need to have a wetland water quality certification and prove that there is no better alternative for your project or something that would be less impactful to your environment and your waterways. So on the federal level, wetlands are protected if they're contiguous with a navigable waterway. So they're connected to another system. And Wisconsin takes that a step further, which is pretty neat, and they protect isolated pothole wetlands. So in the spring, when your ephemerals are blooming and you see skunk cabbage and marsh marigolds blooming in the woods, sometimes the water that they're growing in is only there for a couple of weeks or a month out of the year. That wetland is, most of the time those wetlands are isolated, but they're important areas for salamanders to breed and different amphibians. So Wisconsin protects those, which is great, which is great. And then in 2012, Wisconsin passed legislature that allowed for general permits to be granted for any fill less than 10,000 square feet. And maybe I'm getting too technical here. Oh no, that's great. And we still need to go through the water quality certification process and alternatives analysis is what it's called to prove that there is no other option. And we need to do this project. For example, putting in a road to a house or most of these are commercial agricultural projects. Sure. Farm expansions, things like that. Today, when you want to impact greater than 10,000 square feet of wetland, you're required to either compensate for that on your own property. You can purchase credits in a bank so that wetlands will be restored elsewhere in the state. And this is the mitigation piece. And this is the mitigation piece. Or you can buy credits in an actual, well there's a mitigation bank and there's an in-loop fee program. The bank is you're buying credits in an existing wetland conservation project. The in-loop fee program, you're buying credits in a fund that is going to go towards future restoration. So that our wetland area is the same. That's right, ideally. And ideally in the same watershed so that we're still getting that filtering buffering. So everybody has equal protection. Exactly, filtering buffering in the same watershed. Yeah, great, go Wisconsin. So kind of complicated, but all good. I mean, it's good to know these are important. They're people like you doing things about it. And I also, I know that you recently obtained, and I might mess this up, but there was the wetland science certification. Yes. Could you explain that a little bit more and what it took to get that and what it's about? Sure, the Society for Wetland Scientists is an international organization that supports wetland scientists and their research. It's a great group of researchers, wetland practitioners, regulators, from all over the world that work to protect these large areas of wetlands that have these functional values that we were talking about. And their certification program is something that just requires a certain amount of years of experience, level of education, and it's basically a club of like-minded folks who can share ideas and work towards protecting wetlands into the future. So in your job, you are often tasked with defining wetlands.  Yeah, you can look for, the first thing that I always look for are plants. Plants and whether or not your feet are wet. Your feet are wet, you're probably in a wetland. And you can look for soil, some of the soils in wetlands can be rather spongy. And then, you know, cattails, the common plants that people know grow in wetlands. Sedges are grass-like species, but they have three different angles on their stems. Those are most likely wetland, but there are some upland species. There's a great book out there that's wetland plants of Minnesota and Wisconsin, and there are a lot of common wetland species in this publication. I think the Army Corps of Engineers published it a number of years ago, and there are a lot of the go-to manual. Yes, and Wisconsin DNR website, which will be posted at the end of this interview, is a nice resource for wetland plants as well. Okay, very cool. If a young person would like to go to school with this, or have a, you know, go to school for something like this, or have a job similar to yours, what steps should they take? Say they're in high school and they're thinking about what they wanna do. Yeah, my recommendation to the younger generations would be to get out and volunteer. We have so many opportunities in Sheboygan County where you can get out and volunteer. We have Maywood Environmental Center where there are both educational opportunities to get out into the woods and into your wetlands and literally get your feet wet. There are the multiple nonprofit organizations, Glacial Lakes Conservancy, has multiple opportunities to volunteer on our preserves. We have land walks where naturalists will give tours of our natural areas that we're protecting. And there's always work days where we can work on invasive species and different, which is a different concept, but, and the Sheboygan River Basin Partnership also has beach cleanups every year and different opportunities for volunteerism. So I would start there if I were a young person. And through that, you network with people and get to know what your local community is doing and hopefully establish some mentorship. You can always call me. I'm a new engineer. I'm happy to help. And then what sort of classes should they be thinking about in high school? And then if they're in college, what sort of classes did you have to take when you were in school? Well, I think your basic biology courses find a course that you do some field work, field trips.  Spend as much time outside as you can. So biology, zoology, high school. A lot of the agricultural programs where they spend a lot of time in those systems and learning about crops and soil science, those are important. And then in university setting, I would recommend taking as many field courses again as you can. My inspiration was a wetland ecology course that I took at UW-Madison. And the professor, his name was Quinton Carpenter, was fantastic. And he's the reason I'm sitting here today. Isn't that wild? Yeah, one person. Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting too that you could, with experience like yours, you could work for a consulting firm like you do, or you could work for the state. Or you could work for a private firm who does a lot of development. Telecommunications or roads or things like that. Yes, yes. Fortunately, the legislation in Wisconsin and our municipalities has really come around to being conscious of. And proactive. And proactive of stormwater. And what the impacts of development might be to the environment. So, yeah. Right, so everybody seems to be working together, in my opinion, to just make sure they do the right thing in the design phase, even looking out here, having people go out in the field and sketch that out. And then we'll decide where it goes. Absolutely. Yeah, which, yay Wisconsin again. Yes, yay Wisconsin. And I know you mentioned a little bit about how people can learn more. Or I guess you mentioned how people can be involved. How can they learn more about wetlands? Yeah. Here I have links to Sustainable Sheboygan. Your group is doing a great job, public and educating the public. And if you would like to check out your beaches, the status of your bacterial levels at the beaches, check out the Wisconsin Beach Health website. And they'll show, there are three different signs. There's a green, a yellow and a red. And they'll let you know kind of where bacterial levels are at. The Wisconsin Wetland Association is a great nonprofit group in Wisconsin. They're very active in which legislation has passed and provide a lot of education for landowners who are interested in protecting and restoring wetlands on their properties. And then like I said, the DNR Wetland link here is an excellent resource. They have a lot of information about plants and animals and wetlands. And I would recommend checking that site out as well. Excellent. And you did mention native plants. I know you are very passionate about those also. Can you just touch on the importance, I guess, just quickly as we wrap up the importance of native plants and kind of how this relates to this? Yeah. Well, native plants are designed, their genetics are specifically designed to grow in Wisconsin and to grow in Wisconsin landscapes. They tend to be hardy and they colonize in areas where it's very tough to grow other species, from Europe. And they each have their own niche or specific community type that they prefer to grow in. Be it soil, shade, things like that. Exactly. Different environmental conditions. And so they, and they oftentimes, because they're so happy here, they have deeper root systems, they improve the quality of the soils, they, you know, they're perfect. And the deeper root systems help break up the soils and they have lots of interactions with fungi in the soils and relationships. There's a lot of compatible relationships between plant species, insect species, soils, the whole ecosystem, it all works together. And the alternative to that is an invasive species, which is something that may have been brought over from Europe or another country and can come into Wisconsin and basically create a monoculture and take over these large swathes of wetland or prairie and eliminate some of the native species. So higher diversity of plants means higher diversity of insects and so on. And if you have these invasive species moving in, you're kind of eliminating that. So it's important to keep control of those invasives if you do have them in your personal yard and landscape or if they're on a larger scale, we have to control them so we can bring back our Wisconsin species because they're beautiful and they work. And I know you can go to your local garden center and ask for native species of plants and, you know, help us, I guess, bring back the native plants. We could do a whole topic just on that. But thank you everybody for coming and tuning in to the Sustainable Shibling and Spotlight. Thank you, Sarah, for joining us.


What's going on guys got Kyle here with late in sports cards, and we are ripping five boxes for Jeff M. Gonna be all This is optic choice 2022 2023 basketball Good luck here. Jeff. Let's see some black golds. Let's see some golds. Good luck. Good luck This might be a replay Really? What about last night? TJ Warren hollow and Markel fools good thing. I didn't go to the bar. Oh Yeah, we've got red Opti graphs auto gonna be Steph curry For a spring in the heat Right when he walks in let's go You go Jeff on the optic graphs not numbered curry. There was someone else. I would have a man that one for you Jeff 88 we've got THT Spain in Croatia the final we've got does soon move and a kindle brown rated rookie there for the Pacers and Our choice rookies. We've got Kennedy Chandler and Jaden Ivy nice one there on the choice Great box there for you. Yeah, dude. I uh, I called I called it full and like at least 20 orders all came at the same time Yeah, I got there quick Mm-hmm a lot of stuff to rip Yeah, you can take that. Sorry got you holiday optic Jalen Green Our auto is gonna be a throwback Donner's auto Sean Kemp Nice one there for the uh The magic Sean can't yeah, that's something that one's gonna go the Super sonics though. Yeah to 88 Donovan Mitchell 88 Donovan Mitchell we have Isaiah Mowgli nice one there on the red choice to 88 nice rated rookie red We've got red and green Zach Levine. I like that rhyme there And there we go. We've got a choice been the bucket nice math are in there And tie tie Washington on the choice Good boxes for you so far. Let's keep it going here, Jeff I see a chrysanthemum Oh, you know I mentioned you There's a trey jones hollow a tie tie Washington hollow rated rookie Redemption It is Walker Kessler on the rookie optic autographs choice Nice one there as well, Jeff Walker Kessler ranger on the uh optic autographs choice Very nice Got number to 88 cam johnson for the nets Not numbered green and red is going to be Jalen Williams j will for the thunder rookie We've got a dragon print Jalen brunson that one is for the nicks And we've got two choice rookies pat baldlin and javari smith Nice one there. You gotta go a little further back just the mustache showing dude Box four there it is. There it is. Let's go. Let's go Box four. Good luck. You're jet George just crashed yeah There's a james wiseman. Oh, here we go forest. Here we go Rated rookie auto. We've got palo ban caro Boom You go jeffrey. He's got this shirt on Yeah, he's got the yeah the nba jam.   That is hollow rated rookie And auto is going to go for the Celtics there dino raja on the optic. Uh, uh graphs opti graphs Nice one, they're not numbered for the dino Behind that we had to 88 going to be og on a nobi for the raptors to 88 We have a red and green not numbered cam thomas Yes in montreal And blue to 24 we got malik monk on the blue choice Nice one there kings And the uh choice rookies on the back. We got a chat Nice one there and we got andrew nemhard Alrighty jeff that will do it for your five boxes of optic choice Some great boxes there nice hit on the palo. Um, we'll get those right out to you, sir