So today what we're going to be doing is going through and answer the questions that you have all put into the internet about leadership building teams startups Entrepreneurship and business in general So let me just dig into one of these Let's see. I have not seen these before so I'm just going to open one of these up and see what the question is so Anonymous internet user writes how to effectively manage change in a business This is a Real simple question with a real hard answer Change management is never easy one of the main reasons is because Human beings in general do not like change and they tend to resist it at every turn Even if it's in their best interest or it's something they've even asked for in the past so if you're trying to Implement a change in your business bring about a new initiative change the culture in your business This is especially important and prevalent when you're talking about mergers and acquisitions of big companies Think back over the last 20 years. There's a couple of mergers and acquisitions that went really well There's a lot more that didn't go well and there's a lot written about those I won't go into the details or name any names But mergers and acquisitions can be really tough because that's a really big change management problem The most important thing With change management implementing any kind of change whether in a business or a non-profit or even your personal life is one You need to have a really clear vision That you can communicate to other people of the outcome you're trying to bring What is the good that this change is going to bring about in the world? And then why is it important that everyone comes along with you on this journey? What is their individual role? In helping to bring about this good in the world That's the first part The second part is as we mentioned human beings don't like change. So the bigger your organization is The more you're gonna have to go talk to people and understand how this change is going to impact them Your frontline managers your frontline employees are almost certainly gonna be the ones who are impacted boast by whatever change You're going to make it's really important to understand How things need to be implemented at their level In order for the change to be successful all the way back up to your level in the company for example one of the things that's really important is Everybody in any job has inputs and outputs someone's bringing inputs to them Some and they're giving outputs to someone else. I call them in the gazintas and the gazadas when You don't think about how those inputs and outputs are going to be affected for those employees And how they're especially other outputs are going to be affected because that output is an input to someone else So it's really important one have a clear vision of what it is You're trying to achieve and why it's really important that everybody get on board to Understand who's going to be impacted the most go talk to them and understand how you can aim minimize that impact or be Make that impact most effective for them and see Understand the gazintas and gazadas when these changes occur How are those inputs and outputs going to change and how is it going to change? The way they need to do their jobs to make the whole organization successful All right, let's do another one of these get one from the bottom Now I haven't seen these so these answers may not be as fully concise or Organized as you might like but I'm giving you I'm giving you what I think Right at right as soon as I read it. So Okay, Google Google searcher asks How can diversity drive creativity and innovation in companies? The short answer is how can it not? We ran into this in the Air Force a lot This is a question I had to answer a lot when I was an instructor in the Air Force and Teaching leadership and command principles because in the Air Force in the military We go to a lot of great lengths to make sure that everything is standardized everybody's dressed the same everybody has the same equipment Everybody's in the right place on time on target kind of thing and having standard procedures Tactics equipment all that goes a long way towards doing that and that's great when everything is predictable That's great when you want everything to go according to a plan when you need to think outside the box When you're faced with a problem that what you've done in the past Isn't helping with that problem We need Solutions to that problem that don't come from where we came from in the past that that aren't necessarily based on our previous Experiences because that's not serving as well So in any organization we want to have diversity because people come with different backgrounds different experiences different perspectives Again that can create conflict in an organization, but it pays a lot of dividends Once we hit that situation we go my experience has not served me well to solve this problem in front of me


Now that we've covered the basics of lighting, let's bring texturing into the mix and here what we see is a textured box that actually has two textures applied, one which we call the diffuse map and one the specular map, because the diffuse map its base color for each pixel is what we use in the diffuse lighting calculation and the specular map its base color at that fragment is what we're using for the specular calculation. So effectively can have on a per pixel basis a totally different color used in the separate lighting calculations and so you can see here that our specular highlights are only shown up for what should be this metallic rim of this object to make sense because the base material is supposed to be wood but with a metallic rim and we're getting no specular highlight on the wood itself because if we look at the textures the specular map on the right is entirely black except for the metallic rim around the side and so by having these two separate textures, these separate maps, we get per pixel control of the base color used in these two separate lighting calculations which makes sense for certain objects like this mix of wood and metal because even on the metal you notice that there are some blacker portions darker portions and those effectively are scuff marks. So looking first at the fragment shader it's just like our prior example except now we're putting a texture coordinate back into the mix and now if we look at the fragment shader our material is defined by two separate textures two sample 2Ds one for the diffuse one for the specular and so when we do our diffuse calculation and also for that amount of the ambient calculation we are reading from the diffuse texture but then for the specular calculation the base color is from the specular map. On the C++ side there's really nothing new here just note that we're setting effectively two textures so for diffuse we're setting that to zero for a specular material we're setting it to one and then we just need to make sure to bind the diffuse texture to the first texture unit and the specular texture to the second texture unit. Looking now at 5.1 light casters directional what's different here is that our scene is lit by what's called a directional light rather than a point light. A point light as the name implies is a single point in space from which light is emanating in all directions but the idea of a directional light is that you have essentially a whole field of light rays all running in parallel pervading your whole scene so a directional light is not defined by any position just merely a direction. A directional light is the most obvious approximation of sunlight because the sun is so far away from the earth that even though the light rays are not literally running in exact parallel they come from such a distance that by the time they reach the earth that they mostly are running in parallel or close enough that we can't tell the difference and so a directional light is going to be your primary light source in an outdoor scene at least in the daytime but it also is sometimes useful to use a directional light in interior spaces generally larger ones but anyway what this looks like in code is that for our fragment shader our light now doesn't have a position anymore that's been commented out it just has a direction of that three still and the only other difference is that when we compute the light direction it's not the vector from the fragment position to the light position because there is no light position is just simply the light direction reversed. Direction here is expressed as the direction light is traveling for diffuse and specular calculations we want the vector going the other way so we make this negative and that's actually all the changes here. Note that we don't need frag position for the diffuse calculation anymore but it is still involved in the specular so we can get that angle from the point to the camera the view direction here. For the next example 5.2 light casters point we've gone back to a point light but now our light is attenuating it is decreasing in intensity over distance you can see in the back those those boxes back there they're much darker than these ones up front. So you might assume that our light should attenuate it should fall off in linear proportion to the distance but it turns out for a more realistic look for something that simulates how light tends to behave in typical environments is we want the attenuation governed by three values one we just call the constant here a linear coefficient and a quadratic coefficient and what's happening down here is our attenuation factor is going to be one over this combination of those constants with the distance so we just have the constant by itself added with the linear times the distance plus the quadratic times the distance squared that's why it's called the quadratic because it's multiplied by the distance squared and so this all adds up together into a value that generally should be greater than one it really wouldn't make sense to be less than one because if it were less than one our attenuation factor would be greater than one and we multiply it into our ambient diffuse and specular it would make them brighter not dimmer so generally we make this constant something greater than one because we don't want attenuation to make the light brighter. As for the linear and quadratic values typically quadratic is going to be smaller because the kind of attenuation curve we want is something where the light decreases at a relatively slow and steady rate until we get to a certain distance and then you want it to start falling off rather quickly that is the effect we're generally going for because that is how lights will typically behave in real environments so in this case for example our linear is 0.09 and our quadratic is 0.032 and notice our constant is one here. In example 5.3 light casters spot now our light is a spotlight it's a spotlight which in this case is attached to the camera like a flashlight and always pointing in the same direction of the camera and there's a certain cutoff angle there's a cone of light outside of which the light is not being applied you can see the pixels outside of the cone are still getting some ambient light but they're not getting any diffuse or specular lighting from the spotlight so what's new here other than our light is now traveling along with the camera that's a fairly obvious thing to do just update its position to always match the position of the camera but for a spotlight it also has a direction and it has an angle a cutoff angle such that if the vector from the light to the frag position to the eliminated point if the angle between that vector and the direction vector of the spotlight when that angle exceeds the cutoff then that fragment gets no lighting at all from the spotlight so we get this hard cutoff it's a very hard-edged light here so in our c++ code for the light we're setting this position to be the same as the camera we're setting this direction to be the same as the camera and we now have this cutoff which here is 12.5 expressed as radians and we get the cosine of that and we want the cosine not the actual radians or degrees because in the fragment shader when we compute the angle it's by getting the dot product and the dot product is equal to the cosine of the angle so looking at the fragment shader we get the light direction just like for any point light we get its dot product with the direction of the spotlight though reversed this is a little strange actually we're reversing the direction of the spotlight itself not the light direction you could do it the other way around we could negate light durr instead of the direction of the spotlight itself either way we'll get the same result we store as theta and if this theta is within our cutoff then we're in the bounds of the cone of the spotlight remember that for cosines when the angle is zero the cosine is one and as the angle increases the cosine shrinks so that's why this is a greater than test not a less than for smaller angles the cosine is larger so if this condition is true then we do our diffuse and specular calculations and attenuate them notice that in this example we're not attenuating the ambient because in this example that's not the effect we're going for we want to be able to see those boxes just a little bit even if they're in the distance and outside of our spotlight in the next example 5.4 light casters spot soft you can see that our spotlight now doesn't have a hard edge it fades from full intensity to blackness at the edge so what's going on here is now in addition to the cutoff we have an outer cutoff of some larger degree in this case 17.5 degrees and if we look at the fragment shader rather than making the diffuse and specular calculations conditional instead we're computing this intensity value and the way this will work out is when theta here is within the inner cutoff then the intensity will be one when it is outside of the outer cutoff it'll be zero and then for everything in between it'll transition between zero and one from the outer it starts at zero and as it works towards the inner it increases to one i won't walk you through the calculation here but you can study it and see that's what's happening and so again the intensity will be one as long as we're inside the inner cutoff it'll be zero when we're entirely outside of the outer cutoff and in between it transitions from zero to one in a linear fashion creating that soft edge effect for a last lighting example we now have multiple lights combined together into one scene there are multiple point lights as you can see from each of the boxes there are four it looks like yes and we have a directional light lighting up the whole scene pervasively and we also have a spotlight so now in the fragment shader we have separate starts for directional light point light and spotlight and for our uniforms we have one directional light one spotlight and an array of point lights so now because the code for this fragment shader is getting a little verbose it's been split up into separate functions but if we just look at our main here first we're calculating the directional light and then for each of the point lights in this loop we add onto result calculating for each point light and then lastly we add on to the result what we get from calculating the spotlight and we get one resulting frag color in the end and if we look at these three functions it's the same logic we've saw before just now split off into their own functions so i'm not going to walk you through it let's look at this example which loads a complex model from a file notice it takes a little while to load because it's reading from the file and now it's displaying this crisis character so what's going on here is under the resources directory we have this nano suit model which is defined by this object file and if we open it up it is actually just a text file you can see that it's a bunch of vertices lines starting with v nothing really surprising there vt these are texture coordinates vn's those are normals f's to find faces as combinations of indexes so very much like the indices we saw with draw elements in open gl and the single file is logically split into separate objects here one called visor lines beginning with o and then there's some other objects if we scan down where are they i should search for o space yeah they're legs yeah so this single model is actually logically split into sub models and note also at the top it references this material file which is in the same directory and that describes for each of the objects the arm body glass hand helmet leg what images are used for the textures for the speculative lighting for the diffuse map and for the normals and those again are in the same directory so now in the example's code we're bringing in this new dependency of this model class to find in model dot h and these models can logically be comprised of multiple meshes where each mesh is its own logical component like we saw in the file and this model class itself is bringing in a third party dependency the ascent library asset import library which can read in parts many different model file formats including of course obj and so i'm not going to go through all this code just note that for the model is keeping track of all the textures loaded and when it loads them it actually uses stp image to read them off of disc and create an actual open gl texture with an associated texture handle for each one of the meshes when the model itself is drawn the meshes are drawn individually and for each one there is a separate draw call there's a separate draw elements call because each mesh has its own vao it has its own array of textures and all the vertices and the indices and when the mesh is constructed all this data is packed into the appropriate types of open gel buffers like we've already done before in our examples open gel wise is nothing new for us so i'm going to let you study the code yourself if you're interested i will point out one new thing this model loader supports vertex attributes we haven't seen before what are called tangents and by tangents these are related to normals and they're used in conjunction with normal mapping which we'll see in a later example


I'd be hosting Under Secretary Sarah Sewell for an address on combating human trafficking in 2015. This is, as you know, Human Trafficking Awareness Month, so it's very fitting. And Dr. Sewell, Under Secretary Sewell has a very long career that makes her a perfect person to be in the job of Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights. She combines hill experience, experience in academia, work with NGOs, advising, and deep, deep experience working with the Uniform Services. Many years ago I hosted a meeting in Europe that was on counterterrorism, and Dr. Sewell worked very closely with the military on what we called the Bible, but it wasn't. It was a book on counter, a field manual on coin. So very diverse background and an important thing to note, the mother of four daughters. And so while all of us were busy working on other things, she was, in addition to all these amazing things, raising four children with her husband, Tom Conroy, who's served in a distinguished way in the state of Massachusetts. So on your seats, you had cards. I would encourage you, as you listen to Under Secretary Sewell, if you have questions that you want asked, write legibly, and please pass them back to Sada, raise your hand, Sada. Dr. Mohamed, we thank you very much for helping us organize. And she's going to take a quick cut, and then they're going to make their way to me, and we'll have a Q&A session that way after remarks. So with that further ado, please help me welcome your secretary Sewell. Thank you, Maria. Good evening, everyone, and thank you, Sarah. Dear friend, esteemed colleague, longtime fellow traveler, for an opportunity to talk with you all this evening here about human trafficking. And it really makes a great deal of sense to be at CSIS to have this conversation because this organization really has been home to a multi-dimensional understanding of international security and a thought leader in that field for a long time. But it's also a real honor to be in the room with a host of true trafficking experts. I am not a true trafficking expert. I am still a student of the slavery movement and a supporter of the work of many who have been doing this for a long, long time. And it's always an honor to be with people who represent the movement. I'm going to offer a few observations as an outsider about how far you all have come and the kind of impact that you have had. My thoughts, of course, are shaped by my current role, bureaucracy. Your stand is where you sit. So I sit at Jay, which is the undersecretariat for civilian security, democracy, and human rights. But I think it bears explaining that the bureaus within the undersecretariat are quite diverse and might not be self-evident. So they include the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. They include the Population Refugees and Migration Office. But they also include the Counterterrorism Office. They include the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau that does all of our rule of law and security sector reform work, as well as other bureaus. And, of course, within the undersecretary is the Trafficking in Persons Office. And so I have the distinct privilege of thinking about civilian security issues from a multitude of perspectives and working on really some of the cutting-edge challenges in civilian security. And I would place anti-trafficking work squarely in that lens. So my goal is to offer perspectives today on how far we've come, but to also talk a little bit about my own view as the next layer of the onion that we are unpeeling as we make progress in fighting human slavery. So as Sarah said, President Obama has declared January National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. But 2015, as a year, is important to the movement because it marks the 15th anniversary of both our anti-trafficking legislation, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, or TVPA, as it is commonly referred to, as well as the UN protocol to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons, which is known to most of you as the Palermo Protocol. And, normatively, I think it's fair to say that we've come an astonishing way in 15 years. We have 166 states that are party to the Palermo Protocol. And human trafficking has moved from a misunderstood, often treated as secondary issue to an international priority that is regularly raised by the highest officials and leaders throughout the world, including President Obama and the Pope. And practically more than 100 countries have passed special anti-trafficking laws, and many have established specialized law enforcement units. They've set up trafficking victim assistance mechanisms. They've launched public awareness campaigns aimed at combating the global crime. And yet, as you know, we have an enormous way to go before human trafficking is eradicated across the globe. So we have a great deal to be proud of. And I think Congress and the American people really can take a great deal of credit for helping move this issue on the normative agenda and in terms of its practical progress. The TVPA and the annual State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, the TIP Report, that the TVPA mandates, really has played a major role in galvanizing global awareness of human trafficking and international action to address both labor and sex trafficking crimes. The report analyzes the efforts of 188 countries and territories, including, very importantly, including the United States, to confront this global scourge. Fueled by the dedication of the team in the State Department's TIP offices, as well as officers in every U.S. mission around the world, the TIP Report plays an important role in confronting this lucrative transnational crime. Secretary Kerry called it a gold standard in assessing how well governments, including our own, are meeting their responsibility of confronting human trafficking. TVPA lays out a set of criteria by which the State Department assesses foreign government responses to human trafficking. So countries and territories are ranked by tiers based on their compliance with the standards enumerated in the law. The report not only provides an annual snapshot of the problem, but it also, through its rankings and its associated regime and norm setting, helps hold governments accountable in their efforts to fight human trafficking, and it motivates governments to develop policies and structures to fight the serious crime. Researchers have documented the impact of the report on State's responses to trafficking, including the correlation between tier-ranking downgrades and subsequent enactment of anti-trafficking legislation. The TIP Report also provides a list of specific recommendations for how each country and territory can better prevent this crime, prosecute its perpetrators, and assist its victims. And these recommendations really are at the heart of the report. They guide U.S. diplomacy and engagement on human trafficking issues publicly and privately. They serve as a roadmap to better address the problem, for the sake of improving a tier ranking, but rather for making institutional changes that will put additional traffickers behind bars, will help victims get assistance, and will prevent the vulnerable from being exploited. The State Department's TIP Office has increasingly sought to combine TIP diplomacy with complementary programming to help countries achieve outcomes. Example, last year, TIP Office funded Free the Slaves, the International Association for Women Judges, and the Warnath Group to help Haiti enact a strong anti-trafficking law and initiate its very first trafficking prosecution. And these efforts are especially significant given Haiti's chronically weak institutions and its ongoing political deadlock over the scheduling of overdue local and legislative elections. In Burma, three years of intensified diplomatic engagement has galvanized significant anti-trafficking reforms, including the repeal in 2012 of two British-era laws that explicitly allowed officials to subject citizenry to forced labor and the enactment of a new law prohibiting all forms of forced labor. President Obama's historic trip to Burma in 2012 saw the forging of the first of its kind U.S. Myanmar Joint Plan on Trafficking in Persons and the initiation of a stand-alone bilateral TIP dialogue between our two countries. And we continue to work closely with the Burmese government to support the implementation of its laws and tangible steps to address long-standing human trafficking issues. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, USAID is supporting an assessment to measure the scope and nature of human trafficking in the artisanal mining industry in South Kivu and Katanga provinces. The results will inform the design and implementation of a new program to combat trafficking and labor exploitation in Congo's mining sector. And in Nigeria, USAID is providing psychosocial counseling and healing for women and young girls abducted from Chabok in Nigeria. A training of the trainers program teaches local Christian and Muslim women to use their capacity and skills to help traumatized individuals from Chabok and the wider communities. One of the things that has been surprising to me since I came to the State Department is the extent to which, as the Undersecretariat for Civilian Security, almost every issue that I touch has a trafficking dimension. So whether I'm working on counterterrorism issues, or whether I'm supporting INL in their efforts to build rule of law and hold perpetrators accountable, whether we're talking about the conflict and stabilization work of CSO, so often there are trafficking equities and issues implicated in the work that is done by bureaus that don't have trafficking in their title. And that really speaks to me as a longstanding student of international politics and someone who believes very strongly that the quality of rights that are experienced is intrinsically linked to the security that exists throughout the world. And in the J world, we concentrate on the connections between rights and security. But we see national security issues as being inclusive of rights issues. And the fact that we have the Counterterrorism Bureau and the Bureau for Human Rights under the same Undersecretariat speaks to the integration that was envisioned when the J Undersecretariat was first formed. And what that means for the trafficking office, I think, is a future ahead of ever greater coordination and integration with the broader work of state. Now, we work a lot on crises in the J Undersecretariat. We work a lot on state failure. And for those of you who have been following trafficking for a long time, I'm not surprised you to know that these are among the most critical indicators of trafficking problems. Crises often cause a spike in trafficking because people are displaced, they lose income sources, and they seek security for themselves and their families, often in unfamiliar contexts. And the breakdown of societal and governmental structures leaves populations vulnerable as protections are reduced and options for recourse disappear. So while human trafficking is a problem in every country, including our own, we've seen how traffickers take advantage of conflict, the collapse of state institutions, allied criminal networks, and even natural disasters to prey on and exploit vulnerable civilians. Pope Francis was highlighting this connection in his recent World Day of Peace message. As he said, further causes of slavery include armed conflicts, violence, criminal activity, and terrorism. Many people are kidnapped in order to be sold and listed as combatants or sexually exploited while others are forced to emigrate, leaving everything behind their country, home property, and even members of their family. Now, terrorism's nexus to trafficking is not new. The so-called language schools that sex traffickers use as visa mills were the very institutes that provided visa paperwork to the 9-11 hijackers. But the connection between terrorism and trafficking has really been brought to the fore by ISIL and Boko Haram.  And in early December, ISIL even published a list of rules on how female slaves, both adults and children, should be treated once captured. And the pamphlet instructs that it's permissible to have sexual intercourse with, to beat and to trade non-Muslim slaves, including young girls. In my meetings with Yazidi leaders, I've seen firsthand the psychologically devastating effect of knowledge that a close relative is being enslaved. I cannot imagine, but I know that you know, the pain of those who have been victims of trafficking. Fortunately, when governments are prepared and when they're strong enough to confront traffickers, vulnerabilities can be reduced, even in crises. The 2013 Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines left large segments of the population vulnerable to traffickers. The Philippine government's previous investments in addressing human trafficking enabled it to react quickly. It immediately cooperated closely with international and local NGOs to provide security and screening checkpoints at evacuation centers, intense cities, and at major transportation hubs. These preventive measures helped protect vulnerable populations as they migrated en masse to other parts of the country and resettled in temporary shelters or private residences. Ongoing activities to raise awareness and prevent human trafficking among those communities continues through tip-office funding to the international organization for migration. And in the fight against human trafficking, I do see enormous value in looking at the challenge from a more holistic, foreign policy perspective. In the Jay Undersecretariat, we look at foreign policy through the lens of people, not simply through the lens of states. And we see through that lens international stability and state weakness as coming into focus as the next phase of the struggle against human slavery. The reality is that we need peace and we need effective states to win the fight against slavery. And this, in fact, is the State Department and USAID's core work. The U.S. government works diligently to prevent and stabilize conflicts in where it cannot to help refugees in the internally displaced. And these activities are not always recognized as part of a comprehensive approach to fight human trafficking. But without them, the more tailored interventions that we undertake will not be sustainable. And so it behooves us to understand the broader context of state effectiveness and stability in which anti-trafficking efforts are most successful. In Jordan, USAID integrated counter-trafficking activities into broader human rights program that combats sexual and gender-based violence, early marriage and child labor among Syrian refugees and host communities affected by the crisis in Syria. And with State Department funding, the International Center for Migration Policy Development is assessing the impact of the Syrian war on trafficking in Persons in Lebanon and the surrounding region. This information then helps us inform our humanitarian assistance at a time in which, according to UNHCR, more people were forcibly displaced as refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people than at any time since World War II. But even where states are not directly challenged by the implications of conflict, they may still be fragile, they may still be corrupt, they may be simply poor and weak. None of our normative progress matters if states can't enforce the laws that they've passed. And so the questions of state capacity and sufficient stability to provide a rule of law framework is really central to the anti-trafficking cause. And where the US foreign partners in civil society can address that state weakness, we can provide a more stable and effective platform for protecting citizens. Poor enforcement of labor laws, discrimination, restrictions on freedom of association and other human rights and labor rights violations leave many workers at risk of exploitation including trafficking. And here's where the rest of RJ Enterprise comes in. So the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor promotes internationally recognized labor rights including for migrant workers as part of its core mandate. The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs has some of the department's strongest tools for strengthening rule of law and helping governments prevent and combat corruption. Its anti-corruption and law enforcement programming provides training to law enforcement officers and the judiciary on investigating human trafficking and corruption cases. INL also works on border issues. So does the Counterterrorism Bureau. Border control is a state function that's critical for anti-trafficking work. And some of the counter-terrorist work that is done to promote rule of law responses to terrorism can also, as we've seen in the context of the connection between trafficking with ISIL and Boko Haram, be used to combat trafficking. Interagency training at U.S. missions overseas including Brazil, Cambodia, Philippines, Togo, Hong Kong has enabled State Department, DHS and FBI agents to pursue domestic trafficking cases through international cooperation and engagement in foreign countries. And our agencies have trained more than 1,700 law enforcement and consular officers as well as locally trained staff at overseas posts. And finally I would just say that since the crimes of enslavement and sexual slavery may, in certain circumstances, constitute crimes against humanity or war crimes, the Office of Global Criminal Justice works to deter those crimes in ongoing conflicts across the globe by promoting documentation, advocating early implementation of judicial mechanisms and once the tribunal's been established, working with those bodies to make sure that those who commit atrocity crimes are brought to justice. And that's just the J under-secretariat within the State Department and USAID's work and the work of other government agencies is also broader. So there is a huge and comprehensive line of effort that is dedicated to controlling conflict and increasing state capacity and increasing accountability of states for state capacity that very much provide the platform in which the anti-trafficking interventions that we, you, have been working on so successfully for many years can take root and become institutionalized. And over the last 15 years it's the United States and our partners that have led efforts to end this crime and will continue to do so. Our work's cut out for us, respect for human rights, domestic and international rule of law, strong democratic institutions and partnerships with civil society are keys not only to preventing political crises but also to enabling the state to act quickly and efficiently when they occur. A recent trip to India I had the opportunity to meet with Kailash Satyarthi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has dedicated his life to ending child labor and working with young victims of trafficking. And in his acceptance speak in Oslo he said, I refuse to accept that all the temples and mosques and churches and prayer houses have no place for the dreams of our children. I refuse to accept that the world is so poor when just one week of global military expenditure can bring all our children into classrooms. I refuse to accept that all the laws and constitutions and judges and police are not able to protect our children and I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be stronger than the quest for freedom. I refuse to accept. And Americans in their government also refuse to accept and it's not simply a question of decency but it is also a matter of self-interest because in working for justice we will not only begin to eradicate human trafficking but make the world a safer and ultimately more prosperous and stable place. So thank you and I look forward to discussion with you. Great, that was wonderful. I hope people have questions and you're writing them down and passing them back while you do that. I'm going to ask a few questions. I think the first place that I wanted to start was back to this question of a more holistic foreign policy perspective. It is wonderful all the tools that Jay has but a lot of activity at state and in the field is with the regional bureaus. And sometimes it occurs where the regional bureaus they see the trafficking report is coming up like oh god that means reporting requirements and what's your sense of the ability to get at a variety of levels assistant secretary deputy assistant secretary engagement outside the Jay family because ultimately and I think Secretary Kerry has been quite compelling on this that's where a lot of the rubber meets the road so to speak. That's a great question Sarah and Secretary Kerry believes very strongly that we need to mainstream this issue into our diplomatic dialogue across the board and in some places it's a more obvious and natural issue of engagement than others but I think that the trafficking in persons report provides a mechanism that we can use internally to facilitate that conversation as well as a way to sort of structure a dialogue with foreign countries that are subjects of the report. In other words we've made an effort this year and I think we'll see an even more methodical effort next year to do sort of a mid-year check-in with regional bureaus on those countries that have particularly challenging circumstances that face them and that can come in a variety of different forms and then use that as an opportunity to work with both the regional bureau and with post to engage the country and seeing what are the interventions that can be made at this point in time so that we have less of a gap between sort of report to report without engagement and everyone is very busy but I think when the report comes out it consumes an enormous amount of time and the ideal as the Secretary has made it clear to us is that we use the data that is collected by the TIP report as a mechanism for helping TIP problems go away. That's the goal and we will be working concertedly within the bureaucracy using the framework provided by the TVPA to better engage on a more ongoing basis. That's great to hear. I think generally the community is very interested in making sure that survivor voices are very clearly heard and a part of the programming but we're in this new era where donors are popping up, private sector has a role to play and I think a lot of us are hoping that the Embassy of the 21st century is engaging a variety of different new potential partners on the ground and I know having you as a champion and that's going to be very helpful. The U.S. government is one of the most responsive donors as a whole. I think the number generally is about 60 million but the amount of money that is generated from trafficking is the numbers vary between 150 million, 30 million, a lot of money to billions, hundreds of billions. So clearly we can't do this by ourselves. Your message about this being a security issue, both it being a security issue but it's connections to corruption are I think a very important calling card in talking to some bilateral agencies but also private philanthropy. Unfortunately, I hear too often we're non-profit so we are very reliant on support from donors, individuals, companies, governments. A lot of times people say well we don't work on combating slavery and they say well what does that mean for it? Of course not. So on your travels, what would you think about coming back next year and you can tell us what the response has been in the bilateral governments that you meet and their willingness? Well it's really interesting but a general friend of mine likes to say you know Sarah, all crime runs on the same rails and I think the military has cottoned on to the fact partly because they use the networks model as a way of doing threat assessment that many of the networks overlap and so crimes come in various forms and what INL may be tracking as a drug trafficking network, TIP may be trafficking as a trafficking in persons network but the potential for overlap and for sort of nefarious partnership is enormous and I think as we look at the spread of terror networks particularly I mean most recently just looking at the spread across sort of the Maghreb and the Sahel you know you can almost trace the networks and you can see that the movement in people and the movement in arms and the movement in drugs and the movement in... it is extraordinary. These are interwoven threats that feed off one another and particularly as we move into an era of sort of governing terrorism where terrorist actors need to finance their activities because they're holding territory and supposedly providing services although we have no reason to believe that that's the real interest. The issues of trafficking and the issues of criminal activity to support them will become more apparent I think. So as I look at the 21st century security environment I just increasingly see the rights issues interwoven front and center with those challenges and so I think both governments with whom we speak but also the way we frame as a government the security challenges really needs to be inclusive and that's what we see as a central preoccupation of Jay is to help point that out. At CSIS in gosh now ten years ago we were working very hard Martina Mandenberg was in the audience and others the Norwegian mission at NATO the US mission at NATO to get a policy at NATO on combating trafficking and at DOD and at the UN and I have to say there was at that time a lot of segmentation people would say well we work on trafficking in arms and narcotics but not in people so to the extent that you can really push that message and make sure that certainly all the parts of your bureau understand that kind of well that's them and not us is just not very good 21st century response to these networks because they're coordinating it's puzzling to a lot of us there's the numbers of trafficked victims around the world very enormously some organizations are talking about 21 million some others are talking about 36 million and even though we've had a lot of progress in 15 years I think we're still at a point and I'm thrilled to see everybody in this room here tonight I do feel we're still at a point where we're fighting to go from the margins to the mainstream and I worry a little bit that having such wildly divergent numbers undermines us so I wonder if you could speak a little bit and then I'm going to ask Sada to bring some of the questions up to this issue of data it is when you can have a longer conversation about the degree to which human rights in general has been saturated or not with data but here is a case where it really is quite critical now there's some people saying be careful bad data is not going to help us we have certainly been interested in public opinion surveys being a generator of population based estimates and whether or not for example we did a survey in Russia a number of years ago and it turned out based on the sample that there was something like 90,000 to 150,000 females living in Russia ages roughly at that time 18 to 32 who had been trafficked at some point in their lives no services whatsoever supporting them data can be a very persuasive certainly public opinion data I think I'm putting in a pitch to support those around the world who are trying to figure out is it 21, 36 where is it any comment? Sure I was looking to see how many discrepant numbers I might have in the materials with me but I think it's fair to say the US government's view is that we'll use the ILO figures that's how we approach it but I would draw on my own background in trying to promote the accounting for civilian casualties my pre-government experience and there you also saw in an emerging field that was very methodologically challenging to document enormous divergence in estimates and very diverse methodologies that were used to achieve them and I think that is natural in an emerging field and I think it's natural when the problem is huge and often you're relying Holly Burkholder was just talking to me about a survey that her organization was doing to try to document very clearly a particular element of labor rights violations and the amount of work that goes into something that is methodologically as pure as we would like our NIH proposals to be is significant but it's doable whether it's doable on a scale that's going to really get us to a number that we're comfortable with isn't clear I think from a policy perspective we know enough to know that it's a huge problem we know enough to know that it's a pervasive problem we know enough to know that everyone needs to be part of the solution and so the beauty of the making in persons report in my view is that it paints that mosaic about the character of the harms and so regardless of the quantification of the harms you are pointed toward the kinds of interventions and solutions that are required and so part of the answer to your question about how much does how do we move there depends on why is it that you want to know that on the civilian casualty side we were always asking ourselves does it really help us if we know it was 3,000 versus 5,000 we know we want to address the causes and so I think there are ways to both put in perspective the historical quest for quantitative certainty on really tough problems but I think there's also it shouldn't be a deterrent to the fact that we know there's a problem and we know that there are always going to be different dimensions of the solutions for us to work on we have a lot of really great questions I apologize in advance if I don't get to all of them and they're remarkably legible yes I went to Quaker school and I learned many wonderful things at Quaker school that handwriting is not one of them this question comes from somebody who has identified themselves it's a captain in the US army and strategic intelligence raise your hand if you want to be acknowledged can you further elaborate the ways you see traditionally ideologically based terrorist organizations Al-Qaeda I'm going to call it ISIL not ISIS Boko Haram using the criminal terrorist act of human trafficking do you see indicators of this tactic beginning to spread among other transnational terrorist organizations because it kind of feels like that how can we better take a whole of government approach to this dichotomy of ideology and criminal activity so great question and I spoke a little bit to it earlier but I think to honor it properly it's worth pointing out that there's a fine line between in the terror context recruitment and coercion can coexist and Boko Haram and the most recent cases of very young suicide bombers is a great example of that you want to know what she knew and what was in her head we are going to see terror actors increasingly adapt their tactics and I think what's notable to me is if you try to understand the evolution of some terror actors and the way in which we are morphing toward a governing terrorist model in some cases that's when you see the need for income generation that's when you see the need or the desire to create sort of families and society and supporting structures and you have to artificially create it because it wasn't there in many cases or it wasn't there with your people and so the kinds of methods that are going to be employed for population control and for the appearance of governance are likely to differ from the tactics that have traditionally been employed by terror organizations so I can't speak to exactly how those will evolve and I can't say that I see it as a trend that's definitely expanding but I can note that we were not aware of it to the same extent, the trafficking angle for sure to the same extent prior to ISIL and the lens coming clearly down on Boko Haram and so I do think we should probably be thinking about host of associated criminal activity that's likely to parallel as governing terrorists seek to generate both revenue and control and that this is an area that really needs a great deal of attention because it does not lend itself to the typical counterterrorism intervention. There is a moment as we are in 2015 when they post 2015 sustainable development goals are going to be negotiated and the language that exists happily has a few elements to combat trafficking including a focus on child soldiers so I think that one thing we might want to keep an eye on over the next year certainly as communities raise their voice on what they want to see in the post MDGs and as the U.S. goes into negotiation is that a focus on child soldiers stays firmly put and with that will follow dollars because that will drive how development agencies around the world there's a commitment to for example eradicating or minimizing child soldiers some of these questions are going to be inside baseball so you may have to translate maybe and it could be simply that there are important issues that have been raised and to put on your radar screen so if you don't have ready answers today that's fine there are things that have been ongoing some of them not some of them you've been deeply involved in here's an interesting question and it gets to this issue of new actors possibly positive actors in the field how does the USG or J since you're not necessarily answering for all of the USG view the role of large multinational companies in joining this fight say in places like Burma slash Myanmar that's a really great question I think you know part of the new frontier for tip work is with private corporations and there are a number of organizations as you know that have been pushing the corporate world in this space as I think about some of the complimentary pieces of the US government engagement with corporations whether you're thinking about OGP and the extractives industry transparency stuff there are some logical corollaries between engaging companies in work that is explicitly anti-trafficking and engaging companies in work that is anti-corruption or that is about transparency and governance and accountability you know you might be able to make you might be able to draw that circle even wider but corporations have been edging into this space through the labor rights paradigm and I think I think there's a lot of space to engage more explicitly on the anti-trafficking side and I would see it as a huge opportunity for private corporations to to play a leading role in a cutting edge issue and hope very much that you know it would be great I hope they're talking about Adavos for example what an excellent idea it would be really interesting to go and look and see whether or not when Adavos is like next week soon assuming maybe nobody in this room is going to Adavos but if anybody is going please do raise the issue we know at least Jeanne Bergaud at Internews is going there's a very small number something like 25 non-profits who are invited so we better email and tweet our friends and raise it but I think it's a great question and maybe something to get on the radar screen for next year is Adavos needs to have a panel on trafficking and what private sector can do about this on another side of the for profit in 2012 President Obama announced an executive order on government contracting and human trafficking unfortunately the federal acquisition regulation clause to hold contractors accountable seems to be languishing what is the U.S. doing to hold government contractors accountable I don't know the specifics of that but I do know that this has been an Obama administration priority that I undertook and that it is in progress so my answer I guess to those who are interested is stay tuned I'm hopeful this is not necessarily something that is I think straight up States angle or Jays but I could be wrong and it's a really important question what are we by that I guess maybe the United States doing to cut off traffickers access to the U.S. banking system and their ability to move money across the globe and I ask this in part because when I served at USAID and I would go to a trustee prevention board meetings the treasury folks always had some of the coolest tools to be able to get their hands on money very thoughtfully and very carefully what's yours first of all does Jay have any it's all treasury and justice probably I mean I do think that having a Jay conversation with treasury and justice and elevating it might be a very interesting thing to have happen again if this gets back to the holistic approach you know if we're increasingly thinking about how do we use sanctions in the context of anti-corruption work how do we use sanctions in a very targeted and sometimes even below the radar way to send messages and alter behavior to the extent that we're thinking about that as involving bad actors who are also traffickers then we are again mainstreaming the trafficking concerns into some of the traditional measures of foreign policy activism that I think is only to the strengthening of the anti-trafficking work this is in some ways I think perhaps going to your previous experience you've had such a unique background with impressive depth on security issues how can U.S. military training and cooperation better increase the awareness and effectiveness of foreign forces that's if I mangled that question I think I might slightly re-write it and say from the perspective that you've had deep engagement with U.S. military in fact we spent 2012 is that right as a Minerva fellow at the Naval War College certainly in the work that we've done here at CSIS there is a need for uniformed service members not just in the U.S. but around the world to have a greater awareness of TIPM particularly in this correlation with security issues what's your advice on how to do that in a way that I'm still working on trying to get really tailored civilian casualty training into our training for foreign forces and I think the military which does such an extraordinary job in training looks at training in a very layered and standardized way that they would train so it is a challenge to both help integrate in training because the answer is always if you want me to train on that what do you want me to not train on that's always the answer but then there's also a question of how do you identify those partners for whom this training is particularly necessary or opposite the DRL has created a new office for human rights security and they are just beginning to engage with the military in fact they were down at SOCOM today having discussions about military training and hosting human rights issues so that's a nascent conversation that I hope very much I can support as Jay because there are a host ways in which I think our modeling of military professionalism for other armed forces is insufficient without some additional increment that may not be what our military forces require but may very much be needed to fill a deficit gap in either the education or awareness of other military forces I will say that generally speaking we would look to the police to provide the identification functions and the law enforcement functions not the military so be careful what one wishes for because we do want to have civilian rule of law wherever possible but there's a host of possibilities for specialized training for foreign militaries that inevitably find themselves in either policing roles or in counterinsurgency roles in which these issues are likely to arise for the reasons that we were just talking about and there I think there is real value in developing probably more of a mobile train the trainers program that would do detailed work on the tactics of avoiding civilian harm human rights law but applied human rights law not reciting the declaration of human rights and it could include things like trafficking as well and I would see that not necessarily as a standard model but as something that could be appended where it was appropriate and I really do think that you ought to have a mobile train the trainers program so that you can equip regional areas to be doing their own training because it's always more effective when it comes from sort of the like-minded if you will this is a great question I think that the things within J work together to protect children from exploitation in conflicts and emergencies I might broaden it out to say how does J work with other parts of the U.S. government including AID that has such so many frontline offices working in emergencies it's a great question because you know one of the things that makes me unusual at state I think is that I don't come from within the bureaucracy so I don't think it's through a bureaucratic lens I think about problems differently and so that is constantly a challenge when you work in a bureaucracy that by you know pursuant to labor you know has to sort of organize itself in a way that is not necessarily about the problem but instead is about its own sort of existence and structure and so what that question poses is sort of the next layer out which is you know I see it as you know we've got all these different bureaus and they're interrelated what about kids so we're still working on the first interrelated part and we don't have you know the kid thing we have you know a special office to work on you know women we have the ambassador at large for global women's issues that's an example of where we have for whatever reasons highlighted you know the target audience of the various interventions to the best of my knowledge we don't have anything like that at state we may have within DRL a child advocate or someone I would expect we have people who work on children's rights within DRL but as an operational issue in terms of how do we organize the meetings and how are the papers framed and what are the issues that are being decided by way of policy that's generally speaking not the way that we do it so what my answer would be is that when we work on rights issues that is the subset of rights issues is where integration on children happens but PRM for example when it's thinking about migration issues or when it's thinking about refugees will in its programming often address children but really thinks about it as a refugee problem or as a migration problem so here's a question review of states compliance with anti-trafficking standards where does the United States stand what are the biggest challenges still facing the United States re-human trafficking then I ask that in part fully understanding that your job is not to essentially affect how the US inside addresses this issue but I have found it very helpful when engaging other countries and other governments to have some sense of how we're doing on this is it a topic that's come up when you've been on travel it's interesting most of the focus when traveling is in a bilateral exchange is in people trying to understand how the language of the TVPA and the tip criteria relate or do not relate to their efforts to solve the problem so most of the discussion that one has on a bilateral level is we're doing this or we're doing this but you are only looking at whether we're doing that or it's much more transactional in the bilateral way when the tip team is working on tip issues this is not an issue on which there's normative dispute or finger pointing almost everybody wants to do better no government wants to see it's citizens enslaved so that's really not the comparative is not the most I said most so it's not a comparative generally speaking it's a help me understand why you where the criticism comes from and let me tell you about how we are trying to address the problem that's what I mean by normative success it's really remarkable nobody is arguing whether or not there ought to be a right to X that's not on the table and that is very much a function of the leadership that the anti-trafficking movement has shown over the last 15 years there are a number of questions that have to do with regions which I think are for somebody who's got a lot of functional bureaus I'm not sure the best question for you but I wonder in your travels and in your own research and writing there are certain regions that have more complicated trafficking issues than others are you finding are there places where you see particular vibrance in the community to combat trafficking you mentioned going to India that must have been an extraordinary experience meeting a Nobel Prize winner on this issue is is your sense that this is done at a kind of international level or that there are champions inside government I mean every year state jay honors how do you feel about that process is there a different way to sort of generate who those heroes are and one worry sometimes that the usual suspects get nominated are there strategies for pulling in unlikely heroes well I can't speak to the specifics of the hero selection process but I can tell you that in most of the places where I've had an opportunity to travel as the undersecretary I have made it a point to visit people who work on trafficking issues and to me they're all heroes I mean I'm blown away I often ask the embassy you know who's not already on your radar but have you heard about who is working on whatever and the number of people for reasons that seem highly personal in many cases in some cases their faith motivations in some cases they're born of personal experience but there are unique reasons that these people have devoted their lives to some aspect of this problem and it is mind blowing so definitely if you're only choosing 10 of the probably tens of thousands of people who are heroes around the world working to combat trafficking you may get drawn to the usual suspects but I'm astonished by the the cottage industry of people who are just moved to dedicate their entire lives to this I think the more important question relates this is not in any way to denigrate the efforts of individuals because they have taught us about the interventions that work but I think a really important question is the political will of a country and I think it is fair to say that any controversial process that involves rankings and judgments can be perceived in a variety of extremely negative ways and I think it is fair to say that if you think historically about the emergence of the State Department's human rights report you would find a similar sort of history where initially people didn't want to hear the human rights report who are you to be judging us and I am very empathetic with that perspective none the less the human rights report played a very important role in shaping norms and in changing behaviors and I think that arc of how institutions and norms develop and how people adjust to that and then internalize that that is the arc I am confident that the trafficking in persons report will take and already in the short time that I have been at the State Department the more I am able to explain this is a requirement of the law you may be trying very hard to do X and Y and Z and that may have huge impact here this is the law and this is the report that follows the law and so please understand this and these are some best practices as I said because there is not a normative debate and because it really is a question of well then what works and how do we make that happen I think we are very much in the right trajectory and so the numbers back to your point about the numbers Sarah it is very difficult to know whether enlarged numbers represent an enlarged problem or a greater transparency of the problem or a different methodology for describing the problem and there is no question that the problem is huge but I am confident that the constellation of people and governments that are committed to making a difference on this issue are moving on the right trajectory and it is very exciting and I think there are analogues from the past that can give us great hope even as we look at these enormous numbers and the scope of the problem and its attractability so we have come to the end of our hour we have a lot of people collectively in this room if you are going to add up all the time the people spent combating trafficking it would literally be hundreds of years it is very important that people who have not spent decades working on this problem don't feel that it is too late to engage on this and so we are thrilled that you came to speak with us we hope that you will bring followers along that people will be joining that everybody at J is going to say I know there is a J-Tip office but I want to be involved too I can't imagine being an ambassador anywhere in the world that wouldn't want to be part of this it is such an exhilarating I just have to have a little bit of that feel of what it means so please join me in thanking Under Secretary Sewell for coming to be with us take a moment and congratulate yourselves for the work that you have done we have some of the authors of the original Trafficking Victims Protection Act 15 years it is a blink of an eye but you are right the normative change is real and impressive thank you very much


This is TFNN the Tiger financial news network Good morning everyone Basil Chapman here on this Wednesday Wednesday the 14th of absurd type they didn't wrong Wednesday the 14th of June the Dow is down a hundred and twelve or thirty four thousand ninety seven Waiting for the Fed to come on the S&P is Trading right now as it also pulled back now. It's down. It's up. It's off the high of the day. It's at up six at 4375 the QQQ index 100 ups don't move away from me, please No, it's always a little technical issue when you're in area on There we go Up 42 cents at three sixty three point sixty six just off yesterday's high Waiting for the Fed to speak at two o'clock the IWM is up seven cents and one eighty eight the dollar That's why that we got the dollar is down sharp to down forty four cents gold is up gold is up Ten dollars at 1969 we've got That's gold. We want to look at cruel don't move away from me. I've got a sliding Chart in front of me. Here we go chart chart chart let's get that there we go and We're looking at crude oil Hope to fix all this 42 cents of sixty nine point eighty four and the TLT bonds will see this they all could change After two o'clock softening to 30 this afternoon the TLT is up 51 cents So yields are coming down just a fraction but so far bonds have been stuck in a trading range so we're waiting for the Fed to come on and To say what they're going to say, but looking at the charts all the charts that I've been looking at over the last two days I've seen an increase in the technicals in other words technicals have been improved So it's going to be a sudden smash to the downside that changes things. Otherwise, I'm anticipating It's really next week that we start to see some Rotational correction in them in the general market and that might be that the Semiconductors and I'll talk about that when I get back for my show that I get technicians out in a few moments That's the same. I was actually take a little bit of a beat you back in a moment I was a chap check out both people they used that


This study investigated the potential of underground biomethanation as a way to achieve carbon neutrality and promote carbon circular utilization through methanating CO2 and hydrogen-rich industrial waste gas and depleted natural gas reservoirs, MECHIC. It found that the concept could be economically viable if certain parameters were met, such as a high methanation efficiency, low facility site investment, and low hydrogen content in waste gas. Furthermore, it was determined that the variation in natural gas prices had the greatest effect on the project's net present value, while the variation in other factors had less of an impact. Finally, the study identified acceptable ranges for these parameters, within which the MECHIC concept would remain economically viable.


Hi you guys, Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside to Him. So if you follow me on Instagram or picked up on the videos that I posted last week, I took a trip from Charlotte out to Puyallup, Washington, still learning how to say that correctly, to attend So Expo. If you don't know what So Expo is, I'm going to tell you all about it today, not a sponsored video, this is just my experience of being there and all the awesome things I got to do and people that I got to meet and products that I saw and just in general how cool it was. So if you don't know, So Expo from what I overheard while I was there is the largest non-quilting, sewing, exposition, vendor fair, conference, whatever you want to call it, in the United States. It was really big. There were a ton of people there. There were a ton of vendors there. I've never been to any sewing, conference, quilting or otherwise, so I don't really have anything to compare it to. I just know that it was busy. So if it were the largest, it would make sense to me. But I grabbed their little program while I was there. Also full disclosure, this started on Thursday and I didn't get there until Saturday. So I missed two whole days, which was a bulk of the classes that were held. This was a last minute trip for me. I just couldn't get it together to A, get out there on Thursday and B, stay for four days. So but anyways, I grabbed this and I wanted to read off to you some of the classes that they had because I know that you guys will be interested in taking these because these are the questions that you guys are always asking me about in the comments. But there was, let me see, lingerie wardrobe. So all about sewing lingerie with Monica O'Rourke Bravo. That's who taught that. Easy fit with multi-size patterns with Karen LaPage. That would also be very interesting to you guys. There was one about, oh, here it is. Wait, there was one about Serger 911 with Kathy Rudy. You guys are probably like that. All about knits with Shea Ferris, also interesting. And then upcycling sewing tips with Michelle Paganini. So you can tell there was a ton of focus on garment sewing.  I really feel like it lived up to being a sewing exposition for everyone, for quilters, needle workers, and also garment sewists. I mean, there were a ton, a ton of classes for garment sewers. There's also a lot of classes that kind of crossed over that would apply to both sewing and quilting, like classes on pressing, on ironing and pressing your seams, classes about using rulers, maybe properly. I'm not sure. Again, I didn't attend any of these. Something called ice dyeing. That sounds super cool. So next year when I go, I'll be sure to plan it out a little bit better and get there for all four days. I did have a little mini meet and greet on Saturday. So thank you to everyone who came, also just anyone who stopped me in the aisles or out on the street or whatever. It was really, really nice meeting all of you. And I know it's weird to stop somebody that you think you know, but they don't know you from Adam. I get that. I have the same thing whenever I am meeting the people that I enjoy from social media too. So don't worry about it being awkward. We're all in this together and I'm a really nice, sweet person. So I'll make it as least awkward as possible. If you've ever seen me out in the wild, please, please, come say hi. It really, really makes my day. Okay. So some of the people that I met, oh my gosh. Okay. So in person, I met Angela Wolf. She is just as charming, just as beautiful, just as sweet as you would gather from all of her stuff on Facebook and all of her videos and everything. I met Kathy Rudy who is just an OG and like she just carries herself like the, I don't know, like, like she's been around for decades. She was telling really great stories. She had this whole story about this knit dress that she made on a boat once. But it was cool and it like, you know, it stuck with me. It's probably a story I will remember for a really, really long time. I met Ann Whaley who came out from Australia. She is literally hysterical.  She's like that in real life too. So it was, I mean, I met so many, so many great, wonderful people. But in terms of like sewing celebrities, those were probably like the top three. I also discovered a ton of vendors and a ton of companies that I had never heard of before. So I'm going to go over some of them. Full disclosure, I did not purchase any of this. It was all given to me as a gift. So but I'm covering it all. I'm not leaving anything out. So not picking favorites. But So So English fabrics, have you guys ever heard of them? They gave me this little sticker. I didn't go in there, Ruth. I didn't look at their fabrics. I can't even comment on the quality of them. But have you guys heard of them before? I know you're always looking for different fabric shops that you can shop online. So that might be a good one to check out. It's SoSoEnglishFabrics.com. I also met this lovely, lovely lady. Her name is Ginger Steele and she makes ceramic buttons. How cool are those? She gave me this and she gave me, oh, hold on, they're over here. Look how beautiful those are. She doesn't currently sell online. She said that she was like trying to get it together. And that she was really good at making things and not so good at selling or like selling and marketing them, which I thought was hysterical. But she does have an Etsy shop. So she ever gets it together. You can find her stuff on Etsy, Ginger Steele art. They're really cool, really, really cool. I also met, I forgot to mention Annie Unrain, who designs all the bags. And again, these people are like pros at personifying themselves so perfectly online. But Annie is little, petite, sweet, charming. She's just exactly what you would imagine from watching her product videos. She's literally just like that. And she gave me this pattern. She's been out for a few years, but I don't remember seeing it. It's called Pack It In. And it's those really cool packing cubes. So I might try and whip some of these up before any vacations that I take this summer. Love those. She also showed me a pattern that hasn't even been released yet. I guess it's something that she just made for herself once. And then people started asking about it. So she's like, okay, sure, I'll make that. It was really clever, really cool. It was basically like a hanging catty. I don't know how to explain it, but it was like flat, you know, not a catty like that your shoes would fit in a catty that like notions or smaller items would fit in and it lays flat. You can pack it away in your suitcase really easily. And it also comes with like a hanging loop hook, something like that. Okay, so I mentioned before the upcycling class from Michelle Paganini. She actually has patterns designed for upcycling. I know that kind of sounds confusing, but anytime I do a refashion, I'm always hearing from you guys in the comments about how like, oh, I could never do that. My mind doesn't work that way. My brain doesn't work like that. Well, she walks you through exactly how to like this one, for example, takes three dress shirts and turns it into that dress. And she had a whole bunch of them made up. And depending on which shirts you choose to use and the patterns on those shirts, you can come up with some really cool, very unique garments. So I might try and do one of these for one of my upcoming refashions. I just thought the concept was really neat. There aren't necessarily pattern pieces. It's more of like a process that you follow. But yeah, I've never heard of that.  Here's another one that she gave me. This is the patty shirt. So you can see the front still looks like a button down, but the back has that cute little like skirt peplum type thing to it. So I thought that was really neat. Really cool concept. I met Dana Marie from Dana Marie Designs. She was just wonderful, so smart, and just very, very passionate, I guess, would be the way she just you can tell she just really loves doing what she does. And you know, when you're at a conference, you're meeting vendors, especially the owner of the company, not all of them are great at being out in front of people.  That is not how she is. She's very, very outgoing. It made me feel very comfortable talking to her. I really enjoyed it. So she gave me this super cool jacket pattern, right? Isn't that so neat? This little thing is just like an overlay. So I can see myself applying it to, I mean, all kinds of garments, it can go on anything. So maybe a dress or a top, I don't know, that little thing is probably going to find its way in every kind of garment that there is. So you've never heard of Dana Marie, go check her out. And then lastly, I have a, like a charitable organization. And this is something I feel like we could do a better job of like spreading the word about these companies who use sewing to help less fortunate people. There were two that I can remember that were at So Expo. One of them helped girls who were caught up in sex trafficking. I can't remember the name of it now. But then another one is called So Powerful.  Then you make the bag and it, and they stuff it with feminine hygiene products. And they send it to girls in Africa maybe, I'm doing a terrible job at this, to help them stay in school. It says, our mission is to combat extreme poverty. We do that by training and equipping young adults in Lusaka, Zambia with good paying jobs. They create purposeful products like school uniforms, reusable feminine hygiene products and soap, all designed to keep kids in school and enable academic achievement. So yeah, you download the free purse pattern. So as many purses as you like, send them in and then they send them off to the girls, I guess. So that was a really cool company. If I can remember or find the name of the other one, the sex trafficking one. Somehow she used like Batik fabric or Indonesian something or another. Anyways, I'll put that in the comments. And I mean, sorry, in the description box, if I can remember who it was. But then I also stumbled across the, oh Lord help me, who I should know this, I'll top of my head. Oh Nancy's Notions Booth, which I just thought it was so neat that like posthumously, they were still carrying on her legacy, like as if she were still here. Like everyone was still very upbeat. I don't know, I guess that shouldn't be surprising to me when she has like an empire. But, but yeah, it was just really cool. And they gave me a single needle, which I was like, listen, one needle, I'll take it. I'll probably use this whenever I'm like, oh no, I'm out of needles.  And then you're like, oh thank goodness, I got that one needle from So Expo. Anyways, there were so many other vendors there, obviously, style maker fabrics, who sponsors videos from time to time when she was there, they had a very active booth, tons and tons of people were there. I got to meet, gosh, just so, so many wonderful people. And even though I was literally only on the ground for like 21 hours, it was still a wonderful experience. And I highly, highly recommended it. I'll say about Puyallup, Washington, which is about 30 or 45 minutes from SeaTac, the airport. Not much going on in Puyallup, Washington, other than, I guess they have the state fair there. So, that So Expo was held on the grounds, the state fair grounds. But other than that, yeah, it's a pretty small little town with not much going on. If you've never been to Washington State, I had never been. It was very impactful in terms of the scenery. Like, I'm just not used to seeing lush green mountains with white snow on top and all of that. Like, I just don't go to the mountains or live near the mountains. So that was really beautiful to see. I got even to see Mount Rainier from the rental car shuttle bus. So not, not the best tourist advisor here in terms of like the best way to take in the views. But hey, you got to do what you got to do. And I saw it. I can check it off the list. I don't know if it's like a national wonder or whatever, but seen it with my own two eyes. So it counts. I didn't even technically make it into the city limits of Seattle. I didn't have a single cup of coffee. In terms of like visiting Washington, it definitely like wasn't. It should hardly even count as me saying I went to Seattle. I mean, I really didn't. But So Expo, I feel like I'm making my way toward expert level on So Expo. So anyways, I really hope you guys enjoyed this little hall and hearing a little bit about my experience there. I hope that you will check it out and come next year. Like I said, I'm fully planning on attending again. So there will be more meetups. Maybe I could see about teaching a class of some kind. I don't know. We'll kind of have to wait and see about any of that. But you can start planning your trip now. Next year is a leap here. Crazy. So I don't know. It's the last weekend in February, something like that. You can go to soexpo.com and learn more about next year's Expo, who the vendors will be. I mean, maybe not now, but as the year goes on, they'll have all that information there for you. So hope to see you next year. And as far as these videos go, I will see you all very soon. Bye!