Good morning. Welcome to morning prayer. I want to invite you to stand if you're in the room, if you're at home, whatever you need to do to be able to engage and focus, pull out your Bibles, your journals, and we're gonna begin from the command of Psalm 100 to walk through the gate of thanksgiving into the court of praise and offer the Lord the sacrifice of our worship and praise this morning. And I want to just begin in that way as the worship team leads us. I want to just begin with the offering of our thanksgiving. I know that we say it a lot, but just to emphasize it again, you know, the thanksgiving we are pulling from the reserves, the bank of what God has done in the past. Which is thanksgiving, which then stirs our faith for what he will do in the future. And so we don't typically start the morning in a place of great faith. I don't like pop out of my bed in the morning being like, I'm ready to raise the dead. Like, I'm not filled with that level of faith, you know, in the morning. I have to, I have to take the journey toward great faith. And I like to think of it like in my car, I have two forms of energy. I have the battery and I have the combustion from the gasoline. And the power of the battery is that it's automatic, it's instant. The second I turn the key, the power of the battery is engaged. Now the battery is not strong enough, at least in my car, to get it moving more than like two miles an hour. I need the combustion system of the gas to propel the car forward. And so thanksgiving is like the battery and the combustion system is like faith. And there's a, there's a turning of the key. We don't get in our car and punch the gas and we're going 80 miles an hour. You're like, you don't start in great faith. You start with thanksgiving. And that's the gift of thanksgiving is that you don't have to feel it, but you always have access. You always have the ability to just simply say thank you. You always have something to say thank you for. And you always have the person to say thank you. And so you have instant access to this energy, so to speak of thankfulness, which will get the car going and lead you to the place of great faith. And so, you know, I want to encourage you because we begin in a place of thanksgiving so often it can start turning into a mindless exercise where we're like, okay, we'll let the worship team sing for a minute. I'll just kind of like warm up and then I'll kind of start singing with a worship song. And I want to just encourage you to turn the key to start the engine and offering authentic thanksgiving of the heart, saying, you know, more than just, you know, thank you that you're good. A great phrase. But the biblical command to praise the Lord is not to say the phrase praise the Lord, but it's to get descriptive and detailed about the Lord and who He is and His goodness. And so when the Bible reads praise the Lord, it's not for us to go praise the Lord, PTL.  And so let's just access and begin the process of getting to great faith and just begin singing and speaking out phrases of thanksgiving. Worship team is going to make it super easy because they're leading and there's music and they're singing these phrases of thanksgiving. Let's join their voices and sing. Let's not wait until the first song to utter anything.  Let it pour out from your heart. Remove your lips and say thank you. Even online, there's a grace right now that's being released to discover holiness and the worthiness of God. All across this room online, let's posture ourselves right now to receive revelation of who Jesus is, of who the Father is. If you want to pray in the spirit, go ahead and just begin to pray in the spirit and build up your faith to receive that revelation. But all across this room, let's receive and let's posture ourselves for the Holy Spirit to reveal to us who the Father is, who Jesus is. Holy Spirit, we invite you. We say come bring deeper and greater revelation of who God is. We want to see you and know you as you are. That we discover and see him rightly and clearly. And actually ride this till we intercede. Matthew 16, 14. Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi. He asked his disciples, who do you say that I am? The Son of Man. So they said, some say down the Baptist, some Elijah and others Jeremiah, one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say I am? Simon Peter said, you are the Christ, the Son of living God. Jesus answered and said to him, blessed are you Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you, you are Peter and on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, whatever you bind on earth, you will loose on earth, will be loosed in heaven. Then he commanded his disciples that they should tell no one that he was Jesus. The Christ, this is exactly what we are praying over right now. Pastor Lee has an amazing teaching on this. Are you saying Peter isn't the rock on which he will build his church, but the revelation of Jesus Christ is the rock on which Jesus builds his church. You cannot be in his church without it being revealed to you and knowledge is discovered. We find it and discover it for ourselves, but revelation is disclosed. We cannot see Jesus truly without the spirit of wisdom and revelation that Ephesians 117 talks about. And we can get, we're tempted sometimes to just be like, yeah, we know Jesus, you know, and we just, we got to learn a little bit more. We got to get a little bit more information to know more, but I, you know, I'm good. I don't really need revelation. And the rock on which Jesus builds his church is the revelation of Jesus. And it's not a one-time revelation. The four living creatures know that it's not a one-time revelation. Their eyes are continually open to new facets and new dimensions of his character, his nature, his heart, his ways, and it takes the Father to reveal it. And so let's keep meditating on this as we, before we enter into intercession, I'm just believing Jesus is revealing himself. I remember the time he revealed himself as servant to me and came and washed my feet and left me just in a place of being completely undone and shame being washed away. I remember when he revealed himself as bridegroom to me and I felt the fierceness of his jealousy. I remember when he revealed his kindness to me. I remember, I remember when he showed mercy when I didn't deserve it. I remember when he showed me just a glimpse of his resurrected self. And the awe and the tremble that I felt in my heart. Oh Jesus, we want to see you. We're not content with what we know. We're not content with what we've discovered. We're not content with what we have just searched out. Lord, we do search out. But the Pharisees, they searched the scriptures thinking they saw you, but they were completely blinded. And God, let us not be those who are hard-hearted and search for knowledge to be discovered, but that we would have intimacy of the man who wants to disclose himself, reveal himself to us. And so God right now, Lord, stir us from our complacency and our apathy. Stir the stagnant waters of our soul. Jesus, we have to see you. We have to know you. We have to have a new revelation of who you are. God, we can't live with just how we've seen Jesus in the past. It's not enough. Jesus, we have to see you today.    Without continual revelation and knowledge of you, we die. We perish. We lack knowledge. We lack understanding. So spirit of wisdom and revelation, the knowledge of Jesus, stir our hearts to see Jesus rightly. Just we want to see you on the cross. We want to see you glorified. Mind our soul and our spirit. All of us unite our hearts to fear you, like David said. Unite our emotions, our imagination, our will, our thoughts, our minds, our knowledge, our wisdom. Unite it all to fear you, Jesus. Let's unify and just sing this simple chorus together. There's power when we unify and all pray and sing. With one mind and one mouth, we glorify him together. Every voice, let's sing this together. In the apostolic prayer that Paul prays for the church and Ephesus and Ephesians 1, 17 through 19, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, the knowledge of him. That the eyes of your understanding would be enlightened that you may know the hope of his calling. What are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints and his exceeding greatness of his power toward us? Who believe what we thank you just for the gift of this prayer? God, we thank you for Paul. Lord, we know that Paul did not discover you. In all of his self-discovery, he came away hateful, rageful, killing Christians.  Lord, we know that the apostle who prayed this prayer was not just thinking of a sweet mental picture, but he literally had to be blinded in his natural eyes so that the eyes of his understanding would be enlightened to who you really were. And so, God, we even say, Lord, if in areas where you need to blind our natural eyes because we have gotten so casual that we're riding around thinking that we're serving you and that we know you and our arrogance, but we've missed the nature and character of your heart, Lord, blind our natural eyes to open the eyes of our understanding that we might see you, Jesus, for who you are. Lord, we don't claim, we don't profess to know you in your entirety.  Lord, we say, we don't know you at all without your revelation of who you are. And so, would you enlighten the eyes of our understanding? We want to see you like Paul saw you. Lord, when his eyes were opened and he saw your church operating in the presence and power of God, like he saw you when you took him to that cave in Sinai, then you opened his eyes and you yourself taught him the word of God and he came back. And this was the prayer he prayed. God, let that burning desire to see you and to have you revealed that lived in Paul, God, let it not die out with his body 2,000 years ago, but let it live in his body today, God.  Let us not ever wake up assuming that we already know you, that we know enough, that we have enough wisdom and revelation. Oh, God, stir the stagnant waters. Like David said, our soul longs for you. We thirst like a deer who longs for water. We know that a deer can't drink once and be satisfied, but that that longing for more water is continual. And so, God, we long to see your son Jesus. We want to see him like Jacob saw him when he wrestled him. God, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego saw him as the fourth man in the fire. Like Joshua and Zarubabal saw him when they stood before him. Like Stephen saw him glorified before the Father at the right hand. Like the disciples saw him when they handled him after the cross. When he was resurrected, but not yet glorified. Like John saw him in his fully glorified state, with eyes like flames of fire, with hair like wool, with feet like burnished bronze, and a voice with the sound of many waters. We want to see you like Paul saw you in your revelation, in your glory, in your beauty. We want to see you like Mary of Bethany saw you, even though you hadn't gone to the cross, you were still worthy and you were still the one who deserved all of her love and her affection. We want to see you like the Centurion saw you, where he knew you carried the authority to just speak a word. And he had greater faith than all of Israel, just because he looked at you and he saw your authority. Jesus, we want to see you like that. We want our eyes to be open and we thank you that by your blood you've made a way for us to enter in boldly. And to come before the Father is more than just to have our sins cleansed, but it's to be able to see Jesus rightly and lifted high and glorified. So Father, we echo the prayer of Paul that you gave him, that the Spirit gave utterance to. We're asking that the Father of glory may give the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus. And a little bit more, just in our personal life, Jesus, we want to see what you're doing right now today. Jesus, we want to see you in our family. God, we need revelation to see what you're doing in our kids, in our spouse, in our parents. Lord, we, one day without your revelation, and we slip in to looking with the eyes of the flesh, because man looks at the outward, but God, you peer into the heart, and you have more thoughts toward our loved ones than the sands of the sea, and your plans and your thoughts are for them, and you are always at work. You're always walking among the lampstand. You're always holding the seven stars in your hand. And so Jesus, right now, open our eyes. Lord, where there's a spirit of discouragement, where we're looking at our kids and we're seeing behavior, and that's all we can see is negative behavior, and we're not able to get out. Jesus, we know that's not all you see. You see not as man sees, but you see them a thousand years from now, when they're worshiping in glory. You see them 10 years from now, when they've said yes to the grace of God, and so would you open our eyes, God, and our spouses, our husbands, and our wives, Lord, that we would see what you're doing, and that we would call things forth that are not as though they were. Lord, open our eyes right now. Lord, in the unbelievers around us, Lord, that we would not look with natural eyes, but that we would see with your eyes, Jesus, like you saw, when everyone saw an adulterous woman, you saw a righteous woman. When everybody else saw one thing, you saw another. When everyone else said, Rahab the prostitute, you saw Rahab the righteous, and you called things forth that were not as though they were, and so Jesus, would you enlighten the eyes of our understanding right now? We don't see as we ought. Lord, we don't even know how to minister as we ought. We need our eyes open. We need to see the spirit of wisdom and revelation at play in our daily walk, Lord. Help us to see what you're doing in our church. Oh, God, stir us from our apathy and stir us from our negativity, Lord, where we come in to church services and prayer meetings, and our mind is so filled with criticism and negativity that we can't even see what you're doing.  Oh, Jesus, blind our natural eyes of criticism so you can open up our eyes to see what you're doing. Lord, in your national church, or where we've maybe been discouraged because it seems like every week a new leader falls, or it seems like somebody else leaves the faith, or there's negative press here and there, and it's heart-wrenching, it's difficult, it's painful. But Jesus, we know you're still walking among the lamb stands. We know you're still holding the seven stars in your hand. We know that you still have a plan and a purpose. We know that the spirit and the bride will say, come with a church that's fully prepared and made ready.  But we need you to open our eyes, Lord. We are discouraged in this hour. There's a lot of heaviness and deep darkness, but we know the Lord is arising and He is shining. And so God, we ask in our personal lives, Lord, with our families, with our coworkers, with the lost in our lives, Lord, with our churches, God, will you open up our eyes? We want to see you. It's the things we've exalted above the knowledge of God. I just felt a real grace just in that last prayer cycle through when I was just praying for family members for us to see them differently. I felt like that the Lord was inviting us, the spirit was inviting us in particular to press in through the area of where there's some frustration in our hearts. Maybe it's a kid, spouse, parent, you know. But there's been kind of a lingering frustration that has kind of made its way to discouragement. Maybe it's a kid who has walked away from the faith. Maybe it's just a frustration with a spouse where there's disconnection, or maybe it's difficulty with a parent and relationship. And I just felt right now Jesus just saying, man, I want to give the gift of my eyes and my sight. When we talk about his eyes burning like fire, it's not just that they burn with an ambiguous passion, but they burn with real insight and love and knowledge for the very same people that are in our lives. And sometimes because we love them, they frustrate us. And so Jesus, I just ask right now, God, we want to see our family the way you see. God, we can't look with our natural eyes. We don't trust our natural eyes. But our eyes are deceitful and wicked, just like our hearts. And we only see what we want to see sometimes in our arrogance. And so we need your Holy Spirit to give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of what Jesus is saying and doing. Lord, I ask right now, even everybody praying in this room and praying online, or that you would highlight a family member and Jesus that you would begin to speak. We know that testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. We know that the accuser is up in heaven accusing this person. But we know Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and he is the faithful witness who is faithfully speaking and prophesying on their behalf. And so Lord, we don't want to come into alignment with the testimony that Satan is saying up there. We want to come into alignment with the testimony of Jesus. What the Son of God is saying about our loved ones. And Jesus, would you open up our eyes to see in this moment, oh God, we want to dream, like it says in Psalm 126, when you brought us back from captivity, we were like those who dreamed and our tears were turned into laughter. Lord, we ask, we want to reap a harvest that comes from sowing tears in prayer that reaps joy. Lord, I ask for encouragement where there is discouragement. Lord, I specifically ask for parents. We have kids that have walked away from the faith. Lord, I ask, God, what you would come with the comfort of the spirit. Lord, that you would come with the love of the Father. And you know what it's like. You know what it feels like. But Lord, I ask that you would bring comfort and encouragement to stay the course. For some of you, the Lord is speaking that the arrow is going to find the target. It's going to hit homes. It's going to hit homes. Lord, bring us spirit of encouragement. Lord, where discouragement has blinded our eyes. God, we just ask for a tsunami of hope. God, a tsunami of hope to crash over our hearts. Lord, you haven't given us a spirit of fear, love, power and a sound mind. God, we want a mind that is filled with the power and love and the soundness of what the Spirit is saying in the testimony of Jesus. So Lord, open our eyes to see an encouragement. This is the spirit of encouragement this morning. This is how he's strengthening us today. What the Spirit wanted to encourage us with today. You're not done with my family. You're not done in my city. I just saw the servant running to Elisha just panicked. Like, we're done. We're, it's over. There's an army around us and there's two of us. It's, you know, let's, I don't know what we're going to do. We're dead. That's why I'm waking you up. And Elisha's like, take a breath, chill, don't fear. Let's pray for a second. And I'll show you that God's not done in this situation. There's maybe an army surrounding us, but there's an army of angels that are 10 times as powerful that's surrounding that army. And I really felt like that was the Spirit's encouragement today. Where there's discouragement in the right now. Where there's discouragement in what hasn't happened. And I've seen that assignment from the enemy even recently, just in my own life, to bring a discouragement where things aren't yet and haven't happened. And seeds that we think haven't gone deep enough. And I just feel the Lord just saying that seeds are at just the right depth. You can trust me. You can trust me. This isn't the end. You're not done with my family. You're not done with my city. You know, let's get back up and agree with my heart. And then as we leave, I just felt just the Gate of Thanksgiving, it's not a one-way gate. When we leave again, we're going back out. So when we leave the prayer meeting, we're also leaving through the Gate of Thanksgiving again. And so we end in that place of just giving thanks. And sometimes when we feel the burden of the Lord, I can do this. I can leave a prayer meeting and I can feel more discouraged than when I came in because I'm like, oh God, there's so many things wrong. We take those things to the Lord. We lay them at His feet. That's the threshing floor. That's the garden where we say, God, ultimately it's not my will, it's yours. And then I'm going to put it in your hands and I'm just going to obey and I'm going to leave with thankfulness. And so let's do that, God. We just leave this place thankful. Thankful for what you're doing. Thankful for what you're saying. Thankful for what you're speaking. And God, we thank you that the story isn't over. You're not done. Or we thank you that this present discouragement, we're not going to feel this in a thousand years. We're going to just feel the joy and the laughter on the other side. And so we thank you for your voice. We thank you for your spirit. We thank you that if we felt like we did great in this prayer meeting or we felt like we were disengaged the whole time, we thank you that you still love us and you're for us and you were still working and moving whether we sought or not. Just thank you for your spirit. Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thanks for joining us in prayer. We'll be back to our morning broadcast and today at noon and 6.30. Have an amazing day.


finish line. The commissioner of the taxi and limousine commission and we are so excited to be here to celebrate that we have closed on 1,000 medallion modifications. This is an exciting time for all these guys behind me. They have been advocating, they have been working so hard to ensure that they can have a better future. Congratulations. You know, this administration is the administration that gets stuff done. And under the leadership of Mayor Adams and Deputy Mayor Joshi, we got stuff done. I would be remiss if I did not also thank the people behind me but also the TLC commissioners who voted for the rules package, budget director Jack Chihau and the corporation council Judge Heinz Radix. And with that, I am truly honored to introduce Senator Schumer who has been a fighter in this, who brought everyone together to the table so that we can all be here today. Senator Schumer. Thank you. It is great to be here today. I want to thank everybody first, not on this subject, a little bit of good news. The House just passed our push to get money for home heating for the LIHEAP program, a billion dollars. It had run out of money. It's the same bill I negotiated and talked about yesterday. It's home energy assistance and now the federal pot sits at five billion dollars enough to heat our homes whose people, the people's bills are going up because of the gas crisis, because of the heating crisis. And now there will be some money to help our elderly, to help our working people heat their homes and not have to choose between food and heat or medicine and heat. The money will be there for them. So that's some good news. Now to the edge that just happened an hour ago. Okay, so let me say first that we are here to hail a hallelujah. Let's hail a hallelujah, everybody. Hail a hallelujah because things today are fairer for our hard working cab drivers. We all know the recent plight of the taxi drivers over the years. So many of them put their put their hope and soul and dollars, their life savings into medallions. My father-in-law was a cab driver. He bought his medallion for $3,000 in the 40s, early 50s. And for him, it was a ladder up into the middle class. That's what we wanted the medallions to be, a ladder up into the middle class. But market forces like the explosion of app based for higher vehicles, the pandemic destroyed the value of these medallions. Some were so hopeless. Richard brother Kenny chow that they committed suicide because the lenders were going after them and saying we're taking your home and the humiliation of not being able to support your family and losing your home was just devastating. So I know from my father-in-law and how he struggled as a cab driver what it meant. Now in 2021, the great taxi workers alliance, the great the great taxi workers alliance reached out to my office for help, better be in her group. And we have been working closely with them to fix this issue. As you know, during COVID, I got New York $6 billion in aid via the American rescue plan. The money went right to the city, not to what Albany where they never would have seen it. But we made sure it went right to the city. And Mayor de Blasio announced a relief program because I called him and I said, Hey, out of this $6 billion, we need a small amount to help the taxi drivers. But the plan wasn't enough to help the drivers restructure their loans in a sustainable sustainable way. So I called Mayor de Blasio personally, I told him, I believe that a city back debt guarantee a backstop was the only way to address the serious financial issues facing the cab drivers and deliver economic justice to these workers after so many had been victims of predatory lending mismanagement and everything like that. Then after working with my office and the taxi workers alliance, the city finally agreed to guarantee the medallion debt so drivers can reduce the principle on their loans. And today we're here to celebrate that over 1000 have reduced their debt. They're still paying a debt, but a debt they can live with and work and be proud and support their families over 1000 workers now have had that happen. This is about economic justice, plain and simple. Taxi drivers needed a lifeline and now they have it over 1000 medallion owners have gotten the debt relief. Now I brokered this deal back in November with the last administration. But I really want to give special credit to Mayor Adams and David Doe are great commissioner. They've been relentless in seeing it all through. The deal was negotiated under the former mayor, but this mayor had to make sure that the money got to where it was and that the deal that we negotiated was followed through on. And they did. When Mayor Adams when Mayor Adams says he's a get stuff done mayor, this is one great example. You got it done, baby. Thank you. I also really want to thank Andrew Milgram of Marvel Gate. Marvel Gate was the biggest lender, and he worked with common sense in a collaborative approach. He understood that just making the cab drivers pay so much wouldn't help anybody, including the lending company, because they wouldn't have the ability to pay it back. They couldn't do the job anymore. And so I want to thank him as well. And I want to thank so many other elected officials who helped, including Zora Mandami. He's not here. I don't think, but he really got me involved in this and he deserves our cheers as well. I also want to acknowledge my colleague in government, um, uh, Alexandria AOC, the great Acasio Cortez, who's done a very, very good job at helping the cab drivers again, following through once we negotiated the deal, how they could take advantage of it. So thank you for that as well. So the bottom line is very simple. We worked. But the courage of these people. When we couldn't get the city to pay attention, and they were desperate, many of these great people who are right here, Richard and Mr. Singh. Where's Mr. Singh? Yes, there you are. Um, and, uh, Miss Lakomte, where she Dorothy, she's here, right over there. Um, many of these folks went on a hunger strike and that struck a chord in the city. We're a city where we care about other people. We're a city when we see that hardworking people are being taken advantage of. We all come together and their hunger strike, the hunger strike of these folks, many of these folks here just lit that fire and said, New York is not going to turn your back, our back on you. And that helped get it done as well. And I thank those of you who went on the hunger strike. How many days was it? 15 day hunger strike led by this lady who was very hungry. Barabi decide who's who's led this organization for 26 years. Let's have a round of applause for Barabi as well. So the bottom line is a great day for justice, for hardworking people and for the best of New York. I thank everybody for all they have done. Thank you so much, Senator, and it's now my great privilege to introduce the mayor who has stood by our drivers through thick and thin. Mayor Adams, you know, and I really I can recall over 25 years ago when we met and we were fighting to stop our drivers from being assaulted and robbed. Many voices were silent. I remember, you know, the years ago with one of the blacks in law enforcement who care had as we stood and really mobilized with this amazing union of this is not a new relationship. And so I think that there's something special about the battles we had dealing with the physical challenges that they experienced those 25 years ago. I'm now the mayor of the city that's dealing with the fiscal challenges that they had to overcome. This long rich history of understanding of people who have gone through a lot because they have a mayor that has gone through a lot and together we can make this a fair city. And this is how we do it. The three components of success. Agitate, negotiate, legislate. We had the legislators that are here. We cannot thank you enough, Senator, for getting it done in a real way. We cannot thank you enough, Congresswoman, for your role in making this happen.  And those combined efforts, as we negotiated, we saw the best of who we are, not only as New Yorkers, but how we continue to protect the broken class people of this city and of this country. And this is not an industry that just appeared out of nowhere. There's something iconic about our yellow cabs. 1907, the first symbol of a yellow cab came here. It is as iconic as the Empire State Building. It's actually older than the Empire State Building. It is the foundation of our city. And so many people pursued the American dream through the medallion and the yellow cab. And so what our partnership accomplished with the Taxi and Limousine Commission, Marble Gate, Asset Management and New York City Taxi Workers Association, is just the winning combination to bring this home. And there was a fearful moment for so long. A thousand medallions owners have closed on loans, resulting in $225 million of Taxi Medallion debt release so far. That is really commendable that we were able to bring this home for everyday New Yorkers. Yellow cabs are the lifeline of our city. We've all held it during emergencies. We've held it to go from one location to the other. They have reported countless number of number of crimes that have taken place. They have been the protectors of our city, not only in transportation, but moving us throughout this entire city. Recent years, the medallion owners and drivers have been burdened by crippling debt. And we did not want to sit on the sideline and watch this continue to happen. It's crushed dreams and it crushed families. People like Richard and Kenny Child, who came to New York City from Taiwan in pursuit of the American dream. The brothers worked hard, put their life savings on the line. Kenny paid $750,000 for his medallion. And although he drove long shifts a day after day, he couldn't earn enough to keep up with the loan payments. Richard is here with us today. Tragically, Kenny is not. Kenny took his life and out of his pain, we found purpose to pursue what was rightfully something we should have brought to these taxi medallion owners for a long time. While we cannot bring back Kenny Child or his fellow cab drivers, because he was one of many who experienced this devastation. We can make sure that what happened to them will never happen again. And so thanks to this medallion relief program, regardless of the original medallion loan amount, over 3000 owners now have their loans written down to a maximum of $170,000 and monthly payments that are capped at 1234.  It allows them to wake up to the nightmare that they were no longer part of the American dream. It allows them to experience that mer- American dream. The debt relief program means that they're no longer maxed out on their credit cards, no longer being prevented from providing for their families. So taxi owners and drivers are there for us. Every time we raise our hands to hail a cab at a curb, they responded. Now it's time for us to stand for them. And that's what we've done. And so I cannot thank our state and congressional, our federal and congressional lawmakers for doing what was right for these medallion owners. And every day, New York is hardworking. New York is commendable. What you did, Senator, commendable what you did. Congresswoman, thank you on behalf of the people of the city of New York. Thank you so much. Now I would like to introduce one of the moral leaders of this movement, Richard Chow. Hi, my name. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, Senator Schumer. Good afternoon, Mayor. And good afternoon everyone. So my name is Richard Chow. And I'm a union, New York Taxi Worker and Union member. I'm an owner driver. I'm driving a car for 17 years. So I want to thank you, Senator Schumer, Mayor, Adam, Commissioner Ado, New York Taxi Worker Alliance, leader, our leader, Baby Desai, and our congresswoman, AOC, and elected assembly, elected assemblyman Zora Mandani. He was not here. So yeah. He's here in spirit. Yeah, okay. So we, we thank you all. We fought it for this better for so many years. And finally, we won this. And we fought this since 2018, four years ago. Nine drivers have committed suicide, including my brother. So we have keep fighting, keep hoping, keep praying, and keep hoping for winning. And finally, we are the right track. We are, we are, we are in the winning.  We have a city back guarantee. So we are all the driver, Marblegate, the long hold of all the drivers. So very, very happy. And I want to thank you, the Marblegate, and to give out the second chance. And I want to thank you, the Mr. Commissioner, give out the NRP program and restructure my loan. So my old amount of the loans is $389,000. And now I restructure my loan $170,000, a 7.3% loan, 7.3%, 25 year, 25 year fixed rate, and no balloon. So my monthly payments is $1,234. And I can, I can make a livable income and bring the food to the table. We all the driver, so happy that we are new lights are coming, new days are coming for us. So we can bring the food to the table. We can raise to the kid, to the college. So I'm so, we are so glad that we are so happy. So, so I, we don't have to, after we, we have, we don't need to sign the confession or the judgment. And we are not worried about the, we are not worried about the, we are not worried, we are not afraid about the losing our home, losing our assets. And so I want to thank you all, the Hangwa swagger. So I'm a lot of people, a lot of driver, 15 day hangwa swagger, including myself, Baby Desai, and all, some assembly members, Zora Mandani also, and assembly women, Yuling, their hangwa swagger, about 50 driver, so participating hangwa swagger, some of us participate 13 day, 14 day, 10 day, 12 day. So I want to thank you all, the hangwa swagger, make it happen, make it our dream life. And I want to, I want to say something that I hope the other rest of them, after we sign the Mabel gate, the whole, the, the long finish, next, next week, we were hoping the, the rest of the, the lender, like OSK, Medallion Financing, and Prem Fed, and all the small lender, hopefully participate the NRPCD program, and restructure our loan, the same like a Mabel, the same like a Mabel gate. So we are hoping they are joining as soon as possible. So we got to save all the driver lives, and then we can, we can make some money to the, you know, make it for the living, and then we can, until we work until we are retired, and we are, thank you for all, congratulations to all the driver, and we are very appreciate their support us, all the elected official members, we are, thank you to all the elected members and supporters, and I'm really, really appreciate this. So I'm working until I'm going to retire. Thank you so much. All right, Richard. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mia. All right. Well, thank you so much, Richard. You know, the next person I'm about to introduce has helped my team, the TLC team, has gotten drivers to our Long Island city offices so that they can close their loans. They worked with Marble Gate, with Field Point Servicing, with all of the attorneys of our drivers to get this pass. She is the labor leader that, you know, brought us to this point, Beta V Desai. We've had so many milestones in this journey that once upon a time was only full of tragedy. And to reach this point where there's so much joy and there's so much relief, honest to God, it almost feels otherworldly. You know, four years ago, we returned to these steps over and over again to mark vigils for the brothers that we had lost to a despair that most of us did not have words for. And really, most of the world just could not understand. And here we are, a movement that held itself together and we took ourselves from the depth of that despair to the sunshine of a new day. And, you know, there's so many people to thank. And truly, when we say to you, he is the moral leader of our movement, we mean he is the moral leader of our movement. There is just no one like Richard Chao. No one. Richard took a grief that was unspeakable, particularly when it is a death by suicide. We're so many cultures. It is a form of death that we are not even used to talking about privately, let alone publicly. And he channeled that pain into the pure solidarity so that no other family would experience that level of pain. And through that, he gave a light to our movement so we could find a way home to justice. And along that path, we met so many beautiful souls. You know, the world knows them by their titles, but we got to know them as union family, you know, as the son-in-law of a cab driver who stood with us throughout the 26 years of our movement and in the moment of darkness never left us alone and used his power to open doors to make everybody comfortable in that room. Thank you, Senator. We met a congresswoman who the entire world wants to claim is their congresswoman, but we get to say no, she's ours. She took this issue and made sure that it had a national spotlight and used that spotlight to get us into the halls of congress for a hearing at the financial services committee, which brought us a spotlight into not only the general society, but also into the financial world where we became seen as senior players. Thank you, congresswoman. You know, four years ago, I remember sitting in a cafe with the TLC chairperson of the time who had called me in specifically to talk about this issue. We're so proud that today we get to call her our deputy mayor. Thank you, deputy mayor Joshi. Many people, I mean, I know Assemblyman Mamdani is not here, but we're so happy that our councilman, Krishna, is here today. The representative was at the proud five who got themselves arrested right there on that corner, making sure that we were heard. And I know I'm going to leave out people, and I apologize for that. But this really has been such a long journey. And there were also other families of the nine drivers who stood with us, who put their hearts on the table, and they left it on the streets where we live and we survive. And without their courage and their sheer act of love, our movement, it's not just that we wouldn't have won. It would have been so hard for us to just stay together because there really were days where many of us could not get out of bed knowing the depth of this crisis. And so these past two weeks, I'm just going to jump forward to these past two weeks. It has been so phenomenal to watch the TLC team, the Field Point Services team, which is a servicer for Marblegate, the Driver Resource Center Legal Services, who've come together and really it's such a miraculous effort to close over a thousand loans in a short period of time. They were running back and forth and really did it with such a professionalism. Things were so smooth. I see Sydney here. I see Ryan here. I know that there are other members of the team. And we really want to thank you because while there are so many people that brought this together, the actual logistics of it happening couldn't have happened with all of those workers behind the scenes who got that job done in these last two weeks. And I want to end my thanks with three people who represent, I know, a lot of other people behind them. Begin with Mayor Adams. This transition we won on November 3rd and the transition has been so smooth because of all the work of this administration and your leadership. They assured us from day one that a commitment was made from our beautiful city and they would make sure that the commitment would be seen through. We did not have to feel any anxiety. We did not have to feel any worries, you know, that because of the lapse in time and a new administration coming in and truly that goes to the credit of our mayor and thank you so much for that. I want to thank speaking of transitions. I want to thank our TLC Chairman David Doe who said during his confirmation hearing that his priority would be to see this through. And you, sir, have delivered on your promise and we thank you for that. Thank you. Had to put together an entire team to make this happen smoothly and Commissioner Doe has done exactly that. And I know that there are all these other folks from the law department and Commissioner Jiha from OMB and all these other fine folks from this city who really burned the midnight oil to see this through and we can't thank them enough. But the thank you that I really want to end with is with Mr. Milgram. You know, Marblegate took a position that they were going to find a resolution to this crisis. It took true leadership and a moral clarity for a financial institution to come into this crisis and say we are going to be part of the solution. That it's going to end here and we're going to draw that line. And we could not be, we could not have had this day without Marblegate stepping forward, having that vision and that clarity to make sure that this debt forgiveness would be not only, you know, not, not just something rhetorical but a lived reality for thousands of our families. And so thank you so much, Mr. Milgram and to your team. I just want to say $225 million and counting that is $225 million that will now go to groceries and healthcare, you know, and more, you know, education and housing. It's going to go to feed people, to clothe them, to keep a roof over their head. Families who for years had been struggling to figure out how do they make sure they pay their medallion mortgage so they could go to work and still find a way to pay their rent in order to keep that roof over their heads. No worker should have to make those choices. And the beauty of this day, it is the beginning for thousands of our families who will no longer have to make that choice. That is unbelievable. I mean, it's so hard to quantify what that means for poor people, for working class people, for anybody who's ever gone to bed with a pain in their stomach, from hunger, from every parent that has eaten less food because they saved it for their child, for every parent that's worked the seventh day and the 14th hour of the seventh day, the 15th hour of that seventh day to make sure that their children would not have to have the worry in their futures that they have had to have in providing for them. This is a day of tremendous hope and such a beauty that a group of working class people who have been the symbol of this beautiful city, they work day in, day out on every holiday, on every weekend, on every storm, and every street closure. When every New Yorker wants to go out for leisure, these men and women get behind in that car and they make sure that the person in the back seat is taken care of. We're so proud that we get to represent the ambassadors of our beautiful city and to be able to say today that after everything that they have given to this city, they can finally feel that they are not only essential, but they are no longer expendable and our beautiful city has recognized the value of taxi drivers. And we know that's a chance I can't stop. So we know, or yeah, because I don't want to, we know that this is just the beginning. We're calling on all to do what Marble Gate has done, what De Palma has done, and be part of the solution. This is economically viable for everybody involved in this crisis from the drivers to the lenders. We found a solution that is economically viable, and we call on all the lenders to come forward and to participate.  We don't need to delay this anymore. The solution is already on this table, and we know we're going to keep working with our majority leader, just going to say our majority leader, and with our congresswoman, we still got tax exemption to fight for unforgiving debt. And you know, we know this is just the beginning. This is the beginning of us taking what was once a pathway to a middle class life and was turned upside down into a low weight sector. This is the new beginning where we end that race to that bottom. And we turned driving, whether you're working as a yellow cab driver or Uber or Lyft or green cab or livery or black car driver, we turned the dignity of driving for a living into a job that is valued with livable incomes and retirement and all the benefits that drivers deserve. And we are so proud to say that this journey gets to begin in a yellow cab. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Beta V. Next, it's my pleasure to introduce congresswoman Acasio Cortez, who has hosted phone banks to get drivers to the closing table and who supported funding for this program. Congresswoman. To our TL teacher. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to, I want to thank our drivers too. Truly, and I mean, I want to thank our NYTWA president by Ravi. Thank you so much for all of your tireless, tireless work and organizing. I want to thank our organizers and our drivers. Thank you for pushing. And most of all, thank you for not giving up. Thank you for not giving up. As Bay Ravi mentioned, you know, this, this journey started and really accelerated in 2018 when we lost so many of our taxi cab drivers here in New York City to suicide due to the mounting debt crisis. And in 2019, as soon as, as I entered office, we knew that we needed to make this a priority, not just for our city, not just for our drivers before the country, because as Mayor Adams spoke to so well that our New York City taxi cab drivers are iconic.  And everybody understands that when you get to New York and so many of our family stories started here, that's so many stories started in a yellow cab. And so when Bay Ravi and Richard, thank you so much as well, came up and, and decided to tell their story, we did as much work as we could on the House Financial Services Committee to make sure that we got a national hearing on this issue, that we got national attention on this issue, because this isn't just for New York City. This is really about preserving an icon of America. And, and Bay Ravi and all of our drivers rose so much to that moment. Bay Ravi came and walked into the hallowed but often intimidating halls of Congress, and she delivered a testimony that did not leave a single dry eye in that house. She brought members of Congress to tears over her testimony. And we also bust down so many of our drivers. Richard was there, and I don't know if anyone else was there. We have so many of these folks that's brought their fight, not just from New York City down to Washington. And from there, we were able to develop traction. When COVID hit a year later, that brought our taxicab financial crisis into even greater and more stark contrast in how urgent the moment was. And then, of course, we had Assembly members Zohra Mamdani and Yuli New join our drivers for a hunger strike to make sure that we got it done at the final hour. So I want to thank everyone so much for coming to the table with that. Thank you, Senator Schumer, for elevating and making sure this was a priority, not just in the House, but in the Senate, that we got that money in the American Rescue Plan and that that money, you know, that while we can help and assist big financial institutions, working people should get a cut too. And that's really what this is about. Thank you so much to Marble Gate for coming and being a seat at the table and really leading by example, a centering and valuing of the dignity of working people in their lives. Thank you so much to Mayor Adams for seeing this through. Thank you to Commissioner Doe, Chairman Doe, for ensuring that we got this done as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible. And thank you so much to the everyday New Yorkers that stepped up this week to sign up, to phone bank, and to call our taxi cab drivers to let them know that this opportunity was available and how they could get relief. And this is really, this story is New York at its best. This is New York at its finest.   And it really demonstrates what is possible when we don't give up and when government and when all of us center working people at the core of our work. So thank you all very, very much. And finally, through all the support from the people behind me, I'm very excited to announce that with the help of Andrew Milgram of Marblegate, for Marblegate loans, we will be extending closings for one more week until October 7th. So thank you so much for that. Andrew cares about this industry. He has full faith in this industry. And he has been so incredible to work with. And so I am so excited to welcome him up to say a few words. Andrew. Thank you, Commissioner. I am exceedingly proud to be here today to talk about a number of issues that are dear to those of us at Marblegate, the intersection of economic opportunity and the immigrant experience and the vitality of New York City. I'm happy that the life changing program that was initiated by New York City through the leadership of Senator Schumer has made such a difference and will make a lasting impact for many years. As many have said ahead of me, the yellow cab is an iconic symbol of New York City. And when Marblegate first entered this industry at really the depth of its crisis in 2018, our goal was to fundamentally change the way drivers were treated by a system that far too often neglected their needs. From the outset, we sought to enact innovative solutions that would improve how the industry operates and recognize a real opportunity to demonstrate the role private capital can play to affect equitable change and drive social good, particularly in the city we love. For us, this meant taking a fresh approach that focused on putting the driver at the center of the yellow cab industry so that the industry itself could return to stability. It's that same perspective that guided our partnership with all of the stakeholders you see here today in developing the Medallion Relief Program. I especially want to thank the tenacity of our partners at the New York Taxi Workers Alliance with whom we have developed an unbelievably close working relationship to our partners and regulators at the New York City Taxi Limousine Commissioner as well as the mayor and his staff. As you've heard, we've generated over $225 million in debt forgiveness in just the last two weeks. Now to give you some perspective, that is now over a thousand loans that have been restructured and in that two-week period that means that we were closing a loan restructuring every three minutes. And so just to echo the sentiments that have been offered before, thanks to the very, very, very hard work of a humongous staff at the Taxi Limousine Commission as well as our team at Fieldpoint Servicing, we've achieved really remarkable outcomes in a very short period of time. And it's because of that remarkable success that as the commissioner announced, we're happy to extend this program another week. And please, to all drivers, please come in, take advantage of the hard work that's been put in to making this program a reality. I want to thank everybody who has been working around the clock to make this Medallion Relief Program a success. The historic agreement demonstrates the important role that private capital can play in driving equitable change and what is possible when labor, government and capital work cooperatively to solve problems. I want to thank everyone again. This is a monumental victory and outcome. Real New Yorkers ride yellow cabs and yellow cabs are back. What I want to say here is the original solution that was proposed by the city, not this administration, didn't work. It certainly didn't work for the drivers. But it also, it also didn't work for the city, which would have paid more money under their solution now. It's probably going to cost them next to nothing. But it also really didn't work for the lenders. But so many of the lenders were just intransigent and didn't look beyond the immediate payment and said, we're not going to go along. But this one did. He stood up and he said, this is better for everybody. And when we put together negotiations in the room, and of course, the taxi worker alliance is part of it, he stood up and not really helpful. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Big check. Thank you. So how many thousands of other drivers who haven't gotten definitely and what is your message to the lenders that are not participating? Well, I think as the union leadership stated, we reached over a thousand. They're more out there. They've done an amazing job of foam baking, reaching out. And all lenders should come on board. This is an opportune time for a good plan, with a good deal, where there's a win-win for all. And we want everyone that's eligible to be signed up, get signed up. Outstanding marble gates on cab drivers have loans. You said there's roughly, what, 3,011? What's going to happen to them? How soon do you expect them to hold this or are they just kind of frozen? So there is, we believe there are about 2,000 marble gate specific loans that will qualify. For lots of technical reasons, it's hard to pin that number down exactly. The Taxi Workers Alliance as well as the city, the Taxi and the Museum Commissioner as well as Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez's office are all pushing hard to make sure everybody is getting there. The reality is that the program does have a definitive life for it. And so we encourage everybody to get in just as soon as possible in order to get their paperwork processed, so we can move forward with the restructuring. We encourage everybody to get in as soon as possible. So we've actually seen at peak moments we're doing hundreds a day. So our peak was 192 in one day. And so it's very achievable in the timeline. And if people are signed up, we will make sure that we accommodate anyone and everyone who is signed up to get their loan processed. We're talking about the number of loans, right? Number of medallions, I mean. So there are some individuals who have more than one medallion. So it's not like we're talking about getting in an additional 1,000 people. It's a far lesser number of people because the number of medallions is larger than the number of individuals. And so to us, it's a manageable number within this time period. They're about 1,100 more. We're working with all of our lenders to get them to the table. PennFed is one of the bigger lenders. They have about 300 and they'll be closing loans in the next couple of weeks. And so it's going to be a success. We're going to continue working with all of our lenders. We have a partnership, Beta-V and I, to get the remaining 850 that she has outlined to work with various banks, community banks, to make sure that every medallion owner who is interested in this program can be a part of this program. Beta-V, do you want anything to add? So we identified 24 lenders in total through these years. Now some of those lenders are making what's called a cash settlement. So they're not looking to stay in the industry. They'll offer you a settlement of a large amount and then they're looking to exit. So we think that there are around 850 medallion loans that are spread out across about 19 of those lenders. So it's very few per lender. And we've been working to bring all of them to the table. We're in active communication with all, except for like four of them. And we're hoping that now that the program is operational, they see how successful it is, you know, that I think really beginning next week is when we're going to actually know if there will even be any remaining holdouts. But we feel incredibly confident that we're going to be able to get everybody in. I got it. Thanks folks. I don't want y'all to do this off topic. So we're going to do off topics if everybody else wants to, you don't need to stay for this, if you don't want to. Yeah, I wanted to ask High Mayor Adams. How are you? I'm good, thanks. I wanted to ask, do I know Deputy Mayor Kilbanks? He's very involved in this public schedule that was released just through a foil. He's very involved in the MIPD meeting with Chiefs. Yeah, that's not in his official portfolio. If you want to talk about why, I mean, I know he's the Deputy Mayor of Public Safety, but in terms of his frequent meeting with the police, whole sheeps without the police, I just wanted to get your take on why that is. Well, all of my Deputy Mayors, they all have portfolios. Deputy Mayor Josie has a portfolio department of sanitation, parks, and a host of others. And they interact. That's how we have a team mindset. Deputy Mayor Banks is in charge of the entire law enforcement apparatus in the city that includes everything from hospital police to sheriffs. It's imperative that we cross collaborate and communicate. That's how we operate. All of us operate in one unices. And some of those operations, like what we did during during Juve, it took a cross section of law enforcement agencies. And it's easier when the Deputy Mayor can reach out to those agencies with the commissioners. And so we have a great collaboration every week. The commissioner and I meet with the Deputy Mayor of Public Safety. That is how we function as a team. Why this office is not here? Let's go ahead. We're just doing one at a time. Let's go ahead. Well, Mr. Mayor, my colleague Matt Katz earlier this week did a story in which he represents some images from Rikers that showed inmates defecated in a whole big area, lying near feces, needing medical attention. I wanted you to respond to those images. How is that acceptable? And what do you say to advocates that this is proof that the city needs to accept the federal receivership? I say to advocates that believe we need a federal receivership to go to the federal house of detention on 3rd Avenue. Quality care of first individuals or in custody should be determined by the entities who are responsible. We are responsible. I have not seen the video we're talking about. I don't know when it was produced. There's not much I know about it, but we're going to look into any allegation of inappropriate behavior and make sure it's done right. The federal oversight has stated we're moving in the right direction. This is the federal monitor. The federal monitor stating that this administration is moving in the right direction to fix some of those problems that we have witnessed for decades. And so I have full confidence in Commissioner Molina to do what is what is right and we're going to review and look over any type of evidence of any improper inappropriate atmospheres. Mr. Mayor, the Post reported about an hour ago that you're reaching a deal with Norwegian cruise lines to house immigrants that have fled to the city or been bused here. Is there a more permanent solution after that? Because obviously the space from the cruise ships or the would be cruise ships would run out at the rate they're being bused here. When we get an announcement of any type of deal, we will make it public with a level of transparency. And so any premature announcement of deal that was reached, they know more than I do. I wanted to ask about the Herk Shelter at Orchard Beach as well as the potential for the cruise ship. The administration, even Sackin School before the council earlier is saying that the key word here is volunteer, that these shelters are going to be voluntary for migrants who are transported there. And I'm wondering how is your administration going to communicate that to migrants that are arrived? As they arrive at Port Authority, are they going to be told that they could either go to the tent facility at Orchard Beach or they could go to a shelter indoors? So when and how is that going to be done? We are not going to do what was done in Texas. We're going to give a level of clarity and let the asylum seekers and migrants know exactly what's available in the city and be as cooperative as possible. This is a humanitarian crisis that was created by human hands and we are faced with it. My ultimate responsibility, I've said this over and over again, are to New Yorkers. That is my ultimate responsibility to the people of this city and we're going to continue to do what no other municipality is doing. A lot of people are missing there. No other municipality is doing what New York City is doing as well as shelter, education, as well as healthcare. We have gone beyond the call of duty to make sure that we are treating people with a humane way and we're going to try to be as communicative as possible. This contractor has worked on so many projects. I don't know what their voting pattern is, if they vote for Trump or not. It's like someone drives Trump in a cab. Do we all of a sudden not take that cab again? Listen, these are professionals that have done a good job and many projects in the city and they want a contract to do something else. We are not aware of that. We're going to do the press first and then we'll come back to you. Mr. Mayor, have you heard any more about the man who stabbed the medic for death? Did he have any history with mental illness and his family requested any intervention from the city? We're not allowed to go into the mental health of someone. The police department did their briefing and they're going to report whatever information that they are allowed to report. We lost a hero and it's really unfortunate when we look at the mental health crisis that our city and country is facing right now. We have to make sure that people are getting the proper care and that means opening up more mental health beds. That means looking at Kendra's law. I've been talking about this from some time now. We can't continue to ignore that we have a mental health crisis and we have to do a better job in dealing with those who need that wraparound care. Okay, thank you.


how you feel fit okay because essentially it's your business it's your terms and conditions if you want to go with two months then you focus on that and you sell parents that okay the fact that basketball isn't big in in the Netherlands is actually could actually be a good thing or because that that will essentially make your program more more unique okay like I'm based in the UK basketball is not number one either but like for example there's a lot of NBA games that are coming now to London and a lot of the players that I work with in soccer a lot of them play basketball as their second sport okay so you know it's not gonna be number one but just because it's not a cultural thing but you know there is engagement and also something I've seen with like these international sports is that there's always interest for it it's just you have to get yourself out there and offer it to parents okay and if you do that then you know you might be surprised with the reaction you get okay again I know you're not going to compete with with soccer with football because obviously that's number one in Holland but you know you can make your your basketball program exceptional where parents think do you know what let's go and try it okay because not all kids are gonna play football but not all kids but I don't believe in it so much get sold on it get yourself out there get talking to parents this is why I do this is why I offer and you will be surprised with the response you get right essentially if no one knows you no one's gonna buy from you


Hi, my name is Alastair Krillman. I work at Linneas University in the southeast of Sweden and it's a town called Kalmar and it's my pleasure to present to you today one of the keynote speakers in the upcoming Eden Conference 2014 in Zagreb. And that is Professor Jeff Hayward of my old university, the University of Edinburgh. Hi, Jeff. Hi, Alastair. Maybe I should introduce myself at the start so you know who I am. I'm Jeff Hayward. I work here in the University of Edinburgh, as it says. I'm the vice principal, CIO and librarian, so that, if you like, is my is my suit job. But I'm also still an academic with research and my research interests are in e-learning, the same as the developmental things that I do for the university as vice principal. I'm interested in the moment in how universities decide whether to go into online learning in a serious way. Whether they decide whether to do MOOCs and if so, why they're doing it and what they're trying to get out of it. And it's that balance between the hard core provision of technology-enhanced learning services across the university and the interplay with innovation that most interests me at the present time. Yeah, well, we could pick up straight away on the sort of innovation aspect and the key technologies that are going to influence higher education and say the next 10 years, but maybe even just the next five. There's all the stuff that comes in from left field that you're never going to guess as to what they are. But I think it's clear that there's a few things that we will see a really serious expansion of over the next small number of years. One of them is the use of richer media. I think in particular video, home produced video, but also universities producing many more short videos and full length lectures which they'll make openly available. And so that movement into open educational materials, open so that your own learners can access them easily, but also open so that the world can learn from them. I think we're likely to see. And so technologies around the easy production manipulation, search finding and reuse of educational materials, I think we'll see innovation in. The other is expansion into scale of trying to work out how to deploy the current technologies. We've got discussion forums, wikis, blogs, computer marked assessment, et cetera, how to use those at serious scale. And you see some of these experiments going on at the moment in MOOCs. And you also see a fertile exploration of technologies that try to find ways of doing simple things on large scale. Peer reviewing, for instance, peer marking, peer grading. Those sorts of technologies that exploit the known but in ways that we don't normally step into in on campus classes. I think social media and interaction between people online, discussion forums, the introduction of much more video. It's interesting actually in lots of ways how clunky many of the things we do are that are very text based at the moment. And I think we'll see a movement towards the use of video materials in these traditionally text based areas. I think also that the renewed interest in online learning is causing some people in the artificial intelligence end of informatics to come back again and look and say, how can we make things smarter? How can we make them more intelligent? How can we find ways of generating formative feedback for people without the individual tutor having to do large amounts of that? So I think in a sense not big dramatic things but small scale things that will quite significantly change the way we do stuff. And then looking very slightly further ahead and we're exploring this a little bit in Edinburgh now, thinking our way into it. How do you really make room so that you can have a combination of physical presence and projected digital presence in the room so that you get a higher degree of equity between those people who are there and those people who are not there? I think ultimately it winds up with a sort of Star Wars hollow projection and I'm sure that we'll get there at some point in time. But just trying to make that video conferencing a room, use of Skype and enabling everybody to participate in a much more equal way that will actually have a significant impact in terms of those people who cannot be present at teaching events of different kinds. Yes it's maybe a case of stopping seeing the digital side as being a second best solution and seeing digital arenas as valid arenas for learning just as valid as the physical and that each used to the best of their ability. And I think Richard because there is a really big difference between having a conversation and writing short pieces of material between people and I think that if one could move to a position whereby you were able to talk into that conversation more easily in an asynchronous way and manage it in the ways with threads that we manage written discussion forums for instance or wikis etc. I think that that kind of development would actually transform the quality with which we're able to do and the richness of what we're able to do because body language is a really important part of our interactions in most everyday settings. Do you feel there's a conflict in some ways between this opening up of education and the sort of traditions of higher education which tend to be much more closed, protective, very tradition based and also with the heavy emphasis on research in larger universities that somehow this foray into the MOOC world and open education creates a conflict in some ways? No I don't see a conflict there and actually I don't really come across people going around talking all the time about MOOCs MOOCs indeed dominate my life at the moment. I don't really see that coming through particularly from the heads of the people that I talk to and they don't really have that conflict in their minds. Universities have always thought about themselves as open places. You go back to the Erasmus scholar tradition, universities were not closed to the travelling scholars. Indeed they welcomed them and the whole idea of sabbaticals and visiting other universities and working there has always been something that's very strong. You don't really see that in companies, anything like the same degree. Oh I'll go and spend a year working in essentially what is a rival organisation. So we've always been open in many ways and we've perhaps over the years as recent years as we've grown in scale and the number of students who come and the pressures of time that's maybe made us a bit less open than our roots and our traditions are. So in some respects the opening up of our education to a wider range of the population and of course the population not just local to you that can get on a bus or on a bike or a car to reach you but those who could never physically come to you, that's actually gone back to the spirit of what universities were about. Now of course there is a side to it in which known people enrol on known courses and pay fees or somebody pays fees for them and they go through an accreditation process and they sit exams and they come out with some piece of paper at the end and that side I think by definition has got to be closed in the sense that you select people into it and you manage that experience really well for them but it's not an uncomfortable thing to sit alongside open and actually if you look at lots of universities like mine here in Edinburgh I mean we've got 33,000 students but we have 17,000 people signed up on the books of our open studies courses and traditional research based universities have always done open studies like long learning you know whatever you want to call it. We've always done that kind of stuff so I think that what we're doing is we're re-emphasizing the links between the core university activity the open studies and then a third element into that which is the digital so that your reach is now no longer just those people who happen to be able to be with you and I think that actually works really well with the spirit of universities and indeed experimenting and researching into new spaces is actually what we are supposed to be about So in a way it's returning to our roots in many ways I see it as return to that spirit and I see it as something that actually it's not been possible to do up until now which is to make part of the educational experiences that you offer available to people regardless of whether they are able in the Erasmus Scholar sense to come to where you are and I think as a consequence of that and that opening up and the opening up of a dialogue so it's not just a one way transmission of our learning materials it's the ability to open up a dialogue with people electronically from around the world that actually then expands the academic community and enriches it and I think I don't know anybody around that I talked to about online learning who doesn't actually agree with the spirit of that The theme of the Eden conference is of course about sort of education to employment and if we tie in here the world of work which is increasingly demanding skills based learning and more entrepreneurship and innovation and so on and there are more and more pathways to learning today than in the past Could we say that the degree has been a bit of a gold standard in post-secondary education Is there a new order coming? Do you see new different levels of certification different levels of qualifications or is university still the standard? I don't I mean I've never really thought of the university degree as being the only valid certification that you could have for your knowledge and your skills it's pertinent to certain groups within the population and it's pertinent to certain sorts of activities but you know if you are in IT and you are in networking then a Cisco qualification is a very highly valued qualification to have so there have always been a range of certification options open to people and some of those have sat alongside a degree and some of them have been a substitute to a degree I think that clearly governments over the last few years have moved to a view that for economic reasons they need a high fraction of their population to be trained to a high level and that's actually become a bit synonymous with what fraction of your young adult population goes to university whether the universities as we've got them configured are ideally suited to produce all of those outputs I think is an open question but from my own university's point of view what we see as graduates coming out from us and what we are hoping to help young people to become is critical thinkers those who understand and are prepared to take the risks of innovation and we spin out a lot of student companies from my own university every year so critical thinking, innovativeness, entrepreneurship the ability to think in a research way, evidence base the ability to present, to work in teams, to work alone to understand what motivates and what commits you and to make choices and be reflective I guess as an individual but also actually as a citizen because universities don't just produce graduates for employment they produce graduates for society as a whole I mean this is part of the training in citizenship and in global citizenship these days as well so I think that there's a set of different attributes that you can come out with not everybody needs to come out with the same attributes, it doesn't make sense and so the challenge for us is how to enable young people or anyone who enters university onto a degree program or training program of any kind to understand what it is they would like to get out of it so this is about supporting people to make the right kinds of choices enabling them to experiment and then supporting them towards the end point that they're actually trying to reach and if that's a set of specific employability skills and so for instance if you wish to become a lawyer this is legal training as well as legal education the same is true for medics, the same is true for engineers etc if innovation and entrepreneurship is your interest then to support you in that but if you would actually like to become a blue skies researcher then we support you towards that and so the challenge for us is how do we structure curricula and actually I think particularly these days how do we make the best of technology to help us build those personalized pathways that lead our students towards the end point they would like to achieve I mean there was a while ago I was interviewing employers when in the early days of IT skills back in the 90s when there was a lot of discussion about IT skills in graduates and we talked to a lot of employers and said what sorts of things are you looking at you know the bottom line was what they wanted were independent reflective critical thinkers and most of them said you know I could train people up to use word excel email and all of that kind of stuff we were talking about they said what I really want from you guys are people reflective they're independent they're able to work they take responsibility and they're critical thinkers and I think that's a generic and I don't see that changing so from our own point of view as a university that's what we're trying to do and we're trying to find the best ways to use technology to help us achieve those generic goals Okay I think we better wrap up there and basically look forward to hearing more of your thoughts at the conference in June so thank you very much and I'll see you in Zagreb See you in Zagreb, thank you