bout health and social care integration and the extent to which that will become a very important part of partnerships in the future. Prevention is one of the priorities identified by the national group and we are thinking very carefully in discussion with CPPs about what support they would like from the improvement service from us and from others in order to make that turn from something that is theoretical into something that is very real in terms of how they make decisions about local priorities. I find it difficult to say that the national group is not accepted at the mark, because I don't believe that that's the case. Can we do better? Yes, Mary, we can. I have tried to describe how we are going to reshape the organisation to ensure that we get the same message out properly. We are going to look at the statement of ambition to ensure that it is still relevant to what we are trying to achieve through national community planning. To read the message, it actually gets out. I believe that it actually does. As I tried to explain, the national community planning group is made up of very senior people within the public sector whose responsibility has been to take that message back to their organisation. Is that happening? Yes, it is. Is that happening as well as it should? Probably not, from what's been said, but can I say that we accept this report, we accept the criticism in this report and we'll strive to do better as a result of that criticism? Can I say that the way to actually help is to say how can we assist the organisations to actually do better, not to continue to criticise them but to assist in ramps? Again, selective reading from the report, the Scottish Government and the national community planning group have taken steps to promote the importance of community planning across government and in partner organisations. The national community planning group is now starting to focus its activity on areas where national leadership is most needed. There are many positives within the report. We accept the negatives and the positives. If I could just come back on one point and say to Davidson that you mentioned prevention, you were the only one that mentioned prevention and it is a huge part of the Government agenda. If I may say probably all the Oppositions agenda, we all want to look at prevention. But the CPPs don't know what a strategic approach to prevention looks like. You said that you're talking with CPPs and you're thinking about it. Do you know what a strategic approach to prevention looks like? Is the strategic approach to prevention coming from government through yourselves to the CPPs? Is there a strategic approach? If there is, why don't CPPs know what it looks like? One of the issues that might be here about the language that's used and the extent to which CPPs always badge what they're doing prevention, I think that some of the work that is being done across Scotland, for example, in relation to the early years collaborative, which was spoken about earlier, is an example of investing in early years in order to prevent significant problems happening later on. That is happening. That has got the active participation of all community planning partners across Scotland. Barograph 6, in the summary, the early years collaborative remains underdeveloped, so perhaps not the best example to use. It's at an early stage and I agree that we shouldn't ask these examples to bear more weight than they're capable of doing at the moment. It is a good example of focused attention across public services on an issue that everybody understands in terms of its importance for costs to the public service and more importantly outcomes for people later in life. We shouldn't pretend that we've made more progress than we have, but there is a discussion happening, which is both strategic and also practical at local level in terms of prevention. I've also seen good examples again when I was on the community planning partnership in Edinburgh talking about particular areas in the neighbourhoods of Edinburgh where there were deeply ingrained problems, which no individual service was capable of solving, and people talking together about how, if they aligned their activities and aligned their resources, they could make a difference. To me, that is a strategic approach to prevention, whether they would have called it that or not. We heard earlier about the importance of good practice and I see that as one of the core roles for both Scottish Government but also the national group, that we learn from where things are happening, that we support people in being effective in them and that we share those examples so that they can be picked up more widely. If there is more that we can do to help people to understand why some of these work and why some of them don't, then we'd be very keen to do that. I don't have any other questions, convener, but I think it's very important to point out this is all that we've got. I haven't brought anything else to the table other than what's in here today, so I would be failing in my duty and responsibilities if I didn't hold you to account for what's in this report. I just want to clarify it before I bring Nigel Dawn in that the committee's role today is to take evidence and we're taking the evidence based on the information that's received to us. If it sounds like criticism, please be assured that it's an evidence session this morning. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, colleagues, by a few seconds. There are two issues that I'd like to look at. The first is to pick up on the issue that was mentioned earlier about the health budget addressing health issues. I would only have to go back to the debate in the chamber yesterday afternoon for recognition in some places that it's not the health budget that's going to solve our health problems. Those are inbuilt within our communities and into children almost before they're born, and yet I also heard this morning, as you did, because you were here, thankfully, NHS saying, frankly, we're keeping our budget and it's not going anywhere else, and also recognising that NHS budgets are 99 point something per cent spent dealing with an illness response rather than on health and health illness prevention. Now, if the NHS is going to hold on to its budget, it's not going to share it, and there's clearly no expectation that community partnerships will get shared budgets. That's another thing that this morning, I think, quite clearly brought out. If the NHS is quite clearly going to remain as an illness response, how on earth are community planning partnerships, or for that matter, any other part of our public service, actually going to get us towards being healthier? I mean, I think it is about the prevention part of the agenda. I mean, I can understand the attitude of health. I mean, as a previous elected member, I would just use to always argue that, you know, that the health service was the health service, the health service was actually local government, you know, because that was our job to try to improve and prevent situations, but working together makes a vast difference to communities in how we generate that. If you go to elderly, for instance, you go to elderly, for instance, we all know who the vulnerable elderly are, and the trip, spills and slips cause problems that the early and early, you know, people can actually hospital when they actually don't need to get a hospital, and that was a discussion that I heard Michona Robison making yesterday. We've known that for a long, long time, but we don't work together to actually prevent it. And I'm not just talking about parts of the local government, but parts of the rest of the public sector can work with local government to ensure that those vulnerable elderly are actually aware, so we know where they are, and that steps can be taken to actually assist them in doing that. That impacts on the health budget and releases one within the health budget to then concentrate on prevention. I'm with your logic, but it's not what's happening, and I'm not suggesting that local authorities aren't doing what they can for the vulnerable, but I'll just pick up on that issue. Local authorities, like the health board, will tell you their core activities, and their core activities, as I won't need to tell anybody here, finish up being social work and education, usually the budgets are the other way around, and everything else is struggling in current budgeting environments, and that isn't going to change, but you then, Mr Waters, said, well, that releases money within the health service for health prevention, but it doesn't, actually it doesn't. And what we've got is a situation, I would suggest, where community health, sorry, community planning partnerships, because that is what we're talking about. We're trying to get resources from here and there, but the principal place where they might get resources from, which is the NHS, is not going to give them the resources for health improvement. It's going to carry on doing its illness stuff. I take that point very much. The difficult part in reinventing services, redesigning services isn't so much about agreeing that you need to invest in early intervention, it's what you disinvest in to fund that early intervention. That is a difficult test, trying to get a square peg into a round hole. The body politic, the media are particularly vocal whenever any public service tries to disinvest something, be it a hospital, amalgamating schools, anything of that nature, you know, you get a fury when that happens. We need to have a slightly more mature attitude to disinvestment. Could I then follow that to the, I absolutely have to agree with you there, and I speak as a former councillor as well in the context. Is there any appraisal system of those who are in public service in the very senior appointments that we're talking about in CPPs that says, not are you just delivering your core service, but are you actually working across the agendas? I'm picking this up partly because Paragraph 23 says, and I quote, partners' formal lines of accountability are not to the CPP board, but to their own organisations board, therefore their responsibility and their annual appraisal is on the basis of the core functions of, for example, the NHS or the council. That is precisely excluding what you want community planning partnerships to do. Almost institutionalises a failure to do this cross functional working, which will enable us to do some prevention of all the things I've just spoken about. Can I make a comment on behalf of the appraisal for public bodies and health boards and colleagues might want to answer for local government? What you say is absolutely right, and an important part of understanding how to make this work is understanding people's intrinsic motivations as well as their extrinsic ones. Clearly, the appraisal process and the holding to account is very important in that. One of the things that, over the last couple of years, Government has been trying to do better is to make it very clear what we expect of the bodies who are accountable to Government to do in relation to this. For example, sponsor teams in the Scottish Government as part of the appraisal process of public bodies with whom they have relationships should be looking closely at their contribution to community planning, as well as their delivery of their individual specific functions. We are just about to give the next round of guidance to public bodies on that, which I hope will make that even clearer. Are we doing that as well as we could yet? No, probably not, but we have to go on getting better at it. Similarly, as we heard earlier, the police representative from Aberdeen was talking about embedding that in the appraisal system, and the police are probably better at that than some of the rest of us are. Health boards will increasingly be required to do that. I hope that the new joint boards will be a focus for that activity as well. I think that it is very important that we look right across the whole spectrum of motivations and accountabilities and do hold not only elected boards or appointed boards, but people whose jobs it is to do this to account for that activity. No, I know the way. I think that we are in a position where we are seeing a step change in how we take those things forward. I think that we very much recognise the report that came forward from the auditorium. What we are doing here today in the evidence guidance session is all part of the process of making sure that the process is doing what is meant to do, part of the checks and balances, part of being helped to account. There is a definite recognition that, while we are in a better place than we were, we are not in as good a place as we need to be, and that will be an on-going process. Can I just observe, convener? Given the structure of local government, you are going to find it difficult to hold chief executives to account for doing very much more than giving you a balanced budget, but the practical realities of politics may well leave you struggling to force chief executives to engage with this. I am sure they will. I have much more interest in hearing Salvador Davidson say that the NHS is going to move towards being appraised on this because, as I say, what we heard this morning was very clearly my budgets, my budget to do what I have to do with my core activities and I am keeping it. That is not quite the words that are on the official report, but that is certainly what I heard. Unless the NHS is actually going to engage with that wider task of improving a whole of our community life, I think that community planning partnerships are going to struggle. The latest trend of guidance that went to health boards on their local delivery plans is absolutely explicit about the contribution of resources to community planning, and it would therefore be my lively, opened expectation that, at the end of this round of activity, they will be held to account by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and by the Director-General for Health for exactly that. On the national group, there are four chief executives of health boards. All of them who are brought into that organisation are also hard, although I have not had the opportunity to show them that I could not make the last meeting, or it might have just been before that was after the change. Shona Robison could not make the last meeting, but there are certainly the last three health secretaries who have been bought very firmly into ensuring that there was that kind of buy-in from health boards and from people involved in that. I could not fault the Government's drive or health's drive to fully participate in it. Is it difficult? Yes, it is difficult when you are talking about their budget and how they try to determine their budget, but when we are talking about resources that are not all just about money, you are talking about other resources as well, whether it is people, whether it is buildings, whether it is the other kind of support that you can give, so the whole package is there, and it is not just about aligning your budget but aligning your resources, which sometimes mean your people, your facilities and other parts of the organisation that you are involved in. When police counters were closing in May, I got a letter from Police Scotland to tell me about it, and when changes have been made to daycare services in Glasgow City, I got a letter from the city council to tell me that they are disinvesting from that service. When the health board withdraws funding from a local voluntary centre, or you normally do not get a letter from the health board, you get it from the voluntary centre organisation, the health board is really warning in advance of those things, but the point is that all those organisations, and I think that I was interested in what David Anil said about this, is that a lot of the disinvestment decisions are taken by individual organisations, and community planning is doing a bit of thinking about where you would want to invest and where you would innovate, and I wonder if you can give me a perspective on how much that is a problem, because if you are not having the correct balance of discussion between disinvest and invest, then the community planning structures are fairly hamstrung by the fact that the other organisations will take their disinvestment decisions in isolation, and they will be subject to all the usual political pressures of making difficult choices. A simple example of that would be a report that came out fairly recently. It was called Town Centres First, where local authority health service police whoever, if you are closing offices, closing counters, you know, what's the economic impact that's going to have in a town centre? You might find, let's just say, it was a local authority office that gets closed and you relocate into another building, there might be a saving for the local authority, but you could be damaging the town centre, so in the long run the impact could be negative rather than positive, and it's that type of thinking that you need to have across the public services. Not only how is that going to impact in our budget, but how's it going to impact on the public budget? How's it going to impact on the entire public spending? How's it going to impact on communities? So we do need to be a bit smarter than that and stop just looking at the bottom line and think about the wider impact. I think there's an interesting issue there as well about the culture and the holding to account within partnerships, which you've heard a bit about earlier, in which I know the report talks about. The committee empowerment bill is very clear about how it expects committee planning partnerships to work in the future and that each committee planning partnership would identify the priority local outcomes for their area and what each of them was going to do to support that. I would hope that, in the context where that's all being agreed around the table, if one partner saw one of the others disinvesting in something that they believed to be fundamental to achieving those shared outcomes, they would have both the relationship and the trust and the confidence to challenge that within the partnership. One of the things in which I think the report is saying is that that culture is not yet as fully developed as it ought to be. I think that we all recognise that that's potentially quite uncomfortable space where you've got a mix of people coming from different organisations, but it's clearly where we need to get so that people do understand why decisions are being made, but also are confident in challenging them if they don't seem to fit. On this, this comes up when we discussed partnership relationships in the public services. We talked about it at some length in the earlier panel, but the extent to which this all appears to be dependent upon relationships and culture and those fairly intangible things and the frustration that that causes for all of us. We want to see the whole process be a success and move forward quicker. Have you got any perspectives on what is the appropriate balance between partnership and leadership? If, certainly, the Auditor General seems to be pointing to a deficiency around leadership, where is the accountability over that leadership? I think that there are examples where relationship damage in that partnership, and there are also examples where relationships have been set aside to ensure that the partnership works and works properly. Can I assure you that, if you look to Glasgow, which I mentioned earlier on, who is a shiny example about how to drive this forward, if you look at the relationship between Glasgow and the health board, not three years ago, there were families at war, they are working together as an example of how partnership has been driven by the leadership of both organisations to ensure that that partnership is working. Are they still holding hands and skipping up and down second luxury? I do not know, but it is working, and it is working because the leadership is insisting that the partnership is more important than any bit that was at fall. I think that it can work both ways. I think that leadership has to drive it and ensure that that partnership is going to be successful, but that partnership can be successful even if the relationship is not right. It is long as there is a driver to ensure that it is going to happen. I am sure that the relationship between Glasgow and the health board has been repaired because they are working, because I heard everything from both Robert Caldor and George Black at the same desk, and they were working together extremely well. There was a really bad relationship there in the past, which has obviously been mended, but that is because the leadership insist that it will happen and that that partnership is going to be driven forward. I think that it is important. I think that the relationship is important, and it makes it easier, but is it necessary to know that you can drive it forward if the leadership is right? In the previous panel, I posed the question regarding the benchmarking, and Sarah Davidson earlier in her comments spoke about the introduction of the benchmarking in spring. Can you provide some information, please, as to what is going to happen? At the moment, the improvement service and Solace in the Scottish Government are working with partnerships in order to identify what family groups of CPPs are, so they want to have sufficient identity in common that it would make sense to benchmark against them. We will identify in agreement with them what would be the sensible outcomes to be measuring, and then that will be introduced and tried out effectively in CPPs starting from this spring, and we will learn from that whether they have the indicators in the benchmark right or not. I am afraid that I do not know much more about the detail of that process, and I am very happy to provide that to the committee in writing afterwards, if that would be helpful. In terms of the benchmarking, is that going to be an additional part to the current benchmarking tool that COSLA have introduced, or is it going to be a separate? That is specific benchmarking for community planning partnerships in addition, but very much informed by what we have learned by the work that has been done to benchmark between local authorities. Certainly, if you can provide information, that would be very helpful. Government health warming on benchmark is a tool, and it is no more than that. We have been aware of discussions in our previous committee on that particular tool, but we are writing it as a tool. In terms of the scope of the community planning partnerships, do you think that the membership of the CPPs is adequate? Do you think that there should be more people around the table within the 32 areas, or do you think that there is possibly too many? The community empowerment bill is addressing that prompted by exactly that question and by the differing experience of those who, as we have heard earlier, have either been required to show up or have chosen to show up. We have very deliberately included within that bodies such as School Development Scotland, who clearly have an important role to play and need to be feeding into local planning. There are some bodies such as the national parks who have an important role within their immediate locality and clearly not more widely. We have learned a lot from the experience that we heard about earlier in relation to Scottish Enterprise's allocation of individual members of staff to support community planning bodies. The bodies that are set out in schedule 1 of the community empowerment bill, we believe, adequately reflect what is currently required by community planning partnerships subject to local discussion about roles and responsibilities, but I am sure that the Government and the Parliament, if required, would be very open to amending that in the future if it felt that there was a gap. It is also important to recognise that, in addition to those formal statutory public authorities, there is a very important and growing role for the third sector, who are critical providers of services and whose insight into the experience of service users in local areas is very important. We know that there are some community planning partnerships who have done very good work already, bringing that voice to the table and others who have got further to go. It is important that, when we are talking about partners, we are not just thinking about the statutory ones but also thinking about community groups and bodies that deliver services that are not public agencies. A few moments ago, Pat Waters gave an example of the working arrangements between the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and the City of Glasgow. I posed a question to the previous panel just regarding the chairs of the CBPs. I am keen to get the impression from the panelist in terms of whether having independent chairs would be beneficial for CBPs? Given the experience of an independent chair in the national group, probably the answer is no. In all seriousness, I think that it is people with buy-in that should be chairing it, so I think that it should be members of the local CBP who are actually chairing it. I do not think that bringing an independent chair would add any value. If you have people who have a stake in that area and a stake in the organisation, I think that that is far, far better and more motivation to ensure that what they are going to do is drive the thing forward. My answer would be no, I do not think that it would add any value, so therefore I would probably support having the local group electing the chair locally. In paragraph 25 of the report, which was discussed earlier on, it was regarding that the partners need to create a more effective leadership challenge and scooter role in CBP boards. It is on to say that support is required for CBPs to develop the skills and culture that are needed to create effective challenge within CBP boards. What support do you think is actually required and how can that support be delivered? I think that it is important that, to an extent, we are led by CBPs telling us what they think they need, but it was interesting to hear that the two CBPs who are represented earlier are having quite good insight into the nature of partnership working and the things that they need to be able to do, and I know that the improvement service has offered, in the same way that it does to individual councils, it has offered help to CBP boards to think about the skills and the culture and approaches that they need to bring. My guess is that that is where the investment probably is best spent in helping to think people who, as we have heard earlier, come from often quite different backgrounds, quite different operational day-to-day pressures and yet have to come together in this space to be effective partners. If I were choosing where to put my investment, that is where I would put it. I think that it is important that the opportunities are there. If there is training that is necessary and needed that would make that available, can we insist that people actually take it? Probably not, but should we stop us from ensuring that people need it, we will make it available to them? If people are going to be trained, one thing that they need to be trained in is not to mind when somebody stands in their toes. When I sat in the CCB board, I was quite happy to step in the toes of the health board, but equally I had to be happy to let them step in my toes. When you are sharing priorities, when you are sharing projects, you need to allow that to happen. On that final note, we can conclude the panel for their time this morning and move the committee into private session.


When sediment starts to move, it interacts with the flow very nicely. So for example, we talked about how when we have a grain on a bed that gets lifted into the flow with the Bernoulli effect, the flow pushes it downstream. And so the part of the momentum of the flow goes into the momentum of the grain. And then if it's large enough, it comes back down and sits on the bed again. So this is for an individual grain. And one of the things that happens is there are irregularities on the bottom of the bed. So that's intentionally an irregular line. And let's say that we have a grain sitting right here. It takes a little bit extra to lift it up over this because this high, because the flow is deflected a little bit over the high, but maybe a little bit of flow from this other side can come in and start to move it. The geometry of the flow can change with the geometry of the surface at the bottom. The other thing is we typically have a whole bunch of grains sitting on the bottom as geologists were interested in natural flows rather than things on, say, clean cement surfaces most of the time. So these grains also interfere with each other. So what often happens, I'm just going to draw the grains as dots now. So we have grains saltating and they saltate different distances. What often happens is if you can end up with a little bit of a pile of grains in one place here. And when you end up with a pile of grains, it starts to deflect the flow. So if we have our flow coming in like this, this pile of the grains deflects it upward, and then the flow has some momentum and it often shoots downstream. As it gets closer to the bed again, maybe it sort of digs up into the grains right here. So as you can imagine, that when you have this topography, it influences how the grains move because it's changing the flow characteristics here. So if we draw, this is our pile of grains here. Let's stop it a little sooner than this. All right, so this, I just sort of magnified this here. What happens is our flow is coming along and in this zone right here, our boundary layer is thin. And when the boundary layer is thin, it's easier for the grain is to get picked up. All right, so the Bernoulli effect is more effective when you have greater shear at the boundary layer, which is what happens when it's thin. When the flow reaches the top of the high, it has momentum going downstream like this. And over here, your boundary layer is thick. And when the boundary layer is thick enough, you get a lot less sediment transport. So in this zone here, you get erosion of grains. The effective flow speed is higher. And in this zone here, you tend to have little transport of the grains because that boundary layer is thicker. So if we have a grain here that gets picked up into the flow and it's saltating and it happens to land in the zone with a thick boundary layer, it tends to stay there. So what this is doing is it's connecting the characteristics of the boundary layer to when and how sediment gets eroded or transported along a bed. So thanks for watching.


Cancell of the Medical Women Association of Nigeria, Benway State Chapter has commenced its week long awareness on breast cancer with a rally across major streets of Makode Metropolis. The association was joined by other members of the civil society group and partners with placards with a call on the members of the public, particularly women, to examine their breasts always for early detection and treatment of cancer as it's now more on the increase. A correspondent, Francis Terry, reports that a rally which comes once every year has been set aside every October to mark 23 World Breast Cancer Day with a theme, no one should face breast cancer alone. The president of the association, Dr. Toriangay Bem-Amen, and others in the separate remarks during rally said anyone irrespective of age, social status, background and religion can contract cancer. From my experience in the teaching hospital, at every week we have one to two new women coming with breast cancer, not those that have been on treatments, but new people coming in with breast cancer every week. So it is quite common here in Benway State. We are here out to create awareness about breast cancer. We are telling people that they should do a monthly breast self-examination to be able to detect any change in their breast early so that when they present to the hospital, present early, such that something can be done. Breast cancer will not kill you if you get to know about it early enough. So we are advising women and indeed the general public that the moment you see any little lump as small as a bean, quickly get to any hospital. The group also used the occasion to celebrate with an outdoor exercise. They insist that a regular check is not only for women, men and can also carry out routine check as there are many predisposing factors today that causes cancer in women.  So men should also be conscious of it at any age range to begin to check themselves for breast cancer. Breast cancer is more common as, you know, age advances. But in our clients, in black people, we have seen that breast cancer is occurring in ladies even less than 30 years. You know, so it can affect any woman from any age and that is our message. We are teaching even secondary school students how to examine their breasts. And don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Well, one of her offices was done in Mexico, when she arrived, she will introduce herself in a little video. But I want to thank everyone here today. This is our first session of Tuesday's panel entitled Glorious Blank Age, which probably doesn't need much introduction. But what we will be having here is an open forum discussed off writing habits and ways of approaching getting the job done. Have a seat, y'all stand. Oh, good. I'm first in the United States. Well, I just want to introduce the author of Glorious Blank Age over here on the right, very richly paid with his feet. Actually, do you guys want one? Yes, ma'am. No, this is for now. We're good. Honestly, if I sit down, I can't see past the first row, so I need to stand. Well, I'm with them. You're in chair. Just in case you can else stand. See, I'm committed now. You are. You don't have to stand if you don't. I need to stand if I can. That's what you do here. Today, you're all in the choice. Now that I have it, I'll take 50 hours. Now everyone wants to sit. Let me first introduce Mark Hanna. He is the author of Military Short Stories, the tri-system of authority, ability to talk, ability to act, and the novel to aid. And next, we have Les Johnson, who is a physicist and author and a principal investigator with a near-and-earth, asteroid, scout, solar, television and NASA. George C. Marshall, and I'm using all of them. This is part of this. No, I'm not. When I was five, we'll see how it goes. This is Les's latest novel, Mission to Mephanie, which was published in January of 2018 by Vane Close. He's also the author of multiple popular science non-digital books, including a recent movie, recently released. Graphene. It's the material that's going to change the world. Trust me, it's amazing stuff. It came out in a certain way. It's called Graphene, and it's a strong sense, and it's a reversal theory of that little revolution. It's going to change everything. We have Sette Sette, who was born, raised, and also since then, has been a singer, songwriter, and has written for KB.com. Her passion has always been long since then, but in her career, the chemistry, trilogy, and beyond. And, last but not least, Concentreato, who does work in every facet of the publishing industry. He's a co-designed writing anchor since the past 15 years. He has been writing for professionals since 2011, and his most recent novel, Lovetti for Boys, is due out August 18th. And so, what I would ask you all first is just, if you could, in brief, walk us through a day in the life of being a writer. Okay? I get up every morning about five, six o'clock, and that's naturally, I don't set in the alarm or anything. I get up, I have my coffee, I watch a show, goodness to a morning, I don't know if anybody else watches something, too. After that's done, and my coffee's done, and I feel like I can get out of it, I check out to the office, which is outside of my actual house. It's like a shed that I convert into an office. And I sit out there anywhere between one to six hours, right, and that's all I do. No internet, no family interaction, no friends interaction, nothing. Okay, well my day starts at 5 a.m. I go to the rec center, I swim three laps, and then I do my dives off the high dive dive board because I love the water. Water really gets me going, really gets me motivated. So when I get in contact with the water, I'm ready to go. So I leave there around 10 o'clock, and that long I have classes, and it's pretty good, I love it. I go home, I have two grandbabies I have to deal with. Right now I'm on my A's. I've done all the writing that I'm going to do for the next six months, and then I'm going to get back into that. In the chemistry, it's science fiction meets fiction. Because today, you don't know what's fiction and what's nonfiction. Everything is so intertwined that you're going to be living in fiction. So, that's my day. Basically, like I said, I'm on my A's. When I was writing constantly, I would get up after I swim from home, and I would write about three hours.  So I wait until the next day and it's the same thing. And that is the end. Well, the first thing I'll say is if I had to become a poet, if I were being a time writer instead of my day job, I would be eating dog food. Because my looks aren't suddenly quite that well. But they do fine. I love my day job. I work in a space. But I'll tell you, that's good my enemy isn't for the writer because I have a very demanding, but fortunately I travel a lot for my job. And what I find is I do worse of writing on airplanes than with others. And so for me at home, it's almost impossible to write. Unless my wife's gone, the kids aren't home, it's deserted. I'll tell you, the best days are rainy days. If it's a rainy morning and my work schedule's not too demanding, but typically most of what I write is fit into my spirit. And if you're wanting to be a writer, chances are you're having to do something else to earn your money and your day job, and you're having to fit this in where you have time. And I would love to tell you, I get up at 5 a.m. writing. I wake up at 6 and go to work, right? But I would say that when I do write I am incredibly productive. And one of the things I found in terms of finding time to write is finding out how you spend your time. And if you think of time as money, and you do a budget at how you spend it, you'd be surprised how much of it you don't spend productive for. That's just my opinion. I don't know if you've been to any of them, speaking generally. You know, I found that I had a lot of time that was not productive. And so I didn't buy down time like anybody else. I got a binge on some network shows. But for me, why waste all that time flying from beers to JPL, right? I mean, that's four to six hours to the airport and on the plane. Oh my goodness. You know, no distractions. You just kind of tune out what's there and you can write. Hotel wings. I can write. So a day in the life for me is not consistent. It's sporadic. And I fit in the right, you can write. And I'm more along those lines. I retired from the military in 2015, and actually it took a year off. And I would spend all the morning writing and then in the afternoons jumping a bike, going down to a hike, binge Netflix, whatever. Now that I've gone back to work it's very similar. I try to set aside a couple hours because and I'm sure we'll get to this later and I'll tell you my goals of how I write. But I pick a couple hours sometime during the day and I'll, you know, I'll join the day. Obviously one of the things that I'm up to is for most people instead of having to stage on it. You don't live in a time where a page message is not a thing. In a traditional sense I don't have much in effect on people. But we're looking, yeah. But for sponsorship, I won't put you as a character in the book.  I'll just say it with him. I'm just going to go and say your good-bye. I think that's one thing I've been real talking about a little bit, but it's one thing I hear a lot of people want to be a writer and work to do it is finding that balance and finding the time to do it and I guess is there other ways is there ways beyond just you know, you get to walk into is there ways like you help psych yourself up or like approach against that and be somehow transferable in some way. How many of you are trying to write a book? I don't want to do that. You're shocked. Three pieces of advice. Right. Read read your genre and write. But I want you to look at it like this. Okay. After you've got all your storylines and you've got all your little plot twists and you're like, oh man, I don't love this, right? It's such a goal. I want to write 90,000 words. Yeah, I can do this. Set aside whatever it takes an hour, two hours, three hours whatever it is and write a thousand words a day. Now think about that. A thousand words. In 90 days, your book is done. Set that goal. As you write, you're going to get faster and your words are going to become clearer. It's like exercise.    You get better at it. But if you set that goal, I'm going to do a thousand words a day. I'm going to do 2,000 words a day. I'm going to do 500 words a day. I'm going to do 300 words. Do 500 to a thousand words a day. In 90 days, your book is done. And next year, you're up here. Instead of out there. Set that goal. When I was a child, I was a cautious kid. Oh, yeah. My mother was like, so why? Where? Who? And what? Those were my questions. So when I write, those are the questions that I ask myself when it comes to a story. You've got to ask those things to yourself to establish what type of book that you want to write and your character in this situation. Who, what, why, how, and where. And that will help you set up your book this way. Just remember those five things. And I always got my answers. And then when I started writing, I asked myself those questions. And I was always a metaphysical type of person. When I was small, I couldn't be no more than two or three years old. And this was a time I am 64 years old. And this was a time when thank you. Everything was standard. And I hadn't started school yet. And my mother would always prepare me to take a nap in the afternoon. So I'm laying in the bed and I can remember this really well. When I woke up, my body was in the corner of the room, looking down at myself in the bed. I remember just as plain as that. So that prompted me into getting into a metaphysical aspect of life. And it is there. But here's an etheric realm, and there is a reality realm. The Matrix, Terminator, all those things. We're living those today. Even though we don't see them, we're living them today. And with the who, what, why, how, and where, if you're into science fiction, then that's what you're going to ask yourself when writing school. The most important thing for me, like I said, beginning with this routine. If you're going to do this, people like you, you don't really have a routine. You get in where you can fit in it. With me, I can't do that.  And if I break that schedule, I actually feel that. So that's even more motivation. It's almost like an addiction. You get to do it every single day. You get in the habit of doing it. It's really bad. It's just like any other addiction. And when you build it, the more you do it, the better you get at it, and the easier those words come. Another thing he touched on was read your genre. But I would say also read outside of your genre. There should be aspects. Any good book has all of the genres. All aspects. Of course, you want one central theme like sci-fi or horror or romance or whatever. But you want to add little elements of each one. Like humor, all that stuff. So it makes an entertaining story. That's my opinion. How much of writing another question out here is that to you? Found the thing squatting and storyboarding and I guess what do you think the story's going to be about and how it's going to work versus what actually happened down there. So that's how in terms of how you all handle squatting. Well, I learned my first fiction books were Collaboration. Visions and Ethny is actually my fourth novel that is the first solo novel. The other novels are written in books. I wrote a two book series with Travis Taylor that we've ever seen in the rocket city of Red Nancy. He's a crazy man. Really smart guy, really good friend of mine and we were both he's an engineer and I'm a scientist so you might imagine that we fly our novels. So we know basically the story arc by the time we start writing we write it up and the characters don't always go along with what you think you're going to do because these people become real. And so sometimes they do things. You can count them on and you're working with a co-worker and you know and you do that but generally speaking they plot it out. Well, after I had I was actually contacted by one of my idols, Vin Bova you know he actually wrote one of my short stories and I published it and he said less would write a novel than me. I mean come on. You're pretty good. You're pretty good. I actually wrote a book with Vin. I was ready to sit down and talk the whole thing out with Vin and he's supposed to call it Pantser. He writes from the seat of his pants. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to collaborate. I have this big idea it's going to be a Mars mission and something goes wrong on the world. Yeah, that was what it was. Why don't you get something started and we'll go from there and it's like that. And so basically I wrote that book and before I did edit I read some of my favorite Mars books that he'd written and I also wrote a book he wrote called Write Science Fiction That Sells and I don't even think it was a co-op but he's like Vin Bova, right? I want to make sure that my writing style is compatible with this. I actually had to alter a little bit about writing but so I ended up working that way with him. So for me, when I came back to writing this book I applauded it because I thought we're comfortable with a plot and knowing what's going to happen. And speaking from beginning to end but again as you get into it things diverge from what's happening. For instance, my new character as I was writing it I realized he was on the office of space and when I realized that I'm not going to flee from that I'm going to embrace it and so that's what became, that's what I realized is by protecting this was on the office of space and I didn't even realize it when I was writing it. So he came along. And I'm a little bit of a prose actually in my layout. Especially when you're dealing with historical type stuff. History's thick but getting my assassins back there and putting them all back. When you figure out how to get them back in time you'll be like kind of seen though. Anyway. But no, I do try to applaud it but like I said once the characters take over they're going to go over here and then they're going to come back over here and eventually they'll come back to the story but let your characters go. And one thing I found on this one one of the subplots in this is a lot of presidential stuff like presidential assassination. And I was trying to figure out how my antagonist walking this certain president. Turns out I've already written a chapter and we fought together they already had a history I didn't know of. And so the character went dude I know this guy. I'll take care of it. And then he goes over here and kills the guy and I'm like cool. But those public pieces they don't fit. Let your characters let your characters go. You can always leave it on the bedroom floor later. It's astounding how well they put together. The stories really do so I'm a complete cancer. Everything that I've ever tried to plot in 2011 when I actually took this writing career seriously. Everything that I've tried to plot I have not been able to finish because I lose the joy of discovery. There's no there's actually no reason for me to continue telling the stories when I've written out exactly how the story is supposed to go. So whenever I write all of my rough drafts are I sit down and start writing. I have no idea. I still have intricate plots. And usually those are there before the rewrites. So I've done very very little as far as fixing things to make things fit around one of my most intricate twist endings is a novel I wrote called Life After Dain and that ending was there from the very first draft. I didn't have to fix it at all. So I'm a firm believer like Stephen King said these stories exist and we are unearthing these stories from somewhere. I don't know if it might be the metaphysical like she's talking about or what it might be but these stories exist. So it's like a choose your own adventure now or the war in the places around them. That's what they want. That's a chance to write. Once you realize if you can do absolutely anything with that page it helps a lot. There's no rule.  I would do that. Just write through it. My motto is it's all practice until you publish. It's all practice. It's okay if a novel doesn't work. It's okay if you get stuck. It can be the most simple fix. It can be the most coincidental fix that you can find. It's the easiest thing to blow through it. It's all going to be able to look in retrospect. You better write something in Chapter 20 and go back to Chapter 3 though. There we go. Yes. I swear if there was ever a camera on me while I'm plotting now they're going to love this. Because my whole vein is plot twist. I want to keep you going holy blankity blank blank and flip the page. That's my job. So many people get stuck on it has to be a certain way. Especially with plotters that I've been talking about. It has to be this way. If you don't allow your characters to evolve and naturally react to situations because when you're plotting you don't know how to build that character. That character is going to react differently than you hopefully if you're building a living person and not just a part where you cut out a character. That person is going to have their own thoughts, feelings and another aspect of it is most good writers also. They know how to embody somebody else and they can perform those things so they can get their characters to act the way they should. But never get stuck. If you ever feel writer's block coming on I suggest taking a break and working on something else or pushing through with that and just getting it out on the page. Just getting it done because they can go back to it. That's the first, second, third, 16th draft support. That's what the editing process but the rough draft it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be done. Well in the chemistry the plots in the chemistry I had to go to the future to get back to the past. What I did with my plots is I worked out things where you would never think that everything is interconnected. Everything in the chemistry is interconnected. And it's not hard to write it all. If you know where your main character is going if you focus on your main character that's basically the one that would be carrying the story for me, for the chemistry. I had to do five novels to get to the end point where this was all leading to plots and all. And each plot has something to do with the first or the second plot. It's very easy to do and you're right, you have to be an actor.  And each and every voice that you hear is my voice. I get all the voices. The main character that everybody likes is Bring that woman to me. I would make them bow down to my face. There is no way I should get off. There is no way I should get off. There is no way I should get off. But when you go to the website it's a little good. I would just improvise. A word real quick on dialogue before we move on. If you want to write realistic dialogue the best way to do that is to actually read out loud to yourself. I want to do that. And even your narrative in one step of your editing process should be read and rebooked to yourself. Out loud so that you can pick so many more areas that way. So many more. So many more. Exactly. You want your stories to flow naturally and the only way to tell if that's the case is either read yourself or have somebody read it to you. Luckily my wife will do that for me but I know not everybody has somebody that can do that for them. So read yourself. Have you ever been writing a character while sitting in a character on children's bed? Because at least for me when I'm going through the rough draft I have the scene moving on to the next and then in the editing process I'll add some details and I go back through the dialogue and go this guy doesn't use contractions and here he says can't. So he changed that style and this one I had a character that was very formal and was always Mr. Cutter or you know what. So once you pick on that idiosyncrasy go back through and make sure it's consistent. Think of Yoda okay go back through and try to figure out that dialogue. It hurts the brain. But it's very consistent. So that's one thing you do you make your readers do your editors do make sure the guys got brown eyes in chapter 2 and blue eyes in chapter 7. All of those things must be consistent. But especially the dialogue. Read it out loud and say okay this guy is angry. Hi how are you? That's not angry. You clench here. So make sure that it's actually conveying what you want. You're directing me. You're the screenwriter, the director, the lighting, the costume, the actors, you're everyone. You're the production company. No animals were harmed. Those poor novice gave up their hide for themselves. The novice. They still don't own themselves from the novice. They're coming to intimidate a lot of people who want to be writers or do the editing process. I think that is scary. When the realization comes that that's got the children just sit down crackin' nuffles and talk about those great guys. Right drunk and it's so no. That's him in the way actually. And it's really important. I don't know about you but let me notice that a lot of New York has best-selling authors. The more best-sellers they sell the bigger and the bigger the book and the less tight the story gets. They came all the way. And they're all out there, right? And what made a lot of these writers famous is they really had good editors. Exactly. Because they helped them stay on point, keep it focused. But when some writers get really big it's like, I'll just go to a publisher and I'll tell you this. As I've done this I have people look at my books and give me edits and you do grammar chapters and you re-read it yourself and you find mistakes and you fix it. But having somebody who is not only a punctuation in grammar editor you could think of your favorite cousin who would write something later. I have four stops and some of these are double or triple quadruple in the editing process. As soon as I finish rough draft, I put it away for six months. There's no advantage about it. It's put away for six months. I come back to it, I do a first draft and maybe I need a second draft before I send it to beta readers. They're not going to fix anything typographically, they're not going to fix anything. Hopefully they can get through it. It's not too bad. All they're looking for are plot holes and inconsistencies in the plot and then when that comes back and I'm happy with it maybe I send it to one last person to make sure they don't find anything. It'll come back and I'll send it to the content editor. The content editor will actually not only will they look at the same thing that they look for but they will look for story structure and they will actually go at it with the red pin and chop it up and say this fits better here, this fits better there that sort of thing. After that's done, it goes to the line editing. Notice the guys who go to make sure that everything makes sense that my writing is as clear as possible. They fix errors, whether it be grammatical or whatever it might be. They're there for errors. They're there to chop up the manuscript also. The very last ones, very last eyes of a proof reader. Those are the ones who read the final document for little typos or whatever but they are not to change anything big. That should have been caught already. If you are fixing sentence structure then you're on the wrong step of the process. But that's the four that I use. I don't know how you got it to work. I know one. I'm very similar. Go ahead. What I'm just going to say, what I do is I write a chapter every two weeks. I don't read no more than a chapter every two weeks and once I proofread it myself and I look at it and I'm saying oh okay, it's okay. I send it out to California. I have a very good friend for the pharmaceutical area. She's really good at doing grants. She's really thoughtful. She's got a medical book like this. I send that out to her and until she proves it and reads it and corrects everything for me she'll send it back. That's my only aid that I do. Make it simple. I'll finish the rough draft. I'll go through it a couple of times. Adding the details. I don't necessarily put a lot of details in it during the rough draft. I'll go back and change dialogue. I'll put a lot of the scenery and care for details in it. Once I go through it a couple of times it goes to the data readers. Now I have a point. There's usually three to five. Most of them have very good plot points. I had one of the characters nailing up a sign. I knew what the sign said. I never wrote it down. So I did all of these. I knew what the sign said. They looked for those kind of things. I knew what it said. One of my data readers she goes ahead and she's finding random players. I'll go through it twice. I go through it a third time. At that point I send it to my publisher and her editor goes through it. At least four times someone has gone through it. I'm going to differ with you just a little bit. I'll go ahead. Don't. It works for you obviously. It works for you obviously. Don't get caught in the circle. You write a couple of chapters and then you go back and you start editing. Because there is a vicious circle because it's never perfect. It is never going to be perfect. Finish the whole thing and then edit the whole thing. If you get caught in that circle it's very hard to get out of it. It kills the momentum trying to stay away from it. Now it works for some people. You said you plotted all five books at one time where you can start working. For someone like me that's still discovering the book that's not going to work. I don't know if I'm going to have to if that person is editing the first two chapters those first two chapters might not even be there in the final draft. He was saying it kills momentum.  I don't suggest doing it that way. But it works for her. She got a question back. We have a question. I heard Brandon Sanderson say like 19 books in a row because he didn't want to edit it. How do y'all how do y'all get overlayed when you're here at one time I have to tell you I'm editing an anthology full of fighting books right now where I'm getting various writers who put stuff in. And editing I really love the editing I actually like to do really hard. And so I can understand why you don't like editing because you're on the work critic. You are on the work critic. But you've got to do it. I love that it's a necessary deal because I'm taking a good story whether it's mine or someone else's. If you're the writer and you send it to me to edit my goal is to polish this thing up to make it absolutely best to convey it because I want you to be successful. My process is it takes me three years to get a finished novel. So by the time I'm finished with that rough draft I let it stay so I forget it and I write something else. I have a three step process as far as the books are concerned I always have one I'm editing one I am writing well one I'm actively editing one I'm actively writing and one that I am actively ignoring so I have one set off for six months I am editing one and I'm writing one so my process while I'm working during the day that one to six hours is to edit old material and then I'm going to ignore that other book that's sitting in the door or wherever it might be. Well with my chemistry series I started it in 2007 and I didn't finish it until this year. So that's how long it took me to write all the five books in 2007 to 2018. It's about a year for the rough book. A rough draft a year on the rough draft pretty much a year on the first draft took a few months to get me on that so I come to 18 I'm sorry nine days to 27 days that's not as long as I stay on a rough draft but I'm like huge. I bare bones right at first and then I build through all the editing if I'm going to roll I'll finish the novel in the rough draft and then another three months of editing so I can last year I completed the three books last year this whole series in one year granted the first one was half done I put it aside four years ago because it was not where I wanted it to be picked it up added some stuff I wrote in high school boom it fit. But something you mentioned a while ago the first couple of chapters may not even fit it this book the way I had envisioned it ended up being chapter three so the start of the book ended up being a third chapter because I started it completely different and the last thing I wrote on this one was the prologue it was missing something so I added a five page prologue that changed the entire dynamic of the book in five pages and so don't be caught in the editing loop unless it works for you well in the chemistry the first book starts at chapter one hundred it's one hundred chapters so what we're doing with counting backwards that's why I had to go to the future before I could go to the page and some other things also don't go the way you wanted to go because I had a short story for a collection and as I wrote it it started exceeding the short story and so I had to put that aside because I had to put the short story and then I wrote something completely different see that's the problem I have a like themed anthology that I got invited to or just as soon as they say hey you got a story for us I have a problem with that because I'm a panther I never know whether or not that thing is going to be a short story a piece of flash fiction a short story, a novel ed, a novella a novel, a series of books I never know what it's going to be so I can never say that's one of the problems with writing the way I do is you never know how long the story and I'm going to put this aside and it will be a book proposal about a cure it is a very different process to me anyway between writing a novel and a short story I just edited yesterday a friend of mine said I'm open call for military short stories I had one I sent it to him and he goes tweaking so I spent a couple of hours yesterday tweaking it and we were submitting it so we'll see how it goes I'll spend more time editing a short story than I will with the novel it sounds funny but the reason for that is a short story you only have a certain amount of time it's usually word count that you're looking to hit whether it be three thousand words or five thousand words they have to be perfect you don't have any time for character development every single word everything has to count you can be angry over here for a little bit and describe this person's past in 1987 or whatever and then come back to the past you can do that kind of thing with a novel but with a short story you want to get to the point as quick as possible and get the story out especially if you're writing a genre short fiction it sounded like there was a time when you had something and you read it and you were like this is not really working with a lot of the rest of it and you sort of took it out chapter two didn't go with the other kind of thing my question is at some point where you're writing something there's something and you go back chapter two will work well in this book well for this it's a lot of history since they're time travelers I can have them go in any which way I want it the way I had originally started with the assassin was in his a hotel where I'm flicking through the channels watching his work on the TV going I did that, you know that kind of thing so that's the way I wanted the whole thing to start I ended up putting it in chapter three as a case study somebody studying what you did you still get all the history but it's just changing the diameter but as far as when I sit this one aside if you're bored with it sit it aside just like he said sit it aside to start working on something else when I came back to this one I knew I had a a decent story that just wasn't where I wanted it to be I reached back 30 years to literal crap I went to high school pulled the characters up some of the old stories read Phantom I got a three book series out of it for stuff I wrote 30 years ago I was going to comment on that I call the process cannibalism because what you're doing is you're re-purposing material never throw anything away even if something you think is hot garbage throw it away, set it aside you can cut it out, you can always change character settings, any of that stuff if you have good material, good material that does not mean it's going to fit in the piece it just means it's good material so set that aside, never throw anything away even if it's just a scene if you wake up from a dream and go, dude that was awesome you'd write down the scene five years from now you'd be writing a book out of it I need that scene pull it out, boom don't throw anything away it's the same thing with everything those of us who don't use manual typewriters it's easy to say it's the same thing until your computer crashes that's my paper yes ma'am going back from the editing process one of the biggest problems I have is that in Wallsville and then I continue and I'll start writing I don't know who this person is I do research backgrounds are important but it's not necessary to put all of it in the store it's not necessary to rub a draft if you want to make a note for yourself need research move on just don't commit to anything in the book that requires that research because when you get to a point if you've written something that you were forcing that square line to a round hole you're going to stop writing at some point you're going to be like, ah, I'm done this is garbage I can't do but as someone who's a plotter equally important plotters who are characters and so I create character sheets for the principal character for the background, why they are the way they are and but again when I was writing the missions I had to revise that because of the way the character was so I had to go back and adapt to that but I think it's important for me because I want to know who they are and that's why you actually get stuck the environment isn't important because how your character is interacting the environment that could be some other conflict or whatever else but don't don't let it stop your process, like he said I'll go back through all the time I'm 15 chapters into it I'm going I'll go back to chapter 2 and make a note hey, make him do this and then I go back and I just keep going so when the editing process I see my note, that's when I do the research that's when I add it because in chapter 25 I can go back and go no, no, no, no, no and change it again and again I can't comment on that though because when I was doing the book Rescue Note with Ben Boca I had written the characters into a corner and I couldn't figure out how to get them out and I saw a way to get it out and it would require a character to do something it's almost like an out of character it would be out of character but what I did is I went back and rewrote the character so that it was no longer out of character because I really loved that event and it turns out that's my time to make a cry but it was that saved the story and kept it moving but in order to get that character to have that happen it was this big gap-riching moment I had to go back and change the way it worked at the beginning and then rewrote the character through the story that it consists of your characters will evolve and if you've got it, this is my character it's going to stop let them evolve with the story because sometimes the story evolves with the character yes, yes, yes you're not the same person you were 20 years ago life has changed you let the story change the character and vice versa you really have to wait on on stopping like I said, anything that kills the momentum you want to stay away from if you know that having to research something is going to kill the momentum for that scene if you're having fun going back to which I can't remember which one you guys said if you're bored, the reader's going to be bored there you go you really need to lock on to that because if you're getting bored a scene but also at the same time if you are having a blast with the scene nothing needs to be stopping you no character research anything like that get that now dinner no kids, nothing you keep going the end of the world outside burning stone and any of that somebody will take care of it I'm sorry I'm sorry thank you thank you if you're interested in any of the books we are all upstairs please come by and talk to us what can we do with both signings we'll put it later on fans will be here for the rest of us come see us everybody else upstairs they're very approachable if you stick around for a few more minutes we're going to block another offer panel just drill it depends on your name seriously if anybody has any questions just come by stop and talk to me come on by and I think those are for sale


We're here at ITU Telecom World 2015 in Budapest, Hungary and I'm very pleased to be joined by Jose Toscano, who is the CEO and Director-General of ITSO, the International Telecommunications and Satellite Organization. And he's also here because he's been very involved in a major ITU initiative and perhaps you could tell us a little bit about that. Well, thank you very much for the introduction. Before going specifically to the initiative, I could not be here. I think this is the place where you have to come if you want to see the latest developments in the industry sector. It's a place where you have to come if you wish to discuss the tendencies, what needs to be done, if you want to connect the ones which are not connected at this stage. You mentioned one of the initiatives, in fact the initiative that I consider to be the most important one. This is an initiative which was launched by the BDT director, Bahime Sanu. The name of the initiative is Smart Sustainable Development Model and is an initiative which is about saving lives. It's an initiative where we try to use communication as a way of making available the mechanisms which are there when a natural catastrophe occurs. Unfortunately, as we know, natural disasters occur everywhere, every time. And we have to be able to provide people with means of communications and communications which can be used not only for the emergency response but for recovery. This is an initiative which tries to combine communications for development with communications for emergency. We have been working for the last two years. I am pleased that some results are available. We are doing a project with ITU, ITSU, ITU and some other partners, connecting the Pacific Islands in order to provide a network which is there if an emergency occurs. But also importantly, when an emergency is not there, this network is used for ICT applications. We have the health, schools, access to online government services. So this tries to combine development, communications for development with communications for emergency. As I mentioned to you, we have been very busy for the last two years. We are now in a stage of deciding what needs to be done. I believe that the result of this reflection will be available in one or two months' time. And we go from there. I can tell you that only to give us a little bit of the secret, we will try to do a similar project in the Caribbean, connecting all the islands and providing capacity for any emergency which occurs.  And which has also, of course, enabled you to go out and to have converse with the people here. Yes, because one of the aspects of these initiatives and one of the major things that we have to do is advocacy. People have to be informed that we are working on this because, let's be frank, still today there are many restrictions which do not allow for the implementation of the most efficient systems. I'm going to give you an example. Taxation. Could you imagine that in some cases when there is an emergency and you have operators who want to give free equipment, the government asks for taxes to be paid? Could you imagine that? It's not possible. And that's something that we have to work and we will be working on. So, as part of the exercise, there is an advocacy component. So it is very important for us to be here. You mentioned that we have all the meetings in Geneva. In fact, we had one in Doha last December at the occasion of the telecom. Because, again, advocacy is important. I would appreciate all the help that it could give to us to spread the world. We are here to save lives. And in terms of the people who are involved with this initiative? So, I'm very happy that in fact we have a blend of people coming from different, very different backgrounds from the advisory board. We have people coming from industry, satellite operators. We have people coming from governments. We have people coming from international organizations. But not only that. We have people which have come from very different backgrounds with a huge amount of experience. And all these blend together. In fact, I believe we will enable us to do something for the good of humanity. One aspect that I want to mention to you. This is not one more initiative. This is an initiative which is result is oriented. It's an initiative where we went action to be taken place. And that's why I'm happy. We have done the Pacific Island project. We have installed a system for every warning about Ebola in Sierra Leone. We will be doing the Caribbean project and much more will come. I can assure you that. Well, that sounds absolutely brilliant and it's very encouraging news. So we hope that you are able to profit very much from your conversations here at ITU, Telecom World. And we wish you the very best for the initiative. And look forward to catching up with you again very soon. I hope next year with results. Thank you very much. Thank you.


New Year to the members of the 102nd Intelligence Wing. I'm Colonel Wendy R. Mijo, Commander of the 202nd Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group, and I'm happy to deliver your first command message of the New Year. This first month of 2023, I'd like to talk about New Year's resolutions, setting goals for the coming year, resolving to change bad habits, and discovering a renewed optimism for the year ahead. First, I'll share with you a little history. January was named for the two-faced Roman God Janus. Janus has one face that looks forward for new beginnings, and the other that looks backward for reflection and resolution. The Romans would offer sacrifices to Janus and make promises of good behavior for the year ahead. Fast forward, a Boston newspaper from 1813 featured the first recorded use of the phrase New Year's resolution. That newspaper article states, and yet I believe there are multitudes of people accustomed to receive injunctions of New Year's resolutions who will sin all the month of December with a serious determination of beginning the new year with new resolutions and new behavior and with the full belief that they shall thus expiate and wipe away all their former faults. This article sounds a little dramatic regarding sin at the end of the year and a bit sarcastic about the mindset of those who make New Year's resolutions. But actually, more people succeed at New Year's resolutions than you might think. A poll of over 1,000 adults found that 68% of them who've made a resolution kept it. If you're one to make resolutions every year, or if you're making one for the first time this year, consider these tips to help you be successful in keeping them. First, keep it simple. Settle on one or two goals, not a big list that might be overwhelming, daunting, or unrealistic. Secondly, frame your resolution positively. For example, say I wanna get more exercise rather than I'll stop being so lazy. Third, define a goal that's specific and measurable. Instead of using generalities such as I wanna be a better supervisor, resolve to step out on specific traits that make a good one. Whether it's more frequent check-ins with airmen, better documentation of training records, or more measured feedback to those under you, define a goal that is time-bound and realistic. Plan for a month at a time, not a lifetime. If you wanna save more money, set an amount, put a little bit away each month, then check after a few months to see your progress. You'll be pleasantly surprised. Create an incentive. If your goal is to increase last year's score on your PT test, decide how you will reward yourself once you achieve it. I suggest cake or french fries. Change up your routine. If your 2022 plan of working out at the end of the duty day frequently fell apart, consider setting your alarm to work out in the morning or make it a lunchtime routine. Finally, pick a goal that will truly make you feel better, not just something that others think you should do.  Just work to get back on track. The point is to make a positive change in any little bit counts. In the spirit of setting goals, soon Colonel Riley will officially publish the 2023 wing goals. Each wing goal is designed to further the mission, improve readiness, better managed resources, and increase quality of life for the warriors of the one-of-second intelligence wing. I know each organization will set their own goals for readiness and mission accomplishment. Just like the Roman God Janus, we in the 202nd ISRG are in the process of reviewing past year's goals, giving ourselves a pat on the back for the things we've accomplished, and we're developing new goals for 2023. Among those accomplishments were when the 202nd ISS and the 267th conducted a deployed field training and validated their readiness. We increased our access to industry forums to gain exposure to the latest technological solutions, and we expanded our internal exercise to include other cyber ISR units from Tennessee and Maryland, which resulted in shared operational and training best practices across the enterprise. In 2023, we look forward to moving our cyber-signant operations out of the temporary skiff in the hangar and into our newly accredited secure area in building 165. Last year, we moved all unclassified and administrative functions, and when it's ready, we look forward to conducting operations out of the new building from two separate operations floors with almost a hundred workstations plus a fantastic training suite situated to improve readiness and train airmen for the high-end fight. This will allow the 203rd and the 267th Intelligence Squadrons to simultaneously and more efficiently provide their respective mission partners with actionable intelligence in the cyber domain. It's also through the hard work and truly astonishing expertise of the cyber and intelligence professionals of the 202nd Intelligence Support Squadron that the finish line is well within our sights. In the 202nd, we aim in the coming year to take our warfighting capability to the next level. We plan to maximize our recruiting and retention initiatives to set our group-wide manning to over 90%. We continue to review our mission-essential taskings in order to focus training and readiness. We want to define a continuity of operations plan that's fortified with host-unit agreements and we will conduct mentorship and leadership sessions for more deliberate professional development. Finally, I encourage all of you to make self-improvement and unit improvement part of your New Year's resolutions. Thanks for all you do and I wish you a happy and productive 2023.