Okay. Hi everyone. Thanks so much for joining us.  My name's Talia. I'm an Agile Coach from South Africa, Johannesburg. And then by night, my side company is doing graphic recording and visuals. So this is what I love. Hi everyone. My name's Angie Doyle. I'm also an Agile Coach from South Africa. Talia briefly touched on it.  Agile India very kindly helped us with generating some more booklets that are at the back. But don't worry, the booklets are available for download afterwards. So if you didn't get a colour copy, you can print one out. Okay. So we will be tweeting out the link a little bit later. Okay. Awesome. So welcome. I hope everyone's got their drawing hands ready and nimble. Did everybody know that this was a drawing workshop? You know you're going to be drawing, right? Please don't leave. It's fun. Okay. Just checking. Okay. So maybe just to set the scene a bit. This workshop is geared towards using visual techniques, so visual thinking techniques for teen communication. So it's not about being an amazing artist. It's not about perfection.  So I just want to know by show of hands, how many of you were once children? Please, I hope everyone. Yeah. Hoping everyone's got the hands. How many of you loved to draw as a child? Yeah. A lot of, a lot of hands still up. How many of you still love to draw? Yeah. So we got quite a couple of artists. So just like Talia said, we're introducing you to the basics. If you are a modern day Da Vinci, you can probably come up and join us just now and help us go through some of the basic concepts.  This is going to be the hardest thing you are going to do the whole day. You're going to follow my instructions. So open up your booklets on the first page. It says you're drawing here. If you don't have a booklet, grab some blank paper because I don't think every seat has a booklet. And you're going to follow exactly what I do. Okay. It's hard working with a microphone in one hand. Okay.  Nice big square. Okay. You got your big square in the middle. That's the one.  And then you're going to draw a medium circle next half circle next to it. Can everyone see? Maybe just maneuver around so you can see. Yeah. It's going to be hard to position the flip chart. And then next to it, a little smaller half circle. Okay. On the right hand side of the block, you're going to do a funny upside like angled triangle. Next to it, you're going to do a slightly smaller one. And next to it, a slightly smaller one. Know what we got so far?  A smaller triangle just underneath it.  You're going to do a small one, a slightly bigger one and a bigger one from the top right to the bottom left. Anybody got an idea of what we're drawing so far?  And in that circle, you're going to draw a smaller circle. You're going to color that one in.  And all of you should have something that looks like this. Hey, everybody got an agile chicken? I feel like one of those like showgirls. Lift up your agile chickens. We want to see them. Yeah. Look at that. You all got a chicken. So you can draw. You can draw. That is the hardest thing you're going to do today. I promise it's going to be the most intense thing.  If you can't see at any point, please feel free to kind of gravitate towards where we are. Oh, hello. Is that better? Okay. So if you can't see at any point, please feel free to just gravitate or stand up or move around. Okay. Cool. So we're going to train from the back of the room today because we like to do things differently. And we also needed the wall space. So sorry. Can everyone see this? Okay. We actually made this while we were here in India because the first thing we saw when we landed was all of these signs. Who knows what that means. We don't have that in South Africa. That's not a sign we have. Okay. And it became very clear very quickly that that's like a no hooting like no honking sign. We've still we're still trying to find the place where people obey that. We haven't found it advisory. Okay. It's a suggestion. Yeah. Okay. So basically everywhere you go in the world, we use a lot of visuals. Okay. And visuals actually transcend language and culture. So if you have a look next time you travel at just the signs and how easy it is to follow these signs without any language or words. So this is a nice example. This one was really important for me. I got that wrong on my first day in the hotel. And because the signs here aren't super clear, which is why we decided to draw it there. It's really important to make sure that this looks like a lady. Anyway. Okay. And then this one at the bottom with a wine glass and the arrows pointing up. Who knows what that means. Fragile. Exactly. Fragile this way up. It may not mean kind of this box is full of wine. Usually in my case it does. But again, I mean, what a clear indication that everyone understands universally. And these ones are pretty similar. So we've got the car that's kind of skidding on the road implying that it's wet. And then we've got this one where a person's kind of skidding along the slippery floor as well. We always laugh because this always looks like they're snakes chasing someone. It's really quite an interesting visual. Okay. But other than the snakes, it's pretty much universal, this visual language. So that's our whole point is that you can use visuals to communicate, especially in like cross-cultural, cross-language situations and teams. But why visual thinking? Often I think people think that we just like to draw, but there's a very specific purpose and kind of psychology behind it. So visual thinking helps you see the bigger picture. Often when we're thinking about things in our own heads, it's quite overwhelming. And with teams it's quite difficult to communicate. So if you're able to map it out visually, you can actually put it into perspective and see a bigger picture for a problem or solution. Another thing that visual thinking does is it helps us engagement in a team. If you're actually actively involved in picking up a pen and participating, you're that much more engaged in what's actually happening in the session. And it also helps with different levels of thinking. So it helps you think strategically, it helps you think tactically and it helps you think creatively. How much time do you think you can save in every meeting if you just include some visuals? Some of you can see the poster. For those of you at the back, how much time do you think it is? Does it help if I do this for you guys? Can you see it? You can save 24% of your meeting time that's wasted just in conversation just by including some visuals. Why do you think that is? I'm hearing lots of stuff. It's pretty much that we can have a common picture. Otherwise, do you guys still have records? You know, record players? Yeah? Otherwise, you have like a record. Like the conversation just goes on repeat because no one's actually recorded what was said. Or you're saying the same thing. Yeah. And then also interestingly, so there are four modes of learning. So certain people learn better through different styles. So you've got your read-write, which is very much like traditional schooling system. You've got visual, you've got auditory and you've got kinesthetic, which is movement. 65% of people are visual learners. And actually, I was doing a lot of reading app. It's actually increasing with the younger generations because there's so much more visual. If you think of like social media and videos and all of that. So it's really important to be able to incorporate this with your teams because chances are they're a good portion of your team who are visual learners. How are you guys taught at school? Were you more read and write? Yeah? Your teachers forced you to write stuff down and read things to learn. And we've started seeing that education is starting to change to incorporate the other modes of learning as well. But particularly with my sort of generation and even to an extent Talia's generation, we still see that people were taught to read and write and to ignore the other modes of learning. And the final thing, the final reason why we want to include visual thinking into our work when we work with teams is because we want to have a shared record. So when we walk out of our team sessions, we're pulling flip charts off the wall and we're taking them with us. So if we want to have another conversation a bit later, we just pull out those flip charts and we just keep building on it. You can't do that with PowerPoint. Okay. So it's an agile conference. So we had to include our own manifesto because it's compulsory at an agile conference. So we've come up with our own visual thinking manifesto, which is here. So our first, our first statement to value and visual thinking is thinking in pictures over explaining in words. So words are still important, but they're not enough. We need to start bringing in a way to communicate in pictures. Now in South Africa, we have 11 official languages. So when we're sitting in a room and we have 11 different official languages, words are definitely not going to be enough. We have to figure out how do we include visual elements to you. Cool. And then our second value is shared understanding over individual interpretation. So again, it's about teamwork, being able to actually communicate something effectively to a group of people and not just keep it in your head. And visuals can help do that really quickly and really easily. Our third statement is see possibilities over analyzing problems. Are you ever in sessions where all you're hearing is problems? That's all that people see. We never kind of get to that solution space. And starting to incorporate visuals into your conversation can help others start seeing the possibilities behind the problems. Problems also sometimes seem a lot bigger, you know, if they're just in your head. Okay. And then the last one is embrace humanness over seeking precision. So the first batch of posters Angie and I did, we actually had a spelling mistake in this. We didn't know how to spell humanness. We had one in and someone picked it up and we were like, yeah, that was intentional. We just we're trying to prove a point that it doesn't have to be perfect. We fixed it now. Okay, so this is about it's not about perfection. It's not about art. It's actually about being open and being courageous and authentic and trying.  And which is better people remember that more than a really perfect symmetrical icon on PowerPoint. Okay, so we want to actually embrace that human element. People also connect better generally with hand drawn images. Because of that because it's interesting. It's not like just something that they've seen all the time. And if it's imperfect, they're actually more likely to pick up a pen and go and contribute than if it was perfect. So if it doesn't look, I don't know like an artwork, they'll actually come and contribute more. Okay, and you cannot pick up a pen and go and correct a PowerPoint presentation. I'm pretty sure if anybody wrote on these whiteboard things that all the presentations have been projected onto, there'd be a lot of trouble. So just by having it hand drawn, you're actually going to encourage more collaboration with people. So Talia's just walked to our agenda for those of you that haven't seen it yet. This is just a very simple way to keep things visual. It's just to help you know where we are in the workshop. So we're about to dive into a little bit more of a practical explanation. So this has been quite theoretical. You're going to follow along in your books with us. So we're going to introduce the first element of visual thinking, which might be surprising for you. Because it's actually letters. It's how do you write words? Now if you how many of you have got amazing handwriting? How many of you like awesome handwriting?  The rest of you. How's your handwriting? A little bit dodgy. So, so yeah. And it's a problem, right?  But don't worry, we're going to help you get a better, more legible handwriting. So the way to do it is to start off with a grid like this. So you can see that there's five lines on here. And you're going to use these middle three lines for the bulk of your lettering. So I'm going to try to do this with a mic in my hand at the same time. Does anyone have a spare book? Okay, I'm going to do a letter A here. Okay, did you see what I just did there? I used the three letters in the middle for my letter. If I'm doing something with the tail at the top, so something like a B, I'm going to use the three in the middle and use that top part there for the top. Let's do a C. And now the trick with writing is you've always got to leave enough space between your words. If you write too closely together, no one's going to see what you've written from a distance. So a good idea is between your letters is to leave a space the size of a letter M. Okay, and then you can keep writing. See, there's a letter with a tail. Oops, we've got a very uneven wall here, Talia. Okay, practice that one very quickly. Practice a nice, neat font in your book using the space provided. Write your name. Do you want to maybe hold it for that side? Do you guys have spare books? Can you guys see on that side? Yeah? Cut it. That small is nice because it's got a tail and it's got a top as well. So I don't know if you also saw what I did with my A. I gave it a little cap on the top.  It just makes it very clearly distinct from other letters. Just very quickly. Does anyone have any spare books? There were some people. If you don't have a book, just follow along on some blank paper. Yeah. Oh, here's one. Oh, here we go. Okay. Has everybody got their name? Everybody written their name. Some of you have got really long names. Okay. So once you've got a really, really clear legible font that you can write super quick because the idea with this is you need to be able to write fast and neat. So you've actually got to practice this. It's not good that you can write fast. You've got to read. It's got to be in a way that other people can actually read what you said. Once you've got a really nice, clear font, then you can start doing something like super fancy. What does this say? Those of you at the front that can read it says fancy. Okay. Fancy font. Don't write in fancy font when you are taking notes for other people. Okay. They're not going to be able to read it. You know when you can use fancy font for the headings. Okay. So if you are preparing for a workshop or something beforehand for your team, you can play around with some fun elements and you'll see we do it quite a lot with our posters just to give you some ideas. Okay. Everybody got maybe do a quick fancy font in the bottom one. Okay. Now we're going to move on. You've mastered lettering. Now you're going to move on to connectors. This is something I promise you every single one of you can do. So we like connectors and separators. So connectors are really lines, lines and arrows. So they're good to connect two ideas to each other. So it's as simple as just drawing a line from one idea to the other idea. How do you usually use this line like a straight line? Just to show a relationship, right? What about if I do this? What does that mean? So it's now a dotted line, sort of connected, maybe like a dotted line reporting. So it's not a direct connection. It's like a distant cousin kind of connection. What about if it's like this? So it's a super, super thick line. Strong connection, right? Just using a line like you can come up with three different meanings. Now another way that we can use connectors or lines is to highlight an idea just by underlining it. Like you all do that already when something's important, you underline it. But you can also use lines to make something glow off the page just by highlighting like that. Another way to use lines is to actually keep it, to keep ideas separate from each other. And we do that by drawing a line around something to box the idea in. And I mentioned that we don't just use lines, we also use arrows, because what our arrow is really important for, to draw attention to something on a page. So instantly when you see an arrow, where are you looking? So wherever the arrowhead is pointing. Okay, super simple. You guys do these already, right? So now we're going to move on to something that maybe is a little bit more hectic. How do you like drawing people? Easy. It is easy. It's super easy to draw people. Like all you need to do is just draw a strict stickman, right? So what's your favorite way to draw people? Stickman, that's mine, mine as well. Or as Talia says, stick ladies as well. Yeah, stick men and ladies. It's important.  Super, super simple. The one that I quite like is if you're in a rush and you need to draw people really quickly. So this is good if you're working in user experience and you need to represent that there's people that you're engaging with. And if it's a fast drawing, you can draw a little star man. And he looks, okay, he looks a little bit strange because this wall's weird to draw on.  But you can see he's a person, right? The other one I love is this one and you'll see it on all the posters that I've drawn. Can you see that? He's like a little chess piece.  And the reason I like this one is because you can actually add arms and legs. And he can actually, he's kind of standing there kind of saying what now. A good way to represent a crowd. So again if you're having to draw something really quickly, so if I was going to draw you, this is one way. I might do it.  And then all this one. This one's pretty cool. Well, Talia, you're going to battle on this wall. Our pictures are going to be very imperfect. Very imperfect. We're living our one manifesto value. Okay, so we just got another little crowd there. My other favorite in addition to this little chess piece guy is just drawing little little box men. So they're great when you're trying to give movement or an angle that someone's facing. So this guy over here, you draw his head first in the neck and you position his body in the direction that he's going. So what do you think the sky is doing? He's running, right? Okay, that is a speed cloud. Just making it clear and I'll put like little sweat drops coming off of him. Okay, so just a couple of a few simple shapes can get you some movement with your people.  Okay, oh yeah. Talia's going to do a little motion that you're going to copy. So you want to maybe watch things around you and find like movements or expressions that you can draw. So I think in there we said draw someone jumping. I can't really jump that well but maybe hold it. So Talia, just hold the pose so that they can quickly just stay in mid-air. That would be better. So practice drawing someone jumping. It's in the bottom right hand corner I think of your booklet. So just quickly practice using any of the characters we've just been through but that little square guy is really easy for movement. Everybody got someone jumping. Hey, was it easy? Now that yeah, easier than if you hadn't tried. Hey, there you go. We went to MySaw on Saturday. We did a tour. And Talia did a jump just like that.  I was probably this far off the ground. It was really embarrassing but nice photo. Okay, so has everyone drawn a person? Okay, now that we know how to draw people, what's the next thing? Actually, you guys can look in your book so it's not a surprise. Okay, so we're gonna, we're gonna move on to faces. Now why is it important to draw faces? I mean we in technology, like why personas? Emotion. Okay, awesome because actually at the end of the day, whatever we develop is for people. And it's really important to capture that emotion. How is the person feeling? Are they happy? Are they sad? Okay, so we want to take the fear out of drawing faces. They're really easy ways of doing it. So for example, for the eyes, you can just do like a circle. You can almost do like a w for a nose. So those of you that can't see, it's really hard for us to lift up and show, just move around if you want to. Okay, now that this is my favorite way to draw eyes, it's pretty much just like a colored in circle and then I put like a semi circle on top which looks like the eyelid and a nose you could even do just as a straight line. That's super quick. If you want to get a bit more fancy and now I'm on the crack, so let's see. You can do like a semi circle with another colored in circle in the corner if he's looking that way which gives you more of like a cartoon kind of eye and then a V for the nose. So at the moment, how are these people feeling? You can't tell, right? Neutral. Okay, good point. So actually most of our emotion comes from our eyebrows and from our mouths. So if we did this to this girl, how is she feeling now? Sad, confused. Can you see on the side? Should we lift it up quick? Angry. Okay, so traditionally the eyebrows pointing down in the, yeah, this guy, shame, he's got a bit of a uni brow. Happy but then his eyebrows are just straight, it's like naughty, I don't know. Oh, he looks very goofy. Well, it's because he's got one eyebrow. I know. Okay, so that's a really quick and easy way to show emotion without actually needing any autistic ability and this actually comes from a technique that we use by Dave Gray and it's called a face grid. So essentially all we're doing is using three lines for the eyebrows and the mouth and we able to create nine expressions. So your lines at the top here are your eyebrows and your lines down the side are your mouths. I think it is in your book or you can follow in a piece of paper. Yeah, draw it in your book as you go, follow along with Talia. So basically all I'm doing is I'm saying eyebrows from the top so all of these will actually be like that and then mouth, shame, he's drooling, okay? Okay, so all the eyebrows and then all the mouths. So basically once you've done this you've got nine really unique expressions that you can use, that you can reference. And then if you're feeling really creative you can start mixing it up. Yeah, with the different eyes and the nose so you can really build up this face grid to pretty much create any emotion. And there are some ideas in the booklet as well. Okay, great. So you're comfortable with faces. Awesome. So now that we've mastered people we're going to pretty much tackle everything else in the world, which is like all your objects or anything else you want to draw. And there's also a trick with this. So the trick is to break everything down into its most basic shape. Actually professional artists this is also how they start.  But the aim with this is you want to be able to draw things with as few lines and as simply as possible. Because remember it's not about artwork, it's about just getting a concept across an idea of an object or something. So for example and this blew my mind. So your basic shapes are your squares and rectangles, circles, triangles, and then lines. So your squiggles. So I always had issues drawing a puzzle piece. Because I'd kind of go like around the edge and try. And you'd be surprised how often you draw puzzle pieces with visual thinking. It's like because it means so much or it could mean so much. Could mean like teams working together, it could mean anything. And actually when you break a puzzle piece down it's pretty much just a square with four circles. So a square and then kind of in the middle of each side you're going to draw you're going to visualize a circle. And then all you do, all you do is just trace around it. So you're going to trace around the square and then for some of them you might go in and for some of them you might go out. That's it. Easy. Okay, another one which I use often. So they're actually like a few things that Angie and I use all the time. Is a light bulb. So pretty much a light bulb is a circle and like a rectangle. And then obviously you can just make it look prettier with two lines, a squiggle, and then like Angie mentioned earlier you can use lines to make it glow, to accentuate it. If you want to get fancier you almost just separate the rectangle in the circle and just follow that curve. So there's a bottom. You're going to follow the curve around which gives you that nice kind of hourglass or curvaceous shape. And then you can add a little semicircle at the bottom. And this is the kind of stuff that you can use for so many things. Strategy, ideas, innovation. So it's almost like learning in another language. And then also for example triangle. You can very easily draw something like a fish using two triangles and some circles. And super quick and easy. I think your flipcharts are slightly different from ours. But with one, two, three, four, five lines you've got a flipchart. Okay, so again it's about kind of looking at something and really breaking it down into the bare minimum lines and the bare minimum shapes. So we're going to give you an opportunity to practice with the basic shapes because this is probably the hardest one to do. So you'll see in the middle of your tables there's two tables that do not have a colorful envelope. Those two tables just come and find another table to work with. But have a look at those big colorful envelopes. This one over here. Big folder. Can hold it up for me. Okay, inside of it there's a whole bunch of shapes. And we've also got pipe cleaners for those lines. Empty it all out into the middle of your table. And we're going to give you five minutes as a table to build as many objects as you can with the shapes that are in there. The team who makes the most wins. So be creative. Really think about what the shapes are in different objects. Two minutes to finish up all the shapes on your table. Take a quick look at what the tables around you did. We'll give you a minute to do you like a walking tour of the room. Okay, so take a quick look at the tables around you and see some of the objects that they came up with. So we'll give you like another 30 seconds to do that. Okay, you can start heading back to your table. Okay, how did you guys find that? Easy. Awesome. That's good. How easy was it to create your objects? Not easy. Not hard, right? When you break things down into their basic shapes it is really easy to start drawing things. Yeah. What have we done in the past? We've always tried to make it look like it's real. Okay. Some people say it's not easy and yeah it takes a bit of practice. So what you can do is you can actually look around your home or your office and identify objects and find ways of drawing them quickly or you know what shapes they made up of. Okay, grab a seat back at your table. We're going to keep going through the rest of the elements. We'll just give you guys an opportunity to sit down. So what I do with my daughter, she really loves to draw and we've actually got a journal and we just draw like a big grid on a page and then we'll go into a room in the house and we'll pick out objects and say okay let's draw that and then all we'll use is basic shapes. The trick with the basic shapes is to use as few lines as possible. So you want to get to a point where you can draw these things really really quickly. So it does take a bit of practice but it helps when you just break it down into its simplest form. Okay, so we're going to move on. So now that we've got our basic shapes and our objects and we happy with that we're going to move on to the next section. Just a quick note, you can do a lot with the elements we've covered so far. You can do a lot with connectors and lines and with stick people and like really basic things. This section containers you can get quite creative with or you can keep it simple. So I mean this yeah it's more kind of about using it to illustrate meaning. So for example the trick with containers is to always do your text first. So you'll write whatever you want to write and then you'll contain it. So like Angie did maybe just with a block. Okay because the risk is if you do your container first let's do maybe like a little speech bubble. Awesome it's so pretty.  Okay so it's just like a really practical way is to always do your text first and then contain it afterwards because then you can always just make it fit. What I like to do which is a really easy kind of thing is like the conversation maybe in a speech bubble. Sometimes if it's something that we're talking about that's maybe like a thought or a feeling of a customer for example. I'll use a thought bubble container to contain that that text that thought or that feeling. So already you almost start to develop like a language with your teams because you know everything in a thought bubble means it's suit and information it's a feeling or whatever thought. My favorite is also like banners and Ange and I use use them quite often for our posters so they're really nice just for headings and they're actually quite easy to do so my favorite one is like a very curvy one so it's almost like an S and then a backwards S and then you'll bring it down into like a rectangle and then you'll join at the back kind of where it goes behind you'll create like another rectangle just make sure that it's always the same width as the front otherwise it looks like it doesn't belong. You can also do like a what do you call it like a triangular edge and then all you do is connect it where the S was you just draw a line down and that gives the illusion of it being 3D. Another really basic one would be kind of square you can do a square box a square box behind and then you just do a line to join. So that's a really like simple way of making something look quite cool. What do you think the difference is between you're really like curvy shapes versus your more rectangular pointy edges like wavy okay and in terms of like the meaning behind it like the psychology behind it. Softer, more organic. Yeah awesome so and you see how intuitive it is for us to say if something's in a more like curvy container it's softer it's less structured whereas the very strong edges are very rigid it's maybe a rule not a suggestion who was saying earlier signs or suggestions and again your team will start to understand that and you can actually build it in as like a language that you use. I'm going to break my own rule so the only time that I'll do the container first is if you really maybe having fun or you don't have a lot of text. So here's a coffee cup again just like a half circle in two lines and then you could put text in there to fit the shape you know so you can do like really fun stuff quite simply with containers. There's some ideas in the book as well like frames and and there's lots on google as well if you want to practice and explore. Okay so we've now done all those basic shapes and now we're at the point where we can start adding things like color and shading but the tip with this is always start with these elements first so color and shading is really great to add in but not if you don't have time so rather focus on these things and start adding in things like containers colors shading after otherwise you land the risk of actually losing as you go because you're trying to make it look too beautiful. Remember it's all about visual thinking getting the team into the same page. And sometimes less is more. Less is always more with visual thinking. So we've just got a plain old simple color wheel we don't have a poster for it and the trick with color is to understand the local references to color so there could be different colors and we wouldn't know necessarily from a cultural side what different colors imply so make sure you are aware of color and the use of color. I know in a lot of our sessions in South Africa we would limit the color black that we use so we would use black font but we wouldn't necessarily use a lot of black shading and it's yeah I mean we're also a very colorful nation so that's not going to be the kind of color we'd bring in a lot of. Also one thing sorry Andrew just on that so how many of you use rag or have used rag statuses in the past? Red amber green. So just be careful of the psychology behind that I've often like picked up a red marker just because it was there and written stuff and people have walked in and they're like what's wrong everything's red you know because it's so entrenched so there's a lot of like psychology behind color as well. Okay and then also just be aware of what colors go really well together so you want to know which ones are complimentary our posters have no color scheme okay so Talia and I went for maximum color but when we're facilitating or when we are doing a graphic facilitation session we don't incorporate this much color we'll often actually go with the company's corporate color schemes especially if there's a lot of connection in the company with the corporate branding then we'll just make sure that we've got the markers in that color and those are the only ones that we'll use. Otherwise it can be like a bit visually overwhelming it's different for this kind of workshop but if you're if you're doing graphic recording keep it a little bit simpler okay so the next thing that we want to move on to is shading so this is what we're going to do after we've actually done our basic shapes and there's a couple of different ways that you can incorporate some shading into your into your graphic facilitation or into your visual thinking so the easiest one is to use lines we've got lines on our shirt just to indicate that there's depth in there so that's cross-hatching so you can either use crossed lines I just like to use a simple one line but can you see I've got a light a disc light in the top right hand corner of this poster so it implies that there's a light source coming from the top right hand corner so what's going to happen here is the lines are going to be quite close together in the bottom left hand corner and as you start getting closer to the light source they're going to get further and further away so it looks like it's darker here and lighter there the trick with shading is never to confuse where the light source is coming from so if you're shading and it's darker in the bottom left hand corner keep the shading in the bottom left hand corner because visually we know it looks wrong so just always in my mind the sun's always on the top right hand corner so that's how I always shade stippling this one is really amazing if you have the time to sit and do a lot of dots it's actually a really incredible effect so this one's pretty cool if you're doing something like sketch noting and you've got time to add color afterwards you'll do the same thing lots and lots of dots in the bottom left hand corner and then it'll fade up to the top right the one that you've seen us use a lot on our posters can you see the color that we've incorporated the crayon can you see the crayon so I'm just trying to find mine so we use these crayons which is basically it's just like a block of crayon and then what you do is you just shade and I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it on the wall but I'm going to try so you start really really dark in the bottom left hand corner but it's a really fast way of injecting some color into your posters okay rather otherwise you're going to go through so much ink with your markers so these things are really great to buy for shading okay so are you ready to start drawing are we going to do it we're going to draw again are you ready we're going to play something called visual jam so find that page in your book it is a two by three grid and it's going to have can I use yours can I lift it up that's what it looks like okay grab yourself a pen and how visual jam works is I'm going to call out some words I've got a whole bunch of words that I know teams use all the time and I'm going to give you 30 seconds to draw that word okay using particularly what you've just learned under basic shapes and that's one sorry Angie this one you don't have to do in your book you can use any paper that's on the table you basically just going to divide it into six okay so here's my words Talia is actually going to draw it at the same time like I said I'm going to give you 30 seconds around there per word we're going to see how you guys do are you ready use basic shapes use connectors you can even incorporate words if you want to use any of the elements that we've just been through to help you out with this drawing are you ready Talia are you ready I hope so I don't know what the words are let me pick one okay let's go with management management you're about halfway through okay that's 30 seconds for management this is how quick we've got to be next word let's do passion passion passionate so you can draw passion or passionate I'm okay with either of those to you as in passionate about visual thinking yeah please keep it maybe PG PG almost up next word strategy strategy okay your time's up next word metrics or measurements metrics or measurements metric or measurement you got about five seconds left next word is feedback feedback when you give feedback to someone else okay last word I'm going to make it a good one transformation are you always hear this word in agile you got to love it you got to have a picture for it it's the word you're going to hear in every meeting transformation okay time is up are you ready because what you're going to do is you're going to hold up your pictures and you're going to show everyone what you do because you got to get comfortable with your drawings in public and hold them up show them out come on don't be shy just do it got to get the courage look at that look at those awesome images don't get intimidated by Talia's I'm sure that they're beautiful but Talia's been doing this for years well done well done how does that feel how does it feel feel good hey maybe a little bit more practice than some of them I'm seeing amazing drawings they're they look incredible okay so do you want to have an opportunity to build it up a little bit more and practice a little bit more of what we did today because now we've broken I don't know the nervousness everybody want to take a look at Talia's quick because I want to give you a heads up with Talia okay Talia has done this for two years two years okay she has got that vocabulary in her head so when she hears words she knows exactly what she wants to draw but you're welcome to come up at any point and come take a photo of Talia's if you want some inspiration for your stuff but the trick with this is to draw what resonates with you what does the word sound like to you not what does someone else draw it like what does it sound like to you and what can you draw and a good way to do these these these very quick images is to look at icons on google so if you're not sure how to draw something look at an icon it's usually the simplest representation of it and share and look at other people's work as well so already now walking around I've got other ideas so next time I've got different things I could have used that might have actually been better you know so if you keep sharing you'll keep learning okay so we're going to move into the big practical section oh we haven't been very good with our agenda let's just do that quick so we're here we're now in the the big practical what you're going to do at your tables is you can do a really really big table poster if you want to the the problem with two larger group is that half of you won't have a pen in your hand and you're just going to watch your buddies drawing that's not what we want we want everybody to have a pen in their hand and to play around with coming up with a poster so you can split your table a good size is usually about three to four people per group so we'll leave you guys to self-organize around that there should be some flip-top paper on the tables there's some markers you can mix and match with other tables because you're not going to have all the colors you're looking for and a good way to start with this is to start with a small piece of paper first okay so give me a small piece so this is like a small scale of a flip chart so what you do is you fold please help me talk with my okay so you're going to fold it in half and you're going to fold it in half again and you're going to fold it in half again and what you land up with is a miniature scale of a flip chart so you can quickly sketch out and then you can make it bigger okay this is a good way to kind of plot out if you want to do posters like what we've done this is how we start so you plan on a small scale and then all you have to do is scale it up using this grid so you know in the top left right grid that's what should be in it etc etc just so that you don't run out of space or anything on your big poster so we're going to give you most of the time that's left for this workshop we'll give you an idea of how we're tracking on time but form your groups come up with some concepts and if you're stuck for what to draw we've got a whole bunch of ideas here so we've got the four statements of the agile manifesto we've got the 12 principles and we've got the other the dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Lentioni so if you want to come and grab one and draw that you can draw anything though these are just if you may be stuck at your table for some inspiration so come grab us if you want one of them we can show you what we've got otherwise start forming your groups and we will let you know how time is moving also feel free so Angie and I put a lot of effort into our posters so they can act as inspiration feel free to come and have a closer look get some ideas and just move around freely okay yeah it's you've got about seven or eight minutes what but if we keep going we're going to run over our time slot so finish off what you're doing you've got about 20 seconds also if you have your shapes on the table please could you do us a favor and just pack them up back in the folders so whatever you got to for now is fine hopefully I've got the juices flowing and you'll continue practicing so we are great very cool that's awesome very cool so okay what we're going to do is we're actually going to find somewhere to stick these up on the walls outside so you can see what everybody did but we just want to wrap up the session because we're about to run out of time and Talia and I will be available just now but maybe just quickly grab a seat and let's just finish off the last few few things to bear in mind so we like to use the scrum values when we think about visual thinking so the first one is respect and this one's super important because you are going to be incredibly critical about your drawings okay when you first start they're all going to look horrible in your eyes we know because we had to start somewhere too so the trick is to respect yourself when you first start with visual thinking okay don't be don't be too hard on what you've drawn and also when somebody else has the courage to pick up a pen and draw in front of you respect the fact that they're trying because this is so hard to get right in front of people so if you're a bit worried with the first round that you do if you come closer to our posters you'll see that we did pencil marks in there because even after running this workshop a few times Talia and I still sometimes forget what we were going to draw so yeah it's nervous energy right like even we do it so if you want to draw something in pencil first and then you just trace over it in pen people are going to think you're a rock star because they're going to be like oh my word then you just had to draw this okay so the first one is respect just respect yourself respect others when you when you first start trying and then the next one's openness so it's really important to Angie and I we try to bring in this new way of thinking using visuals so be open with it if you would like to our contact details are in the booklet or you can reach out to us tweet us pictures if you do sketches if you do sketch notes or use it in your teams you welcome to tweet us you welcome to reach out to us so it's about being open and it's about also not taking yourself too seriously so you know if you draw something that you really don't like what Angie and I do is we just put a heart on it and we're like okay let's love it let's move on or label it if you try to draw a frog and it looks like a blob just right under their frog laugh as a team and move on the other one is courage it does take a lot of courage to do this you build it up over time so within your team create the space where all of you can practice doing this a bit that should be a safe space okay and then commitment so it does take time and practice so if it is something you're interested in just commit to practicing and building up your visual vocabulary and then the final one is focus now it's not focus on your drawings okay what do you think it's focusing on whatever you're hearing okay there's going to be a conversation and what you're wanting to do is you're wanting to capture that conversation so don't get too absorbed in drawing your picture and you lose the conversation that's happening around you because you're trying to make your picture perfect so focus on the conversation build up that vocabulary you start drawing stuff certain things really really quickly so then it's easy to capture the conversation but don't lose sight of the conversation that's happening okay so one last thing we will be sharing all the photographs of the posters as our slide deck we'll put it up on the conference site and then also Angie and I are relatively active on Twitter so Doyle underscore Angie and I'm actually underskitching Scrum Master so we'll share links in that as well but we just hope that we've inspired you all that we've reignited your inner child and that is something that you now feel confident and courageous to take back to your teams I don't know if we've got any time for questions but Talia and I will be around after the session and we'll hang around outside a little bit as well and a little bit later on so come find us if you've got any questions that you want to go through but thank you very much for coming to our workshop


Hello everyone, this is Alice Gao. In the previous video, I introduced the concept of de-separation. This is a very powerful concept. Given any two variables x and y in the Bayesian network, we can use de-separation to test whether x and y are conditionally independent given that we observe a third set of variables e. In this video, let's look at a couple of examples where we apply this concept to determine some independent or conditional independence relationships. All of the questions in this video use the same example, same Bayesian network. So we have that if we travel on the subway or if we take a trip to an exotic area, then we might catch certain diseases like malaria or flu and these diseases may cause different symptoms such as aches on our body, fever and jaundice and fever will cause us to have a high temperature. Let's look at independent relationships between some variables. So for each question, I will tell you the answer first and then I will discuss the reasoning behind the answers. Make sure you pause the video and do the question yourself before you keep watching for the discussion. Here's question 1a, we are interested in travel subway, the relationship between travel subway and high temperature and let's assume that we observe nothing. So given that we observe nothing, our travel subway and high temperature independent or unconditionally independent. Think about this yourself and then keep watching for the answer. The correct answer here is no, travel subway and high temperature are not independent. Here's how I derived the answer. So in order to figure out the relationships of the two variables, I need to first find all the path that can connect these two variables. There's only one path in our Bayesian network. So going from travel subway to flu, then to fever and then to high temperature. This is the path. So being the only path, we need to look at this path and consider every variable on that path. And for every variable, we need to decide, determine whether that variable blocks the path or not. So first of all, does the variable flu block this path? Well, the links around flu is the first structure that we looked at, right? The first rule. So we need to apply rule number one. And rule number one says that if flu is observed, then it blocks the path. If it's not observed, then it does not block the path. In this case, we'll observe nothing. So flu does not block the path. Imagine that we can go through flu. The path is connected there. It's similar for fever. Again, the structure around fever is a chain. And then according to rule number one, it does not block the path because we do not observe fever. So the entire path is connected and not blocked. Therefore, the two variables are not independent. Question number two, or question one B, consider the same two variables travel and subway, except in this case, we observe flu. So given flu are travel subway and high temperature independent or not. Think about this yourself and then keep watching for the answer. The correct answer is that these two variables are conditionally independent given flu. Again, we can get this by you applying rule one twice. So the connection between the two variables is again this chain. And now if we look at the variable flu, we observe the value of flu. So it does block this path. And we can stop right there. Because as soon as we find a variable that blocks the path, the path is severed and there are no other paths connecting these two variables. Therefore, these two variables must be independent from each other. If you want to verify for fever is the same as before because we do not observe fever. So fever does not block the path. Question one C, this question is again asking the relationship between travel subway and high temperature except that we not observe aches. I'm going to leave the reasoning as an exercise for you, but I will tell you the answer right here. The correct answer is no. Travel subway and high temperature are not conditionally independent given aches. The key here is that again we are going to apply rule one twice to figure out whether any node blocks the path between the two variables. And also it's important to realize that observing aches does not affect anything between these two variables. Let's keep going. The next question to a, we are finally looking at the different set of variables. So we're looking at the relationship between aches and high temperature. And in this question, we observe nothing. So are aches and high temperature independent from each other if we observe nothing? Think about this yourself and then keep watching for the answer. The correct answer is no. These two variables are not independent. To see why we need to look at the path between the two and this path go through flu and fever. So for each of flu and fever, we need to apply one of the three rules to decide whether it blocks the path for flu. The links around flu correspond to the second rule, rule number two. And if we apply the second rule, it says that if we observe the node, if we observe flu, then it blocks the path. But if we don't observe flu, then it does not block the path. In this case, we do not observe flu. So it does not block the path. There's a connection through the node. And for fever, it's same as before, we will apply rule number one. And because we do not observe fever, so it does not block the path either. So this path is connected the whole way from aches to high temperature, which means the two variables are not independent. Question to be, we are still considering aches and high temperature, except that now we observe something. We observe the value of flu. So given flu are aches and high temperature conditionally independent or not. Think about this yourself and then keep watching for the answer. The correct answer is yes aches and high temperature are conditionally independent given flu. Again, we need to decide whether this path is blocked by any node on the path. The path is not blocked by fever. And this is based on rule number one. But the path is blocked by flu. And this is based on rule number two, right? Rule number two says if flu is observed, then it blocks the path. Since this is the only path between the two variables and it's blocked, so the two variables are conditionally independent given flu. Okay, we have two questions left. Question 3a, are flu and exotic trip conditionally independent? I should strike the conditionally word here because we don't observe anything. Think about this yourself and then keep watching for the answer. The correct answer here is yes. The two variables flu and exotic trip are independent from each other. Let's look at why. So there is one path connecting these two variables and this path goes through malaria and fever. So for malaria, the structure around it looks like rule number one. It's a chain and we do not observe malaria, which means that malaria does not block the path. We can go through the node and it connects the two nodes around it. Now let's look at fever. The structure around fever looks like rule number three, where we have flu and malaria, they jointly cause fever. So applying rule number three, what does rule number three say? The rule says we need to look at the node and we need to look at all of its descendants. In this case, it only has one descendant, which is high temperature. So among the node itself and all of its descendants, if all of the nodes are not observed, then this blocks the path. If at least one node in this set is observed, then it does not block the path. Well, in this case, nothing is observed. Fever is not observed and high temperature is also not observed. So in fact, they block this path. So because this path is blocked and this is the only path connecting flu and exotic trip, so flu and exotic trip are independent. Here's the final question. We are considering again, flu and exotic trip and in this case, we observe high temperature. Given that our flu and exotic trip conditionally independent or not. Think about this yourself and then keep watching for the answer. The correct answer is no, flu and exotic trip are not conditionally independent given high temperature. Let's look at why. Same as the previous question, there is one path connecting flu and exotic trip like so and same as before, we need to look at whether malaria blocks it and whether fever or any of its descendants blocks it. So malaria, the structure around it, we apply rule number one again and it does not block the path. We can go through there. Now the tricky part is with respect to fever and its descendants. So again, rule number three says that if we observe none of the node fever and also none of its descendants, then it blocks the path. But if we observe at least one of the node itself or one of its descendants, then they do not block the path. They actually connect the path. In this case, we do not observe fever itself, but we do observe the only child of fever, which is high temperature. Therefore, fever does not block the path and actually connects it. So after applying rule number one and rule number three, we find that the entire path is connected, nothing blocks it. Therefore, the two variables flu and exotic trip are not conditionally independent, given high temperature. That's everything for this video. After watching this video, you should be able to do the following. Given any patient network, pick any two variables and then pick a third set of variables to be the observed variables. You should be able to apply the separation to determine whether the two variables are conditionally independent or not, given the third set of variables. Thank you very much for watching. I will see you in the next video. Bye for now.


City of Columbia, Richland School District 1 and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation have kicked off the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Honor the Dream Food Drive, benefiting Harvest Hope Food Bank. The food drive is held each year to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy of community service. Some requested items include canned fruit and vegetables, dry goods, and canned meats. The food drive ends December 6, so make sure to drop off your donations by then at one of the numerous locations set up around the city. For a full list of locations and more information, visit the Parks and Recreation website at columbiasc.net slash parks-recreation or contact their office via phone at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Thank you. Your support of this food drive will not only fill plates, it will fill people with hope. Don't forget to subscribe. Also, while you're here, be sure to check out one of our other videos or follow us on our social media platforms. Thanks again and remember, we are Columbia.


Everybody, Dr. O, this is where we're going to talk about breast milk. So we'll just look at some of the basic benefits of breast milk. It can be a very, very good source of nutrition for the baby. It also has a passive immunity. If you look at moms being exposed to things, mom's immune system is generating antibodies to whatever mom is being exposed to. And then all five classes of antibodies, IgG, A, M, E, and D, all pass in through the baby in a form of passive immunity in breast milk. Breast milk also has HMOs, about 200 of them. They're called human milk oligosaccharides, which means mom is producing these oligosaccharides, these medium-change carbohydrates, that are there to feed the baby's microbiome. So not only is breast milk probiotic, because it has living organisms in it, to seed the microbiome of the new baby, but it also is a prebiotic, which means it's feeding the good microbes as well. So there are advantages to the baby from an immunity standpoint, there are advantages to the baby potentially from a nutritional standpoint, and there are advantages to the baby from a microbiological microbiome standpoint, that's the reason that breast milk is important. For mom, breastfeeding and the increases in oxytocin that occur during it will also help with uterine contractions to bring the uterus back to its pre-pregnancy size, and then also mom will burn around 400 calories a day producing breast milk, which can help some mother return to pre-pregnancy weight. So those are kind of the real quick overview of the importance of breast milk, but let's look at the fact that during the final weeks of pregnancy, the breasts are filling with colostrum, this human colostrum, which is only going to be produced the first 48, 72 hours after delivery, maybe three ounces of it is made a day, but that's going to be plenty, because as you can see here, colostrum, high in protein, higher than regular breast milk, much higher in immunoglobulin, so babies get in a real big dose of immunity. From mom, those first few days, lower in fat, but again from nutritional standpoint, I think the key thing with colostrum is the immunoglobulin, the fact that this baby is getting a huge boost of passive immunity from mom, thinking of it like an antibody therapy, which can protect their GI tract and then hopefully their entire body. So that's going to be colostrum, and then you're going to see after those first few days postpartum, you're going to see a transition into what's, you know, your mature human breast milk, which will probably occur around day 10. So from day three to day 10, you see this transitional period, and now you're at regular human breast milk. The average woman is supposed to be able to produce about one and a half liters of milk per day, but of course that doesn't always happen. Some people can't produce that much, some people can't produce any at all, others produce a tremendous amount. A woman should be able to continue lactating as long as she wants. The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding for up to 27 months, but a woman should potentially be able to continue breastfeeding as long as she wants, but it only takes about a week of not breastfeeding for the process to shut down. So human breast milk compared to that colostrum, lower in immunoglobulins, but still has immunoglobulin, so the baby is still getting that passive immunity from mom, but not as much as it was before. Cow's milk, it's not a supplement for breast milk. What else? So we'll cover the let down reflex and actual the suckling and lactation in a separate video, but when milk is being produced, you see two different kinds of milk. One comes out when a baby is breastfeeding is called four milk and it's going to be a lot more watery and it's going to be mainly to help the babies get satisfied or thirst. Then you're going to have the hind milk that's going to be, it's going to be more for the baby's appetite, higher in fat, so you see like this watery early milk called four milk and then you have hind milk, but usually if a baby feeds until they're full, they should get all of it anyways. Benefits of breastfeeding, another benefit is that breast milk does have a bit of laxative effect and it's important to clear out the GI tract of a newborn baby because of that potentially the meconium, if some of that's in their GI tract, getting that out of there and also young babies have a real hard time with bilirubin, so getting that cleared out is very important. So the laxative effects of breast milk are also important. Those are just a couple of things, we talk in class about pros and cons of breastfeeding and then whether it's possible for everyone. There's certainly no shame here at all, but I do think if you were to ask me, should breastfeeding be the number one option if possible, yes, mainly because of the passive immunity that mom can give part of her immune system to her baby while it's developing, that's pretty awesome. And number two, the probiotic and prebiotic effects are going to help your baby have the healthiest microbiome possible. All right, that's just a quick overview of breast milk and why it's important, hope this helps, have a wonderful day, be blessed.


Our guest this weekend is Edward Stringham. He's a professor of economics at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and he is the author of a fantastic new book called Private Governance. And what this book does is it looks back at the history of private legal systems and in so doing it really demolishes this idea that only the state can deal with human conflicts and adjudicate those conflicts. And Ed gives some concrete examples, some real-world examples today of how private governance operates even in a statist world. So if you're interested in Rothbardian and Hoppean anarcho-capitalism, I think you'll find Ed's book, a great addition to your library and I think you'll enjoy hearing this interview with Edward Stringham. Stay tuned. Ed Stringham, thanks for joining us and welcome to Mises Weekends. Nice to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Well, first and foremost, I want to say congratulations. Your new book, Private Governance, has been out a couple months now. The subtitle is Creating Order in Economic and Social Life. Now, this is an Oxford University Press book so it's obviously a great publisher. Now, I have to say it's a physically beautiful book. I mean, they did a fantastic job on it. I love the cover and I'm impressed by the lineup of the blurbs you managed to get on the back. We've got Peter Teo, we've got Andrew Napolitano, Leonard Ligio, Walter Block, Tom Woods, all saying good things about the book. So tell us a little bit about how the book came to pass. Thanks so much. I'm really honored and flattered that all those people said good things. The idea behind the book is asking whether markets depend on government. The most crucial question, I think, of all is to what extent do markets depend on government? And my own opinion is, and this is what I've found throughout history in all the research examples in this book, is time and time again, markets working even when government is not underpinning them. So the standard idea is government needs to enforce contracts, protect property rights. And you look throughout history and you find tons and tons of examples where government either is unknowledgeable about supporting markets or uninterested in supporting markets, or even when government exists just incapable of solving private problems in a low-cost way. So instead of people sitting around and doing nothing about the problem, you see tons of examples of private parties figuring out ways to protect their property rights and facilitate exchange. Well, I'm interested in the title you chose. Someone, I believe it was Jim Ostrowski, talked about the term anarcho-capitalism and how unfortunately that term contains two words that have negative connotations in the minds of a lot of people, whether we like that or not. Private governance, I think it's a great term. Is it something you coined or is it just something that you've heard? Well, there have been uses of that historically here and there. So I'm not the first person to come up with that term. But I will say that they've mostly been in passing and I would say that I'd like to see a more systematic use of this term. I think that it does describe what the term you were talking, anarcho-capitalism, does have a lot of negative connotations and this term is very, I think, compatible with that term. But it provides a more positive description of how things actually work in a positive way. So rather than saying, well, we can't do that, you can't do that, this is trying to describe how things actually do work when we have governments, when we don't have governments, we do have lots of private governance. Well, I noticed you did a take off of Hayek's road to serfdom. You dedicated this book to legal centralists of all parties. Tell us about what you were thinking there. So I think that most people could be described what Williamson, Glantz, and a lot of other people define as legal centralism. And legal centralism is the idea that all market exchange must be underpinned by government. Otherwise, you're not going to see it. And so to a legal centralist, they look out at the world and they say, okay, there's markets, must be government-enforcing properties, right? Must be government-enforcing contracts when there's a problem. The legal centralists say, well, okay, let's look to government to solve it. Let's have a new law. Let's have a new cop. Let's have a new regulator step in to solve this problem. And to me, that whole view is erroneous and it makes a lot of assumptions that are just wildly optimistic about the state. And so I dedicate the book to legal centralists of all parties because this view is common, not just among extreme left-wing people. It's common among extreme right-wing people. It's common among a high percentage of libertarians where they assume you cannot have markets without the state. You can't have exchange without government enforcement. And I'd like to just question that whole line of thinking. Well, maybe the thought today should be that as we move beyond, hopefully left versus right, that maybe the real issue of our day is centralized versus decentralized. I think decentralized is important. But I'd really like to focus on the voluntary, contractual nature of private governance. So let me just give an example.  When you live in the United States, you're not really ever given a choice to opt into or opt out of the Dog Frank Act. The same thing is the case with a local government legislation. You don't have a choice if the local town hall annexes a new law on your property that's going to affect how you can do business. And so to me, eBay is much bigger than your local town hall. But the main difference is that eBay is a private voluntary association, whereas the United States government or your local town hall is imposing legislation on people whether they like it or not. Well, I think eBay is really a fascinating example. My wife's a big eBayer. And people who operate on eBay within the rules, within the parameters to which they agree, they really are not thinking or motivated by external constraints like, well, if I don't do this, I'm going to fall outside of eBay's rules and get into a lawsuit or someone's going to call the police or something. I mean, the vast majority of eBayers really do comply. They really do sell what they say they're selling. They really do send the money. They really do ship the product. I mean, the amount of transactions on eBay that occur without a hitch must be 99.9%. It's really staggering. I think it's a fascinating example. Yeah. So a lot of people predicted that it would be impossible before it existed. But the founders of eBay said, hey, look, first of all, people tend to be honest. Second of all, we can rely on certain private mechanisms to ensure and encourage that honesty. So they have the well-known ratings system. If you don't follow through with your order or you ship bad goods, you'll get a bad rating. So that's the first line of defense. The first private rule and regulation is simply a reputation mechanism. After that, in the very few cases where there actually are problems, and sometimes they do exist, eBay does have a private dispute resolution system where they'll step in and do a small investigation. That happened to me once. Actually, I was trying to buy a tie. I got the wrong tie and the guy just didn't respond to any of my emails. And because of that, eBay realized that the person was not acting in good faith, and they simply just returned my money. So you've got basically all of the functions that people assume must be done by the court system. It's done privately. Rather than relying on a thousand-dollar or multi-thousand-dollar legal trial, you have a very streamlined and private system to solve the problem. Well, let's think about that on a bigger scale. You're not just buying a necktie on eBay between two parties, but what about large multi-national corporations? They do business around the world and they have established complex private arbitration schemes because for them, it's just not practicable to litigate problems in all these different jurisdictions. They have an inherent self-interest just like the eBay or has a self-interest of creating rules that get rid of all these transaction costs and that people follow from self-interest. That's exactly right. So private government is very important for very small transactions like a necktie where the cost of going to court would dwarf the value of what's at stake. But it's also extremely important for large transactions, which there's tons at stake and oftentimes very timely issues. A multi-national corporation that does thousands of deals in a day, they can't afford to have that money tied up in a court case that might take months or internationally some court cases will take years or even decades. And I've chatted with plenty of businessmen who've been involved with this stuff and they said, never again do I want to get involved with a trial. It's just a nightmare. So people don't want to do that. It's just too costly. So instead, people rely on tons and tons of private rules and regulations to avoid that. And one of the simple ex-post ways of dealing with things is through an arbitration clause, mediation, alternative dispute resolution where people say, hey, look, you and I have an incentive to follow through with our word. But if there's ever any misunderstanding, let's have a private third party who understands this business look at things rather than having us get assigned to some random government judge who really has no idea how this business works. Well, you mentioned earlier this kind of blind faith that we need the state to, for instance, enforce contracts. Patrick Byrne, the Overstocks CEO, is recently at Mises Institute talking about how encryption and blockchain technology might make it possible to have like land transfer titles to ensure payment, that sort of thing. Talk a little bit about how technology might make private governance easier and lower transaction costs. So the cool thing about private governance is not a one-size-fits-all solution. And people are always searching for new and better ways of doing things. And I'll share a couple of stories about the advent of electronic commerce and the role that companies like PayPal played. At first, the internet was like the wild, wild west and it was great. It opened up trade to everybody around the globe and that's great. But it also exposed companies like PayPal to fraudsters from around the globe. And whether we like it or not, whether they like it or not, it's not possible to call the government and say, hey, look, some anonymous fraudster, we don't know who it is, just stole our money, go track them down. Or even if you track the person down, some fraudster located in Kazakhstan stole our money, please recover our money. Those are just not feasible options in the modern world. The government in PayPal's case did some investigations and they basically were pretty much all but clueless about the technology. There's this one story Peter Thiel tells where they did the investigation and then they went to PayPal and asked questions like, what's a banner ad? So just really simple technological things where they were way behind the curve. So rather than relying on government, which was not providing any solution at all, PayPal figured out how to detect and predict fraud and assign likelihoods to each transaction of whether or not it was legitimate or illegitimate and basically protect the problem of online fraud ex ante rather than relying on government. And this is a nice story because it actually has now spread to tons and tons of other companies to credit card companies use a lot of the same types of technology with prediction ex ante. So beforehand, rather than relying on government courts after the fact. So because there was so much at stake, private party figured out a way to solve it. And I would say the same thing is likely going to happen or not the exact same thing, but something similar is likely going to happen in the future with these examples you mentioned as new technology gets invented. There might be new challenges, but that's going to open up a lot of opportunities for people to figure out better ways of protecting their property rights or facilitating exchange. What I really love about your book is that, you know, as libertarians, we understand the difficulty in changing people's minds in political ways or in ideological ways. But with private governance, we can take a third tech. We can say, hey, here's what works. And I think Uber is a great example of that, right? Highly regulated taxicabs, the medallion system, all that. It's hard to get a cab. The driver's bad. He don't know where he is. He doesn't come. And Uber comes along and with no ideology whatsoever, people just get that it works and they get that, you know, the driver has a self-interest in being nice and in not having you leave a bad review, et cetera. Do you see the sort of the potential as libertarians for us to sort of sell people on private approaches without having to change their minds politically? Yeah, I think that philosophical discussions are necessary and useful. But for a lot of discussions, showing people, pointing people to examples to say, hey, look, this is not some abstract theoretical, philosophical idea that I'm having. I'm not saying, well, ideally in some science fiction world that I'm imagining markets could solve things in some theoretically better way than the current state. We can actually look out the window and say, hey, this is not a pipe dream. This is actually how commerce has existed for hundreds of years. It has not been backed up by the state. The example that we can chat about perhaps in a minute, the stock market government did not enforce those contracts for hundreds of years. People figured out how to privately enforce them and to say, look, this is a private innovation and private innovation has made the modern world possible. And yes, the same thing is true with Uber. I imagine a lot of chicken littles would have predicted, oh, my goodness, if we allow a private company to let private parties get in their cars, everybody's going to die and it's going to be terrible. But we can look at this and say, this is actually amazing. It's lowered the time to get a car. It's lowered costs for the consumers. It's actually increased the income for the driver. So all around you can show that the market has produced all these great things. Well, you mentioned the stock market. Let's talk about the great crash of 08. Of course, the progressive narrative is that that was caused by a lack of regulation and greedy capitalists investing in CDO obligations, that sort of thing. But really what occurred, I think, is that the natural regulator of companies and investors, which is bankruptcy and liquidation, was not allowed. That process was not allowed to take place. Yeah, I totally agree.  So no, it's not me, it's you, the non-failure of Wall Street during the 2008 economic downturn. And the idea is that government regulators are always claiming to know things that they don't necessarily understand. And when they enact a bunch of bad policies and then things go awry, they never look at the mirror and say, oh my goodness, we made a mistake. They always look at the private sector and say, you, you did it. And that definitely was the case, I would say, with the 2008 economic downturn. There were a lot of regulations that were introduced, some very funny monetary policy, raising interest rates very rapidly over just a few quarters. And then afterwards to then saying, oh, see, look at Wall Street, Wall Street did it. It's not our fault, it's Wall Street. So I think this is kind of a longstanding deploy that the government officials have done for hundreds of years. But I think we need to start questioning them and saying, hey, are you guys as omniscient as you really say you are and are the private parties really as bad as you say they are? Both Rothbard and Hoppe talked a lot about an insurance model. And I want to get your thoughts on this. It seems to me that insurance could do two things in a system of private governance. First, of course, it could compensate people when bad things happen in a way that it just involves private contract and doesn't involve the state. But second, private insurance can act as a regulator, a governor on behavior of sorts because unlike the situation now where you can sort of offload the choices, your lifestyle choices onto the public in an insurance model, sort of the riskier activities you engage and the more your premium goes up. So give me your thoughts on the role insurance can play in private governance. Yeah, I agree with that. For the most part, we can look at this in the collateralized debt market, credit default swap market, where you see riskier products had to basically have insurance, which was called the credit default swap. And the people who had very good credit risk had lower insurance premiums. People had higher default risk, had higher insurance premiums as in the cost of ensuring that debt was much higher. And a lot of people look at these markets and say, oh, look, there was payouts that happened. And I actually look at it and says, well, payouts did happen, but in many of the cases, we've got a case of a riskier venture or riskier investment going bad. And that risk was priced into the transaction. We can also look at that with credit card payment processors. Credit cards are very good at looking at which types of products and transactions are more likely to have fraud involved with them or things called charge backs where somebody claims that they didn't actually purchase the product. So the average product, the loss ratio is less than 1%, but certain products, there's a lot more fraud and there's certain products that might surprise you. Fortune tellers have a lot higher rate of charge backs against them. So I guess they can't perfectly predict the future. And those riskier products get pulled into high risk payment processors. So the better that people are at assessing the risk ahead of time, they can actually basically charge a premium for those types of products. And it's essentially acting as pooling risks, charging people for risk in the exact same way that an insurance market charges for risk, pools risks. And you've got the payment processor in many cases assuming those risks and managing those risks on the behalf of everybody else. So you don't have to have each individual saying, I'm going to do all the calculations myself. You can hire another company to actually act as your insurer. Ed, we just have time for one more question. So I'll leave you with this. Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. You and I can point to an example of a private community like eBay or even almost a private city for a day like Disney World that has its own security, its own processes, etc. And talk about how well those systems work without the state. But I know what the critic would think. The critic who does not agree with your book who has questions about your book would say, aha, but you know what? Underlying it all is the knowledge and tacit understanding that we can always go to the state if everything breaks down. In other words, there's still going to be a state court or a state police officer underlying all of this in case your private systems don't work out. So how would you respond to this kind of criticism? Yeah, that's a standard assumption of a legal centralist. And to see why that's not true, we can look at tons of examples where government explicitly refuses to enforce contracts or government is by all means incapable of enforcing contracts. And we can see that in modern times across nations when people interact, it's theoretically possible for people, two parties in different countries to establish jurisdiction in the other country and start a trial and have that trial litigated in the other country. As a practical matter, these things will take years or decades. So I don't think we can say, oh, it's because of the government. But assume that government is backing up those contracts, which I think is a very fanciful assumption. But historically, we can look at entire markets where government did not understand them. Government refused to enforce contracts in them. And the one that I like to highlight is stock markets. People thought that government official size forms are gambling. They thought it was used to manipulate prices. And in those markets, government simply was not involved. They said, we're not going to enforce contracts. And for hundreds of years, stock brokers developed very sophisticated forms of trading, short sales, forward contracts, option contracts, even though none of them were enforceable by law. So one would have to make the argument that the stock brokers from the 1600s knew that hundreds of years later, the government was going to theoretically enforce these contracts. And that was what was making these things work. Whereas in reality, private parties were governing themselves successfully for hundreds and hundreds of years. Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you're interested in this topic, I really recommend Edward's new book. Again, it's called Private Governance. It has some great historical examples of how private marketplaces can work and have worked. It'll challenge a lot of your assumptions, or at least your friends and family's assumptions. It's available from Oxford University Press. No doubt it is on Amazon. It's also available for sale through Mises.org on our own bookstore website. And Ed Schringer, I want to thank you so much for your time today. Ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend.


Personal Finance Powerpoint Presentation, Forward Price to Earnings, Forward PE. Prepare to get financially fit by practicing personal finance. Most of this information comes from Investopedia, Forward Price to Earnings, Forward PE, which you can find online. Take a look at the references, resources, continue your research from there. This is by Adam Hayes, Update of July 16, 2022. In prior presentations, we've been looking at investment goals, investment strategies, investment tools, keeping in mind the two major categories of investment. That being the fixed income, typically bonds, and then the equities, typically the common stock. We're focused here on the common stock more when we're thinking about the forward PE, forward price to earnings. Also, keep in mind your investment strategies and investment tools. For example, if you were to be investing for a long time horizon, possibly for retirement, you might be using tools such as mutual funds or ETFs to help pool your investments together and help to diversify in which case you might not be scrutinizing so much on individual stocks, but possibly more on sectors and possibly indexes. When we're thinking about individual stock trading, we're going to be scrutinizing doing ratio analysis more likely on those individual stocks, which we might be using tools for such as the forward PE. Keep in that mind, what is forward price to earnings, forward PE? Forward price to earnings, forward PE is a version of the ratio of price to earnings, PE that uses forecasted earnings for the PE calculation. So we're forecasting into the future. That means kind of like we're projecting out into the future. Possibly the reason for doing that is because we want to make the decision on the margin. We want to make the decision going forward. The past data is useful and good mostly because it's more accurate. We know what happened in the past, but if we can have an accurate prediction into the future, that might be more useful for us to try to make investments going forward from this point on the margin as economists say. While the earnings used in this formula are just an estimate and not as reliable as current or historical data, there are still benefits to estimated PE analysis. So in other words, the prior data of course is more reliable because it has actually happened. We know what it is, but we can also try to use projected or future data which might have more predictive power. So understanding forward price to earnings, forward PE, the forecasted earnings used in the formula below are typically either projected earnings for the following 12 months or the next full year fiscal, fiscal year period, which might be different some other 12 month period typically. So the forward PE can be contrasted with the trailing PE ratio. So the forward PE, we've got the current share price. So we're still using the share price at this point in time. That's going to be the market price determined by good old supply and demand. And then we've got that divided by the estimated future earnings per share. So instead of looking at the earnings per share based on the data that has already happened, we're calculating the future earnings per share. For example, assume that a company has a current share price of $50, so it's selling on the market for $50. You could buy this stock for 50 bucks if you want. And this year's earnings per share are $5. Analyst estimate that the company's earnings will grow by 10% over the next fiscal year. The company has a current PE ratio of $50 divided by 5 or 10X. That's the current PE, meaning the $50 is what is being paid for it. And the earnings for each individual share, the earnings per share is 5. So we're at 10X, the price is 10 times the earnings per share. The forward PE on the other hand would be we're going to get to that 9.1X instead of the 10X by taking the 50 divided by the 5 times the 1.1. Because we determined that the growth, it's expected to grow by the 10%. So once again, analysts estimated that the company's earnings will grow by 10%. So if we had the current $5 on an earnings per share basis, we think it's going to grow by 10%, then we can multiply it times 100% plus 10%, 110% or 1.1. And therefore we're going to have the denominator not at 5, but 5 times the growth, therefore 5 times the 1.1. That's what's going to give us that 9.1X instead of the 10X. So note that the forward PE is smaller than the current PE since the forward PE accounts for future earnings growth relative to today's share price. So note we're currently using today's price. You would expect that if there were to be growth, maybe the share price will grow in the future. We're using the same share price and then on the denominator, the earnings per share side of things, instead of keeping that constant at using past data, we're projecting that out into the future. And if we think earnings are going to increase in the future, that means the forward or future earnings per share is going to be higher, which is going to result in a lower forward PE as compared to the current PE. So what does forward price to earnings ratio reveal? Analysts like to think of the PE ratio as a price tag on earnings. So when we're investing, we're trying to generate earnings clearly. We're trying to generate earnings by either getting dividends in the future or we're going to have growth in the company, which we would expect would mean the valuation of the stock would increase. The way that happens, of course, is the company generates revenue. It makes money on what they have on the assets that they have. It makes revenue and either gives that revenue to us in the form of dividends or they reinvest that money into the company, which we would expect gives value to the company increasing the stock price. So it is used to calculate a relative value based on a company's level of earnings. In theory, $1 of earnings at a company A is worth the same as $1 of earnings at company B. If this is the case, both companies should also be trading at the same price, but this is rarely the case. If company A is trading for $5 and company B is trading for $10, this implies that the market values company B's earnings more. There can be various interpretations as to why company B is valued more. It could mean that company B's earnings are overvalued. So it could just mean that for whatever reason just a sentiment on the market is overvaluing company B. If that were the case, then we would expect that possibly to even out over time valuations for the market being reflected in price over time, which could drive our decision making process. If that's our interpretation, it could also mean that the company B deserves a premium on the value of its earnings due to superior management and better business model. So it could also be that there is actual value that the market perceives and the price is being accurately reflected. So notice whenever we do these calculations, it's not just that we look at the ratio. We do the comparison and then we make the decision just mechanically based on whatever the outcome of the ratio analysis will be. Then we have to explain the rationale. Well, why would that be the case? What is the rationale behind that? That's what usually is going to be driving our actual decision making our investments. When calculating the trailing PE ratio, analysts compare today's price against earnings for the last 12 months or the last fiscal year. However, both are based on historical prices. Analysts are using earnings estimates to determine what the relative value of the company will be at a future level of earnings. The forward PE estimates the relative value of the earnings. For example, if the current price of a company B is $10 and the earnings are estimated to double next year to $2, the forward PE ratio is 5x or half the value of the company when it made $1 in earnings. So notice if there's going to be a substantial growth in the future that we think that the growth is going to go up a lot. That's going to have a lot of an impact or difference between the current PE and the forward PE ratio. If the forward PE ratio is lower than the current PE ratio, this implies that analysts are expecting earnings to increase. So one of the things that could account for people having a higher price, even though we're looking at current PE ratios that are similar in nature, would be that the forward PE ratios are different due to differentiations in future earnings projections. So if the forward PE is higher than the current PE analysts are expecting a decrease in earnings. Forward PE versus trailing PE. Forward PE uses projected earnings per share. Meanwhile, trailing PE relies on past performance by dividing the current share price by the total earnings per share earnings over the past 12 months. We're usually looking at 12 month time periods notes. Trailing PE is the most popular PE metric because it's the most objective of suing the company reported earnings accurately. So trailing PE is useful because the past has already happened. And therefore we can be reliant on that number as long as we can be reliant on the company fairly representing or reporting that number, which hopefully we can be given the fact that they're publicly traded companies, they're being audited and all that kind of stuff. So some investors prefer to look at the trailing PE because they don't trust another individual's earning estimates. So in other words, if we look at forward PE, we got to depend on estimates and whose estimates are we going to trust. Management, they seem a little bit biased possibly, although they could be accurate estimates. Whose analysts are we going to trust going forward that are going to be good? Maybe our best bet is to look at the prior data, which is actually hard data, which has actually happened, even though it's past data and not projected data and then try to figure our own projections. So however, trailing PE also has its share of shortcomings, namely a company's past performance does not signal future behavior. So we could think that the company is going to be fairly consistent going forward or we can try to use that past data and then think about the future. But obviously it would be best if we knew the future. So investors should thus commit money based on future earnings power, not the past. The fact that the EPS earnings per share number remains constant while the stock prices fluctuate is also a problem. If a major company event drives the stock price significantly higher or lower, the trailing PE will be less reflective of those changes. Limitations on forward PE. Since forward PE relies on estimated future earnings, it is subject to miscalculation and or analysts biased. So we could mess up what we think the future is going to be, of course. And obviously when we're getting future projections from people, those projections, even if they're analysts that are not within the company, they could be biased on their own because they're trying to rationalize their own decision making process. So everybody's going to have their own take on things. So there are other inherent problems with the forward PE also. Companies could underestimate earnings to beat the consensus estimated PE when the next quarter's earnings are announced. Other companies may overestimate the estimate and later adjust it going into their next earnings announcement. Furthermore, external analysts may also provide estimates which may diverge from the company estimates creating confusion. So the company, you might look at the company estimates, but obviously the company in and of itself has its own incentives. One incentive is they don't want to overestimate on one hand because if they overestimate and they don't hit their target, they're going to look bad. So maybe they actually underestimate their estimates on purpose so they have a low hurdle that they can clear. That's one strategy that companies might take sometimes or sometimes they might try to overestimate their estimate, possibly in a way to try to drive market sentiment in such a way that it will actually result in a virtuous cycle. You know, an increase in the stock price artificially. Also, of course, we could have other people calculating what the future value will be outside of the company, which means now you've got multiple kind of future valuations, so which one's the one you need to use. So if you're using forward PE as a central basis of your investment theses, I'll research the companies thoroughly. If the company updates its guidance, this will affect the forward PE in a way that might cause you to change your opinion. It is good practice to use both forward and trailing PE to come to a more trustworthy figure. How to calculate the forward PE in Excel? So we might do some of these in Excel, but you can calculate a company's forward PE for the next fiscal year in Microsoft Excel as shown above the formula for the forward PE is simply a company's market price per share divided by its existing earnings per share in Microsoft Excel, first increase the widths of column A, B, and C by right clicking on each of the columns and left clicking column width. Assume you wanted to compare the forward PE ratio between two companies in the same sector, enter the name of the first company and sell B1 in the name of the second and C1, then enter market price per share into cell A2 and the corresponding values for the company's market price per share into cells B2 and C2, next enter forward earnings per share into cell A3 and the corresponding value for the company's expected earnings per share for the next fiscal year into cells B3 and C3 and then enter forward price and earnings ratio into cell A4 for example, assume company ABC is currently trading at $50 and has an expected earnings per share EPS of $2.6 $2.60 enter company ABC into cell B1, next enter 50 into cell B2 and 2.6 into cell B3 then enter equals B2 divided by B3 into cell B4 the resulting forward PE ratio for company ABC is 19.23 on the other hand, company DEF currently has a market value per share of $30 and has an expected earnings per share of 1.8 enter company DEF into cell C1, next enter 30 into cell D2 and 1.8 into cell D3 then enter equals C2 divided by C3 into cell C4 the resulting forward PE for company DEF is 16.67