Good afternoon. I will give a quick introduction of the panel and then I'll hand it over to Bobby McKenzie from here But thank you for joining us at New America this afternoon for the launch of Ronnie up was eights book no turning back We're very honored and grateful to have her joining us here at New America She's a fellow from two years ago in her book Proposal then was very illuminating and exciting for us to come across as we're going through applications It was a process before my time as director of the program But it is a book that is very timely in many ways, but also haunting in other ways too as the crisis in Syria continues to Be inflicted and continues to ignite on a regular basis And so as we take the time to reflect on the history of the war through Ronnie's book we're also grateful for her contribution to these stories and for really shedding a light on the human Toll that it's taken there over the past few years and we're really grateful to have her Joining Bobby as well today much of his work intersects with What's happening in Syria and how it's starting to affect our own policies here domestically as the director of the Muslim Diaspora Initiative? He looks very closely at immigration issues refugee issues And I think it's a great combination in terms of their shared expertise and hopefully to the conversation that we'll have here today And so before I hand it over to Bobby. I did want to read two blurbs from Ronnie's book And I think they're really poignant in terms of what her book really represents and hopefully you'll all buy a copy We do have copies on sale from solid-state books The first is actually from Peter Bergen. He is director of the ISP program here at New America And he writes widely recognized as the bravest of reporters Abuse a rights of great fluidity and authority about the most important foreign policy and moral crisis of our era Embedding with the men women and children whose lives are torn apart by the Syrian civil war No turning back works both on the level of deeply reported personal narrative of a tragedy that continues to unspool and also as a major work of history And then also from Dexter Finkelkens. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning author of the forever war The civil war in Syria is the most catastrophic event of our time and the most dimly understood most journalists won't go near it Rania Abuzade has produced a work of stunning reportage from the very heart of the conflict during to go to the most dangerous places in order to get the story The result is a sensational book that allows us a deeper and more humane understanding of this terrible war It's a credit to Abuzade's bravery and fortitude and with that Bobby the pleasure. Thank you want to thank everybody for joining us today, and I want to thank Rania for being here and For producing a truly extraordinary Book but also about the conflict that is deeply deeply troubling and as you and I talked about backstage Syria Has been an engine of enormous human suffering For those that aren't familiar at least a half a million dead half of the country displaced five million Syrian refugees Chemical attacks against children and it goes on and on and against that backdrop you reported on Human beings and you surfaced some extraordinary stories And so I I think it would be great if you could just start by giving us a sense of Then I just gave us an outline of where we are today, but in 2011 it didn't quite look like that And so could you maybe take us? From 2011 to where we are today and sort of what you saw Just that if you can to the degree you can because I know that's a lot of years and a lot of suffering But there are also some extraordinary stories in there that maybe we can touch upon Sure Thank you very much. Thank you to a new America and thank you to everybody here. Thank you for your interest in Syria I started reporting it in February 2011 after covering the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and If we it's so hard to remember now But if we think back to those heady months in early 2011 when you know took Mubarak 80 after 18 days Mubarak step down Tunisia's then al-Abideen bin Ali got on a plane The Libyan leader looked like he was teaching Gaddafi looked like he was teaching There were protests in Yemen in Bahrain and in other places. There was this sense of Change there was the sense that these men who seem to be cemented to their seats in power might actually be shaken out of them and It's hard for us to remember that now, but that's that was the mood back in those days and it That that fervor that wave reached Syria and I say February 2011 and not March 15 2011 which is widely considered the date of the Syrian uprising because the first protests Happened in February and they weren't so much they weren't against the regime. They didn't mention the regime. They were in Solidarity with Arab protesters elsewhere Because what they were trying to do was to test the boundaries of what they could get away with in a state that had been ruled under a State of emergency since 1963 it meant that public gatherings were banned except those that were Sanctioned by the government so they the protesters were trying to just test the waters and they started With these protests in solidarity with Egyptian protesters and Libyan protesters and I was outside the Libyan Embassy and witnessed what was one of the larger protests at the time and that starts the book that's the The the prelude to the book and what to say about where we are now the numbers that you offered are Numbing they're numbing and they're hard to to get your head around what it means.  At least half a million dead people mean and that figure has been static for years because the UN stopped counting Syria's dead in mid 2013 At least half a million dead people means Every every one of those numbers is a person every person is part of a family every family is part of the community Every community is part of a bigger regional group So think about all of those ripple effects from just one death and now imagine half a million of those ripples inside Syria That's what that's where we are now Can you talk a little bit about what it was like to report inside Syria? How did you how did you do it given all of the complexities as we talked about backstage you have You hadn't currently have a number of actors from Turkey to Russia to Iran to his Vola to Arab Gulf States There isn't just one opposition group. There are many many and could you just give us a sense of how did you navigate all of that? I need to sigh. I'm sorry before I answer that question Well, initially, I mean I learned that I was blacklisted by the Syrian regime in summer 2011 And wanted by a number of its intelligence agencies, which locked Damascus to me I couldn't cover that side of the story and I would have liked to cover that side of the story because I'm a journalist And I want to talk to everybody, but I couldn't access that side even though I did manage to get back to Assad held territory twice and there is a story line in the book that documents what happened On both sides of a front line, so I have the the rebel side and I have all what was perceived as the regime side so that meant that I had to focus on the rebel side and I had to get into Northern Syria and that meant illegally trekking like being smuggled across the Turkish border to get into to those areas and Initially, it wasn't hard. It really wasn't hard The border was so porous that you could literally just walk across it. You wouldn't even see a guard and if you did, he didn't care So that was the beginning and obviously as the years Went on it became harder and I I mean I noticed a change a Very sharp change and I'm going to say 2014 when the Turks under pressure to sort of stem the tide of People coming out and and this was before the the big refugee wave if you recall so the Turks were under pressure to stem that tide of people coming out so they Started to get tough on on the border and what that looks like now is that they have erected a Concrete barrier like blast walls along their border. It's almost 900 kilometers of wall And it's well inside Syrian territory. It's topped with coil razor wire and there are guards there who will shoot to kill So trying to get across the Syrian border now means risking death For anybody for families for journalists for anybody and that's just getting into it But once you're in there the number of players that you're talking about it was such a fragmented rebel battle field That with shifting Coalitions and groups that would merge with other groups and then fight with other groups It was it was difficult to keep track of but you had to keep track of it because in order to stay safe You had to understand the territory that you were entering and that meant you had to understand it at every level at the military political social religious level To know what you were getting yourself into You mentioned that Distent the tide of people trying to leave the country But Syria also received something in the neighborhood of 30,000 foreign fighters And could you talk a little bit about that what you saw? Did you see this growing or changing because this was something that at least Western media suggested that sort of ISIS and the foreign fighter Situation came on almost out of left field, but certainly 30,000 people is not left field First of all, I don't know where they got the numbers from and Syrians I talked to say well if they knew that they were coming in down to the numbers why didn't they stop them? So I don't know about the number But but certainly you could see foreigners coming in on the on the domestic flights in Turkey from Istanbul down to different parts along the Turkish border and different Turkish airports served as jumping off points to get into certain parts of Syria So if you wanted to go to Aleppo you would fly into Hazi at up If you wanted to go to Idlib or Latakia provinces in Syria, then you would fly into Hatay airport And I mean I was coming and going and coming and going and every one of those flights everywhere You'd see them.  There were men who I mean in the book I even have a senior member of Al Qaeda who was getting so angry with these foreign fighters because they weren't heeding Instructions to tone down their appearances at airports And and you would hear them. I mean I wouldn't be standing next to them and you can hear their plans They're talking in a mix of Arabic dialects. They're speaking in Cockney British accents. They're talking You know in English and French and different languages. They were not hiding what they were doing. I Would encounter them inside Syria as well I was once going to be smuggled across the border and I was there was a Moroccan man who was going in the other direction I mean there were They were there and they came for many different reasons is the other thing some of them came because they Were sick of seeing People dying and they just wanted to help Some of them came for ideological reasons. Some of them came because they believe that Syria is blessed It's mentioned as you know blessed land in the Quran and that this was a jihad that they had to participate in some of them came to to Establish an Islamic state in Syria that would then expand into the broader Middle East so they came for for many different reasons and On my last trip in which was spring 2016 to finish up the reporting for the book The nature of the foreign fighters had changed so they were less Arab less European more Central Asian more Uzbek East Kazakhstan East and and and men from those those areas in August of 2014 was the official rise of the caliphate and Did things feel different? I mean it again? I'm thinking about how we see things here and in America Why I mean this was when I think everyone became fixated on Syria, but obviously there was enormous suffering before that Did things feel differently after the rise of the caliphate? Yeah, yeah, I mean because the for starters the rebels took them on in in early 2014 in the first months before the caliphate was announced the You know Islamic State had been Harassing the groups in the areas where it was based. It was not just harassing civilians But it was also Intimidating and trying to elbow out rebel groups I mean at one territory it took territory from them from rebel groups and and from and the rebel groups by the way Are a spectrum from so there were some who were very various limits and there were some who? Who were less is limits and some who weren't? So I don't you know, I don't like using the catch-all phrase, but nonetheless So the various rebel groups like in all of their political stripes took on Islamic State in early 2014 and they kicked them out of an at least two provinces Two provinces where they were very prevalent and they pushed them east towards the rocker because and and the ones that I was in Syria at the time and And Al Qaeda turned on them at the same time the local Al Qaeda affiliate Turned on them as well and the the men on the ground were saying let's push them through rocker and out back into Iraq and They stayed in rocker obviously and they established this caliphate but no, I mean certainly it It meant that an entire swathe of Syria was cut off to many Syrians It meant that Syrians from that area tried to we're trying to get out It it contributed to the fragmentation of the country because we started to see okay, so there's the Islamic State rule part There's the Kurdish enclave that's taking part. There's the rebel area. There's the Assad regime You know, there's a governmental Part of Syria and and the southern front is also rebel But it was different kind of rebels from the ones who were up in the north. So it was just completely fragmented And in the midst of all of that you have barrel bombs that were dropping fairly regularly Could you maybe describe for the audience here? I mean you were in proximity to some of these Incidents, could you just explain what what that's like what that feels like? A barrel bomb is a is an unguided crude weapon So it's literally like a water heater and it's stuffed with shrapnel and metal and various other things And it's unguided and it's it falls based on Gravity and the wind and it's dropped from helicopter gunships not on warplanes. So You could see the helicopter gunship flying high and the thing is that also The street would just stop and every all eyes would turn up. I mean it's amazing like Syrians developed a new relationship to the sky All eyes would turn up because they'd watch the barrel falling because they thought because they want to see where it's where it might go in the hope that They could figure out where to run in which direction because it was that unguided and And it would rip through the air with it a terrifying sound. It really does it really does have a distinct sound and then it would land and explode and Everything that was in it would come out One of the stories you talk about here is being in a hospital and listening to a young girl that was being operated on that had shrapnel in her I think her shoulder her neck and face And screaming uncontrollable, can you maybe take us into that room? Sure This was mid 2012 It was a mid 2012 and I was That I was in a rebel town basically it was a town that was not Under government control anymore, but there were still four checkpoints in this town for regime checkpoints and it happened The border post fell I said suddenly lost control was losing control of the border post There was this a renewed rebel momentum and the rebels in this town were like, okay Look, they were receiving news reports saying look what's happening Maybe we should move now and be part of this momentum. So they decided to take out one of the four checkpoints in their town and the reaction was or the the response to their attack on this Checkpoint was that at least 25 people died when I was in the hospital but I later learned that the toll went up to 35 and It was complete pandemonium in this hospital People were coming in children were coming in there weren't enough Beds for them to lie on so they'd lie on the floor. They were bleeding into the floor People were stepping in the pools of blood. There were messy footprints Women were screaming and asking about their sons neighbors try we're trying to figure out what was happening to Their families I remember talking to one man and he just looked at me He told me he had three children and he didn't know where they were Because he hadn't been at home when something happened at home But he learned that they may be in the hospital So he was in the hospital to try and see if he knew where they were and in the midst of all of this Pandemonium and yelling and and there was no electricity So the hospital had a generator and the generator kept cutting out and there was like there were only a few doctors and They were trying to Treat as many people as they could so you know bodies or broken bodies were being brought in and the dead were carried out and And the injured and people were just patched up enough to make space for the ones who were coming in and in the midst of all of this was a little girl who came in and The base of her skull was cut open and she had shrapnel in her eye and shrapnel in her neck and it was spurting blood and she came in and She was calling up from her mother But her mother wasn't with her her father was and her father held her hand as the doctor operated on her without anesthetic So you can imagine I Mean just imagine if you get a burn or if you cut if you get a paper cut it hurts and The base of this little girl skull was cut open and she was being operated on without anesthetic because there was none Because the medical supplies were so low and this is something that Syrians live with day in day out That's just one little girl, I'm not even sure she made it as a statistic and that day's Tally of what happened in Syria and we're seven years in now people This is still what people are experiencing Speaking of little grocers another girl that you write about Roja Can you talk a little bit about her sure and turn port is to the to the book sure so the book is I? Focus on four characters who I consider like the main pillars and then other characters branch off them and These storylines all help explain an element of the uprising in my Experience covering the Middle East and South Asia. I find that you know these are often complicated places They're often complicated conflicts if they're in conflict and it's hard to get your head around things. So if you focus on Telling the stories of people Individuals within the context of events they help explain the events So I wanted to tell one of the four characters is a little girl called who huh, and she's nine in 2011 and I wanted to show war through it child's eyes And I chose this particular child because she was so precocious and she was just such a smart little girl who would say things that would just Really stopped me in my tracks I mean she had such an acute awareness of what was happening around her and her ways of trying to Understand what was happening were Very powerful. I found them to be very powerful, and I wanted to share her her experience so she's nine when you first meet her in the book and The first thing that she does the first scene where you see her is that she's sleeping in her grandmother's room because she liked her electric blanket and There's ferocious knocking on the door and her grandmother who's who's an older woman Has difficulty moving so she asked her to open the door and who opens the door and it's a security raid Because they're looking for her father So she opened the door to the first raid on her family's home When they came looking for her dad who was a protester and you see the raid through her eyes and you see What it does to the family and then you follow the family for six years after that through their ups, you know through their highs and lows and Through telling that story. I hope to just show How people get used to Their environment how quickly you can adapt. I mean you don't really know what human beings are amazing You really don't know what you're capable of until you're placed in the circumstances that will produce certain parts of your personality I hope that none of you will ever have to experience what this nine-year-old girl experienced but Human beings are amazingly resilient. They really are and This little girl's resilience comes through in the book Before I open up to the question open up to the audience I'm just ask you one final question that the subtitle here is life loss and hope and you've sketched out for us some of the Suffering and the enormous tragedy that we've seen We're now entering the eighth year of the conflict with no end in sight Where is the hope the hope is in the people the hope is in people who Can't have lost many things Lost loved ones, but they they can still forgive the hope is in Doctors who work in these field hospitals. They could they could leave, but they're still there Because they know that their community needs them the hope is in Some of the characters who who go through things that honestly Hollywood could not script and yet they emerge on the other side And they say that they are not bitter About their experience the hope is in the resilience of normal people and you might think that's a small thing But don't forget when I was talking about those ripple effects of what one person can do it can work the other way, too I mean one one, you know one person It's part of one family in a community and it's a small thing But but communities are made up of individuals and they're made up of people. So the hope is in the people Let's open up to the audience if you could State your name and your affiliation and questions only, please Thanks for the talk. My name is Blake Selzer I work for humanitarian group from 2014 to 2017 in the Syria region based out of Amman Working on advocacy. So my question you touched on about hope you started it off, but I Understand hope in the people and the doctors everyone who's doing incredible work But you have hope in the international community That has failed and there's particularly the UN because when I was doing advocacy I think people in this room may not realize there's been UN resolutions from the Security Council since 2014 They call for unfettered humanitarian access and an immediate end to indiscriminate attack on civilians Russia vetoed some of them, but there were some on the books and they're just never enforced So do you have hope in the international community? That's my question. I think no, I mean But but but I think that Syria will be a case study for exactly these things to to to examine international the impotence really in some ways of of exactly what you said the things that you think are basic like access to humanitarian aid and the rules for for Humanitarian organizations and who they have to deal with it They have to deal with the state and not with non-state players and various things I really think that Syria will serve as an important case study for for all of these things and for for diplomacy The role of vetoes in the UN Security Council and what have you because there have been so many examples as you as you said of exactly that I'm curious about your situation Do you speak Arabic and? How difficult was it for you to move through different areas and from one section to another controlled by different groups there and Also, does the group the white helmets still exist there? Yes, I do speak Arabic I'm of Lebanese heritage, but I speak Lebanese accented Arabic, which is not Syrian Arabic So when I open my mouth, they know that I'm not from there and what's worse is that Different Lebanese parties are involved in Syria You have has about fighting with Assad regime and then you have Hasab Allah's domestic Rivals who are were supporting their position.  I that was the first thing that the rebels would say so it made it tricky to to navigate And as for moving from one area to other I mean that comes back to really understanding the terrain they are entering and knowing who you're moving with and I move very low profile I don't have a team or anything with me and I try and blend in as much as I can so I don't Stand out like I'm not there You know people I talk to know I'm a journalist and I have my notepad and pen out and and and that's clear I'm not hiding that but But you know, I'm not I'm not Tweeting about it either Are the white helmets? Yes, the white helmets are present. Yeah Can we just yeah, we'll get back to you sir Hi, Ranya. Hi Did you see The US presence in the Syrian Civil War which was you know Reputed on that the CIA was helping some factions there. Did you see that? Did it make a difference? What what did you see of US policy on the ground when you were there? It's in the book No, I mean I I There's a lot of new information in this book that hasn't that isn't public the book is underpinned by by a What I think well at least it was rigorous to me a rigorous investigation that really Goes back and investigates how it militarized and how it Islamized the role of the Saudis the Qataris the Turks the Americans and everybody else and it maps it out and I have a section there that deals with exactly your question and it's all new information about The information that the CIA was getting who was dealing with what it did with that information and how it interacted with the groups Yeah, just again back to the white helmets there There have been forces that are trying to demean the efforts of the white helmets that they Really is a little bit collusion with Al Qaeda as one if you had opinion on that but the other thing is There was a legitimate rebellion at the beginning, but then you had the entry of the Foreign fighters for al-Nusra al-Qaeda and Isis if the foreign fighters were prevented from going in and it was just a battle between the Syrian government and Rebellious forces at that time Do you think that the war would have been settled a long time ago? A Syria has ceased to be about Syrians and it hasn't been about Syrians for a long time It's a proxy battlefield for everybody. You have the Iranians the Russians Hasballah the Turks the Saudis the Qataris. I mean you name it. They're in there Everybody's in there. I mean as we speak the Turks are there's a Turkish led offensive now against the Kurds up in in the northeast the regime is is you know attacking Huta Backed by the Russian Air Force as well. So it's It's stopped being about Syrians almost they're simply the it's just their blood that's being spilled But they're it's an international battlefield Related to some of the questions. I'm wondering if you have a perspective of was there a point in the beginning where Some sort of international intervention or US intervention would have made a difference and prevented Subsequent budget. I mean I can tell you what Syrians in opposition. Tell me and the Syrians in opposition And there are many different types of Syrians in opposition But some of them say that had there been a no-fly zone for example in the northeast in the north Sorry, not the northeast then the the planes would have been grounded Hospitals could have operated unmolested Many of the refugees may not have left the country they could have stayed in in the country and that's You know the Syrian opposition's Fledgling institutions could have taken root that's what some of them say And then others point to the the red line comment after the chemical weapons attack when they say that had there been Force on the regime at that time that maybe it may have made a difference But everybody was involved from from very early on the various states what were involved and they all picked their teams And and that's prolonged the conflict Thank you again for for joining us today my question is more specific to you And I hope it's okay to ask just more about your personal Connection to these stories. I mean it's six years of reporting. I can't imagine it was easy to bear witness to a lot Of what you've written about and so in terms of the length of reporting How much time would you spend on the ground between trips and then also as you would leave? I'm just also personally curious as a reporter who's covering these very intense topics How you came to terms of what you witnessed? I Was I Was really I was in there all the time it felt like all the time. I mean there was a period for years when Out of every month, I was I was in there for about three weeks three weeks out of every month So or I was on the border trying to get in So I was always in and out in and out but as for how it affected me I mean I'm more interested in how it affects them and they're still living it I mean I knew that I could leave I knew that that if I just got back across the Turkish border That I had a credit card in my pocket which meant that I could check into a hotel I could have a shower I could have something to eat and I have a passport that enables me to go back to a house That is still standing and family who are not endangered. So They're still living it they had no escape they they had they Their suffering wasn't finite. They're a danger Whatever it is that I experienced wasn't finite. They're still living it. So I'm more interested in their suffering and how they're coping I Work with their organization that provides virtual education for refugees Residing in the countries of first refuge And the question is how do you foresee their future? Are they marked for life by the regime and will never be able to come go back What do you see how it's gonna be unfolding? I don't know I mean, it's it depends on the individuals and why they left and the particular circumstances But people are are going back from Lebanon people are going back into to Syria I've never met a Syrian who doesn't want to go home. I really haven't even the ones who end up in Europe They don't want to many of many of the ones that I know of course some of them may want to stay there But many of the ones that I know want to go home So the question is if they can in terms of and not all of them were Anti-Assad either some of them just wanted to flee conflict They're not all necessarily wanted by the regime. So I think it depends on the particular circumstances But obviously, I mean, you know living in limbo as you can imagine It's not a state that that anybody would want to be and I mean imagine Place yourself in their position You're you're in a foreign country. You just want to go home it's a very Very difficult thing Especially for Syrians who are so tied to where they're from they're so tied to their communities their families to that Their sense of identity in terms of you know, the particular village that they're from and the province and it's the building block of the community Yes, thanks. My name is rich glassy. I'm a freelance environmental journalist. Thanks for this excellent presentation So I'm interested for this long period. There must have been some agriculture and how does it continue? Where are the farms that are functioning and dislocated and also, you know a lot of environmental stories that before the Civil War? There was environmental stresses one what you think about that thesis. Yeah, I didn't really do too much on that but but you know that there's still agriculture especially in Idlib province, which is at agricultural heartland and the interesting thing to me about you mentioned agriculture is that for example the Many regime held areas aren't the agricultural areas So there has to be so so I talked about these fragmented Serious these many series, but they're still interdependent on each other because of things like agriculture because of things like fuel which is coming from the eastern province so even though Politically, they're splintered economically They they rely on each other to a certain degree because they need the wheat from from Idlib they need the lentils from the regime the government held areas need those things and and vice versa and and and the the Syrian state still pays salaries to civil servants who are in Rebel held areas. So those connections still exist. I mean, I'm referring to Idlib province because it tends to be You know lots of agricultural land up there Thanks, sorry, I have a two-part question I'm so I mean first of all, how do you possibly see this ending? It seems like none of these fractured forces has the might to actually win this conflict and how could it possibly end and then secondly you've spent so many years you've put your life at risk to write this book and I'm wondering What impact are you hoping to achieve? What impact can a book have or informing the world about what's happening there? And why did you do this basically? The first question in terms of how do I see it ending? I think that The outcome has been determined And the outcome is is that Assad is staying and that he has won But the war hasn't ended and it won't end. I don't think for many years while all of these different series fight over Territory, but I said isn't going anywhere and that's clear and the the rebels are so fractured and they've lost so much of their foreign support that I Can't see them Posing any real threat and I can't I mean I can't see Assad going anywhere in terms of why I did it. I did it because I wanted to I mean we were talking backstage if you About how you know there are moments in time in the Syria coverage. There is the the dead boy on the beach There's the the boy who was in the ambulance and they grabbed people's attentions for a minute, but Why was that little boy's family on the raft? Why were they on the raft and what happened to the survivors afterwards? We see people for a moment in time But I wanted to show you what was happening over six years so that you could really understand their What happened in Syria and I Focus on the people because I was so sick of the numbing numbers and I wanted to put people back into the story You mentioned some of the infighting that's happening, you know territorial You know battles that are going to work themselves out. How serious do you see the Turkish Kurdish? Conflict that seems to be looming that has been going on for a while There's been a lot of saber-rattling more recently over Afrin and you mentioned that Assad regime is there to stay Do you see the regime ever? establishing control over the whole of What used to be Syrian territory? To your second question. I don't know. I don't know because I don't know what you're going to do with For example Idlib provinces is massive. It borders Turkey and it's the main rebel real estate at the moment So I don't know what's going to happen to Idlib.  Everybody in Idlib and he's been Busting his enemies from other parts of Syria in evacuation deals to Idlib. So they're all gathering in Idlib So I don't know is my answer to that question and the first one know the Turkish intervention in Syria is very serious it's it's You know, some people say that they're they're carving out their zone of influence in the area and that they are they're there to stay It's a it's a major move and it's a major investment by the Turkish forces inside Syria Hi So hi, thanks. My name is a Jack Kropansky unaffiliated um a question about the the the media role of the media and this Rallying cry that Assad must go. I mean just today. I heard Saw a report that a reporter was badgering the cent com spokesperson I think about do we still have that as our policy? Does that help the discussion at all or does it hurt in any way? Or what would you like the discussion to be like in the media? I don't I don't want it's not about me. It's about what the Syrians want and that depends on which Syrians you're talking to And what their politics are? Hey, I have a couple of questions, too I was wondering if I can ask what what does your family think of your decision to? Go on such a dangerous place, I mean, I can only imagine how it must be to have a daughter or your sister In Syria for all these years, and then I was wondering if you think you're gonna go back soon Can I just ask a follow-up to that maybe you could talk about who the book is dedicated to and Well, let me flip to the page now For my parents my sisters my family I carried your love and support in my heart every time I crossed the mountains While on my shoulders, I bore the guilt of taking you with me That answer your question And I'm sorry. What was your second question? Oh, I'd be there now if I could Because I want to know what's happening So since you would like to be there now to find out what's happening Do you feel that the reporting that we're getting in this country is not adequate? Oh, I think that's a big claim. It's not fair. There are journalists who have been covering this for six years Trying to cover it. They've been It's really hard to get into Syria. It's the regime doesn't give visas easily And the Turks have literally created Walled in the country. I mean, it's really hard to get in there and many of us who had contacts and who maintain those contacts I mean seven years in People are dead people have moved people have fled It's it's very it's very difficult to cover from for all of those reasons So and yet journalists are still doing it and they're still trying and they're still Trying to develop new sources and they're still trying to get into the country. So, you know We do what we can with what we're given. I think we're going to wrap it up here We have a reception and I know I think you're around to sign some And is the rule you're not allowed to leave if you join the reception without buying a book Okay But I want to just I want to tell you how important this book is and what's so powerful about it is What run you says on stage is what she says off stage when I ask her about these things It's about the people. It's about the people. It's about the people. It's not about one particular side it's about trying to understand the human experience and We're very very fortunate To have this book and I certainly hope that it shapes and informs a much needed And fresh understanding of what life is like on the ground in Syria. So please join me


Many, many people have given me that kind of gift, the small thing that didn't look important. I'm thinking right now of my teacher in first grade, Gary McCaslin, his name was such a kind man. All I remember is his beard right now and the feeling of safety I had being around him and his kindness. I don't remember anything that he specifically said to me, but somehow his being imprinted itself in me. Who knows, without that influence, who knows what I would be doing today?  Maybe anything I do in this world should be attributed to him, just as much as to anybody else. Yeah, we're all in it together. And which role is yours to have? Is your role to be the public speaker?  Or is it your role to be that first grade teacher who gives the public speaker, or gives the important person who gives the future president, who gives that person a bit of love in a dark time and changes who they express themselves as 30 years later, 50 years later? How do you know what your role is? You cannot reason that out. Yet, the knowledge of when to act and how to act is given to us. It's just not through the mechanism of the mind, usually. It's through the heart, through the gut, through the bones.


British poet, W.H. Auden once said, thousands have lived without love, but not one without water. And Auden was obviously right. More people die from unsafe drinking water each year than war and other forms of violence combined. This problem of access to clean water is compounded by the fact that less than 1% of the earth's fresh water is actually accessible to us. And by 2050, global freshwater demand is expected to increase by an additional 33%, making it even more difficult to protect both people and our finite water resources. One area that must be addressed to stormwater management. Currently, when it rains, stormwater flows through our cities, picking up garbage, sediment, automotive fluids, fertilizers, and other pollutants from roofs, streets, and parking lots. And more often than not, the stormwater is untreated, resulting in these pollutants eventually flowing downstream into our rivers and lakes. When these pollutants enter these waterways, they have devastating environmental consequences like reduced fish shields, harmful algal blooms, and they pollute our drinking water sources. So how do we stop these pollutants from entering our waterways? My unique approach is to leverage recent technological advances like low cost, low power sensors, and computers that enable real-time data crunching and decision making. And this is already happening all around us.  But what does that look like for our water infrastructure? Imagine a city that's covered in sensors, devices that measure soil moisture and rainfall, water levels, and water quality. And then they adapt the measurements in real time to control things like valves, pumps, and gates to change how the water's flowing through the city. So for example, imagine one neighborhood is flooded, it's completely dry. We can reroute some of the water from the dry neighborhood so that neither, to the dry neighborhoods, but neither neighborhood floods. To that end, my dissertation focuses on the fundamental questions that will enable cities to meet their water quality goals for smart connected and autonomous stormwater systems. Before I could even start tackling the fundamental questions, I needed a way to test smart stormwater system. So I built an add-on for a computer simulation program that allows me to model water quality processes in a smart stormwater system. Essentially, with this program, I can learn how pollutant levels change as I control how, when, and where water flows through a city. Now that I can model these systems, I'm currently investigating what water quality goals can be achieved with a single stormwater asset, think a pond. So imagine a pond that flows into a stream. If I could put a valve on the outlet of that pond, I can control when and how fast water is released into the stream. And with enough simulations, I can find the optimal win and how fast to release the stormwater. My preliminary results suggest that by optimally controlling the pond's valve, the released stormwater will be twice as clean as compared to the uncontrolled pond. Once I finish this work, I'll move into the last portion of my dissertation where I will utilize what I've learned thus far to investigate how to optimally route water through an entire city, which has tens to hundreds of ponds and other types of stormwater assets. Overall, my research will result in fundamental discoveries that will not fully transform water management, but also protect human life and our finite freshwater resources. And if you wanna learn more about this work, you can head over to openstorm.org, which you can see on the slide. Thank you.


I'm Jeff Rick with Silicon Angle. We're here at HP's Discover 13 and I'm here with Gion trainer from Alliance One. We're breaking news here. It's not announced yet but we found out you're going to be soon announced as the partner of the year. Yes. So congratulations. Thank you. That's a great news for us. Yeah that's terrific. So tell us a little bit about what you do at Alliance One, both as the company and why you're winning a partner of the year. Okay so I don't have all the reasons why we won but at least I can give you some insight on what we do with HP. So basically Cosmos is a pure player in the network intelligence technology. So basically what we do is we classify and extract network information on the fly and we pass this information for further analytics process for instance. So we've been working with HP for three four years now and we've got some live deployment in APAC and it seems that the customers are happy and they're giving you a good feedback. So that might be one of the reasons why we're a partner of the year. Good. And how long has the company been around? So Cosmos was founded in the year 2000 but there was a reset in 2005. So it's been I would say seven eight years. We're in this network intelligence business. Okay. The company has a steady road and right now we're above 100 employees. We're making 50 million euros so in USD that 20 million is something like this. Great. Great. And so what are the types of applications that people are using the intelligence that you're pulling off the network to do? So the main use cases are I would say the quality of service, quality of experience, security and analytics. So everything to better understand the usage is the behaviors on the network. Okay. And what's the secret sauce? Why do you guys do it better than people's alternative options? Actually because we are very focused on what we do and what we do is to classify and extract in real time and we have a leverage HP hardware. We also have some partnerships with Intel. We leverage their X86 technology and what we do is that we do it better than the competition. So this is a point we're here. Good. So talk a little bit about kind of the whole big data explosion of what's going on with the data, internet of things, industry limit. Are you starting to see that in the traffic flow through your application? Are you able to handle that? Yes. How's the profile of the traffic changing since 2000? So to us like two years ago people were asking to be able to monitor like 10 gigs a link and at the time it was like sci-fi just to be able to monitor without losing any information in real time. And now when we go back to the customers they're complaining that 10 gig it's not enough they want 20 gig and they're already talking about one terabit per second solutions. So we see the growth by the demand from the customer side. And how's that impacting your guys product development? Are you able to handle that with the architecture that you have? This is difficult. You're working hard. Not only we're working hard but we need to make some drastic changes. So we used to work on a embedded servers, the ProLiant. We're running on the G8 right now. But now we're aiming to move towards the flex architecture in order to be able to scale and reach this terabit per second throughput. So using your own kind of cloud solution to burst up for these types of... I know we're going to leverage HP hardware solution as well as also some Intel components. Okay great. So one other question your partner of the year. When Meg talked in her keynote she talked about wanting to make HP a better company and easier company to work with from a partner perspective also from a customer perspective. So you've been around for a while. Have you seen a kind of a change in the culture in HP from a partner perspective? Yeah HP is a company really easy to work and what I do appreciate is that it's a global company. So you know we had in counterparts in Italy and in the US as well and because they belong to the same company it's easy to understand their mindset because they are online. So that makes it very easy to work with HP. Oh good. So besides being partner of the year which again we're breaking news it doesn't actually happen for like two hours. What else have you enjoyed here at the show? What do you kind of take it away? To me this is just to get the grasp of where the market goes just to understand what people are thinking about the short future. So that provides me some insight and just to help me to position what the next portfolio should be. Great. Again it's a geome trainer from Alliance One partner of the year breaking news will get you awarded in a couple a couple hours. Thanks for coming on. Thank you Jeff. Alright thanks.


I'm hemoplegic as well, which is a sort of milder form of cerebral palsy. It affects my leg primarily, but also when I was younger, it affected visual perception, body awareness, so it's almost like living in half a body, so language, visual perception, body perception. My parents in particular, my mother, realised there was something different around six months. Initially she thought I was deaf and blind, and it was nothing, again, it was nothing to do with my sensory organs, it was to do with the how my brain was taking in these modulations or not. I know, even with autism, there's quite a lot of... I think that's one of the common misdiagnosis is when we're younger, the fact that we're deaf because one of the typical behaviours of autistic children is that we don't always respond to our name or we might go the opposite. And if people address... if you're at school and people address generally the teacher comes across and says, okay kids, or okay group, or something like that, then we just don't pick up that we're included in that. Absolutely. Yeah, it's a sort of egocentric reaction. It needs to be more directed at you or at least aware that the conversation is also about you. You're quite right there. So it was around six months and then she said as I got older, it became more apparent and I was her first child, I was a secret baby actually, she kept me secret. She still doesn't understand why, but I was kind of this big reveal to my grandparents when they got so tall in the evening saying you've got a... And don't get me wrong, they were brilliant grandparents, so they were very loving. But moving forward, as I got older it became more obvious and there's a few reasons why my language was like it was and it goes into the visual perceptual aspect. So breaking down these visual perceptual aspects, there's two things going on. Firstly, there's a condition called somalagnosia, you can read about it. There's a syndrome called Balance syndrome, which I relate to apart from the optic ataxia, which is the movement of the eyes, I don't have that. But somalagnosia I do have and Donna had it as well, this is why I connected with her more than just an advocate, there was shared experience. And what it means is it's tunnel vision. So if I look at one thing in my visual field, everything else is neglected. So you can see how that affected social perception, you know, if I looked at a person, they're being pieces, all fragmented, distorted. I could maybe see a nose or a pair of eyes or hair, but if I would switch from the eyes to the nose, I would lose the eyes and focus on the hair. If I switch to the face, I could sort of focus on the face and the body, or I could look at the room but lose the person or look at the person and lose the room. So somalt simultaneous visual sensory information I couldn't get. The other thing I have was semantic agnosia or visual associative. So this is one of the reasons why my mum thought I was physically blind. It's because the way I was interacting with the environment was like a deafblind child. So I was licking, sniffing, tapping, rubbing my hands with my eyes and ears. So what I was doing was getting other sensory modulations to create a framework which I couldn't internalise visually. So I don't have a visual memory. The opposite of Temple, I know you spoke to her. That must have been very interesting. I'm the opposite. So I don't have that strong visual pictorial framework. And it's quite a common way of thinking. It equates for about between 60 and 80% of the human populace visual thinkers. And that's trailing behind with word thinkers, which is about 20%. So I'm more tactile kinesthetic. So my world was tempered by touch. My mum has nice memories of me. I was a happy boy.  It's not true at all. I was happy, partly because of their open-mindedness. I mean, she has a very fond memory of me, you know, because I didn't wear shoes because I needed the texture of the ground. Yeah, being grounded, literally. And she can remember those moments out in the garden. So that's quite like it's definitely like a sense that we've lost nowadays. And obviously, it's a lot to do with safety.  No, not grass. Grass will be fine. Let's say it's an insect on it. Yeah, an insect, yeah. But we're actually like, it's actually quite important for us in terms of like sensing. Like we very much like blunt our input from like the ground and the earth and like a lot of people who are into like the whole kind of spirituality, like meditation thing.  And you know, for me, someone who has kind of difficulties with proprioception and vestibular, you know, balance and awareness of your body in space. I used to wear these things called skelly toes, which are like an off brand version of vibram fine five fingers, which are basically just barefoot shoes. So like minimal padding, just like pretty much like similar to crocs, I guess, in a way. But I used to used to do everything in them and they were really kind of it's it's such a different feeling feeling like the pressure of the ground on your feet. Whereas, you know, nowadays we have a lot of shoes that are very heavily padded. You know, they've got big heel lifts. They're like, you know, there's so much sponge between you and the ground, even even even more. So if you like like chunky shoes that it kind of makes you feel a little bit detached from your environment, I think. Yes, it does. You're right. And being with the earth, I suppose, and the way in which I interacted with the environment, the physical environment, people, places, etc. Means that the way in which I interacted was, I suppose, more sensory based because it was a trade off. If I can't see with meaning, or I wasn't getting clarification through my eyes or the way my brain was interpreting this visual information, then I'd find other ways to navigate and create compensatory ways of what is a tree, what is a shoe, what is a face? Is that mum? Is that father? Who is that? So I do all these things. And of course it did have an impact on language because if I haven't got the pictorial referencing, that's going to affect language association. Yeah, yeah, because I imagine like, because, you know, a lot of the ways that kind of humans learn and also, you know, particularly like youngsters, little kids, babies learn is by like association, like your parents say some combination of sounds together.  Yeah, I didn't have that, not. No. And I would wonder what it is, unless it was being used or unless there was a way of object of reference moving it about and making it come alive. But when things are dead, when they're not moving, I would easily wonder what they were or confuse them with other things. So the other aspect is language. So I was about 80% meaning death when I was young. So when I was in preschool, all I all I saw was fragmented pieces of information. All I heard was phonics. So these fragmented things. I'm trying to give you an idea of how it felt. So these fragmented things were making sound phonics to one another. So I didn't create the association with the image and the sound to create word. What I was hearing was just pattern speak. What I was seeing was visual patterns. I was very high. Like it's a way to mean about this way. Like animal crossing. Yes, absolutely. Little animalese speak, but they don't think. Yeah, or like for older viewers, and I used to watch reruns of these peanuts, Charlie Brown, when they used to be in the school, he would do this trumpet sound. It would be the adult speaking. You've never heard the adult. I always liked that they'd done that because it was purely about the kids and all their... Charlie Brown was quite an endearing character. He's a bit of a sulker. But he would always get there in the end. He would always have his friends backing up. Sounds like me as a kid. Well, yeah, I think it kind of sounds like me too. Maybe that's why we relate to it.


Hey there, this is Vlad from the Insurance Sales Lab and in this video I'd like to share a very simple sales strategy that will help you close more sales in the first call. Now if you sell insurance then you can completely relate to this where you call a prospect, you have a conversation, you share your price, you give them a quote for their home and auto and instead of them switching their insurance to you in the first call they say yeah let me think about it. I'll talk it over with my spouse. What you showed me was good but I'm just not ready to move forward. Let me think about it. Why is it so difficult to close sales in the first call? I was just talking to a group of insurance sales producers that are working in an all state agency. There were three of them in one agency and this agency buys a lot of internet leads and when I had the zoom call with them I asked them a very simple question. I said look when you call an internet lead and they answer the phone. What's going through your mind? What are you thinking about when they answer the phone? And they all thought about it and the first person said she said well when someone answers the phone I just want to make sure they don't hang up on me. That's my goal. I just want to keep them on the phone. The second producer said yeah I want to get to the end of the call, give them a price and see if they're ready to switch over. And the third producer says yeah I just want to help people. I want to help as many people as I can and if I do a good job and I ask a lot of good questions then they're going to switch over to me. And I thought that's probably why none of you guys are closing the sale in the first call. So here's what I told them and you might be already doing this but I'll say it anyways. If you get on a call with an intention just to quote someone or just to help someone then that's all you're going to do. You're just going to give them a quote but you're not actually going to close the sale because that wasn't your intention to begin with. Sometimes people will hear your price and say yeah I'll go ahead and switch over but a lot of times it'll require a second or third phone call. Now compare that to someone who approaches every call with the mentality where someone answers the phone and they're thinking the sales producer is thinking all right this person who just answered the phone they're going to switch their insurance to our agency in this call. I'm going to do everything in my power ethically to persuade this individual to switch their insurance to our agency. And if that's the mindset that you have going into the call then something magical happens. The way you go about that call is going to be very different than if you're just trying to quote them. The questions that you ask your your attention to detail to their responses will be different. So that's the first thing that you should do is go into every call with the intention to close them ethically. Now a simple thing you can do to remind yourself to go into every call with an intention to close them is as simple as just putting a little sticky note on your phone or on your monitor to simply remind yourself that you're not a quota. Your job is not to quote people. Your job is to help as many people as possible by having them switch their insurance from their current company to your agency so they can get better coverage and be insured with a better agency. So that said if you're watching this video and you're thinking man I already do this. This sounds very simple and it is simple but it's not simplistic. If you're already going into every call with an intention to close prospects but you're not closing them in the first call it's probably because you're not using this sales script. The six step script to the one call close. This script is what I personally created and used to write over 150 policies per month and a lot of insurance sales producers who use this script they write over 100 policies per month and a lot of their sales are coming in one call because this is a one call closed sales script and the reason the script works is because from the time that the person answers the phone to the very end of the call when you hang up everything has its own place everything has its own order. You can't just wing every call and hope to close a lot of sales.  If you want to see how this script works in action if you want to see a live demonstration of this script then I'll include a link right below this video you can click on that and see how a lot of insurance agents use this script to close their sales in the first call. So in summary the first thing you want to do is go into the call not with an intention to quote someone but to close them and then the second thing is you need to have a sales process with every call that you have. If you're okay with having two three four five follow-up calls to close sales then you do you follow your process but if you know that it's possible to close sales in the first call and you want that to be a common occurrence then follow this script the link will be right below this video to see how it works in action. Thanks so much for watching this video if you're an agency owner make sure you share this with your sales producers and other agents in your area. Hope to see you soon thanks for watching this video. Take care.


What's up guys, my name is Michael and welcome to my YouTube channel today. We're gonna go over the how to get the height of a binaries treat the height is the furthest the is the number of edges between the root that we're currently on to the furthest leaf So in this case the furthest leaf is a there are all actually balanced here So the height is just two right because it takes every time you go down a level you increase the height by one So here we actually start at zero on the top. So we have one Right to go for four to two one and then two Right all these nodes the furthest leaf are two right even if you go from four to one It's still two four to three. It's two four to five. It's two Four to seven. It's two Okay Now whereas in this situation The height of this tree is actually three because from the top of the root of three It's gonna it takes three levels to go to the furthest node, which is seven the furthest node is seven And it takes three levels. I got to take one two and then three, right? It's how the largest the furthest from the root. So that's what this height means It's the furthest level one two three. It's not this one because this is one two It's not this one because it would take three one two for four It's three to seven because it takes one two and three. It's the furthest from the node To one of its leaves So I'm just to explain how this code works. It's not that difficult Um our base case is if the root is no pointer Then we just return zero and the reason why this is the case is because at the top of the node the roots height is zero and Yeah, at this point it would just be zero right because at the top of the node you really Yeah, you're starting node is zero. So technically that's your base case All right This is a little tricky to understand, but it's not that tricky to understand actually so I create two variables called left and right And it's just gonna represent the height of the left side in the height of the right side All right. Um, we have to check if the left side exists So if the left side is not equal to the null pointer, that means that it exists, right? So if Let's say Let's say we're on four, right This left side of four is left is null right there There's nothing nothing exists on the left side. So we can't go there. So we have to check if the left side is No, it's not equal to no If we're gonna go to the left side So what do you do is if if the left side is not equal to null pointer? That means there is a left side, right? There's left There is a left Left subtree right on the left side. So if that's the case, I'm just going to get the height of left side Right. I'm just always gonna get the height of the left side or curse to be called left side Because I just I want to get the height on the left side also, right? I just keep going to the left always keep going down to the left and The thing is every time you traverse down a level, right? So if I go from three to two and two to one We increase the height by one right because it takes one step to go down. So one two, right? Every time you go down one level, it just takes one step So from three to two it takes one here three to five it takes one right so every time you go down down a level It takes one step. So that's why if left side is not equal to null pointer. I recursively call on the left It's left side of the root and I add one right because it every time you go down a level we're gonna increase by one, right? That would be the the height of it Now if the right side is not equal to null pointer that means the right side is not null Right that means there's something on the right side this part. There's something on the right side here So if that's the case what we're gonna do is we're gonna just set the right height the right height It's gonna equal to recursively calling on the right side because there's something there, right? There's something on the right side that we have to go to and Yeah, we're just gonna keep going to the right side if there's a right side, right? And then every time we go down the right side, we're gonna actually add one Reason wise because the same thing every time you go down a level So from three to five we go down one level on the right side. It's a cost of one Right, we've plus one and for five six on the right side. It's plus one also in six or seven of plus one So every time we go down the right side, we're gonna add one okay now because they say the Height of a tree is the furthest leaf, right is the one who's furthest down Right, we're gonna take the max of the left side and the right side and that's gonna get get us which one's The furthest down, right? So if I got to get the left side height and the right side's height, whichever is furthest down That'll be the height of the tree So that's why I just return max of the left side's height and the right side's height So yeah, hope you guys enjoyed this video or a calm subscribe is all that hard Pete's


Řeknjen bo za svojo nač оvo. Načo bo? Boš, da so Spokrčili. Pitečno zelo, če se predneš u obustovstvenje neželosti. To je je bilo vyslep, ko je prodišljena v komunijetnih velju. Neželosti neželosti neželosti neželosti neželosti, da všeč neželosti neželosti noželosti obustov. Češnji svet, da ne bomo še vzelo občasovati, je nema, da sem je občasovati, da ne je nič nekaj zvržen. Tako, nekaj je vzela, da je zvržel doplim. Zelo zelo zelo, da se vse je vse, občasovati, predne genre in povede, ježi potrebno občasovati, kako je občasovati, kako je predne genre, Communicate u益 greatly produce private goods, open source projects produce public goods. On the other hand, I think they have very strong similarity in the way they build their products. In both cases, if a product is successful, it has a very long lifetime which requires financing at various stages in its life depending on the circumstances and opportunities that arise. To je nekaj najrednji, da ne da se všechno jel težen. Vsa je... ...završen, da je to kajnice, kako se najredni produt održi, se odršati što z Praženih in spremljenih, kako če je točen način v počke. The gape je, da je več ban, da je točen. ima to je objavno gap. The gap is that in the public sector you have mechanisms that support companies to deal with both of these issues. So you have equities which deal with financing products and companies, and you have financial derivatives like options and futures which allow companies to hedge their risks. And you don't have any of these mechanisms in the open source world. z pravim, ki jim vse predstavim tudi, z nekaj predpraviljne predstavne, ali se je vzipoma vzipoma na pravih, z katera je predstavim na začetku. In pri tudi, ga vse predstavim, nekaj predstavim, zato sem podstavim, in podstavim, ki je podstavim z tem, da je zelo radno neko, kdučne, bo mi dobro, da se je začetno vzipoma. Uspunje mi se, tako in dožinačnih. Od njega je kar tu djišno je pod to, da jih je površal, način, na časovosti rečne, ma tudi pri srečne vrte. TVS je obršal, ki bi te delač je najstaj, in dožem se na uključenji za versetnički. Bzar, kakor, smonen rem. kaj so zelo postavili z vrče in zelo. Tako, zelo začel njimem izgovoril. Svet, operacije je vsegnoranje, kako se priče, naredi, kar se način naši tačnega priče. Idelj, da je začel in tešnja, kaj so kodratične grana način način, zelo, da je, da je, da vsegnorana način način i kodratične grana začin.  In pa vseh, zaradi če je ne za operacijno, vblijovati na strimljenih način, vseča, zelo, izminučen, izbran, vsečal, kaj je bilo, zelo, očen, na menjelji prosesi, in, samozvisno, grani začenili in se vsožite, in se tako vsožite, in se, zelo, odsne, nekaj ne razilj, odclapping. OK. V tem zelo, Zelo ga boš dočati jednje kontrakt, kaj je zelo priživati za občasnje projekte, a smo počusti se v tudi drugi vse desaj, pa počusti, da se počusti vse desaj, kako se počusti. Zelo je tudi kontrakt, kaj sem zelo pčetnje tukaj vse počusti. Prvo je tudi tukaj zelo počusti, da je zelo počusti ideje z dvej pčeti z konvenštvih pčetnih in z polorizmih. So let me first cover the basics of this. Just like equities, the entity that issues equity tokens is a github organization. And the idea is, much like with equities, that any github organization can issue tokens, it can sell them, it can buy them back and manage its financing in the same way in which corporations use equities to manage financing. Of course, whenever you're dealing with issuing of any kind of equity, you want to make sure that investors are protected from dilution, which in this case would happen, of course, using a smart contract, which protects investors in sort of three ways. First of all, all issue tokens should be public, and all future sort of schedules of issuance should also be public. And in the event of unanticipated changes to the issuance schedule, you would have some kind of a vote between the shareholders in the open source project. And I'm going to sort of more specifically explain how this vote should work in the next slide. So, up to here, these equity tokens look very much like conventional equity. Now, what is the value, why would you buy these things, and how do they work? In conventional equities, the value of a share in a company is really just the present discounted value of the expected future return of the products that the company makes. But there is no such equivalent in the open source world, because open source doesn't produce profit. So, why would you buy one of those? First, I want to address the question, where is the value captured? The value is captured in two places. One is the team that runs the GitHub organization, because it's the team that adds value and makes the software, obviously. The second one is a little bit more technical. The value is also locked into the URL namespace of the GitHub organization. And the reason for this is because any other open source project, which uses or depends on this one, would refer to it by name. So, a classical example is if you're programming in Go, you refer to other open source projects using their GitHub URL. So, this is where the value is captured. So, what is the value of the equity tokens? So, this is a design proposal that I'm sort of putting forth. It's a stromen proposal. The value here I propose should be that holding equity tokens gives you influence over the open source project. So, how does this influence work exactly? In sort of well-run and smooth open source projects, everything happens on GitHub through pull requests. And this is not just changing code. This includes discussions, feature prioritization, almost everything, especially if it's a community project, because there needs to be visibility into the thinking process and also pull requests enable people to have a discussion before any changes are made. So, pull requests look like a very convenient bottleneck for installing an influence mechanism that kind of works generically and comprehensively over an open source project. And the specific mechanism I'm proposing here is to approve a pull request if it gets a sufficient number of votes for its approval. And by sufficient, I mean it should exceed a certain threshold which the GitHub organization can specify. Now, the little king here, sort of like the subtle detail which comes from plural mechanisms is that the voting power that is bestowed to holders of the equity tokens should be the square root of the amount of tokens they hold. Rather than equal to the amount of tokens they hold. And this is, like, a well-known by now plural mechanism. Another note I'd like to make about this influence mechanism is that by requiring votes to exceed a certain threshold, we're kind of aiming to have a practical mechanism which doesn't need to involve all shareholders for every pull request that is being approved and merged. Typically, with this kind of condition, you can make it so that most day-to-day pull requests can be merged purely by members of the GitHub organization itself. But every once in a while, when a shareholder is interested in having influence on some specific pull requests, they can join in the discussion and sway the outcome one way or another. OK. Now, to tie the whole story together, I'd like to add one more idea to the design of these equity tokens. And this is the idea of partial common ownership. So, this idea is popularized by the economist Glenn Well and his co-authors in the book Radical Markets. And there's also a non-profit called Radical Exchange, which further popularizes and sort of develops these ideas. In its original form, I will recall these ideas of partial common ownership. It was originally a mechanism for efficient and equitable taxation of land. And the way it works is... And by the way, I should say, it has been implemented in some Latin American countries, so it's sort of a tested mechanism in some sense. The way it works is that if you own a piece of land, you get to self-assess the value of this property, and pay tax, which is proportional to the self-assessed value of your property. But you also have to be willing to sell your land to anybody who comes along and is willing to pay the price that you have self-assessed for your property. And then there's a secondary kind of aspect to this mechanism, which is called universal basic income. And this just says that the tax collected through this mechanism is distributed equally to the community, which is a mechanism that sort of creates a more equitable distribution of capital in the community. So what's the key idea behind the tax mechanism? The key idea is that if you're a rational actor, you're compelled to basically self-assess truthfully because if you set a price that's too high, then you will benefit from the fact that nobody will probably take the property away from you because it's highly priced, but you'll be paying a very high tax for this privilege. On the other hand, if you assess your property too low, you won't be paying taxes, but you're running the risk that you can lose your property at any point in time. So I took this idea and I want to apply it to these equity tokens in open source projects, and it would work in the same way. So if you hold any equity tokens, you get to assess how much they're valuable to you, you get to pay tax, and you're obligated to sell them if anybody is willing to pay the price that you have declared for them. Now, what's the rationale behind this thing? The rationale is that when you hold an equity token, you have a marginal cost and a marginal value. The marginal cost is the tax that you pay for the tokens that you have, and the marginal value is whatever value you derive from having influence over the open source project. So you would be compelled to truthfully effectively so pick a price for the equity tokens that you have such that the tax that you pay truthfully reflects how much value you derive from having ownership in this project. Okay. And so to wrap this up, I want to sort of give you a view of this marketplace in the familiar limit-order market book way of looking at a market that most of you are probably familiar with, and the first interesting thing to say is that the partial common ownership rule essentially means that all supply of an equity token for an open source project has to always be on the supply side, so on the sell side of the market book, because by definition everybody is always ready to sell the tokens and the value that they have declared, which is the same thing as saying that everything you own is always on the sell side of the market book. This is a very cool feature because it means that there is 100% liquidity on this market at all times, and that's a good thing because it means that you don't have to have market makers, and you will probably end up with a marketplace that is not volatile and is sort of less prone to speculation. And I'm leaving here one open question for you, which is in traditional market places the identities of the market players who are buying and selling are anonymous, but in a communal space it's worth sort of debating whether they should be public. Okay, so this is the end for me. There are three more topics in this talk which you can look up on the slides which will be uploaded, or you can just contact me. You can contact me happy to talk about this. So the topics that I'm not mentioning here are I have a second design for a contract based around binary options which addresses how do you have a risk in open source projects, which I think is a very interesting question, and I address the lack of meaningful business metrics and indicators for the open source system and some reasons why this might be the case. And finally, I address governance of this marketplace by pointing out that governance, being a smart contract, is basically just an open source project, so you can reuse all the techniques that I mentioned so far to make modifications to the governance basically using pull requests. That's it for me, thank you.