Welcome to ThinkTech on OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and Hawaii. I'm Jay Fidel. And I'm Kauai Lucas. Our show this time will take us to part two of the recent roundtable discussion at the East-West Center, examining and addressing the changes in Honolulu's news media and their impacts and effects on our community. In part one, we heard from Jose Fajardo of Hawaii Public Radio and Patty Epler of Civil Beat. In our show this time, we'll hear further comments from Ann Aument and Brett Obigard, who are on the faculty of the journalism school at UH Manoa. We're treating this as part two in our series on the subject. Yes, we still need to wrestle with all the changes surrounding us. New technology, new social media platforms, new tastes, standards and expectations for content, new methods of delivery, citizen journalists and lots of new readers too. It's all about change and how the media and the reading, listening and viewing public can integrate those changes into the way they live and look at the world. The Trump-Clinton race has made these changes all the more pronounced and we can hardly overlook them. Fact-checking when that was a given only a few years ago, tweets delivered by some candidates at two in the morning, live TV debates delivered on your smartphone and audiences of hundreds of millions in the U.S. and millions more around the world. It's all connected now. And there are new and higher production values in video and podcast audio. New questions of truth are consequences by the candidates and their spokesmen. A new vernacular in election rhetoric and new and profound questions of credibility and trust. New journalists, new business models, new audiences and new tastes and sensibilities we do not yet fully understand. We are only beginning to integrate the changes and their effects. What's even more interesting is that these changes are taking place real time in a real election and having a daily effect on the way people see not only the candidates, but the way they relate to their government and the Constitution itself. Just as no one can predict where the country and the world are going politically, no one can predict where the media is going and how the consumers of news will engage with the platform or the content. So the plot thickens as we move on from the remarks of Jose Fajardo and Patty Ebbler in part one of this series last week to the remarks of Ann Alman and Brett Opegard of the School of Journalism in part two this week, again as moderated by Karen Knudson of the East West Center. Ann Alman. She's a professor at UH Manoa School of Communications, the journalism program. She's also an alumna of the East West Center and is on the chapter, local chapter board. So what I'm focusing on right now is news literacy giving students the analytical tools, especially in the selection year and they are very engaged despite what you might hear about young people. They are reading, it's just not what we're reading, in fact they are reading more than adults are and this is in the latest Pew report on the state of the media that was released in June 2015. I mean 2016 about last year, has anybody seen that report? I encourage you to go look at it. So with this group of students too I found a big change over last year when Facebook, Reddit and so on were their primary sources of news and information. This year I did the word cloud again. It was the New York Times and this is through Facebook and I'm like, wow, you know when the star advertiser was in there too. So this is good news and they are very engaged. So the problem is sorting out what is the truth and why we shouldn't be reading true pundit. There's no names on there. We don't know who owns it. It could be the Russian, it could be Julian Assange. So this type of thing is what we look at. So that's one thing and the second is a set of ethics which Kevin Komodo who's sitting here, raise your hand Kevin. He and I teach those classes and we're constantly sharing stuff. I believe Kevin more than I am. He sends me stuff every hour sometimes of what's going on. So giving them a set of ethics that they also create and internalize as both consumers and producers of news and information and I think that's critical that they take that away with them because they want this and they're looking for it. So I think what all of this comes back to are our readers and we are readers. They are readers. We are producers and consumers and where are these readers going? Where are they getting their information? So I pulled up the Pew report to look at that and then the second part of this is how do you folks respond fast enough to create media structures and systems and to hire employees with the skills you need to produce and deliver news to those readers and what can we do to help you? Where do we need to go with this and we're constantly focused on that. Also how do you track the advertising dollars? You know in the end it's financial and there's all kinds of models going on right here in the room which is why I'm bringing my students down on Friday and I bring them almost every semester to public radio to experience that model of getting on the phone and talking to the community and raising money that way. So the Pew Center report reports that younger Americans are more likely than older to prefer reading news and most of that is digital text. Interesting isn't it? So under 50 of those who are reading so you've got 42% who are getting their news from reading and those over 50 it's only 29%. So the rest of the information they're getting from watching and listening so those are the three categories reading, watching and listening and it's the people who are reading and it's from digital text primarily 81%. So when you think of where are you putting your resources that's primarily also from social media. So think about where you are putting your resources and Brett's going to talk more about the mobile which is his specialty as well. So even beyond the young fully 62% of U.S. adults overall now get news on social media sites. They spoke Twitter and so on. I have that public radio. I have the HPR I get the push notifications BBC Twitter. That's where I'm gleaning information every day as well. Of course then we have the financial realities of news content online. That's a challenge. So native advertising is come into its own now. It's gotten very sophisticated and we've been exploring that a lot in news literacy can students recognize what native advertising is? And some of it is really good and very informative. And I think it's here to stay. I even went on the onion and onion unabashedly says on its website basically the proud of native advertising. We are monetizing your trust in us. Those are the words they're using. And Brett Opregard who is a system professor at UH Manoa Journalism program and he also writes reader rep media commentary column in Civil Beat. Well in the last three years over two billion smart devices have been sold each of those three years. In fact in 2015 it was 2.6 billion totaling in the last three years 7.3 billion smart devices. So just in the past three years there have been as many iPhones, Android phones, iPads sold as there are people on Earth. So that should give an indication of how dramatically this is changing the way we communicate. In addition there are more mobile subscriptions in the United States right now than people and that is really dramatically different in Europe where it's up to like 140%. So you start to see how this affects the way traditional media companies run with their newspapers and broadcast channels that they were used to using. So about two years ago I went over to the Pointer Institute in Florida and a bunch of media companies came there and we were talking about the mobile news phenomenon and how it was changing and everybody's very excited because their numbers were nearing 50% of their audience going to mobile. So you think about all their audience, where is it at, 50% was coming up to mobile. Well now about two years later these numbers are up at 60, 70%. Now the problem with that, like the New York Times for example I went to a workshop with them maybe a few months ago at Columbia and they said 60% of their audience is on mobile but 70% of their revenue is in print. So you can see how that just really messes up a business and how it's affecting the way people work. Now when you think about business interest you can also bring into your mind the social media outlets and how they're changing the way we distribute news. So I have one more example that really kind of stunned me. This was in April 2012 when a company you might have heard of called Instagram had 13 employees and had been in business two years and Facebook bought it for $1 billion. On that same day the New York Times was valued at $967 million. So this was a day where Facebook could have bought the New York Times instead decided to buy this little company called Instagram. All right now this seemed pretty shocking at the time but then more statistics started to come out like the Washington Post sold for $250 million in August 2013 so one fourth of the price of Instagram. WhatsApp sold for $19 billion in 2014 so that was something where you could have bought 19 New York Times for buying the WhatsApp program. And I started thinking well geez you could probably have bought every media organization in the country instead of buying WhatsApp at that moment for $19 billion. You probably could have bought every single one of them. If you think about newspapers for example we used to give at least spend millions of dollars on a product that would give to 12 year olds that would throw in your in your bushes and that was kind of the model there and that whole idea of paying people to run the printing press paying people to stack up the papers insert the advertisements all this was very expensive and what we found out I think in this transition was that people bought the newspaper for a lot of reasons they didn't just buy it for what was on the front page they might have bought it for the TV guy they might have bought it for the comics they might have bought it for the classified ads there was all these things in there that that they found worth the cost but when other things like craigslist came along or all these different other type of entertainment sites may be distracted people from those products then suddenly we had to say well what's the real value here what am I really getting for this price and people decided that the content they were getting was not worth the 50 cents or a dollar a day so it goes back to content but it's also about delivering the content to people in the way they want it so the idea that if if we don't transition into the mobile device where people want their content because we want to have you know say like like Patty mentioned a big a big photo we think that's more important than having it appear well on the device then I think you know you're going to turn off the audience in ways that maybe they won't come back for so we have the structural issues in our country with the commercial models and so we'll have the click bait right we'll have the algorithm driven and that's for profit as well so you know we have organizations like TMZ who are doing that sort of thing we're putting out videos that are sensationalist and that will attract and then we have the New York Times so we have a huge spectrum of different kinds of media and so I think what you said Brett or Patty maybe you know what kind of organization are you what what are your ethical standards and it's going to be different it's going to be different but I think we also need to look at the models in Canada and Australia in Britain where we do have government funded media I used to be a journalist in Canada so I was familiar with that model where they are editorially independent I don't know if Americans whatever go along with that but I do have a friend who's another East West Center alumni who's working for the ABC in Melbourne and she's now in Sydney covering covering government and she's absolutely independent there is no government influence they would take the government to the courts you know if that ever happened I think the key answer in the commercial market is and this is my speculation that we have to be extremely brutal about the type of content that we offer and it has to be valuable content we can't get away anymore with you know sloppy incremental inverted pyramid type stories that just push the ball an inch forward and then we we call it good for the day I think people are are number one they're probably going to be reading more in modular fashion like I'm interested in this particular story not so much I'm going to come and maybe Patty has some insights on that but probably are going to be more attracted to stories through social media you know this is a topic I'm interested in they'll probably come through that direction and they're going to want value in it if they're going to pay for it you know an event story about the local festival and you know what kind of hot dogs are going to be serving there might have been fine 10 15 years ago but people aren't going to pay for that anymore because they can go straight to the website of the festival organizer and find all that out so I think the key challenge for journalistic organizations is how are you going to make your content worthy of that dollar dollar 50 or whatever you're going to charge and then see who will buy it and I think if if the content can support it people will pay for it I think for all of us not just producers of news and information but us as consumers right we read we create media that we have to be open and flexible to the changes around us so we need to be constantly learning how to learn that's hard and so I think that's what the future is all about that if we can try to learn how to learn and do a better job of it maybe we'll be able to protect news and information and save journalism well generally technology has changed dramatically the the way the media environment has developed and this is causing a lot of disruption for traditional media sources but there's also a lot of opportunity out there more people are reading more people are reading news they're engaging in news they're mobilized by news and I think the key part is the businesses have to figure out how to make that work financially so that's I guess the the key question in the future if you want to go back and see part one you can see it on OC 16 or wait a few weeks and see it on thinktechkoa.com or YouTube it'll be worth your while to see both parts in the week following the program at the east west center Brett Opagard a regular contributor to both civil beat and thinktech came down to our downtown studio for a talk show on the subject the media environment is changing very fast so I think what's what struck me most about this panel is that all of these people on it we're dealing with this change in different ways and we're all thinking about how this affects our organizations or our activities and where we're going in the future so I think that's going to be like this never-ending puzzle that's going to last for a long long time and I think it just keeps changing faster and faster so the number one thing I would say is we need to be embracing this change and be ready for it and not feel like we're stuck in any particular model I think back to when websites emerged in the kind of legacy media and everybody's very excited about putting their website up and within you know five years or so of people establishing that mobile has taken their entire audience or 50 60 percent of their audience as an ideology we have to maintain journalism as a way we think about the world so in that respect we should hold on to the past we have to think about like what are our journalistic you know mantras but in terms of how we deliver that journalism that's the thing you know I recommend we just kind of let go of as much as we can without bankrupting our companies but you know let go of it and say where in the future will journalism be and a lot of people have experimented with just amazing new forms like virtual reality and drone journalism and augmented reality journalism so people are trying these these new ways of communicating out and they're doing journalism within those forms so that's a very exciting time I think for journalists yeah it's maybe not so exciting for ad sales and analog papers but it's very exciting if you think about it as an ideology at some point people get you know just exhausted with that that constant negativity that leads them to buy things and I think in the political process you get the same sort of deal where you feel like everybody's always trying to spin you and manipulate you then at some point you think well if this is really important to me and not every issue can be really important it has to be like this is the issue or these are the issues that I think are important and then the person should spend the time investigating them and finding out what what is the real truth most of our life is seen through media I mean our first-hand experience is very minimal when you really think about it I mean you sit on your couch like you said or you get in your car or you're sitting in your workplace or whatever it is and that's your first-hand experience but most of what you know about the world is is through mediated sources so to understand how those mediated sources work on you and also I think the main thing is they distort reality in very dramatic ways the real challenge is for every citizen to spend time and effort on that media and figuring out what what it means and what you can trust and you know where it's coming from it's not just a trifling thing that you you know you spend five minutes in the morning reading the newspaper anymore thanks again to the east west center the school of journalism for having organized and presented this important program it is truly a community service and we feel it should take place on a regular basis think tech itself has on various occasions organized talk shows and panel programs dealing with what we have called news morphesis videos of these events are on our website and youtube google news morphesis and you'll see all in all we believe these discussions are critically important to understanding the thinking and direction of our community and our country with that in mind we are delighted to have been able to cover both parts of the series and you can bet we will continue to cover the story in the future and now let's take a look at our think tech calendar of events going forward there's so much happening in hawaii sometimes things happen under the radar and we don't hear much about them but think tech will take you there remember you can watch think tech on oc 16 several times every week to stay current on what's happening in government industry academia and communities around the islands remember also that think tech broadcasts its daily talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m to 5 p.m on weekdays then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends and some people listen to them all night long and on the weekends if you missed a show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows they're all archived on think tech hawaii.com and youtube for our audio stream go to think tech hawaii.com slash radio visit 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comment to enhance the discussion we'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of think tech but first we want to thank our underwriter okay kawaii that wraps up this week's edition of think tech remember you can watch think tech on oc16 several times every week can't get enough of it just like kawaii does for additional times check out oc16.tv for lots more think tech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on think tech visit think tech hawaii.com be a guest or a host a producer or an intern and help us reach and have an impact on hawaii thanks so much for being part of our think tech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech energy diversification and global awareness you can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next sunday evening for our next important weekly episode i'm jay fidel and i'm kawaii lucas aloha everyone


We're going to get started in just a few seconds if everyone can take a seat. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Maria Torres-Springer. I'm the Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Development and Workforce. Welcome to everyone who has joined us here today, extraordinary partners in government, in the public sector. Today is the second stop of our administration's working people's tour. This tour is in celebration of New York City reaching a record 4.7 million jobs just last week. This number reflects the nearly one million private sector jobs recovered since the lows of the pandemic and highlights the success of our administration's inclusive economic agenda, which really does aim to ensure that all New Yorkers, from all walks of life, benefit from the city's economic prosperity. Today, and we'll be joined just shortly by the Mayor, I'm incredibly excited to join everyone in Breaking Ground on Sunset Pier 94 Studios, an important economic development project, and yet again, another example of a long-stalled project that our Get Stuff Done administration is making happen to deliver results for New Yorkers. Before we bring up partners in this work, I do want to just describe how this initiative fits into our economic agenda. So like our transformative efforts at Willets Point in Queens, Spark Kips Bay, the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, the Climate Center in Governors Island, we are advancing a bold slate of economic development projects spanning the entire city that will create tens of thousands of family sustaining jobs in all zip codes across a multitude of growing industries. The activation of Pier 94 is no different and will bring the same type of strategy, the same type of energy to the west side of Manhattan, to a public asset that has long been crumbling and is vacant. Now we anticipate opening the project by the end of 2025, creating 1700 new jobs and generating more than $6 billion in economic impact. And as we begin to look to New York City's future economy, we have to make sure that we remain the center for arts, entertainment and recreation. Sunset Pier 94 Studios is instrumental in this effort and will not only deliver a state of the art facility, but also provide many benefits to the local community, including new waterfront open space, bikeway improvements and other community facility space. Along with the improvements to the public realm, the project will also connect local New Yorkers to opportunities in film, TV and media production through a $250,000 investment in workforce development training led by our industry partners. So I want to thank everyone here today who has really worked so hard to reach this milestone and is committed to growing our economy for all New Yorkers. I'd like to invite our first speaker here today, you know, this work of not just building projects but really transforming entire neighborhoods of our city. We cannot do it alone. We have to do that in partnership. And when that happens, what we're really seeing is a vote being cast for the future of New York. It's a vote of confidence, not just in this neighborhood, not just in this asset, but really for New Yorkers. And so I'd like to thank all of our private sector partners who are helping us make this happen. And to speak on their behalf, I'd like to introduce Victor Coleman, the CEO of Hudson Pacific Properties. Victor. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Good afternoon, everybody. This is extremely exciting for all of us. This will be the best studio facility in America when it's done, right here in Manhattan. So congratulations. On behalf of my partners here behind me, I'm very fortunate to have Blackstone and Vornado as the lead partners on this project. Their expertise, friendship, and professionalism is going to bring this over the top to make this project exactly what you want it to be, the best ever. So we're thrilled to be breaking ground here today. This is something that's been in the works between all of us for at least three years. And you know what? This campus in Manhattan is going to be something else when it's all said and done.  First and foremost, Deputy Mayor of Housing, Economic Development, and Workforce, Maria Torres Springer. He's not here, but easy. Deputy President Andrew Kimball and Chief Operating Officer Melissa Roman Birch. Fantastic work. Thank you so much. Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, Pat Kaufman. Thank you. The Manhattan Borough President, Mark Levine. Council Member Eric Buckner. Senator Brad Holman Siegel, Segal I apologize. Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal. Deputy Board Four Chairperson Jeffrey Levine-Swa and the whole community poured for all of their hard work and constructive feedback on that. Hudson River President and CEO Noreen Doyle and her entire staff in collaboration for working with us and all the neighbors in the community. I'd also like to acknowledge our partners, the three of us as partners on the financing side led by RBC and as well the unbelievable design which you'll see from Gensler Partners, fantastic super sexy project, you're going to see that soon to come. So thank you all. Finally, just on the thanks on the Vornado side, the working team on Vornado, they made this possible. So thank you, Barry, Frank, Dan, and Julian, and specifically, as I said, our EDC partners in the City Law Department, Banga, Raven, Greg, Judy, Bill, for their tireless work in getting this project to the point and from this point on to the finish line. So thank you all very much. As the Deputy Mayor said, this is going to be a $350 million investment into Manhattan to make Pier 94 studios the first of its kind. It's going to be home for the state of the art facility with all the new technology and the most competitive aspects for filming and production on all forms of content worldwide. As all New Yorkers are going to benefit from this, 25,000 new square feet of a waterfront at the back of this space is going to be open to the public, new restrooms. We're going to have on the Hudson River a 1850 square foot community amenity place here. And in addition, we are going to improve the bikeway as well. So this is going to be a fantastic new ad for the entire area and the city of Manhattan. It's the first of its kind. There is no purpose built studio in Manhattan, believe it or not. This will be the first of its kind. My company, Hudson Pacific, we've been in the studio business for 15 years and we've always wanted to get into New York. This is a dream come true for our company. This is a dream come true for our partnerships. Blackstone and us have looked at forming Sunset Studios now for several years. This is what we strive for quality. The best in class and something that I know will leave a lasting impact for the city of New York. So when I first got a phone call from my longtime friends at Vornado, who I've known for over 20 years, three years ago in the makings, they said, this is an opportunity for us to do something good for the city. And damn right, they were on it and so are we. So congratulations. Thank you for coming out and thank you, Deputy Mayor, for leading the way. Thank you so much, Victor. I'd like to acknowledge that we've also been joined by Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal. Our next speaker, I'm sure, it is music to her ears when we shared and it will now become reality. The fact that there will be Manhattan's first purpose built film and TV production studio. And she's really leading our efforts to grow and support a major industry here in New York that has 185,000 jobs and tens of billions in economic impact. And so please join me in welcoming the Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Meet and Entertainment, Pat Kaufman. You know, I've been in this business for a long, long time before I was city film commissioner. I was a state film commissioner and I will tell you that the entire time that I've been working this industry, everyone was clamoring for we got to get a purpose built stage in New York and we want to get stages on these piers. No one could get it done until now, until you guys work together and, of course, until our wonderful Mayor, Eric Adams, came along. And then suddenly the magic happened and here we are. I'm thrilled that this is going on. You grabbed one of my best lines that I'm here representing the film and television production industry. An industry, and I just love saying it, so I hope you don't mind. I'm going to repeat it, an industry that generates $82 billion of economic activity every single year and creates and provides jobs for 185,000 people. Astonishing, right? That's film and television in New York.  So it's exciting to be here and watch as something like this stage is coming forward. You know, this industry creates not only jobs for the people that are working on the set, the actors, the crew and all of that, but also in the ancillary businesses that support the industry. Somebody has to go get the lumber to build the set. Somebody has to clean all the costumes. Somebody has to have the flowers that might be used in a scene. So it's a wonderful creation of jobs. But in addition to those obvious jobs that the industry creates, we also are very powerful in that we attract people to New York.  When those scenes are about New York and New York City, that makes people want to come to New York and experience New York. They want to live in New York. They want to work in New York. They want to visit New York and they want to do all the great things that are so much fun in New York and spend money on it. So that contributes also to the power and the economic activity. Granted, the last few years we've been hit pretty hard. Everyone has been hit pretty hard with the pandemic and all the difficulties that it brought. And now, of course, our, I say our industry, the film and television production industry has been hit very hard by the strikes. But we are thrilled that finally today, the negotiators are back at the table and we're very hopeful. That very quickly we're going to get a good result of all this work and then a fair and equitable solution is going to be found. And once that happens, we are really expecting a rush of new production. We've got the expanded tax credit, film production tax credit that's going to attract productions. And now we're going to have a new fabulous purpose-built stage that's going to enable us to service all the production that's going to come. So this stage is going to be a boon to the industry, production industry. It's going to be a boon to the local economy. It's going to be a boon to the small business. It's going to be a boon to all of us. So it really will help us continue to build on our dream. It will, first of all, it will keep the city, the crown jewel of the industry, the production industry in this country. But it's also going to help us make sure that New York remains the extraordinary production hub that it's been and we want it to continue to be. We like to say that when film and TV production industry thrives, New York City thrives. And that's what's about to happen. So as you guys finish the great work that you're doing and you finish these stages that are going to be so extraordinary, that's when my and my team's work really begins. Because we are going to be out there recruiting the productions that are going to come here and be so excited about having what this production facility is going to offer. So thank you so much for the work that you're doing and the vision you've got and all the changes that it will bring about. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. I'd now just like to ask Andrew Kimmel to share a few words because it's so important that this is the type of project that advances with the type of speed that it deserves. But before Andrew speaks, I would like to a pivot because our mayor has joined us and, you know, when we started, we inherited a lot of projects. Some of them were long stalled and it was very important to the mayor and he gave us our marching orders that we not just identify what those long stalled projects are, but that we worked quickly to problem solve and to make sure that we reverse those trajectories and this project here in Pier 94 is a perfect example of that. So please join me in welcoming the 110th mayor of New York City, Mayor Eric Adams. Thank you. Thank you. Real excitement in the air and it's just a continuation as we're doing this working people's tour with Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer and just showing how this city can continue to come back in a real way. We don't do it alone. I was 22 when I took office. I started calling up our major corporations, bringing our teams into the room and just sending the right message, government has no business being in your business. Government is supposed to support business. When businesses are doing well, it allows people to be employed and we were very clear. It was a triangle offense. It was about public space, about investing in people and about being safe. If people felt safe, they would get back on the subways and get back into our office spaces, visit our restaurants, tourists would come here. If we dealt with the over-proliferation on guns on our street, we were trending in the wrong direction. We're moving in the right direction. In our time categories are decreasing. Four million subways riders are back on the subway system and we're watching businesses return. We have more jobs in our city in the history of New York City. People said it was going to take five years. They did not understand those three letters. Get stuff done. We're getting stuff done every day. This is the greatest city on the globe. Everybody argues about two and three. Nobody argues about number one. New York is the number one city on the globe. We have been beaten down to believe we have to take second place to others, not under this administration. Twenty months this city has turned around. When I come back, New York City is back. We're going to continue to move in the right direction. I want to thank Vernado with their fearless leader. We met the other day. This is what hard-core Brooklyn Ice Street guys can do. They build from the bottom up and real good stuff. Reality Trust and Hudson Pacific Projects, Pacific Company as well. EDC, Andrew Kimball put more shovels in the ground than you can ever imagine. We want to continue to do so. First of his kind. Each time you hear us say first of his kind, first of his kind, first of his kind, this administration has been rolling out so many firsts of his kind, first time in history, first time in history, over and over again with an amazing team of New Yorkers. We get stuff done because we have a New York attitude. We're not taking any mess. It's about showing who we are as a city. We lost our aunt. We lost our power. We lost the feeling of what it is to be New Yorker. It's a privilege to be a New Yorker. Let those cats go to Miami all they want. We want the best right here. It's a privilege to be living in this great city called New York City. This project, 350 million in private investment, believing in city, came here, a minus AA bond rating without a AA. We continue to soar in the right places. And that's why investors are saying we want to invest in New York City. And this is a 350 million dollar private investment, 1,700 jobs, 1,300 good paying union jobs, $6.4 billion in economic opportunity in the next three years. So we have to keep it going. I need SAG in our studios. We need to sign the deal. We need those 185,000 workers back into our economy. So let's get this signed. Let's get this deal. Let's get some great movies here in Manhattan, great office spaces, great opportunities for people to enjoy. There's some amazing waterfront. When you have great populations in the waterfront, it brings back the energy to the city. And listen, well, John, job well done to all of my electors here, to all of our teams here. This is how we can get stuff done. Bring our city to the direction that we want. Great job, Deputy Mayor. Keep doing it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mayor. And knowing Andrew as well as I do, I know he's a man of action and would prefer that we go ahead with the actual groundbreaking than more remarks. But I'll just close by saying it's a fantastic day for Sunset Pier 34 and 94. Thanks to all of you for all of your tremendous efforts. And we can't wait till 2025. We'll see you all back here when we open this amazing facility. Thanks to all of you. Thanks, John.


The Hubble Space Telescope can resolve angles on the sky as small as 50 mAh. The angular distance between S2 and SAGA star at Paris Center was just 15 mAh. That's 42 billionths of one degree and three times smaller than Hubble can resolve. To follow S2 as closely as they did, astronomers had to use a stellar interferometer. These kinds of telescopes can resolve images 30 to 40 times smaller than optical telescopes. This makes them extremely important tools for studying the galactic center, as well as exoplanets. They can even resolve sunspots on nearby stars. So to understand how we know how close S2 got to SAGA star, we need to understand how these stellar interferometers telescopes work. In the Speed of Light chapter of the How Far Away Is It? video book, we covered the Michelson interferometer used to measure minute distances in the lab. Interferometers can measure distances on the order of a few nanometers. Michelson immorally used it to show that the speed of light was a constant. In order to create light interference, Michelson illuminated the interferometer with fully coherent light. Coherent light has a common frequency and phase. It always produces interference patterns on the far side of a double slit. Fully coherent light, like the kind that lasers create, will produce regions of fully destructive interference. That is the dark regions have no light falling on them at all. Fully coherent light will produce regions of partially destructive interference, meaning some light falls in the dark regions. And incoherent light will not produce interference patterns at all. We find in nature that waves can start out as incoherent and become partially coherent as they spread out. Watch how these ducks start with a chaotic mix of water waves as they enter the pond. But as the waves move out, they become quite orderly. This is a geometrical effect. The further away one travels from the source, the less significant the distance between the individual wave generators becomes. A point source for starlight would produce coherent light, and at any distance from the source the light would create interference patterns. But there are no point sources in nature. Ducks have a diameter on the sky. An extended thermal light source would start out with incoherent light, but as the light moves away from the source, its coherence increases just like with the ducks on the pond. The relationship between the diameter of the source is a distance from the interferometer, and the distance between the two slits was determined in the lab. Michelson used this property to measure the diameter of Betelgeuse in 1921. It is fascinating to note that incoherent light waves created by excited atoms in stars 20 billion kilometers apart can travel for 26,000 years and still carry the remnants of that starting condition. A large enough stellar interferometer can use the visibility dimming of the interferous pattern created by the light to detect the original star separation. See how the amount the image fades is greater the further apart the two stars are. The math involved was developed independently by Dutch physicist P. H. van Sittert in 1934 and F. Zernik in 1939. It's known as the van Sittert-Zerniky theorem. It has taken 80 years to extrapolate the basic physics of interferometry into the working instruments we have today. There are currently over 20 stellar interferometers in operation around the globe. It was the four 8.2 meter ESO-VLT optical telescopes with an attached four-way interferometer called gravity that covered the S-2 Perry Center passage around SAG-A star.


Hi there, my name is Matthew Saunders. I've known since I was small that I was different. We didn't call it neurodivergence back then. It wasn't called learning differences. People like me were called learning disabled and my disabilities were such that I was considered, it was considered bad enough that I was legally entitled to accommodations from the Canadian and Ontario governments where I lived at the time. I've been part of the Drupal community since 2006. I intended my first Drupal Con in 2007. I'm one of the founders of Drupal Camp Colorado. I sat on the association board of directors for about two and a half years and I helped found the event organizers working group. I'm a founder and currently the chair of Drupal Colorado Incorporated and if you can believe it, this is my 25th Drupal Con. I work in Pfizer and Digital in a senior management position. So I've got a standard disclaimer right now and that is that nothing I talk about today necessarily reflects the opinions of my employer. In 2019, I did a presentation at Drupal Con Amsterdam that touched on my neurodivergence while telling the story of my journey and it was called pivot points, recognizing opportunity, turning challenges into strengths. I'd spent quite a few years at that point researching my daughter's own challenges. We adopted her from social services at the age of five and her experiences before she came to us were really traumatic. So I read, I went to classes, seminars because I needed to understand as much as I could about her neurodivergence, so I could be her advocate. She has bipolar disorder, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, reactive attachment disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. But doing this research, I had light bulb after light bulb after light bulb go off in my head. As I started recognizing a lot of things that I was seeing in her and I was reading about in myself. So in a very real way, if it hadn't been for my daughter I would have just continued coping and I never would have understood my own ADHD and dyslexia and I certainly wouldn't have come to the explosive realization that I was on the autism spectrum. Now, back when I was a kid, there weren't a lot of resources to deal with these kinds of things. So I had figured out most of my coping mechanisms on my own by the time I went to university in 1989. And there were a few others that I hadn't sorted out until I had cancer in 2000 and we'll talk a little bit about that later. But the truth is I really didn't understand why I was different until much later. My personal epiphanies occurred between 2005 and 2017. And since then I've spent a lot of time reflecting and refining my own self-understanding. In my Amsterdam presentation I talked about my journey to being a technology leader despite challenges. And a large reason that my journey was challenging was my lack of diagnosis in my cognitive differences. And like I said, I also had a battle with cancer as a young man that profoundly changed the way I see the world. That cancer in a very strange way also might well be related to my learning differences and I'll talk about that as well in a little bit. Now I'm super lucky because my parents saved all of the diagnostic documents from 1970s and 1980s when I was initially having all of these problems. And what this practically means is that I can now filter through all those documents through the lens of the 21st century. And I don't think a lot of people have that opportunity. I also wanna say that this is my lived experience. I'm giving you insights into what's worked for me where my primary struggles have landed and while there are recognizable patterns for folks who are neurodivergent, every one of us is different. That said, I'll try to generalize my observations because the main goal of this talk is to help people who are neurotypical understand atypicals a bit and atypicals understand neurotypicals a little bit better and provide insight in how you can better relate and communicate from both those points of view. As a child, I was diagnosed with a reversal problem with extremely short attention span, anger issues and inflexibility. I was labeled as being oppositional. Abrupt noises were and still are painful to me. I experienced sensory overload very easily. It was observed that my visual mortar integration was poor. In the 1970s, there wasn't the vocabulary, the sophistication, the understanding to really define my challenges. But in today's terms, I would have been diagnosed differently. I would have been diagnosed with dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder. The spectrum now includes what was called aspergers. Now, I grew up in Canada and autism wasn't diagnosed there until 1980. Even so, I wouldn't have fit the diagnosis back then because they really were using the word autism at that point to describe significant deficits. Aspergers wasn't recognized in Canada where I grew up until the 1990s. And it's also interesting to add that when you've got multiple disorders, comorbidity can make it really difficult to identify what causes what. However, I had a great mental health professional that I worked with who said to me, often it doesn't matter what the diagnosis are, it's more important to treat the recognizable symptoms. As a side note, the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders at the DSM no longer recognizes the label aspergers. In 2013, it was removed. And I think it was partially because it was discovered that Dr. Asperger played a critical role in identifying children with disabilities during the racial hygiene measures of the Third Reich. Many children were sent to Spiegelgrund in Vienna where they were sometimes euthanized or used as subjects in experiments. And that association has been pretty upsetting to some members of the community. That said, on the other side, there are many folks in this community who are also highly suspicious of the diagnosis being rolled into autism spectrum disorder. So this brings me to my first small insight for you. If somebody shares with you that they're neurodivergent and describes it as aspergers, be sensitive to refer to it in that way with that person. It's how they're identifying. Likewise, if somebody shares that they're on the spectrum, there's a really good chance that they don't identify with the label aspergers. So try to be sensitive to how people talk.  I would beg my parents to put me on the saddle. Once I was sitting on the trike, I would just sit and scream. I would just scream and scream and scream. And my parents couldn't figure out why I would just sit there and haul her at the top of my lungs. It took me over a year to learn how to ride it. Much later in 1977, I was identified educationally as a high-risk child due to delays in eye-hand coordination, spatial relations, motor skills, and visual memory. This was the reason I was screaming. I literally couldn't figure out how to make my legs move the wheel. And I could see other people doing it. Now, at the point to this, is that people on the spectrum can anger quickly and they can have a lot of difficulty calming themselves. So we have to learn skills to cope with an increase in that irritability. But first, before we can even do that, we have to be able to identify emotions. Dr. Kelly Blankenship and Dr. Noha Minshawe of the National Library of Medicine wrote, individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders also exhibit difficulty modulating their anger, which may lead to further difficulties in their social interactions. Because they have difficulty interpreting their own subtle changes in emotion, they're often only able to describe extreme emotions. I simply couldn't express my frustration in a normal way, and this led to extreme outbursts. My emotions either seemed elated or extremely angry, and there didn't seem to be much subtlety in there, not much nuance at all. This would continue well into my teenage years, and I had very few friends because they couldn't identify with me. As a young boy, I would often get into verbal and sometimes physical altercations with my peers, despite being very small for my age. I would become outraged, and enraged if I felt that I was being wronged or insulted. And you know, children are cruel, so rather than trying to help me calm down, they found it funny to just wind me up until I was a complete mess. In grade seven and eight, in an attempt to sort out my learning difficulties, but also cater to my intelligence, I ended up being both enrolled in the gifted and the remedial program at the same time. This meant that I didn't fit anywhere. I didn't fit in with the gifted kids because I was in the remedial program, and I didn't fit in with the remedial kids because I was in the gifted program, and regular kids didn't want to have anything to do with me. It was an extremely lonely time, and that ran all the way through high school. This had social impacts of its own that really didn't resolve until I went to university. However, I do think it saved me from being relegated solely to the remedial program, and this strategy quite likely saved me from a life of being dependent on others. As I got older, I was baffled by how people reacted to me. I wanted to figure out why I had trouble making and keeping friends, and what eventually worked for me ultimately was in the moment journaling. When I found myself feeling angry or sad or excited, I would take a deep breath, identify where those emotions were coming from, and I'd write it down in the notebook at the time, and I'd write down the reactions that people were having to me in that moment, good or bad. So in the last two years before going to university, I was able to start identifying what my self-destructive behaviors were around other people, and then I could start to short-circuit them, using reason rather than instinct to figure these things out. Now that social impact of being an experiment by mixing remedial and gifted programs was on its way to resolving when I attended university. When I arrived, I realized nobody knew who I was, so they had no idea that when I was younger, I was prone to outbursts and so forth. I learned at the university that I could start to define my own identity. I learned that I could fake it until I made it. That exercise of writing down what I was feeling, when and why, that allowed me to flourish both academically and also socially during this time. People liked me, and it was the first time in my life that that had happened, and it was a profound thing for me. I would note that these feelings of anger that I get though are nearly never directed personally at another person. When they fade, and that happens quickly now, I have no feelings of animosity towards the people that it might have seemed that that anger was directed. This can be really, really confusing for the other person or persons, because they don't understand how somebody can 180 so quickly. It can also be really confusing for the neurodivergent person, because they've let all this stuff go, right? They can't conceive why people are still upset with them. So to this day, my emotions continue to be extreme, and I use a variety of self-soothing techniques to smooth things inwardly and outwardly. Sometimes this manifests itself as box breathing, or lightly tapping my shoulders. Sometimes it's repetitive movements. Sometimes it's using a fidget. But I've identified ways that I can calm my brain down, slow things down. So when you work with those on the spectrum, please consider that their feelings can manifest very much differently than yours. They may feel deeply about things that you wouldn't expect. You may be surprised by what they feel so deeply about. Please avoid approaching this as overreaction. That will simply make things more challenging. But none of this makes those feelings less valid or real. For me, I'm found it totally fine if somebody comes up to me and says, hey, what's up? What are you feeling? Why do you feel that way? And I'm happy to talk about these things. What drives me nuts is when those feelings are dismissed. So if you're in a long-term personal or professional relationship with somebody who's neurodivergent, learn what triggers are likely to lead to these extremes. And you can help an awful lot just by understanding. I experience the same extremes in emotion at the other end too, joy. The Asperger's Autism Network writes, many feelings such as fear, anger, and joy seem to be experienced more intensely by those with Asperger's profiles than by average people. In addition, some individuals with Asperger's profiles report that they deeply internalize other people's feelings. So when someone else is upset, they themselves will find themselves quickly upset as well. I feel joy unbelievably deeply. I remember when I was a choir boy, singing solos in places like St. John the Divine in New York, feeling like I was being filled with joy. Or as an adult, going to the Coventry Cathedral and the juxtaposition between the bombed-out church that they left as it was from the Blitz that was then purposefully built in integration with the new. Well, I was brought to tears. I've been to two Drupalcons in Barcelona and both of them, I attended a La Mercia Festival. Both times I sat at the street level under the fireworks and it felt like I was absorbing joy directly from those lights. I will add that both times I had to leave before the festival was over because it was too much, the noise, the lights, all of it. But in that moment, it was magnificent. Most recently, I became certified as an open-water scuba diver. And the pure joy that I felt while I was swimming with turtles and gliding across forests of coral, it was all-encompassing. So I want folks to understand that folks who are neurodivergent, their feelings really matter and they're really deep. As a child, it was observed that I had a massive vocabulary and excellent word discrimination compared to others in my age group. My verbal IQ was scored in the 99.8th percentile. However, traditional learning was nearly impossible for me. It was recommended that you treat Matthew as if he was hard of hearing. These are direct quotes, by the way, from one of these documents that I was talking about. Treat Matthew as if he was hard of hearing and maintain eye contact while giving oral instructions. Eye contact, are you crazy? And his attention span is so short and he's so easily distracted that it's possible for him to not hear or retain oral lessons. But here's the thing.  And then I'd go nuts, right? And then the show would start back up again and I was right back into it. I was able to pay attention. But it wasn't in the ways that teachers and classrooms wanted me to pay attention. My mind was quick to sort out a problem but I could only focus on one thing at a time and often obsessively. It was, you know, if that thing interested me. My handwriting was atrocious. I would scramble letters up. I'd put them backwards. It was awful. And my parents were told, Matthew's never gonna learn to read or write. Be prepared for that. That report of an extremely short attention span wasn't correct. I needed the proper motivation and the obsessive behaviors that come with those on the autism spectrum when something's interesting made those literacy predictions false. You see, my siblings and father were part of a church choir and I desperately wanted to be part of that experience. I was in second grade. I couldn't read. And under normal circumstances, children in second grade should be able to read 50 to 90 words per minute. The choir master had me try to read from a hymn book. I just couldn't do it. And he told me that until I could read, I wouldn't be able to join the choir and I was inconsolable.  This turned into fury. It was a red tricycle moment. Initially, my parents saw this as being oppositional behavior, but it occurred to my mother who was a nurse that they needed to steer that anger towards something more productive. I was very fortunate. My dad was an English teacher and he sat down with me every night writing letters, words and then short sentences, longer sentences and eventually short stories on the back of used dot matrix paper. We spent two months or so every night after supper drilling. Mom and dad would find me drilling on my own, often having to force me crying because I did not want to stop to go to bed. And 10 weeks later, I went back to the choir master, asked to be tested again. He was like, what? What are you talking about? Well, after the test, he asked me to join the choir. I'd learned to read in less than 70 days and not only that, I was reading above grade level, both in speed and comprehension. This is known as repetitive obsession. Those on the spectrum when they find something interesting can learn that thing incredibly quickly. They can learn that thing very quickly if they're motivated. And if you're on the spectrum and you have tasks that you aren't particularly interested in, something that's worked for me is to change the rules on that task and turn it into a game. So for example, I do a lot of budgeting work at work. I hate spreadsheets, but if I can start to do things like use pivot tables and manipulate things in ways that weren't expected, suddenly it becomes a game, suddenly it's far more interesting. And I can find myself actually getting into doing that work. So when you're working with somebody on the spectrum, young, older, in between, a good tactic is to find out what amuses them, challenges them, interests them. They can excel under those circumstances. So if a work task is proving difficult to complete, look for another way to make the task different. Fall into a way that amuses them. I had behavioral issues that included some pretty angry outbreaks. In retrospect, I realized I was having significant challenges with transitions. I was irritated with unexpected change. So when I feel myself tensing up and I can recognize that fight or flight response occurring over something as stupid as my wife asking to use my car or making an unexpected shift in a shopping pattern, like going down the wrong aisle the wrong direction, or somebody at work adding some tiny new requirement to a project, what I have to do is I have to stop because I can feel these things trigger me. So I stop and I box breathe and I ask myself, is this actually a crisis? Is it a problem? What are the implications if I push back? Before I started engaging in that strategy, my first response would be to argue, which had negative professional and personal impacts. But this never came from a place of actually trying to be oppositional. So if you work with somebody or live with somebody on the spectrum and you see this fight or flight response on what seems like it should be a simple conversation, take a breath and ask yourself, what am I missing? Help me understand the risk here. The moment you do that, you have shifted the context of your conversation with your friend, colleague or partner. And that, for me, that shifts me immediately into solutioning rather than defending, explaining rather than fighting. Dr. Marsha Eckerd wrote on Asperger's 101 site, before schools and parents and families labeled behavior as oppositional defiant disorder, they need to explore the thinking of the child involved. Those certain explanations of behavior might seem intuitive to the parent or teacher. This behavior might not be intuitive to the child with autism spectrum disorder or nonverbal learning disorder. Ideally, once the teachers and parents get it, they'll be better able to be helpful and provide meaningful explanations and valuable insight instead of creating a negative experience. It takes time, but it's worth it. As a child, I didn't understand consequences. I did not understand that if I did action A, it would result in consequence B. Good or bad. And because of that, I found myself having to think through scenarios so I understand what happens if I do this thing, what's gonna happen later. That happens really quickly now. Like, I've intellectualized it at this point that it can happen in a moment. But I've intellectualized these responses rather than have learned them through osmosis. I never realized until adulthood that most people actually just naturally extrapolate these things. It was like, what? Really? Learning to do this has been essential to my success. And that doesn't mean that I don't understand kindness or decency or I don't understand the difference between right and wrong or goodness or anything like that. In fact, I'm highly sympathetic to the problems of others and I find myself really eager to please. All right, names. Remembering names is so difficult. I've never been good with them. I remember faces, places, events. I remember landmarks. But keeping a person's name in my head is so difficult. If I'm introduced to somebody five minutes later, I have no idea what their name is. Names jumble up into a picture of these Drupalcon name tags that I've put up here and they blend into nothing. This isn't just in my personal and professional relationships. I also have a hard time with names in books, movies, TV shows. I see the pictures of these people in my mind but it doesn't connect to a name. So remember when I said that my testing indicated that my attention span was terrible? Learning new names is obviously tightly connected to the short term memory. And the best way for me to remember someone's name is to create a mnemonic device in the moment or associate that person's name with something else or repeat that person's name over and over and over and over and over again. Now you can imagine when you meet somebody, that's a little awkward, right? They're looking at you like you're completely crazy. As you say, schnitzel, schnitzel, schnitzel, schnitzel, right? Like that's, it's really bizarre. And this also can be really awkward when you're asked to introduce someone you're with to another person.  So I plan ahead of social gatherings and meetings, right? I remind myself of the people's names that will be there and I write a note on my phone or on a piece of paper that I put in my pocket. So you may be around me and you'll see me look, go into my pocket, pull out a piece of paper, put it back in my pocket, that's what's going on. I'm trying to make sure that I understand who it is that I'm talking, remembering the name of who it is that I'm talking to. And stimulus and stress make this way worse. Names go out the window completely when I'm stressed out. I can even forget the name of a close friend. Crowds freak me out, there's just too much stimulus. I get anxious just thinking about going to the shopping mall. I find it exhausting meeting new people and figuring out how to negotiate those new relationships. If I know that I'm gonna be in a situation like that, I'll often pick one person who I know and trust and say, hey, can you just keep an eye out for me? I may become uncomfortable and may need help to get out. So if someone on your team is on the spectrum and they say that they're experiencing too much stimulus, believe them, help them get to a quieter place. For me, lower lighting can help as well. And don't be offended if they don't remember your name. If they ask you to remind them, just tell them. Timeline this. This is something that can be both a symptom of ADHD and of those on the autism spectrum. So I'm not really sure where it comes from for me. But when I was 12, my father was writing to the Ottawa Board of Education trying to get some additional help for me. And he said, Matthew has no proper sense of time. It took him a very long time to understand yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He has no notion of days, years, or months, or of getting somewhere on time. And this is still largely true. I have to go completely overboard to make sure that I've got things like calendar reminders to get to places on time. I can't estimate how long it'll take me to go from point A to point B. So I often use Google Maps to find out. Because I don't really understand time, just because it says it'll take 20 minutes doesn't mean that I'm actually gonna understand what that means. Sometimes time for me goes by incredibly quickly. In a moment, sometimes it's very, very much drawn out. And it has no real relationship to the amount of time that actually has gone by. Being a remote worker has been a huge boon to me because I can frequently just use my calendar to see what comes next. And I do struggle with deadlines. So I overcompensate and I start tasks really early. When I find something really interesting, I can hyper-focus, I might miss meals. I'll often look at the clock and wonder where the time went. So what I do, what to do? So the first thing is, wear a watch. Smartwatch is awesome. Have clocks in multiple rooms.  Use technology to prompt you with alarms like Siri, Google Home, Alexa. Use a stopwatch to time tasks that you know you'll do repeatedly so you can intellectualize, setting up these alerts for yourself when you should start to do a task. Then do the math backwards from the deadline to figure out when you should start and then double that time. My anxiety levels go through the roof when I realize I'm imminently gonna be late for something. And it deregulates me. I make mistakes at those times if I don't force myself back into self-regulation. Things like trying to find parking in time, in a tight time constraints, can completely unhinge me. And if I've got a critical set of tasks that I have to complete after I arrive in that place, cognitive skills have gone completely out of the window because the fight-or-flight response is in full force. As a result, I overcompensate. I always plan to be early. I usually give myself 15 to 30 minute buffer because if you're always early, you can never be late. Give yourself enough time to self-soothe and collect yourself. Observe if 15 minutes is enough. Do you need more? Do you always need to do certain tasks when you arrive somewhere? Plan for all of that. Use your intellect to compensate. When I was little, I had no sense of distance, either. So I would run halfway up the front yard if I saw a car coming to avoid it. And at 12, I was still considered to be a hazard to myself and others because I wasn't good at judging how far away something was. My eye-hand coordination was poor. I didn't have a sense of my own physical space. I don't really have a sense of how far a mile is. And back in the 1970s and early 80s, nobody could have possibly made the connection between shortsightedness, poor binocular vision, astigmatism, and ADHD. You see, ADD wasn't added to the DSM until 1980 and then ADHD in 1987. Many of the symptoms are shared with binocular vision dysfunction. This is the lack of ability to properly focus because your eyes are misaligned. Those with ADHD and ADD can present with these symptoms. And in the 70s, I was diagnosed as having a lazy eye. I didn't have a lazy eye, but I was diagnosed with having a lazy eye so I had to wear a patch for a couple of months and it didn't do a damn thing. This is all a long way of saying, I overcompensate because I can't properly judge these things. One last bit of connected data that couldn't have been understood at the time either has to do with the fact that I'm red, green color blind. So, our of the journals reports that 33% of the general public has astigmatism. When you go to those on the autism spectrum, it's 73% of us. The National Library of Medicine reports about 8% of males have color blindness. Then when you look at those on the autism spectrum, it jumps to roughly 30%, three and a half times more prevalent. The medical community didn't make any of these connections until about 2017. To mix all of this up, I'm also direction blind. So, I've got spatial impairments and I think it's partly due to my dyslexia. I have trouble with left and right. Somebody gives me directions to go north on First Street and then travel west on Green Avenue. I'm a mess. But if you tell me, go up to the Arby's and then turn towards the school, it all makes sense. I'm fine. So, again, I have to give myself extra time to get places because if I don't, I get lost, confused, anxiety levels go up, dysregulate, all bad. Shortly after moving to Colorado, to start my first full-time professional job, I discovered a lump in my left testicle. That lump tripled in size over the space of about 15 days and I needed surgery and chemotherapy. The chemo was pretty painful at times and to this day, my hearing is affected. I have neuropathy in my fingertips, permanent tinnitus in both ears. It was intense and I was in the doctor's office taking chemo through a port that they installed in my chest here pretty much every weekday for about two months. So I brought a work laptop to the clinic, spent my days coding, an application for work and when I got home, I'd curl up in a little ball, sweating and just miserable. So in 2017, it's weird that all these things sort of are connecting in 2017. But in 2017, the European Association of Urology made the connection between the prevalence of testicular cancer and learning disabilities. The work lead's author, Dr. Mehran Ashbar said, we found that people with learning disabilities are not only more likely to develop testicular cancer, but they're far more likely to die from it than the general public. And people with learning difficulties are four times more likely to die of testicular cancer than the general population. And for me, this was another data point that just kept connecting dots. Now I will say this. For me, the cancer wasn't negative on balance. It took me a while to figure that out, but it represented another step towards me becoming less rigid. Remember when I talked about my childhood, how it was impulsive, short tempered at times, often inflexible, obsessed with a single thing and bad with transitions? I could be really impatient with people and I would often quibble about small things and found it extremely difficult to let those things go, often to the detriment of my personal and professional relationships. That went right through until I was almost 30. But the experience of having cancer forced me to confront the fact that all that small stuff didn't matter. I learned that holding on to those kinds of trifles and letting them stress you out was counterproductive because when you're treating something that will 100% kill you otherwise, your perspective can change. Now I don't want any of you to learn this lesson by having cancer, right? And you don't have to necessarily. But I do want you to, I'm gonna give a public service announcement here. If you're a guy and particularly if you've got learning differences, do self checks in the shower regularly.  When I finished high school, I wasn't ready to go to university. I wasn't mature enough. I didn't have enough self-awareness. High school had been difficult. And while I never failed any classes, I had a hard time concentrating. I was socially was extremely awkward. I didn't understand people well, they didn't understand me. I misread intentions and it was often bullied. 9th grade I was taped up on a football goalposts two feet off the ground. People broke into my locker and left biology lab crawfish and fetal pig and snake in my locker. Just awful things. Junior high had followed me. And I felt alone. I was bullied and largely out of tribe. And ever since then, every success that I have is colored with somebody's gonna figure out that I'm worthless. This is when impostor's syndrome began in my life. I was happiest when I was able to do things on my own. Things that required repetitive actions. This meant I excelled in art classes where repetition and techniques like crosshatching were valued. I did decide with the help of my parents to take a vocational art program for high school graduates. And I worked in a coffee shop but all of that didn't really feel right.   And that was Bishop's University in the Eastern townships of Quebec. So when I arrived there and did a tour, there were only 1700 students. My largest class was 40 people. My smallest was seven. I was in a situation where teachers really, really cared about the students. Really took an interest in them. And so I was in a situation where I got scholarships to go there. It was awesome. And I was waiting to be bullied and shamed. But none of that actually happened. Everything just started falling into place. So high functioning people with ADD and ADHD can do well in the workplace and school and so forth. But undiagnosed, they may attribute symptoms to anxiety and depression. It can affect your self-esteem. You can feel things like you have character flaws that lead to feelings of shame, lack of confidence. You get praised for how hard and long you work.  This can make you feel like a fraud. And it can lead to that feeling that someday somebody's gonna figure out that I'm just faking it. This last story is really general advice. It doesn't really just apply to people with learning disabilities, but it is doubly important to us. After finishing my bachelor's degree, I moved back to Ottawa. And I worked as a lighting tech for a theater company. And I realized, while I enjoyed it at the time, I really didn't wanna be a lighting technician for the rest of my life. So I enrolled in a non-profit management program at the University of Ottawa, which led to a job in an experimental dance company. And I had also applied to go down to Virginia and do my masters down in Virginia in fine arts focused on arts marketing. That job was curious though. It represented my real first step to becoming a software technologist. So this was back in 1995, and I was hired to work on the white website. And I said, sure, I can do that. And then I was like, what's a website? And we didn't have Google to Google what's a website?  I met my wife there actually, and I asked a friend on LambdaMu who I knew sort of had this kind of stuff going on, what this web thing was.  So suddenly I was a webmaster, really had no idea what I was doing. But even so, I'm sure most people who were in my situation were in the same boat because in 1995, there were only 23,500 websites in the world. But one of the insane things that the company did that, the dance company did that summer, was collaborate in real time across five different cities with the Canadian Broadcasting Company. And they produced a piece of work in real time in front of all of these audiences. And it just blew my mind away. So when I got down to grad school, I explained to them what I'd seen and how that had affected me. And they said, okay, you know, Matthew, here's, we're gonna give you the chance to figure out what it is you wanna study. Obviously it isn't arts administration any longer. So rather than researching arts administration, I produced three multimedia works, each layering on the previous, experimenting with the web, imagery, live action theater, streamed live feeds, pre-recorded video. What this meant was I needed to learn to code, to manage people, to string together networks, learn codecs. So this boy that was never supposed to learn to read or write was suddenly becoming a technologist. And all of this led to me working for the university after graduating, teaching copyright law, videography, developing the first database-driven tourism website with the Virginia Tourism Board back in 1998. So what I'm saying here is never be frightened to ask for what you need and want. The worst thing that somebody can say is no.  Do something that takes you completely out of your comfort zone and assume if you keep applying pressure, you will make it work. Be fearless. Don't let the perceived consequence of failure cripple you because the real consequence of success can be life-changing. So I want to admit something. I was afraid to start talking about my own personal mental health challenges. I was frightened to discuss my learning disabilities. My neurodivergency was something that I have heavily masked my entire life. I didn't want to be different. I didn't want to be perceived as being different. I didn't want my professional career or personal relationships to be prejudiced or destroyed because of these pieces of myself. And when I was a child through the school of hard knocks, that's when I learned to hide that part of me.  But remember when I was talking about becoming a dad earlier in the talk? Well, I had to take the time to put myself into a situation where I had to learn and talk about this stuff because I needed to be able to advocate for her. So I wouldn't have learned any of these things about myself if I hadn't had the courage to spend the time learning about my daughter. And this all led to me at this point having the courage to talk about these things publicly. Now, I have a few last takeaways before I pause for questions. A few stats here. It's estimated that 1% of the population has autism spectrum disorder. When you look at software developers, those who self-identify, it jumps to 4%. There's way more of us than 4%. I guarantee it. 4.4% of the population has ADHD and 20% have dyslexia. High functioning autists gravitate to industries like software development. You have these people in your life. You may be one of these people. Some of them you may not even know that they're in this circumstance because they're masking themselves. So keeping all of that in mind. Use empathy. If you are on the spectrum, you're gonna have to work twice as hard to understand how others perceive the world. And if you're not on the spectrum, but you have those who are on the spectrum in your life, you have to work twice as hard. Rather, they have to work twice as hard to understand how your autist friend, colleague, or partner thinks. Please make patience central to your life. Patience is a muscle that needs to be exercised. Those with ADHD and autism become irritable more easily than atypical people, rather more easily than typical people, and they can lead to outbreaks of anger. Practically this means if you're neurodivergent, you really need to monitor why you feel the way that you do. And if you're neurotypical, help your friend by watching out for warning signs and triggers. Kindness, that should be your go-to even when you're feeling upset. Assume people are always approaching a situation with good intentions until they absolutely prove otherwise. Be kind. And on that note, thanks very much for listening to me. I appreciate it. And I'd be happy to take some questions if you have. And if you wanna ask a question, come up and ask it in the microphone so it gets recorded. Hey, thank you. Yeah. What do you write on your papers with the names? Because I have the same problem, I don't know what to write on. Yeah, yeah, so I actually do little doodles of the person that I know that I'm gonna be around. And then I'll write the person's name right beside it. And yeah, that's the way I approach it, yeah. I gotta come bother you. No, what resources do you have any resources for both more typical and neurotypical people to help them along? I know your family was an inspiring source for your successes in life. Do you have any other resources? So almost all schools now should have a resource person or persons who can help out with that kind of stuff. I'll tell you this, my experience with my daughter was that I had to fight like hell with the school board to get the help that she specifically needed. However, they legally cannot deny you those resources. So you just keep pounding on them until they give up. Sometimes you have to grind them into the ground in order to get those resources. They don't want to assign people to programs like that because they don't get any additional money per head for those kids, but those kids are much, much more expensive to be educated. But your kids have the right to an education. It's literally, it's in the law. And they have to find ways to accommodate.  So I was interested about, we often group in web accessibility, neurodivergency. And it becomes a real gray area like what divergencies we're speaking to, how to articulate that, and the WCAG doesn't really speak directly to it. And I'm curious if you had any thoughts on how web accessibility can relate, should relate, or maybe shouldn't relate to some of the topics you brought up. Yeah, yeah, that's really good. So one of the places that I can speak to personally is color contrast. Like things that for somebody who's not colorblind, things that seem completely reasonable in terms of color contrast, I can't see. Like you throw green text onto a red background. I'm screwed, I can't see it. It's difficult for me to see red text on a blue background. And often, like red text on a blue background is used as a, pay attention to this. And I'll end up doing something like using a screen reader for that. Because I just can't read it, I can't see it. Or I'll highlight it, because then it changes into the background, right? But you're absolutely right. We throw this notion of neurodivergency into accessibility, and nobody has really spent the time to start to articulate what that really means. So I don't have much for you other than observing you're right. Yeah, I've heard that as well. I've been working on an open-source accessibility project and one of the big issues that I see is the gray areas, right, where you want to package disabilities within accessibility, but you haven't really defined what are the outcomes, what do the users actually need in these paid places? Right, yeah. Any other questions, comments? Not so much a question, but I guess a comment on how things are these days. We have a 17-year-old daughter who is entering college this summer. She's neurodivergent, ADHD, she's had convergence and sufficiency, so difficulty with focusing. She can't read for more than, say, 20 minutes at a time or something like that. I mean, she's brilliant. She can read, but it's just, you know, it's painful. She's been through a lot of the bullying that you've been through. I've been through that when I was younger, and I always told people things changed as soon as I went into college. It just completely changed. And I've never been diagnosed with anything, and my daughter keeps telling me, you better, you should get checked, because a lot of the things that are happening to me, I'm noticing with you. But the thing that I wanted to comment on was sort of like this state of how things are these days, how things are perceived. She's coming from a project-based public school in Philadelphia. She's had tremendous support of 504 plan accommodations, and she's been accepted to 11 colleges, visiting nine colleges, it was nuts, but she finally picked one, but a lot of these colleges have accommodation programs.  I went in with my daughter when she went to university, and they were flipping amazing. Yeah, yeah, a lot of the colleges and some of them are built in, they have them all built in, some of them you have to sort of cobble together, but I think the state of things now is so much better than it was back then, but even given all that, she struggles with worthiness, fraud. I mean, I feel that all the time, so I feel like it's my fault that I sort of like gave it to her, but for anybody here who's dealing with children who might be having these issues, the programs are out there and the support is out there and it's so much better than it was before. They talk about the stigma being less and less and it's still there, but it is getting better. But that's one of the reasons that I talk about this stuff now, right? I think one of the easiest ways of dealing with the stigma is to literally be in a position where you're showing people who are highly successful in life, in their relationships, in work, with neurodivergency and making it normal, right? Like, everybody's got something going on. Everybody's in the spectrum in some way. It just so happens that we've defined this narrow band of what's normal, which is kind of crazy, right? Like, it doesn't make a ton of sense. Mine is more of just a comment and I've struggled with a lot of these things that you've talked about all my life and it's really frustrating to try and find that type of, I don't know, there's not really been a lot of talks about neurodivergency in a lot of the spaces that I've been in, so I just wanted to really thank you for doing this type of talk because it makes me feel really hard and I just wanted to say thank you so much for doing it. You're really welcome. I'm sorry, another question. That first thing for the lazy-eye story, that was the worst part of my schedule for many years, I know that. I used to be around people within the spectrum for years and I know how to deal with them and all their emotions and stuff like this. However, remotely, I have no clue what's triggering them and you know those conversations on Slack, Teams, sometimes I don't get an answer for 10 minutes and I'm like, oh crap, have I made a mistake? And I have no idea how to start discussing about those because some of those people, I've known before COVID and stuff, but some of them are joining us and I have no clue and it's really hard to start talking about it and what's triggering you? Just ask, what happened? Like why did you disappear for 10 minutes? You know, don't make a big deal about it, but ask, that's all we want, right? We want to be heard. We want people to understand us and the easiest way to do that is just say, hey, what's going on? What happened? And the thing is, for me, the only time I get upset about that kind of thing is if I'm dismissed. If what I'm feeling is dismissed as being overreacting or whatnot. If you come to me with good intentions and ask me what's going on, I'll tell you. And I bet you your colleagues would tell you too. Don't be afraid to ask. Yeah. All right, I think they're probably gonna kick us out of here because I was supposed to be done 12 minutes ago, but thank you very much everybody for coming. I really, really appreciate it.


Hello everyone, my name is Dr. Shubham Karev, junior resident at Sir Jeje Hospital, Mumbai. I am before you presenting a case study under the title of MR Assessment of Internal Rearrangement of Emporomandibular Joint, then under the guidance of Dr. Mayor Buriwer, an assistant professor at Sir Jeje Group of Hospitals, Mumbai. Let's go with the introduction. The TMJ Joint is a gingivo-arthrial joint which allows the motion only in a backward and a forward direction and permits a gliding motion. Emporomandibular Joint, the main function is of the mastication and the speech and hence is of great interest to the podontologists, clinicians and the radiologists. The internal rearrangement of TMJ is defined as an abnormal, positional and functional relationship between the disc and the articular surface. Pre-sized localization of the disc is very important in the diagnosis of the TMJ internal rearrangement. Hence, an MRI imaging is required for the interpretation of these abnormalities. The aims and objectives of our study are to study the various internal rearrangements of the TMJ joint using an MRI. By trial and method, we have studied 15 patients referred to us with a pain in the pre-oricular region or pain during the jaw movements or clicking sensation. All the scans were done in a 3-tas-lise GED-scovered 750-metre MRI. The following sequences were used, going for the axial PD, sagittal PD, PD-fat sag, sag and the coronal PD-fat sag. The scans were reported by two readers. The results and the observations has been observed, have been obtained by observing 30 emporomandibular joints of 15 patients which were referred to our department. Based upon our study we have concluded that the anterior displacement with the reduction was the most common internal rearrangement found in our study. This is a graphical, this is an eye chart of the derangements which we have obtained by studying the patients in our study. Coming to the discussion, the discussion goes for the emporomandibular joint is a gingerly arterial joint. The articular surface of the TMJ joint is formed by the inferiorly by the mandibular condyle and superiorly by the glenoid fossa and the articular eminence of the temporal bone. The articular disc is round or oval by concave or vascular between the condyle and the glenoid. The disc itself is oriented into three zones, an entry band intermediate and the posterior. The posterior band is thick one measuring approximately 3 mm, a bilimolar zone. The intermediate zone is a thin central zone of approximately 1 mm. It prevents the articular damage through a continuous interposition between the condyle and the temporal surface during our mouth opening and closing. In a closed mode, the posterior band of the disc is directly above the condyle near the vertical line through the apex of the condyle or curvature in such a template. The junction of the posterior band and the bilimolar zone should fall within 10 degree of this vertical line to be evaluated as a normal. In an open mouth, the junction between the enter band and the intermediate zone should be interposed between the condyle and the articular eminence. The muscles of mastication in addition to the other axis helps in opening and closing the mouth. If this is not present as we see on the picture on our right side, there is disruption of that joint and there is displacement of this location of the joint. On an MRR, the marrow fat in the condyle as a T1 high signal, the disc is otherwise emotionally hypoint and spike on the disc. The bilimolar zone is visible as an intermediate zone in a closed mouth position. The junction of the posterior band and the posterior attachment lies above the condyle nearly at 12 o'clock position. In an open mouth position, it lies between the condyle and the articular eminence and the posterior band is against the posterior surface of the condyle. The superior belly of the lateral teregoid attaches to the anterior band of the disc. The inferior belly of the lateral teregoid attaches to the anterior surface of the condyle or neck with a thin linear hypointense fibrous band. The internal derangements. The opening of the mouth requires a perfect synchronization. The term internal derangement refers to the mechanical defect that interferes with the harmonic position. On that basis, we have anterior displacement of the disc with reduction to the normal position with mouth opening. Without reduction, the entire displacement with perforation, the sideway displacement is medial and lateral, the rotational, antrimedial or antrolateral and the posterior displacement. That is displacement with reduction. The articular disc may dislodge in several directions anterior, medial, lateral, antrimedial, antrolateral and the posterior. This means that the disc is displaced from the mesaline and the condyle when the mouth is closed. In case of reduction, the disc returns back to its anatomical position on opening the mouth spontaneously. The disc remains in the position as long as the mouth is closed. Once the mouth is opened, it gets dislodged. Like the shoddy in the figure, this is an anterior displacement of the disc on a closed mouth. The disc is repositioned when the mouth is open, as you can see here. This has been displaced and this gets repositioned on opening the mouth. That is displacement without reduction. In this event, after closing the mouth, it doesn't get spontaneously to its anatomical position. Like you can see, it is displaced here and same, it remains displaced even during opening. Now, there is displacement with the perforation of the tear. The disc is less likely to reduce to a normal position as a bio-LMLR zone becomes progressively dysfunction. The disc perforation can occur or the disc might become thickened and fibrotic. Like in the figure 3, the sagged PD of a left impermanence shows the anterior displacement of the disc on a closed mouth. In figure 3, we see that the posterior zone is thickened and shows a high signal, most likely a tear. As you can see here, this might be a tear of the disc. Now, the medial displacement. This goes into the side-to-side displacement which we have in the medial and the lateral. The medial displacement, we have shown the medial displacement. The figure 5 is in the coronal section where we see the disc between the clenoid fossa and the mandibular condyne but on the right side. The conclusion of a study goes by that the imaging of the TMS joint is performed by the case series depending upon the clinical science and symptoms. The MRI is the modality of choice for the evaluation of the disc position and the internal arrangements of the joint. These are my references. Thank you.