I want to be able to respond if I can, Mr. Speaker, to this motion that's on the floor and certainly certainly the very healthy debate and the many married issues that have been brought up to the attention of the house in considering this motion. Let me deal with probably some of the issues that… Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Let me deal first of all, Mr. Speaker, because it came up on two different occasions with the government's decision when they were in office in 2011 to 2016 to move the infrastructural works from the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Infrastructure. And when we first came into office, we continued that trend. And one of the things that came very apparent very early in the game, and particularly with the amount of repairs that now we were instigated, because a long period of time, Mr. Speaker, had gone by where there was no repairs to the schools. I hear the prime ministers claim that the million dollars a year was not for repairs, but it was to help the teachers or the schools with basic operating costs. I thought that that's something that would go into the recurrent costs. So I'm not 100 percent sure. We did not see, and nobody else felt, the level of infrastructure repairs. But let me get back to the point. The Ministry of Education's technical staff continuously complained about when the works were being done, and that the staff at the Ministry of Infrastructure were insensitive to the urgency and the timing of issues when it came to repairs. And we had a long discussion. It's not something that just happened overnight that it was a knee-jerk reaction. And despite the assurances of the then Minister of Infrastructure, it was an issue we could not get resolved. And so therefore, the decision was made to move it back into where it had always been in the Ministry of Infrastructure. Sorry? Sorry, moved it back into the Ministry of Education, if I said it incorrectly. And that had always been where it was. And the Ministry of Education is very aware of the timing of schools and reopening of schools and when we can do things. And as I said, the level of coordination that we would have expected between the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Ministry of Education did not happen. And it was very vexing. I have to say to you, as a prime minister and particularly the head of cabinet, trying to sit down between the two ministries to resolve this issue every single time because repairs were very important, Mr. Speaker, could not get resolved. And so the decision was made to move it back into education. I believe that that's where it remains today. I also want to say that, Mr. Speaker, that when we came in and I had the opportunity of going to visit some schools, Monde d'Or was one of them. And I was shocked that from the time that that school had been built, the level of disrepair that that school was in. In fact, it was an odd situation where that when it rained, it was easier for the teachers to move the students to the balcony than it was to keep them inside of the school. And don't even begin to talk about the state of disrepair and the condition to the Washings. Babano, Soufraire, literally when he went to every quarter of this country, the state of our schools were in utter disrepair. And I could not believe that we had found ourselves where we were sending children to those schools. And that is after we spent $30 million plus $50 million from CDB. $80 million has been spent in repairing the schools. Every single school in this country was touched in every single constituency, whether it was a renovation, whether it was a roof repair, whether it was bathrooms, whether it was new furniture, whether it was a new wing. Every single school, Cicero, John Odlem, just a name to in your own constituency, and many more. Which Cicero? Your Cicero school. Which one? No problem. I'll be happy, I'll be happy to get the details from the member for Castery's south because he may have forgotten. But this allegation that we would ever play politics with education in this country, I resent that statement. I resent that allegation and that's not true. So Mr. Speaker, the member from Castery's southeast recanted a story of me and the Adenry school. And I want to say there was some truth to that story. The fact is we went in and fixed up that school, roof, furniture, plumbing, we did all of the bathrooms. And when I went on a tour at the beginning of the school season, which was one year after the repairs had been happened there, it wasn't to say that the bathroom was in a poor state because of overuse. It was vandalized, urinals were smashed, sinks were smashed, mirrors were smashed, windows were kicked in and we were two days before we were getting school. And I asked the principal, opening up school in two days, how could the bathrooms be in this condition? Several Prime Minister, I made a request to the Minister of Education to get them fixed and they didn't have enough money to get them fixed. And I said, so you're going to open up school with them in that condition? I said, didn't we just redo these entire bathrooms? He said, yes. I said, but this is not broken. This is vandalized. At what point would you all have realized that it was vandalized? And who are you going to hold accountable? I remember his words, he said, well, they have X number of students here and we don't know who they are. I said, but it's the boys' bathroom, so it's down to half the population. But the reality is, is that government must be doing education because we all know, we're all in here repeating the same thing, that we don't have enough money to bring the schools to the level that we have to. And therefore we have to include our communities and there must be a shared responsibility for maintaining our schools. It is their children who are going to the school. I the first person to talk about a quidme at a school, I know that how many capable people they have in Denry who are hard workers, carpenters, masons, plumbers, electricians and to bring the parents in and for them to take some level of responsibility and for the principal to hold everybody responsible. It's a state asset that belongs you a hundred percent right, not Alan Shastney, it belongs to the taxpayers of this country. It belongs to the students and the people who live in those communities who get to use it. And what we're going to know, going to borrow money and allow people to just abuse a state asset and nobody wants to hold anyone accountable. I'm sorry, if we're going to make it through this crisis that we're in, we have to manage our resources. You can't come here and just use it as a political ploy to suggest that we mismanage resources and just say that, but when it comes to the actual practicality of holding people accountable in this country, for what we're doing, sort of if you want to take it out of context, that's not a problem. And Mr. Speaker, the double standard by some of the members in this house, you know, it's beyond me. It's not even worth responding to some of the comments that I hear, and I'm not going to. The reality is I'm not the one who came and spoke about the story. The member from Caster East Southeast is the one who did it. And as I said, and I stood up to say how he is conveying facts that he believes to be true is incorrect, and it's out of context. I was not getting anywhere with the former speaker. So I waited my turn. I listened to the rest of the stuff he had to say, and I'm going to address it. So Mr. Speaker, here we are today, Mr. Speaker, that we're boasting. Heard the member from Laverie talk about how great the economy is doing and the management, fiscal management of the Prime Minister. And you're going to tell me, Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. Minister of Finance, member from Caster East, that you're going to borrow money at 6 percent for five years, a two-year moratorium in five years.  That's commercial money to go and what, to fix up schools. Now, I'm very happy the money is being spent on schools. But I have to say to you, the revelation of that has raised all kinds of alarm bells in my mind as a former Minister of Finance to say, whoa, wait a second, that's the best we can do. Those are the best terms that we can get to get one loan. And when we get the loan, $5 million of the $15 million is being spent in one school. So how much more money is really being spent in the other 16 schools? So if one of the schools is $5 million, and of the remaining 15 schools, we're going to spend $10 million. That is not even going to be close to solving the problems that we have in education and lifting our education product to another level. We are far away from achieving the minimal amount that we should. And that brings up a much bigger issue that we're scared to discuss in this house. And we play politics with it in terms of how do we resolve the problems in this country? Six percent for five years. Wow. The member from Castery Southeast spoke about the cost of operation in Martinique. And the point I was trying to say to him across the floor, make sure the public can hear, is that Martinique is 440,000 people. And that hospital was built not just for Martinique, but also for Guadalupe, which is another 300 and something thousand people. And completely subsidized by France, you know, not taxed monies that are generated in Martinique, the French government is sending them money. And the question is, how do we take advantage of the French government spending that kind of money? But it brings up a much bigger issue that we have to deal with, because he's 100% right. When we came into government, the only thing that the former government could have achieved with OKU is to do a naming ceremony. You couldn't open it, and you weren't honest with the public as to why you couldn't open it. You could not open it because you did not have the money to operate it. But we've repeated it. Victoria Hospital is $35 million, and it was not even being run properly. OKU is air conditioned and automated and bigger. Therefore, it's going to cost us much more and more money, even though it had a little bit less of the number of beds. But OKU was built in design because we were supposed to be decentralizing our healthcare services. And that work had not even begun as yet, Mr. Speaker. It had not begun, and there was a report by the University of West Indies that said that to move into OKU would cost $75 million. So you're talking about $40 million more a year than what Victoria Hospital was. And already healthcare was the largest budgetary item that we had, and of that budgetary item, 85% of that budget is for salaries, nurses and doctors. 15% was being allocated to the operating cost of that, of Victoria. And when you went into Victoria, the operating procedures there were zero, zero. I remember walking in and seeing the cashier, and she had a big box. I said, wow, that's a lot of people in one day. She said to me, no PM. They come here every quarter to get the receipts. There are some people who profess to have some accounting backgrounds in this house. How are you going to reconcile your accounts on a quarterly basis? In fact, as Victoria was not even collecting the money. That's a sad reality. So when we talk about the problems that we have in education, we also have them in health. We also now have them in the police force. We have a serious operational deficit in this country. But there are no two more important in my mind than health and education. So how much money are we really going to have to spend? And we already had accepted as a government that we were going to have to increase the allocation to cover the cost of OKEU. And that does not even take into consideration an expanded operation at St. Jude's. And let's not run away from St. Jude's. Because we fool ourselves every day. We fool ourselves every single day in this country about St. Jude's. Because we treat it as a semi-statutory agency. And we send an allocation. In my day it was 18 million. I don't know how much it is now. But that's not money. It's sufficient. And St. Jude's has survived because they have found a way to collect money where Victoria hadn't. But it's not enough. And when we move into the new facility, wherever that new facility is, whether it's a new building or the old building, the operating costs are going to go up significantly from what they are now. So we have a financial crisis that is looming in this country with health care. And yes. And that is why there are two different solutions that are being proposed. This government that wants to tell you that they're going to have universal health care. So if you're going to have universal health care, so the state is going to pay for all of it. You're raising $33 million. And you said that you're going to divide that between security and health. Again, we have no idea how you're dividing it. Member for Microsoft. Member for Microsoft. I've allowed you a certain degree of latitude to go out and respond to what some of the members would have said. But I don't know how health care and St. Jude's ties with the motion that we have before us, which deals with a loan from the African import export box. So can you just come back on track? So Mr. Speaker, I'm speaking to health care as it is relative to the financing of our budget and the limitations that we have with education because of the financing of the education budget. And we're here to talk about borrowing money for education. And Mr. Speaker, I sat here and listened to the latitude that was given to the members. We spoke about Carrie Chris report. We spoke all about other things. So Mr. Speaker, I would certainly like to be given the same latitude and particularly given that I am only two opposition people here. Member for Microsoft. Member for Microsoft. We have a motion before us. Motion speaks clearly. I've given you latitude as I've said. And you will not dictate what the chair does here. And you will not dictate what amount of latitude that I give you. That is solely with the chair. I would appreciate if you would continue and address the motion before us. Thank you. Mr. Speaker, with the greatest amount of respect, I'm going to take the same latitude that everybody else took. So I will continue. So Mr. Speaker, we have to look holistically at the financing of our government if in fact that we are going to be able to provide healthcare services, infrastructure, education, even crime. We have a serious crisis in this country. And when I'm seeing a government is going to come and borrow money at 6%, Mr. Speaker, 6% two-year moratorium at five years, how do you use that kind of money? If you're going to be using that kind of money to repair schools, Mr. Speaker, we're in trouble. This country is in trouble. Mr. Speaker, members questioned the VAT rate and everything else. The reality is, is that we have to grow this country. A member from Labry, Mr. Speaker, quoted the carrot Chris report and spoke specifically about the $300 million that we borrowed during the COVID period and said we were such a wicked government that we did not provide support. And he listed a whole bunch of things which were all erodist because we did provide support to all those groups. But the $300 million that we borrowed, Mr. Speaker, was to make up for the shortfall of revenue because the economy was shut and exactly what the member said from Labry, the economy contracted by 24%. And we've had that discussion. It contracted more than anybody else in the OECS because our GDP had been rebased to create so that because tourism was given a much bigger role in our economy than it had before. The same thing that will happen in all of the other OECS countries. Sorry? $300 million? Oh my gosh. We borrowed $300 million. And the $300 million, Mr. Speaker, was used to pay salaries. Salaries. We had an operating cost. We had $44 million a month for salaries. $30 million for debt financing and $30 million a month for operating the government. And the fact is the monies that we borrowed from CDB, the monies we borrowed from the IMF, the monies we borrowed from the World Bank, we could not use that money to pay on debt. So that means the revenue that we were generating, which was limited because it dropped from $100 million a month to $50 million a month. So where's the rest of the money going to come from to pay salaries and to pay the operating cost? Where was it going to come from? And when he speaks about stimulus, every single civil servant in this country went through COVID without a pay cut and got their salary every single month. That was a form of stimulus. That was a form of stimulus. And we made sure and every single person that was owed money, they were paid so the government did not go into default. And that is why we can have a report from Caracus. But you know, Mr. Speaker, I didn't have to go there because it's the same government that was in opposition that said, who believes that tourism can come back? Tourism could never come back. There's only one person who believes that tourism can come back. And who said that we should not be focusing on construction? What are the two things that drove the economic growth for this country in 2021 and 22? Tourism and construction that put us in the place. This is the same group of people that said that the debt to GDP was gonna go past 90%, 100%, scaring everybody, telling everybody how we had missed magic on them. And guess what? It made it to 90%, which we knew it had to go to 90% because when you have a decline of your GDP by 24%, there's nothing you did. It declined from one day to the next day. Not a gradual decline. The whole thing just dropped. It dropped. And we said, we will get tourism going. We will use construction and stimulate the economy and grow at a much faster pace than we were before. It was the opposition that said it could not happen. Today, you are enjoying the benefits, the fruits of that policy. You are. The economy grew by 12.5%. The economy grew by 18.5%. Read the Karris report based on what? On tourism and construction. On to the same people who said you can't eat roads. And we said the things that we could not do right now. So let us focus our effort on how we can create jobs for people. So it means all the civil servants stayed employed. The government paid its debts. And the government stimulated and opened up the doors for tourism. And I'm waiting for the minister because he gave it a very nice report. I hope he knows how to read it. I hope he knows how to read it. So when you speak about you, that we inherited a surplus, I don't know what planet the member from labry is coming from. I honestly, I think he's gone from being in a plane now to a rocket. He's flying at an altitude that I don't know. What happened to something went wrong and we cannot borrow any money? Is that the statements a minister of finance would make if in fact the economy was so great because you had one year in which you were able to balance your stuff. And then when the member wants to talk about in 2019, the economy is in recession. You know what he's talking about? The economy contracted by one-tenth of 1% in 2019. And we've explained repeatedly because COVID hit in February and March and it impacted the revenues. A half, a negative one-tenth of 1%. Mr. Speaker, when members want to now, he talks about people misusing or misquoting facts. That is a complete misquote because if it was not for that, we agree with the economy every single year, something the liver party could not do. They couldn't do it, they couldn't grow it.  Every single thing that caused the economy to grow in 2021 and 2022, every single thing. You criticize, you said no, you said no, you said it cannot happen. The members sat there multiple times and said that it's only Alan Shastney who believes, nobody else in the world believes that tourism will come back. Member for Library. Who said so? You did not say so? Who said so? You said so. Yeah. I'm gonna say that loud for everybody to hear. The Prime Minister is saying he never said that I was the only person that believed that tourism grew. The same gentleman who said, I never knew that tourism was so important to our economy. A former minister of tourism. That's what he said. And I'm very happy to repeat it because it's very easy to show that because the tapes are there. This is a government I was lost. All y'all know how to do is to protect the victory. That's it. And that's what you did. So minister, when we now talk about a caring government, a passionate government, right? Wow. I have to sit there and reflect on that statement, Mr. Speaker.  You've told us the stories about the fish horn and people who wanna buy fish and they cannot buy fish and the hardships that people are going on. You know all of that. Yet, you will increase taxes in San Lucia. You will allow bus fares to go up. You've not once reprimanded, looks like about the fuel store charges that are taking place. And then you implement a policy. You say it yourself. I didn't say it. You said it. You said it's not going to impact the cost of food and it has. And yet you still don't want to admit that. Remember for Miku South. Remember for Miku South. We are debating a motion to borrow the amount of U.S. $6 million from the African Export Import Bank to finance the construction of social infrastructure and other facilities damaged or destroyed by tropical storms. Bread, condom, education, rehabilitation, climate link facility. Please ensure that your contribution is in line with the motion before us. I will not allow you to continue if you are not going to address the motion that is before us. Continue, remember for Miku South. Mr. Speaker, I continue to address the motion, but I also continue to say, to speak to the lack of foresight on this motion that this government would now recognize the need for education, this late stage in their administration, this late stage in their administration and are so desperate to go and do something now, would turn around and borrow money at 6% for seven years and want to come home and say that, oh, we're heroes. Remember for a letter, remember for a letter, and now remember to be heard in silence, please. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. That's what we're here to discuss and examples of other things that they have done to mismanage your economy. Of course, I have nowhere to run to, okay? In fact, I like to stay here and listen and be entertained by other stuff. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, I have to say to you, Mr. Speaker, if there are more presentations like the presentation by the member from Cassry Southeast, which I found despicable, disrespectful, and there's no place for that kind of discussion in the house. If the member wants to that, all means go to the market steps and speak away, but it was a disrespect to this house to have that kind of conversation. And of all the people who wants to now question people's character, oh, really, really. So, Mr. Speaker, I applaud that we're fixing up schools. It's necessary. But I'm concerned, Mr. Speaker, that there is no plan for any continuity of the work that we're speaking here, talking about here. I also want to say, Mr. Speaker, that the member, the minister of education, hopefully will give me that latitude, Mr. Speaker, spoke about the eBooks. The eBooks was an initiative to give kids a learning device that would have restricted their access to the internet. So it would be only for educational purposes. When the member, the minister, the member from January North, and the minister of education wants to mislead the house and speak about a foreigner bringing the content into the books. I mean, I had to sit there and ask the member from Schwozell if, in fact, I heard that correct. Where do you think the curriculum came from? The curriculum is the same books in our curriculum. And then when the member wants to try to play as an economist, right, you should stay out of that domain and speak about, oh, the money for the license fee is money that's being exported to the US. So when you're buying books for $1,000, where's it going? Where is it going? The school books he's buying because the license fee was to replace the school books. And so instead of the students having to spend annually $1,000 plus on school books, now they could have gotten an eBook in which it was $250. And the fact is because of COVID, the same government who said, they wanna say that we had no stimulus, the government paid for the license fee for three years for everybody. Now I want to say that he's heading in a direction that I applaud, but it has nothing to do with the eBooks. The eBooks created the platform. And I'm glad now, I am so glad now that they've recognized that empty computers are not going to solve the problem. And now that we're investing and creating a program to do what, to take the same curriculum, so what you're paying, the license fee that you're paying for, the license fee that you're paying for is for the technology, is for the technology, $250. Instead of spending $1,000 plus. And more importantly, no, not U.S. Easy, easy, 250, per subject. Oh, minister, minister, minister, minister, please, minister, minister. Minister, get your facts right. Get your PS's there, I would suggest you go and speak to the PS, okay? Crazy, crazy. At the end of the day, we did it for three years during COVID and to get people so they had a choice if they wanted to stay on the books, they could, and we knew over time that people would much rather the e-books. You're talking about the e-books have gone bad?  Where was the concern when you made the decision to go and get laptops and you had all the e-books already that we paid for? Where was that concern? And with the e-books every single time that their new edition was updated, it was updated for free. And it was also a training tool for the teachers. Maybe you want to come to the house and you want to discuss. Let's have a debate. The member from the library said, let's have an intellectual debate. Let's have that intellectual debate. Any day you want to have the debate to compare the e-books to the laptop, I will have that debate with you. And it goes through the cost and the effectiveness. Teachers now know that students are doing their homework. We know how much time the kids are spending on the programming. We know that they have the proper links and we're giving them a device that when they get into the workforce, that's exactly what they're going to be doing. Correct. Mr. Speaker, I know the members on the other side know better and they're just blowing a lot of hot air. Something they're very accustomed to being able to do. But the facts speak very differently to what the members are saying on the opposite side. Very differently to what they're saying. I look forward to the report. Invite me. Invite me. I'm very happy to come. No problem. I want to be able to participate. So, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker. I applaud the government for continuing the program as my colleague said. You know, Mr. Speaker, I heard two members in particular from the house. I'm very happy the entrepreneur school is getting repaired. But I'm also happy with the fact that and during our administration, we started repairs at the school. I'm very happy that we did one report on Mondadon. And so many other schools. So don't come when the member from Castry's north wants to sit here and talk about talk, talk, talk and everything else. Really? How many years he's been in the house? He was prime minister, minister of education, all of these things. And all those years that the state of the schools in his constituency remained at that level. Really? Had he never gone to Mondadon? Had he never gone to Mondadon? That's good. I'm very happy. But I need T. Rocher. Okay? So Mr. Speaker, every single school was touched. There was nothing to do with politics. So I wanted to dismiss that right away. And I want to dismiss the idea that they have members in this house who are bragging about how many years they've been in parliament and have been at different levels of ministry and now want to come and talk about, finally, that there's some work taking place. How come you didn't do anything before? You cared so much? You cared so much? You cared? And that was the condition? You didn't see what the state of the bathrooms were? You didn't see the state of the electricity? Everywhere I went, tell me about the Blasher schools. What about it? And I fixed it. And every year you have to fix it. The roofs, the electricity, the plumbing. Ah, there we go. Horses, horses, the same horses that you just came from doing. Mr. Speaker, you see that, Mr. Speaker? You do not want to have a serious discussion. You do not want to be held accountable for your own deeds. If we're going to move this country forward, we have to recognize, Mr. Speaker, if we're going to solve the problems in education, we need to grow the economy. But this government wants to tax the economy. You will never grow this economy by taxing it. Never. And I guarantee you that even with the march that people are going to suffer even more in this country if this government insists on holding on to the two and a half percent tax. Do you want to pay enough for health? No, absolutely. And that's why we wanted to put a healthcare insurance program and the way the healthcare insurance program. And you know, the member wants to talk about, may I, because they brought it up. The member from Castery Southeast wants to speak once as always my time. The member from Castery Southeast wants to talk about the health insurance versus universal healthcare.   Yeah, seriously. So the insurance, the insurance program we were putting in was the first step, but it was the first step that would help everyone. And everybody would be making this step up for us. You want to come in now, it's there. You didn't want to do it. You're the ones who went and promoted universal healthcare. I want to see how you're going to do universal healthcare. And you think that by fooling the people and telling them you're going to help the elderly at 80 years old, people are laughing at you all. People are laughing at you all. You're not here, you don't want to hear. People are laughing at you all. And they didn't laugh at you for not doing that thing. Oh, they did, and they put me out. But I'm saying to you, what we did, what we're doing is much better than what you're doing. So I think the collapse you're going to have is even greater. And now that you're in, and you said all the misinformation and the propaganda, now it's time for you to deliver. Go and deliver to the people of this country a better education system. Go and deliver to the people a better healthcare system. And good luck in thinking that you can do that by taxing the country. Do good luck in pretending that you're listening to the poorest of the poor. Keep fooling yourself and being fooling yourself as to how people, the resilience that people have, solutions are the most resilient people. Really? Because they suffer in silence? They suffer in silence? That's okay. It's okay. I'm only saying to you, it's for you whether you want to take the advice or not. Okay, no, obviously you're not. You know what you're doing.   Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.


So this presentation is about a case study on the Spotify model of scaling agile. So how many of you know about Spotify? How many of you use Spotify? All right. So Spotify is a music app similar to sovereign or gana.com in India. So it's a mobile-based app, as well as a web-based app, so where you can stream music. And they have extremely sound algorithms for streaming the music that you like. So think about an app, a mobile app, where you can basically listen to music, whichever you like, and it will provide you suggestions as well. So that is the beauty of the Spotify. So now, Spotify model has got nothing to do with streaming music. It's a model for scaling agile. So I think today you have heard about a number of models for scaling agile. Can you recall one of them? DAD, there are quite a few of them. And I think quite a few more will come as well. The reason is every software organization is unique and the same model may not apply for each organization based upon the way the software is built, based upon their environment, based upon their customers. So different models will apply for different situations. So in terms of scaling agile, you can either do top-down approach or do a bottom-up approach.  So that's where you scale agile bottoms up. Whereas if you're an existing company and you want to implement agile, so then you can do top-down with the directive from top management. So in the case of Spotify model, they started with a small team and then created more teams and they expanded the model. So now we look at Conway's Law. Conway's Law basically states that based upon how your organization is structured, that is how the system that the organization designs will turn out to be. So for example, three-tire architecture, you know, three groups, three layers, that's how the system turns out. So in the case of Spotify model, so you're looking at highly aligned and loosely coupled teams. So what is highly aligned? Basically, everybody is clear about the strategic goal. Everybody knows what they are supposed to do and what the company is supposed to do and what is their role in the company. So they're all highly aligned. The reason why they have to be loosely coupled is because you get less cross-functional meetings, less time spent in interacting with other teams, less dependencies. So this is the kind of situation where Spotify model will apply. So in the Spotify model, they have gone back to the agile principles and they are calling the team as squad. So what is a squad? So it's like a scrum, it could be Kanban, it could be any one of the models that are used, but they call it as a squad. And the squad has a squad lead as well as a product owner who gives ideas to the squad. So the size of the squad is limited to 10 and this is the basic unit of development at Spotify. So what are the squad responsibilities? As you can see, the squad has the squad lead, a dev backend, the dev app, the quality engineer, the PEM and the tech ops. So this gives you a good idea about what kind of team structure this is. This is a fully functional, responsible for the entire feature kind of team. And there are multiple teams like that. So the squad will own the conception, the design, the construction, the testing deployment operation scaling, the full top to bottom of the software delivery. Plus the squad lead will choose what particular model they want to follow, either it is scrum or Kanban or waterfall. You will also do some management activities such as PTO and no ticket assignment if that is a model that you use. So why we have this kind of model is that it gives maximum independence to the team and the team owns the whole product. So now we move on to a bigger organization structure which is called the tribe. So in the tribe, it is responsible for a major portion of the software, but they're all related together. So for example, a tribe can consist of three squads, two squads, even a single squad. Again, the size of the tribe is limited to 100. As we saw in today's speech, some of these sizes are based upon the organization structure and hierarchy and research that has been done. So sharing squad details. So the squad has to be as transparent as possible. So the reason is that everybody should know what the squad is doing as well as how the work of the squad is affecting their work. So for example, you want to make sure that the dependencies are minimized. So we need to make aware the actual work of the squad. So you can use any methodology, any software tool that will help you achieve this. So the reason is that we want to have a highly transparent and open system so there is no hiding of information and things like that. So cross-squad communication. So there is a daily meeting to list dependencies only for the duration of a cross-squad effort. So basically a squad cannot complete the entire software end to end. So there will be dependencies, but the software should be designed in such a way that the dependencies are minimized. So this is the way in which the company that I consulted with ensured the cross-squad communication is minimized. So the project managers were used to take care of this cross-squad communication and for scheduling meetings for the squad members. So this is a slight change in the role. So different companies can use different ways for taking care of this communication. So the Spotify model is kind of an open source model where you basically adapt the solution to fit your organization. So chapters and guilds. So yesterday we heard a talk from chapter lead of Spotify. So what is a chapter? So all team members from the same tribe who belong to the same function form a chapter. And what is a guild? So all team members from different tribes who are interested in the same function form a guild. So can you see what is the chapter and what is the guild here? Anybody? So the pink boxes that I have marked here are the dev web from the chapter. So they have a chapter lead and then the QEs, they are forming a guild. So basically they share information, they share the latest technological updates. They have a slightly different reporting structure. Again, it is up to your organization to change it any way you want. So the big question is, will it all work together? So you have, as you can see, you have a group of people all working on their part of the software. They take care of the full front to back, all the operations. And they are having very, as far as possible, very minimal communication across the squads. So do you think such a model will work? Well, in this case, actually it works because different squads are producing output at a different pace. Squads are dependent on one another. Each squad is the mini startup and competition among squads exists which helps the product development. So this kind of organization, which I talked about earlier, highly aligned and loosely coupled organization. So for those kinds of organizations where your software is constructed or architected in such a way that it is possible to have this kind of independence, then the model will work. For a squad is, the size of the squad is limited to 10, the maximum size. So if you require more work, then you basically split the functionality into two independent parts and then let them work together. So ideally you should have a single product owner for each squad, but of course it depends upon the situation. You may have a product owner who takes care of all the squads. So it varies based on organization to organization and the amount of work, like today we heard lots of information about the role of the product owner and how it should expand and how it needs more support. So based upon that you can see like what is the workload and how well prepared they are, what is your backlog and things like that and decide how to form the organization structure. So the solution. So the squad dependencies are identified and resolved by senior management and agile coaches if needed. So we need help from the senior management to achieve this. So the senior management has already made everything transparent. So the work of all the squads are visible to each and every squad, right? And if there is a dependency between squads, so we identify, okay, this is the dependency that we are facing. So let's try to resolve it as soon as possible. So that squad will take that as higher priority and execute on that. So these squads work to some extent is controlled by the business objectives as well as the technical objectives that the squad itself has. So it's a combination of both the goals. So it should not be like the squad will work on some features that nobody wants. The squad owns the product, but at the same time it is responsible for delivering the business requirements. So how do we achieve this concept of different parts of the software coming out at different times and how to take care of all those conflicts? For example, if you have a software that is installed, then you have to basically ship a CD to somebody or ask them to download. So it is a single package. So in such a scenario, how do you ensure that the software that is produced at different rates by these individual squads are coming out on time? So that is where we come to the concept of the release trains. So here we have this regular periodic releases at specific schedule. So what happens is you have a bi-weekly release for the entire product, not just for a small part of the functionality. So the entire product, the entire software product gets released every two weeks, every three weeks, every month. So the higher the frequency it is, the better it is for the squads to work together. Again, continuous delivery is another option. And the other trick that people use is feature toggling. Basically, for some of you are familiar with it already, it is basically enabling a feature based on license keys or versions. So that, for example, there is a squad A which is producing a feature A and then there is a squad B which is producing feature B and feature A needs feature B to work, but feature A is already ready, but feature B will come in the next release. So what they will do is they will release the feature A, but it will be hidden. So as a switch, it will turn it on once the dependent feature is available. So these are the ways in which we can control the output of the different squads and coordinating the output of the different squads. So team ability and autonomy. So this is one of the concepts that we want to give to the teams. So more the teams that are more autonomous are high ability. So those kinds of teams will find the Spotify model very exciting because you can have one squad which is working on Java, another squad which is working on C sharp, another squad is working on Node.js. So different kinds of technologies can be brought into the company and they can develop their own solutions. So again, they should have good, very high confidence level. So there should be not looking for instructions from higher management or the architect to say, okay, this is what you're going to do from now on. So they want people with initiative who will take up responsibilities and execute on them. Second thing is, is there any role for an architect in this model? Yes, the architect is kind of like a consultant within the team. So he will move from squad to squad based upon like the current need of the squad. So maybe this squad requires the help of an architect to complete a solution. Yes, the architect moves in and helps there. Similarly, for example, there is an external client or external some dependency which is not following the agile methodology. So there is a project manager who will help out in terms of ensuring that these goals are met at these delivery points. So this is a combination of both pure agile where we deliver the software when it is ready to fix a deadline model where you can say, okay, we have to have this feature by this date. So please put in all the resources. So it's a very flexible model. So it gives the autonomy as well as the ability for the company to provide the best results which will give the maximum value for the business. So what is the outcome? So the outcome of this model is there is competition among squads. So no squad wants to be the bottleneck of any other squad to solve a business problem. So for example, you have a squad which takes care of, let's say payments and then they are looking at to get some VMs. So there is a squad which takes care of providing VMs. So the moment you see a lot of requests going to that squad, then you realize, okay, so we need some resources in that squad to take care of this problem that the business is trying to solve. So the agile coach and the management has to check if there are more members needed for a squad. So for example, the requirement is huge. So the squad's responsibilities increase. So you can increase the size of the squad. Similarly, you can split a squad into two separate squads. Again, as time progresses, now the squad can shrink in its responsibilities because maybe the product is getting sunset or something. And the tribes themselves are much more long-lived. So they will be having three squads, four squads. They will expand the number of squads. They will construct, decrease the number of squads. But at the end of the day, they will still be responsible for a major portion of the software functionality. So how the tribe will solve this functionality using different technologies, different methodologies is up to the tribe. So here is the system overview when you have this kind of software that allows you to plug in releases at any time. So as you can see, you can mix the chocolate version one with strawberry version two and with butterscotch version three. So things like that can happen. So your software should be robust enough and your architecture has to be robust enough to accommodate this kind of flexibility in terms of releases. So this is the actual real-life model. So this is a case of an organization where it was following a traditional SDLC model and moving into a pure Spotify model where the freedom for the developers increases and the autonomy increases and their engagement also increased. So you can see there are different sizes of the tribes. There are some tribes with just one squad. Then there are project managers and business analysts which are who are embedded into the squad in some cases or in some cases they are outside helping a few squads. Again, as you can see a product owner is helping out two squads, two small squads whereas in other cases a product owner is responsible for only a single squad. So it's a very flexible model and it allows a lot of freedom for the company to organize the software. So here is the question then. So what about reuse? So what will happen if everybody is building different pieces of the software from the top to the bottom and everybody is recreating the same logic somewhere? So the idea is that some basic functionality or basic features should be embedded as or mandated from the management. From here is where the chief architect helps out a little bit. Says okay, these are the things that you need to take care and you need to adhere to in the system so that you are all able to produce something like this. So suppose you are going to build a cake which doesn't fit in any of these boxes then it will be very difficult to serve that as to the customers. So for example, so we say a restful JSON endpoint shall be the default so that things like that so it will be easier for people to communicate with the different output of the different squad. Again, there should be agreements between the squad. So if this squad is saying I own this part of the functionality and I provide you this agreement so whatever request that you make I will return the result within one second or three seconds and SLAs things like that they have to agree to. So it is pretty much like a small company within a bigger company so that there is a lot of independence for the team as well as the commitment from the team that they are responsible for that piece of software so the ownership increases. So here is the reference for the Spotify model basically it's an open source model so it was invented or discovered at Spotify and then it has been adopted in many various organizations and actually there is a small one pager in the book that you have been given on scaling agile along with all the other models that are there. So thank you, any questions? So can I ask questions? So how many of you think that your organization has this kind of software, the architecture system? So I would say for example, software which is more of a phasing website kind of software or mobile app kind of software that would be a software which would be ideally suitable for this Spotify model but if you have a lot of dependencies, agreements and contracts with the government and things like that that you have to ensure so that you don't fall out of the law then maybe this model may not be suitable because the model works in such a way that people are producing output at their best pace and they are very much engaged into the product and it's very hard for them to wait for different approvals and staging and things like that. So here is the ideal system overview. So to some extent as we move forward to the cloud and the source model, more and more systems will become like this where you have all these features available in different portions of the way and then their full feature teams where they take care of producing the entire piece of this trade, right? Well, the main advantage that we saw is that the engagement of the team increases so the team output is higher and then in terms of handovers, very less handover so basically any production issue comes along immediately the same development team takes care of the issue so the customers are extremely happy and then you will see new features coming out very quickly so for example, you want to have a newer version of payments, a new credit card or any one of these features that you can think of so all of those things will come out very quickly so the velocity is very high so the organization initially has about 100 people so 100 people who got into the transformation first so they were split up in, they formed the tribe and then they were created into separate squads and split into separate squads with squad leads and a lot of changes in the organization but from before where the software was not getting ready was getting delayed so the changes improved the availability of the new features of the software so that way it was a big advantage the challenges I would say in terms of one of the big challenges is how to evaluate the team members in terms of performance and other things so that is a big challenge that came up so some of the HR aspects have to be changed as well to say okay because of in terms of agile methodology these are the goals that you have and then you have to adhere to these goals which are basically our self-director basically the individual is asked to provide the goals that he would like to achieve so same way like the scrum says the individual team member decides what story he would pick up similarly the goals for the individual person is to be determined by the person himself and then it has to be approved by the manager so there is some level of standardization by the manager saying okay these are the goals the team has selected on average and then based upon that you will see like so okay this team member has performed well he has embraced the change whereas some team members who require a lot of guidance they would not be able to embrace the change so that is how you can say the main challenges in terms of the goals where basically in terms of software output as well as individual development so for example somebody would say I would like to learn F-sharp and implement the software in F-sharp and somebody would say I am going to do some DevOps activities so those kinds of technology challenges as well as responsibilities for different increased scope of the features so you say this is a complex feature so let me take this so those kinds of goals that came up and based upon the goals that we set and then the banding so to speak has to be set in such a way that the goals that they set and the expectations that they have or matching and then based on that the review happens so in terms of productivity see the main thing that was measured was basically the velocity but the thing is the velocity should not be measured across squads again as we see the squad is very flexible it is increasing in team members decreasing in team members so all of those changes had to be accounted for so for that a lot of one-on-ones were you know done to ensure that it is you know there is a alignment of the employee with the company's objectives as well as whether the employee is able to commit to the work that is expected at the same time is able to deliver to his commitment so those kinds of things were the ones that were decided you know the primary determinant for a performance so in terms of leadership style yeah initially it was a very command and control where the project managers desired who you know what projects to pick up and which project would add more value so there will be a lot of competition among the project managers saying you know my project has highest value so let's implement this project whereas now most of the value is the value is determined at the much higher level business level so the project managers have turned into more like let me remove the blocks it's more like helping out the team let me remove the blocks let me communicate with the client or let me communicate with the you know the non-agile folks so that they are all in sync so that is how in terms of the organizational structure that was affected so the initiative has come from the top management from the CIO himself and the CTO so they had primed the organization for this model for almost six months with the option to go for different types of coaching different types of models whatever they want to adopt so all the flexibility was provided so basically the management top management itself took a step back saying okay the only guidance we are going to give you is you are free to do this and this is your business code so that way the individual the goal setting happened not from top to bottom but from bottom to top well there are many people who didn't fit in into this culture who are more into you know let me stick to the old command and control model I would you know I'm used to this kind of style but there were people who adapted to the new style and you know got used to the new kind of responsibilities that the company expected them to do and in terms of people who were not able to adapt to the responsibilities they basically moved on to different opportunities so if you look at the structure so you have a project manager who is needed only if there is a dependency between squads or between the squad and external agency so project managers themselves have now become you know moving consultants they will be you know for three months with this squad ensuring that this objective is achieved and then they move on to a different thing so the project managers are like a flexible a part of the squad so the technology folks so basically the focus turns to the technology folks which leads to good engagement and better output so the focus is on the technology people to own a piece of software and wherever they need assistance they will be taking using project manager or the architect for different purposes so the main recommendation you can say from a 45 model is that the team has to be co-located so in case of you have a team so anyway there is only 10 people right 10 people is the maximum size of the squad so if you cannot co-locate them then you basically split them into two squads and have them all co-located but if it is absolute must that you should have you know the squads split in different continents for various reasons like supporting for example production issues squad so for that you will have all these daily meetings where you basically have multiple meetings with the squad which is located here and the squad which is located there so that way the coordination has to increase so there is a cost to having the squad split so in terms of coordination for example there was a case where a factory has to implement a hardware system and then the customers had to be told about that you know the implementation so the software team and the hardware team so they were connected closely with one another with the help of a project manager and then this project manager also had a project manager on the you can say the hardware side so there are two project managers who are interacting one between the hardware team the software team and another between the hardware team and an external team so they were in close contact so it is more like two project managers helping out in terms of the coordination and the messages that are getting transferred from the client to the software team so it wasn't basically giving directions okay you have to do this, you have to do that because basically these are our goals and these are higher priority and this is the deadline for us so there is an element of deadline because you know there are external people involved there so in those cases there were some you can say non-agile models were introduced because non-agile methodologies were there because you are putting a deadline saying you have to finish it by this point but for those you know urgent situations which are happening in any which can happen in any business so we had some external resources basically people from other squads come in and help out so ideally the main bottlenecks that were occurring was basically in terms of the machine's availability so we had different squads asking for different VMs because we want to deploy each of these services into different VMs so there was a positive of resources to take care of that situation so it's a work in progress and so I think it's mentioned there in the slide that it is it is not a concrete model that has worked in that it's up to completion but it is like a work in progress so we are identifying all these bottlenecks and removing the bottlenecks for example in terms of the VMs it has been the rides have been transferred to the squad leader himself so that he can create the VMs that are necessary for the squad again there is a lot of you know give and take because if you create more VMs then it becomes more expensive whereas you know business wise but software says you know you have to have as many VMs as possible so these kinds of decisions are made to some extent given the freedom to the squad leader to some extent by the business manager thing feel free to you know use up to this limit and if you need more just come and ask any other questions so the main thing is each squad is responsible for its own unique functionality so for example logistics would be one squad's responsibility then suddenly there is an external demand from a client saying okay from tomorrow onwards I'm going to charge you 10 percent more or 15 percent more suddenly you have to you have new work which is going to save the company billions of dollars at the same time your squad is very lean and they are already working on some next priority in a higher priority system so those kinds of situation basically is coming from the business value that is gained from this particular feature implementation so for example we discover a new a competitor introduces a new product which we can also introduce very quickly but if you wouldn't introduce it we would lose a lot of revenue so those kinds of business situations urgent requirements lead basically the management to say okay these are the priorities for us because of the value into the business so okay so we have a slight tweak here basically we planned such and such situation but the situation has now changed so let's see who can help out in this they mainly basically based on for example the architect himself is like a consultant within the tribe so he would immediately join in and help out and then he would also you know identify other members who can join and help out so those kinds of judgments are left to the technology team but the business decision is coming from the business manager who says we have a higher priority here so let's focus on it so this is basically building known product so hopefully it was very informative alright thank you very much


One of Donatello's earliest commissions was for the Armorer's Guild, a very powerful organization in Florence, and it's at the church of Orsan Michele. And he was commissioned to create a statue, a pinnacle relief, which is that triangular one at the top, and what's called a predello relief at the bottom of the whole ensemble, showing St. George, who was the patron saint of their guild. St. George was a warrior saint who lived during the Roman Empire, and of course, because of that, there is an emphasis on armor in this particular niche at Orsan Michele, because it's for the Armorer's Guild. This predello scene below the statue of St. George shows the most famous legend from the saint's life, where he's saving a princess from a dragon. So after he saved her, the entire town nearby that she was a part of actually converted to Christianity. He slayed the dragon with his sword while riding on a horse, which we see in the center of the relief, where George is battling the dragon. And the carving technique here is specific to Donatello. He invented it, and it's unusual. It's called Schiazzato, which literally means squashed in Italian, so it's a very low depth relief sculpture. If we compare the carving on Donatello's St. George relief to this one here by Nani Di Banco, which shows the four crown saints, we can see that Nani Di Banco's relief is much higher. So the figures are almost sculpted completely in the round, attached to a flat background, as opposed to the St. George, which has a bit more depth and dimension to it. The scene here also shows carvers and stone masons in their workshop, which is fun to look at from the perspective of materiality as well. One of the advantages to Donatello's Schiazzato technique is visible in this angled view of the St. George relief, where we see that George's head and the horse's head, the mane of the horse's hair, actually touch the top of the marble tablature above there, and they project out from the background, which is actually curved. It's concave in the upper area, and this would allow people to see the relief much more easily from below, because it's actually set much higher above eye level. So observers would be able to read it much more easily than they might Nani Di Banco's similar Pradella. Because the niche of St. George is now inside of a museum, and no longer on the exterior of Orsan Michele, we can see more of the actual construction of the relief. So inside of those blue boxes, you can see the seams where the marble is joined together, and the relief face, where the seam is carved, is actually wider at the part that touches the wall than in the front carved portion of the relief. So the side pieces actually sit partially in front of that marble block and touch more seamlessly together, so the seams actually aren't visible when the ensemble is completely together on the exterior of the church. Looking at this detail of the princess in front of the building, we see that her head, an upper body, projects out further off the relief plane than her feet as well, so it also accounts in the same way as St. George and the Dragon for the fact that the relief was viewed from below. And at the very right edge of the relief, we can see that there is a deeper carving inside of this actual building, so we see a recession into that space. And these sorts of differences and depths in carving, while very minimal, are something that Nani Di Banco couldn't do with the flat surface of his pradella. Zooming in to look at the view inside the building, we see that Donatello also carved tiles on the floor, and he actually did that with a pointed chisel, where he just barely scratched the surface of the marble. We can see that the pilaster on the left, that sort of column that makes up the doorway, stands a bit taller off the face of the relief, casting an actual shadow onto this interior space, something, of course, that would happen in real life when we're looking from a sunny exterior into a shadowed building as well. Zooming in behind the princess, we can see just how much detail Donatello carved into his Schia Ciotto relief. We see a Corinthian capital, that decorative capital behind the princess's head, and of course these beautiful trees. On them we can also see individual leaves. So Donatello spent a lot of time creating these to give a sense of atmospheric perspective, something that was very important in the Renaissance, and up until this point had only been done in painting. But because of this lower-level relief carving, the Schia Ciotto technique, he was able to accomplish it in marble as well.


So hola, ¿qué tal? It's really nice to be here. I'm going to speak in English, unfortunately. My Spanish is not so good. I can order drinks and things, but that's a good start. So get a headset if you're having trouble with the understanding. So I'm here to talk about humanity and technology. It's interesting, you know, when I started speaking about this five years ago, we started talking about digital ethics. Nobody understood what I was trying to say, because, you know, digital ethics was like, how do you use the Internet? You know, do you use too much of the mobile phone or gender bias or so? But today it's funny, is today we're talking about the future of humanity, the future of us. Because technology is now at the point to where we can say in 10 years it will be unlimited in what it can do. I mean, today what we're seeing with the smartphone and the possible that that will be nothing compared to 10 years when we have augmented and virtual reality available to us and most of us will work in a virtual reality space and very soon 15 years when we can connect directly to the Internet. This is not science fiction. I mean, 10 years ago you thought about science fiction being WhatsApp. You know, free phone calls and that was science fiction. I mean, it's mind-blowing the things that we're seeing around us. This is the main topic. Humanity and technology are converging in technical terms. In spiritual terms, yeah, that's a different debate. I'm not religious, but this is an interesting topic, you know, when you think about who are humans and what are machines, what's the difference? I mean, clearly you can see this is already our second brain, our external brain. This is where we keep things. It's not too far-fetched. You can say in 10 years this is our brain and we cannot get up in the morning without connecting to the brain. That would be a very sad moment because when you think about really what's happening here in our world is that it's going to change more than 20 years than the previous 300 years and I think 90% of that is good. We can defeat cancer, not 20 years, maybe 30 years. We have unlimited food, unlimited energy, cheap healthcare, global... I mean, that's amazing, that's like Nirvana. I mean, today Richard Branson has invested last year in a company that makes artificial meat in the lab. It's actually a real meat, but it's grown in the lab and right now it's 2,000 euros a pound. But if this works, we can feed everyone. I mean, if we distribute, you know, if the price comes down to 10 cents. But these are all the trends, virtual reality, big data, artificial intelligence.  Every day there's a new innovation. Every day there's somebody else launching a new thing that is the next big technology and here's the bottom line, it could be heaven or it could be hell. But technology doesn't care what it is. Technology is machines, it's just about efficiency, making things work. Technology does not have any moral code or it just makes things work and if the mission is to make paper clips, it will make paper clips from us, if it can.  I mean, there's just ants, there's plenty of ants. So maybe in the future technology will step on us by accident. This is a very big discussion. We have to think about who we want to be. If we want heaven, I think we can have heaven using technology. But we're going to have to talk about what that means. And then we're talking about politics, culture, social contract, ethics, economies, economics. We're not just talking about money. If we were to use every technology that we have to make money, we can probably make 500 trillion dollars connecting our brain to the Internet. But do we really want that? Do we want to live in a world where longevity is a standard so we get to live to be 120 and some people get to live forever using technology? How far away is that? 50 years? But imagine if living to be 120 is the new normal if you have money. That strikes me as a prime reason for terrorism. All the rich people can live to be 120 and we just die with 60 because we don't have the same means. It could be heaven, we could become as God. Sorry if you are religious. Superhuman.   Look at what happened to social media. This is social media.  Why do you think in the last 10 years we had this huge wave towards right-wing thinking in Europe? The polarization of media. I mean, why do we have this? The answer is probably social media. And before all of that we thought, okay, it's a great tool. I love social media. But we're going to have to go a little bit further than just making it available.  If we're going to invent how to fight diabetes, Alzheimer's or cancer using technology, if we can only save one person, that's enough of an argument. We have to do that. But if we invent these technologies, we also have to make sure they are both safe, equally distributed, available to everyone. And also there's an ethical purpose of what it's supposed to be doing because the same technology that can fight cancer can build a super soldier. And God knows we don't want super soldiers. We don't want any soldiers, but we don't want super soldiers. I mean, this talking technology has no ethics. So Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, spoke in Brussels a couple of days ago about digital ethics and data protection. And he, considering that he's the CEO of the richest company in the world, pretty much, this is a quote. We shouldn't sugarcoat the consequences. This is surveillance. And these stockpiles of personal data serve only to enrich the companies that collect them. Now, what companies is he talking about? Of course, not his own, really. It's interesting. Apple doesn't really do that very much. But what we have today in media and communications, to a large degree, is surveillance. In many ways, it's also the opposite. It's freedom, right? But look at Turkey. The same technology that was used for Turkish people to express themselves is now being used to put them in jail. So technology has both angles. This is obviously a big discussion at Telefonika, where we are right now. And by the way, thanks for Telefonika Foundation and the forward to Kultura for inviting me. The idea of the new digital bill of rights and new social contract SAP has an AI ethics proposal. This is a software company. It talks about AI ethics. This is a huge topic. People talking about new laws that we need. And the biggest thing is that we should not let technology firms decide what our future is. I mean, look around today. I mean, I work for lots of these technology companies as a speaker. So I see it firsthand. Who decides the conversation on the future? It isn't us. It's not the government. It is not the people. It is not the political parties. It is the tech companies. The tech companies tell the story of the future. And they tell it really nicely. Leader being IBM, of course. We should not let the story of our future be told by companies that make hardware and software. This is a human story. It's not a sales, not a marketing pitch. Look at the discussion about AI and ethics exploding. Just a couple of days ago, Tim Berners-Lee published a new contract for the web. This is the Worldwide Web Foundation at the Web Summit in Barcelona. This is the hottest topic of the year. Gardner says digital ethics is the number one topic for 2019. It's funny. Gardner is a completely a tech company organization. He talks about techy things like virtual reality and cloud computing. And now they're saying ethics is the biggest topic in tech. And I mean this positively. It's not like we're going to spoil the party or something. I mean ultimately what is the point of having technology if we can't be human? I mean that would defeat itself. How would you have happy consumers if we're robots? I mean the whole system kind of perverts itself. So digital ethics really is the difference between whatever is possible in technology terms and what is a good thing to do for humans that provides happiness. Well what is happiness? That will take another five hours to discuss. But societal flourishing. Is this good for us? Maybe the mobile phone is good for us. Would it be good for us to be controlled by an AI? I doubt it. Where do we stop? We're living in a world of exponential change. And the problem is that technology is exponential. This is after all just machines. And we are not. You can say as much as you want even if you're 15 years old. You can melt the tiles better than I can. That is true. But you're not going to be exponentially powerful. Machines will. We're going to have quantum computing. That's already here. In 10 years we have a machine with the combined computing power of all human brains in the world. That's a machine with an IK of a trillion. It could be extremely useful if we can use it right. So we're at the perfect point of this. But our ethics have not kept up with our technology. Einstein has already talked about this in the 60s. But now it's finally true. So we need to make sure that we use technology in a way that will actually serve its purpose. Which is to help us be better humans. Not to help itself make more money. This is otherwise called as the Facebook Dilemma. Facebook was a place where we had a purpose. Now Facebook has become its own purpose. Facebook is a place where we are the content of it to generate billions and trillions of dollars from our data. And in return, addicting us. Data is the new oil. And AI is the new electricity, artificial intelligence. This is what all the tech companies are pursuing. Data, intelligence, cloud computing. I mean, we're in the building of a telephone or a phone company, right? A company that provides connectivity. That's part of this whole empire. We're talking about a 50 trillion dollar gold rush here. I mean, every single company in the world wants to be part of this. I mean, look at who's actually leading the gold rush. This giant vortex of connectivity. Look at these companies. Top four companies on this list. They have grown tremendously. They have more money than the GDP of France. They have tripled in value in four years. The richest companies in the world are paid the least taxes. They're the least organized about the side effects of technology. They make 40 times as much money per employee as a traditional company. The average salary at Facebook is $245,000. Think about that for a second. How much money do you make per year in Indonesia? $5,000. Yet every Indonesian is using Facebook. Look at the Internet of Things. $14.4 trillion. AI, $15.7 trillion. So do you really think that these companies will go slow on developing things that could have a harmful effectiveness? That's like saying to the oil companies, check out the oil because you know the CO2. Same problem. We're going to have to think a little bit further because now these machines can actually think. They can hear. They can speak. They can learn. Now, before you get too worried, when we think about these human terms, thinking here, learning, speaking, that's not what machines do at all. Machines don't think like humans for at least another 50 years. So it's not like that. But enough if they have machine thinking. That's already plenty because now we have artificial intelligence becoming pretty much active in every place of society. Look what happened here. Language translation, intelligent assistance, Alexa and so on. Call centers, debating, poker, ghost, speech recognition. Basically computing is coming all the way rising to the top. And all of us use artificial intelligence every single day with email, Google Maps, Tinder. Now, you don't use Tinder. I know that. We'll be just some other people somewhere. But basically what we have here, we have a cut-off, right? That's going to be difficult for machines to do things that takes a human ingenuity. And that's our hope for the future. Will that bar rise? Yes, it will. How far will it rise? We don't know, but here's the biggest problem. We don't want a machine that has what's called AGI, artificial general intelligence. That's what we have. We are generally intelligent. We don't want a machine to have this.  Not by purpose, just by accident. Like stepping on an ant, petting a horse. And we'd be the horses of the digital age. So intelligent assistance, AI, that's fine. But an arms race on smart machines? Very bad idea. And we are already there. Putin already says that that's what he wants. Of course he says many things, but he says that he wants to make sure that Russia is number one. China wants to make sure China is number one. I don't know about Spain, but we'll see about that. But basically this is a huge conversation because we're going to what's called an intelligence explosion. A machine that can do anything. The other day I was surprised a week ago I saw a robot that can make a dental implant. A robot can be a dentist. This was an operation in Japan where the machine did the whole thing by itself. Not sure I would want to go there, but... So here's a key question. What happens to us? What happens to the things that make us human? I think we're going to need a moratorium on artificial general intelligence. Not on AI or fancy software, smart machines. I think that is disruptive, but probably good. But in a machine that's like us, I think that's a bad idea because we're building a new meta-intelligence. We're connecting everything. This is what phone companies do. They connect everything. Now we're going to have a trillion connected devices. We're going to build a new nervous system. That's really what we're building. A brain. In fact, Google calls it the brain. It's like five or six. There's even a European Union brain project. So then we have all these minor questions. Security, privacy, rights, sustainability. I call these minor questions because when you have conversations with companies about the future, these are questions that matter after you have a couple of drinks. As Bartolt Brecht liked to say, dinner first, then morals. We cannot sustain this. I tell you in ten years we're going to be at a place where this is a reality. And then we're going to say, well, that's really bad because now I can no longer get insurance because the system knows that I smoke. You shouldn't smoke anyway, but of course. So Tim Cook again said technology can do great things, but it does not want to do great things. That's because it doesn't want anything. If technology is going to do great things, then we have to make it do great things. We have to have the right government, the right politics. Every politician needs a driver's license for the future, a test. I propose that we test every single mayor, public, official, whoever they are all the way up to the prime minister and the king, all the way up to say, do you have it? Are you aware of the future? Can you decide what it takes? Because now we're going into the world that will no longer be about this whole debate if we can do something that's today. The new debate is why we're doing something. And this is the question that Telefonica is trying to answer with the social contract debate and the digital ethics. It's no longer about technical feasibility. We're getting to a world that is frankly unsustainable. Social media is built on addiction. Social media companies have hundreds of neuroscientists trying to figure out how to keep you there. Like cigarettes companies used to do.  And they're ultimately a danger to democracy. If social media companies want to help us build democracy, let them hire journalists. Make them pay for 30,000 journalists in Europe to work and get paid by Facebook but stay where they are. And then we're going to the future where we basically have the same problem that we have with green energy. Nobody cared about the externalities of oil and gas or nuclear until we have the stuff that we have today. And that is 485 ppm. Climate change, warming, all the stuff we're going to have to eat in the next 20 years. That is everywhere. Now the same thing is going to happen with technology. The externalities of technology, surveillance, loss of privacy, machine thinking. We have to address them. Otherwise we'll be in the same place and we are today with the climate. In 10 years we're going to sit back and say we have like, you know, whatever, 1,000 ppm so to speak of digital pollution. We need to think about that as a way of where it's going. So I have proposed this digital ethics council as a way of putting that into place an organization of 50, maybe 60 people around the world who get paid very nicely to do the job of thinking about what we actually want. You would be surprised how much we agree what we want even between China, Russia, India, US and Europe.  There is a 1% that wants to be more than human. And we'll find that out in Burgos tomorrow, right? So I'm going to wrap up by saying basically as our lives move into the cloud, this is the key question. How do we put the human back inside? And as the next speaker will tell you this involves silence, boredom, mystery, secrets, things that make us say we have to protect them. We have to create an EPA for humanity, a protection agency for humanity. Because as much as I love technology and the money that comes with it, obviously everybody loves that, the convenience, what does it do if we can't be human? What's the point? It does not actually, you know, the biggest danger today is not that we're going to be killed by robots. That is a danger in 50 years. The biggest danger is this, we become too much like them. We get lazy, we stop thinking, we leave the work to them. And that also impacts our education. We have to think about that, we have to really talk about not just the STEM education but the combination of the two. I call it HECI, Humanity, Ethics, Creativity. Why do we stop teaching kids music, or art, or sports, or philosophy?  This is the only thing that makes us human, we take it away. We teach them how to be a machine.   It's very important that we put this on equal footing. 50, 50. The science and everything else, because here's what's happening, we have the same cards we had for thousands of years, but these are the cards of tech. A new card every week. We must invest as much in humanity as we do in technology. That's easier said than done. I realize, we'll talk about what that means shortly. So I summarize by saying this is the inevitable future. Basically technology is absolutely everywhere. Big data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, virtual reality, the blockchain. I mean, that could go on forever. The list is basically endless. And we're talking about hundreds of trillions of dollars, but on top of all that stuff, we have to think about how we put humanity on top of technology. Because the purpose of technology is to make us happy, not to make itself happy. And this is what we are. So very important, the future has awesome humans on top of amazing technology. And I think for that we have to collaborate to make that work. Think about how we will get there and how we're going to affect it. Thanks very much for listening.


I'm in the tactile booth with Kevin Murphy, PhD, and he appears to have Legos in front of him. What are we looking at here, Kevin? Well, you are right. They are Legos, but they've been surgically altered and educated to the Braille code. So they have Braille dots on them? Yes. This is this is how I taught my own son how to read and write Braille back in 1981. Kevin was 13 then and had all the attitude a 13-year-old ought to have. He was totally blind. Just like a regular kid. Oh yeah, mad at the world. Mostly mad at himself. But he had cerebral palsy as well as being totally blind. He had motor problems, touch problems, and his school teachers finally threw their hands in the air and said, we can't teach him to read. He'll never learn to read. And of course that upset mom and I. Didn't buy that story. Well, didn't want to. But it was really a no-brainer. We just turned to the only thing in the world that he wasn't mad at. And that was Legos? That was his Legos, right? So I cut up his Legos into the Braille code. By the way, this is audio as well as video, so we're going to do a lot of description of everything here. Okay. Very quickly, Braille is made up of just these six dots. Dot one, dot two, dot three, dot four, dot five, dot six. So if you wanted to make a C, for instance, in Braille, you'd use just dot one and four and so forth. It's really a magic poetic language that makes a great deal of sense. Very quickly, Louis Braille set it up so that all the letters A through J are a variation of this letter G, these four dots. He just used the top four dots. Then when he wanted to go on from K to T, all he did was add dot three. This is B with dot three as L. C with dot three as M and so forth. I never knew that. Oh, that's awesome. Now, down here, we're getting in a little trouble because W is British and in 1825, that was not good in France. In France, if you wanted W like we, it's OUI. So they have no use for a W. So Louis didn't include it in his patent. So if we just pretend there are no W's in the world, we can go on and see that all he did to finish the alphabet was add dot six. U is K with dot six. V is L with dot six. I see the pattern. Right. As long as you skip W, now I learned a little something about the alphabet, too. So who are these best for? Best for anybody who wants to explore Braille, for any reason. Adults who lose their vision. They're especially useful. I make a mathematics set. I don't have it with me. But a blind child in school is expected to learn mathematics as you and I would have if we were given a typewriter. Oh, jeez. That's a little slow. There are only there are only three ways other than this to work with Braille. You can use a slate and stylus, which is like a little punch card with a that's like like your voting. Yeah, you you you clamp the paper in between and it has little rectangles on top of the paper and below the paper are the little wells that you push with your stylus and you can make Braille that way. Of course, you're going in the wrong direction. You have to turn it over to read it. The you can do it, of course, with a you'd have to write it backwards. Yeah, you would. But you don't want to tell a Braille teacher that that's backwards because they'll yell at you and I don't know why they but that's a head turner. So six is where one should be and no three four is where one should be. Exactly. But they don't want their Braille students thinking of it as backwards. They want the written Braille, for instance, the written Braille for A would be dot four, whereas the reading Braille would be dot one. Like you have to learn two alphabets then. Exactly. So while I've been standing here, we were setting up to do the interview. Three people came by and looked at me and said, these things are awesome. And they were specifically talked about in school. So are you finding uptick on this? I've got them in schools all over the world. I've got them in South Africa, Sweden, Australia, Beijing, all over the United States. So in Chinese Braille is just Braille? The Chinese-ordered English Braille. In the world, most of the real good Braille reading material is in English. Oh, interesting. Okay. So how do you sell this? Is there a package deal or how does it work? Well, a set consists of the entire Braille code for whatever you're going. Those six dots I showed you mathematically can only be combined 63 ways. Okay. So this is an English literary set. And so what he's holding up is maybe two feet by one foot with big Lego blocks. So how many blocks is that? Well, this is 160. So the entire set is 320. It's on a board like this, which is a worksheet.  Right. And this one with the Legos on it is just another one of those boards to keep your Legos. Okay, to storm. So I would sell the I would sell the Legos and two of these boards come with the set. And then some children, this is just too much real estate, especially buying children. So I sell two of these boards. And so this is a little one that's maybe eight by six. It's 10 by four. Sorry, eight inches by six inches. I meant right. Okay, 10 Braille cells by four, but eight by six. And I make the sets in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, mathematics, music notation, computer Braille code. Wow. And by that you're talking about are those, since it's Braille, what do you mean it's in Italian or French? Well, they only have those 63 characters. You, by the end of the day, will probably come across 10,000. So they have to come and compete with us and do make those 63 characters work as if they were 10,000. Wow. They do it in very clever ways. This is a letter D. This is called a dropped D. Now this is this drop D. I've marked it D D D I S period. And it's really very logical how they can call this three things. If it starts a word, it's not a period and it's not a double D. You would start the word dismembered dismay. If it's in the middle of the word, it's D D. For instance, you could use this for daddy. Oh, okay. But if you wanted to spell add, you'd need an A and two real Ds. This is called contracted breath. If you find it at the end of the sentence, of course it's a period. Oh, wow. This is getting complex. So what do you sell this whole set for, then? $695. That's not bad. At standard Lego prices, that's a real deal. Well, I also, I mean, blind children like to put things in their mouths. You mean just like regular children? Well, more so than regular children because a blind baby, if they drop or throw a toy, it literally falls out of existence and they'll never see it again.  So I can't use regular, you have to use high toy grade plastic and I have to check the ink for all kinds of heavy metals. I mean, I have to take the actual can of ink and send it to a laboratory and have them certify my can and like there's eight metals and it's $50 a test and plus I have to pay the ink. Well, I still think that's a great price. This is a fascinating product, Kevin. For our first interview of the day, this has been spectacular. So how would somebody find out, find these? What's your website? The website is tactile.com. I'm rebuilding it now. Tactiles is T-A-C-K, like a thumbtack, then a hyphen, and then a tile, T-I-L-E-S, like a floor tile.com. Very good. Or you can reach me at 1-800, tactile. Very, very good. Thank you so much for your time, Kevin. Congratulations on this. Thank you very much for stopping.


Hi and welcome to the session, let's work out the following question. The question says the monthly income of Ruchi aged 30 years is Rs 18,200 excluding HRA. She donates Rs 8,400 towards Prime Minister Relief Fund, Relief 100% and Rs 12,000 to an Orphanage Relief 50%. She contributes Rs 4,500 per month towards Providence Fund and Rs 2,500 per quarters LIC Premium. She purchases National Saving Certificates worth Rs 8,000. She pays Rs 900 per month as income tax for the first 11 months, calculate her income tax liability for last month of the year. Let's start with the solution to this question. You see that Ruchi's monthly income is equal to Rs 18,200. Therefore, annual income will be equal to Rs 18,200 multiplied by 12 that is equal to Rs 218400. Now, let us calculate amount of donation and savings. First of all, it is given Prime Minister Relief Fund as a relief of 100% on it. So, this is Rs 8,400. Now, given in the question that she donates Rs 12,000 to an Orphanage, So, to Orphanage, relief is given to be 50%. So, that will be 50% of Rs 12,000 that is Rs 6,000. Next will be the PF that is the Providence Fund that will be Rs 4,500 into Rs 12,000 and that is Rs 54,000. Also, she purchases National Saving Certificates worth Rs 8,000. So, next will be NSC that is Rs 8,000. She also pays Rs 2,500 per quarters LIC premium. So, LIC premium will be Rs 2,500 multiplied by 4 because in one year there are 4 quarters. So, this is equal to Rs 10,000. Now, if we sum them all we get the total amount of donation and savings is Rs 86,400. Now, let this be the step 1 and let this be the step 2. So, now what we do is we subtract the amount obtained in step 2 from the gross salary in step 1. So, subtract 2 from 1 and we get taxable income is Rs 2,18,400 minus 86,400 and that is equal to Rs 1,32,000. Now, we see that for women employees if the taxable income is up to Rs 1,35,000 and rate of tax is 0. So, here it is less than Rs 1,35,000 so rate of tax will be 0. But she has been paying Rs 900 for 11 months that is equal to Rs 9,900. But her income tax is nil so she will be refunded Rs 9,900. So, this is our solution to this question. I hope that you understood it and enjoyed the session. Have a good day.