Welcome everyone, thank you for joining us. If you want to start introducing you in yourselves in the chat, please do. You can either join the poll via the link in the chat, or you can go to slido.com and then put the code hashtag PCW2023. Okay, thank you everyone thank you for filling that in so I think you can all see the results as well. A few of you are thinking of setting up a platform co-op, that's really exciting. Some of you are interested from a point of view of research and others are here just to find out a bit more. So welcome everyone. So, if we're running this webinar in webinar format, so unfortunately we're unable to see you, but we will be monitoring the chat so please do use the chat, either to ask questions or comment or also to comment between you. My colleague Jen is with us so she's looking at, she'll be looking at the chat so if you need any help she'll be able to respond even while I'm talking. Thanks Jen for all your support. So what we'll cover today, so my name's Vika Rogers, I work for Cooperatives UK, and I've been focusing on this areas of platform co-ops for quite some years now. And so I'll be going over what we mean by a platform co-op, how to start one and what support is available. I'm followed by two excellent speakers that it's really great to have with us today. So we've got Jennifer Bird, who's the founding member of Sinelize, which is a sign language interpreting services service that uses a digital platform to connect its members who are deaf people, British sign language interpreters and service user organizations. And we have Kaylee Reed, who is a member of Open Food Network, which is a co-op of organizations whose members collectively own and control an innovative software platform that they use to trade food they produce. So I'll be talking more generally about platform co-ops and then we'll get the chance to really talk with the people who are running them, which is really exciting and then we'll have some time for a Q&A at the end. Okay, so I'm going to get started. So, just to make sure that we're on the same page because some of you might be experts and in co-ops others might be the first time you hear about co-ops I just wanted to give a quick definition or description of what we mean by co-op. So first of all, a co-op is a business organization that's owned and controlled by its members to meet their shared needs. The members can be a very different types, it can be customers, employees, residents, suppliers, and they all have a say in how the co-op is run. Corruptors can be in any sector, so here we've listed some, and more than 7,000 co-ops contribute over 40 billion to the UK economy. Members are the foundation of every co-op, and that's the reason they exist and the purpose drives who the member should be and vice versa. Members choose what to do with the profits and they are the owners of the co-op and they can invest to benefit from the co-op but they can't invest just to make money. And members have an equal say in the co-op. So, moving on to what we mean by a platform co-op. To describe what we mean by co-op, I wanted to give a bit more of a description of what we mean by platform. Now, platform is a broad term and there isn't a very specific definition to it, but it's a term that has been used by sort of the tech business sector to describe a phenomenon that was starting in the last decade of new business models determined by the fact that trade was happening on platforms digitally. So, this is a definition that I tend to use, which is a platform, a business is a business that uses a digital platform to trade, connect people and all poor resources and data. Now, we are all probably more and more aware of these types of platforms and they become so much more dominant in our life. They help us to connect with friends, they help us to order food, to book a taxi, etc. And these type of businesses are growing and becoming more dominant in our life. And especially following the COVID crisis, during the COVID crisis, we all realized how important they were to help us continue to deliver our activities and to connect with people. But unfortunately, we've also learned that there are a lot of downsides of these platform businesses. So, I'm just going to go through some of them, you're probably mostly aware, but just to provide some context. So, unfortunately, platforms often, they collect and hold large amounts of user data, but it's not always clear what they do with that data, and they don't always disclose it. And they often use algorithms that might contain bias and that skew the way the platforms operate. So, platforms gain immense power due to the huge amounts of data they hold and the large profits that they make. And the platforms also give the businesses a lot of power over the users and so they can unilaterally introduce changes that can impact users. And also changing our own rates or simply deactivating a user from one day to the other, which can result more or less in firing them. They also have had a strong impact on communities and workers rights. So platforms tend to facilitate dependency on precarious income streams and working conditions. They have often created obstacles or openly opposed collective action, and they can have negative impacts on local communities by introducing disruptive economic practices. And something that I think is not emphasized enough is also that they really are good at exploiting crisis. They definitely benefited from the high unemployment rates and low wages that follow the financial crisis and did again so with the COVID-19 crisis. They tend to have an extractive business model that extracts disproportionate value from other people's assets and labor while offering them limited rights. And they tend to be driven towards exponential growth also due to their aggressive funding models which are based on very often on venture capital. And to reach this exponential growth platforms often tend to aim to become a single provider of a service across the globe by destroying or buying out their competitors, but also aggressively lobbying government and attempt to anticipate or regulate a regulation. So this all sounds terrible and very worrying. But what, when I started working on this what really inspired me about the platform car movement was the fact that what was the question that it was posing which was, is it really technology, the root cause of these problems, or is it the business model on which they're built. What would happen if we instead these businesses these platforms were collectively owned by their users by their members and democratically controlled by them. And that's exactly what a co-op is it's a business that's collectively owned and democratically controlled. So, if we go back to what a definition of a platform co-op is, by merging these two definitions that I gave at the beginning we can say that a platform co-op is a democratically owned and controlled business that uses an online platform or mobile app to trade, connect people and or provide people with all the poor resources and data. And so, for example, just imagine if Deliveroo was owned and managed by its riders, or if Spotify was owned and run by its musicians or listeners, or Airbnb by hosts or local communities. And what's really exciting about the platform co-op movement is that it's producing alternatives to these large platforms. So co-op cycle is an international platform for cycle couriers, Resonate is a platform for musicians and listeners, and Airbnb, FairBnB is a community powered tourism platform, and then many more emerging. So, platform co-ops operate according to the cooperative principles that I've listed here I won't go into detail but we've got lots of information on our website about it. And what is interesting for me is that the principles not only define how the business is run but they can shape also the way technology is used and determine how data is collected and processed. I also think that the co-op movement can learn a lot from the potential that platforms can offer. And first of all, technology allows startups costs to be relatively low. It allows direct people-to-people connections are made easier, members can choose how much they want to use or provide a service, and collective participation is more practical, also from the point of view of participating democratically in processes. Barriers for members to join and participate are low and the network effect provided by technology allows us to scale these organizations more rapidly. So here are some examples of UK-based platform co-ops. I won't talk about signalized because we'll hear more about them later. I tend to divide platform co-ops in two types. One is where the platform really allows to connect the providers of a service and the receivers of a service. And I've just put some quotes here from these organizations and I'll just read one of them which is from EcoCare. You want to see a care and support system which puts the relationship between giver and receiver first, shares power and allows care and support to exist in abundance. And what I think is really interesting is that not only is the platform model being challenged by these organizations, but also the power relations between the providers and receivers of the services and how they interact with third parties as well. Another form of platform co-op, I tend to group them under infrastructure co-ops, where the platform really provides infrastructure then to smaller organizations, either internationally or nationally. We'll hear more about the open food network, Lake Turb, but another really good example is Co-op Cycle where the platform is owned internationally by local worker co-ops of riders across Europe. Okay, I'm just going to move on now to how to start a platform co-op. I've provided a lot of information so please, you know, do start typing your questions in the chat if you don't want to forget them, and I'll try to respond to some of your questions at the end of the presentation. So, the information I'm going to provide now is based on the work I've been doing over the last three years of supporting people in starting their platform co-op, but also sort of monitoring the landscape in the past few years. However, every co-op is different, it doesn't always have to go in this way, so this is just really to provide some general guidance in a sense of what the patterns we're seeing, but it doesn't have to be in this way for every co-op. So, we've sort of mapped the journey of a platform co-op startup on the sort of traditional setup precede seed language that is used with digital startups, which is probably actually starting to get a bit old as well. But we can see that there's a really early stage phase that I think often is underestimated how long it can be, in which really there's a lot of time in exploring what the business case is, what the business model could be, finding your founding members. One thing that is really important in a co-op is that you can't start a co-op by yourself, you need to be a group of people, at least two, three to start a co-op because it's all about building something together with other people.  Then there's a phase that probably starts much earlier, a before incorporation that is testing your business idea, starting with your prototypes, building your tech and building the business and understanding all the processes that you need for that. And then you get to the point that you'll need more capital to grow or to stabilise the co-op. And what we've seen happen in the UK is co-ops going for what we call community shares, which is a form of capital that is very unique to the UK. And it's a form of very patient capital. But also, it doesn't matter how many shares one holds in a company, they only have one vote. So it's a really good way of sort of attracting big investors but without having to give away too much decision power. And then obviously then there are a series of cycles of growth and cycling. There's a link that we've just put in the chat that you will see a much more in detailed journey that you can just scroll through. Again, this is very sort of patterns of what we've seen up to now. So don't take it too literally. So from the point of view of funding, what we've observed is that in that pre-year before you actually become a company, often founders are able to attract either through crowdfunding or in fellowships or grants around £15,000. Once you incorporate and they are able to accept grants from institutions and we see sort of co-ops attracting around £75,000 in grants. And then when you get, you're ready to launch community share offer, there's a huge jump and we see co-ops raising between £200,000 and £350,000. I'm not going to go into detail with regards to community shares. We have a lot of information on our website, but happy to answer any questions later in the Q&A of media. And this is just some examples of community share investments. You can see the first ones were really from the more media platform co-ops, but then in the most recent years we've seen more infrastructure co-ops and provider and service provider co-ops as well. What is also interesting is what I mentioned was that you can attract large investors as well. And what we've seen is that some, not many, but some grant funders are also interested in investing in community shares and providing match funding to what you're able to raise from the community. So I'm just going to quickly go through the support that's available for platform co-ops before I hand it over to the other speakers. So the main program that we have to support platform co-ops is called Unfound. I currently run this program so you can get in touch with me and Unfound at uk.coop. The main, the program is run from Corruptives UK and supported by the Corruptive Bank. The main activities of the program is really business support, but we also do awareness raising around not only platform co-ops but also tech and co-ops more broadly. We spent time trying to see which funding streams could come to the sector and a little bit of time on policy, but that's probably the least work we've done in this area at this point. What we are doing is business support is an accelerator program. We run it once a year and we are actually accepting applications now until the 5th of March for the next accelerator. It's a 10 week business support program for a cohort of up to 8 to 12 teams which are at the really, really early stage of setting up their platform co-op. And the business support concludes with a pitch event where teams get a chance to pitch their business idea to access funding and support towards which the Corruptive Bank has contributed a 10,000 prize fund. So, to access the, to be eligible for the program, you need to have a team of at least two members that are the early stage of setting up their platform co-op. You have to believe that the co-op model is the right for your form for your business, but also you need to be at a stage that you're really looking to register in the UK by the end of 2023. And we have to have at least one member in the UK. It can't be a platform co-op being set up abroad. So the deadline, as I mentioned, is the 5th of March. These are the dates of the accelerator. We will also have two specific webinars that are really just specific to the accelerator where you can ask any questions about the accelerator. I think I've put the dates right, but we've, I think we've got them in the chat as well the 30th, 23rd of January and the 21st of February. So to keep up to date with anything related to unfound, to register with our newsletter. I also provide information about funding opportunities and events around tech and co-ops. So that's really a useful place to register. And then we're going to put in the chat a few more links related to where you can find more information about unfound. But what is really interesting, oh, sorry, but before I go into that, we also have other support available, which isn't targeted specifically a platform co-op, but it is available all year round while the accelerator is only in certain times of the year. And then there's this step-by-step tool that is really useful in helping you go through the various steps needed before you're ready to register your co-op. And then there's also support available for you to register and incorporate your business. We have other support programs. So we have a business support for co-op's program that will offer up to six days of bespoke one-to-one business support and peer mentoring from other co-ops. This isn't live yet on our website, but we'll be live in the next two weeks probably. So, you know, if you're interested, do look back on our website in relation to that. Our advice team is always available. They provide a lot of services, but also a lot of training sessions. So it's a really good way to sort of just get to learn some aspects at your own pace. And then as I mentioned, we do a lot of work around community shares and we have a community shares unit with their own area on our website where you can find a lot of information about the support available, the funding available, information about how community shares work. But what is also very exciting about the co-op movement in general and platform co-ops is that the movement is international and so there's quite a strong international movement around platform co-ops. And so do visit the website platform dot co-op, which is run by one of the founders, Trevor Schultz from the New School of New York. They run events, courses, opportunities to connect with people, founders of platforms in other countries, exchange skills, exchange knowledge, they also have a newsletter which is worth subscribing to. And also some interesting international lists where you can be kept up to date and participate in the discussions if you're interested. That's all from me. I'll put this slide up at the end as well where just to remind people of where you can find some more information. But I think now it would be really nice to hear from the other platform co-ops and I'll stop talking at last.  So Jen Byrd from Sinalise, it's great to have you here. Thanks. Thanks Vika and good afternoon everyone. So I'll just start sharing my slides. So yeah, I'm Jen Byrd from Sinalise co-op. We're a platform co-op where a multi stakeholder cooperative of deaf users and sign language interpreters and we also have investor members. So I'll just talk you through that. The reason why we were set up is because the sign language interpreting profession has come across a lot of problems, especially since around 2010. It was a very austerity era after the financial crash. This is one of the all too common stories that we tend to hear about at least once a month where family members are used as interpreters in hospitals because either the staff don't know who holds the contract or there is no contract. It could be a variety of reasons. So these are as an explanation of some of those parts of the problem. And those large private agencies, they could be sign language specialists, or they could be large spoken language agencies on national charities. Quite often the larger the agency, the worse the problem. So there's more and more distance from the users that are involved, whether that's the workers or the end users, the receivers of the service, so the deaf people. And because those agencies are very profit driven, it's what Vika was explaining about the extractive model. That profit is not seen again by the community. It's taken out of the, the interrupting booking process and it tends to either fund other services, or it lines shareholders profits. So I'll go on to talk about what we do as a co-op to mitigate against that. But quite often with there's layers of the process with interpreting and the bookings process where in one particular region, there could be many providers of interpreting. And the users aren't aware of who holds the contract for their GP or their hospital or the community service which provides many community services such as physio or podiatry. It can be held by many, many different providers and this leaves users in a state of not knowing who they should contact if there's a problem. Quite often they can't contact anyone other than the medical service who then sometimes don't even know who to contact or who holds the service. So there's too many layers of administration and not enough connection with the community that causes a lot of these problems. And often users have an appointment and even when they're on the way to their appointment, they don't know who's coming. There's no communication with the user at all. It's more of a bums on seats approach or a tick box exercise in providing interpreting where perhaps a trust has a contract that the user never gets to know who's going to be arriving on the day, which according to research by sign health causes a lot of anxiety and it also can cost up to 30 million a year in NHS funds in wasted appointments on misdiagnosis. So it's a really big problem. So for us as a platform cooperative, how we mitigate against these problems are by doing it in a different way. So not doing the extractive model but using profits. We're not actually making a profit yet because we're investing so much into our tech, but the plan in the future is to invest those profits back into the service by working with users or by working with interpreters to improve standards or by reinvesting in the business itself. As we are community owned as well, we have that unique way of tapping into our communities with the members themselves to ask them if there's any problems with the service. So we get that immediate feedback either via our quarterly meetings with both service user with both groups of members or at any point at all by them being able to feedback to staff. As experts in delivering or receiving the service, we know best we're directly involved and we have the, we have the answers and if there are problems in service delivery, we can come together and talk about those and solve them amongst ourselves. So this is just a bit about our journey which very much reflects on what beaker was saying. We started in March 2019 as a small group of interpreters and deaf users and did our community shares raise in June 2021. In August 2021 only two months later we were awarded the place as a sole provider on a large framework agreement on Merseyside. So that was for up to 19 NHS trusts and we're now on contract number seven as of December. So hopefully we'll be gaining a few more this year. And we see that we fit very much into the post COVID economy where social value is placed very highly, or certainly more highly than it has been before. So there's been the in 2012 the public services social value act, and also many more commissioning guidelines whether locally or nationally for interpreting or otherwise. So the framework that we were successful in actually had social value embedded quite highly throughout the questions on that tender so we were able to score quite highly on those. The interpreting market is hugely competitive so we're really up against it, whether it's from the video interpreting companies which are pretty much all American owned now, or whether it's those large spoken language agencies. Often sign language as a provision is lumped in against many other spoken languages whether that's Russian Hindi or so forth. So, which is why those that specialist knowledge is being lost by those providers, but as a platform cooperative we can retain that knowledge and retain that expertise and prove we're the best at delivering the service. But as a platform cooperative what we're really investing in is the tech side, whether that's our video service that we've created, or whether it's the platform itself which the NHS are using at present and we want to expand the use of that in future. So that's a little preview of our booking platform, it's still in beta, but the majority of the interpreters that work in the Merseyside area and the surrounding areas where interpreters come into Merseyside to work are on the platform. The percentage of members in certain parts of Merseyside we have 100% of interpreters that are available are members of the co op in some other areas, it's around 70 or 80 so we're working hard to try and get to that 100% in all areas of Merseyside. So, the benefit to users is deaf users is that they can log onto the platform and state their preferences. So they can, you can see I think Karen's got one heart there. So users can actually go and click and tell us who their favorite interpreters are and in future we'll be building a list where people can say who they don't want to work with because some people have some strong views about who they don't want to turn up at their appointments which is fair enough for something so personal. So, these profiles were live and it's one of the first times the interpreting professionals had this kind of technology, it's, it's failed in the past, partly, well mainly because it didn't get buy in from the interpreters or the deaf users necessarily. So, as a co op we're building it ourselves so we're gaining direct feedback from the interpreters as to the features that they require or what the features that the deaf users require so we're very flexible in that sense. And when a deaf user has an appointment that's been confirmed so for example if Mr blogs has an appointment at 10am tomorrow and it's been the bookings been made on the platform. The staff have facilitated some of the back end stuff that they do manually at the minute which is more and more automation is coming. The deaf user gets a text message with a link to the interpreters profile so for the very first time in the history of interpreting the user directly has a confirmation of the date and the time of their appointment appointment and who is coming and a link to further information. So, some users in the past have been told by hospitals as to who's coming but there's no further information given. So, in that direct we in built into our service that direct ability to talk to the user and ensure that we take those preferences and we confirm it. And we've had great feedback from our members and also the wider deaf community that aren't yet members about how reassuring So, in the early days of this last year we had an interpreter arrive at an appointment and a deaf user said, Oh, your face flashed up on my phone yesterday. And I didn't I didn't quite realized was it from the doctor and the interpreter was like can I see that message please. And the deaf user showed them the message and it was the text message from us. And because it was a smartphone their face actually flashed up because the link was to their profile online. So this is one of our USPs it's one of our success stories. Private companies don't necessarily do this because it's something that's not going to bring them extra profit necessarily. So this is these kind of initiatives are being born out of a community driven business which we're very proud of. And we built a video interpreting service. It's not American owned it's community owned. It's very much in its early stages. It's a lot of hard work, but users also benefit greatly from this. So, for example, deaf users can now call their GP during COVID especially and prior to then deaf users were having to physically go to their GP surgery, perhaps right on a piece of paper to ask them to book an appointment. So you or I might pick up a phone and excuse me just call the surgery and book in an appointment. There's been no facility, partly due to information and governance. National national directives by NHS England deaf users aren't allowed to text or email GP surgeries, according to their governance so they actually have to physically go into those surgeries. So what we do now with us is use the video interpreting service to directly call those GPs that we have a contract with on Merseyside in order to and the interpreter on the. So you can see on the second box there there's only two people on that call but if a deaf user on the call that'd be three. There's you can see it right at the bottom there's the interpreter view and then there's two other people so it's a three way video call where somebody can be connected to a GP surgery and make their appointment. It's also been really useful to use in out of hours. So, more recently, a deaf user was on hospital ward and rather than waiting for an interpreter to turn up in the middle of the night was able to access an urgent scan immediately because they were connected to the video service and interpreter facilitated that communication. So for us, it's about reviewing our strategy next, making sure our existing strategies still fit for purpose and increasing in business for us this is now the time to grow and scale and continue to evolve the platform and the video service both of which are incredibly important for us. We're also doing more outreach work so we have an outreach worker who is going out into the community and basically helping users understand the platform. On Merseyside as around the country, many deaf users don't even have a smartphone or a laptop or a device so we're trying really hard to work with users who do have devices and to help users who don't talk to access the service as well. We've also got a lot of work to do on our co-op development side on the government's governance and the membership just to keep, make sure that as we're scaling and increasing our membership that all members can access the co-op and know how to input into it. So, we have a lot of work to do over the next few years but this is basically where we're up to. So if you do want to contact us, I'm happy to answer any questions as I haven't seen any come through I don't think in the chat but I'm happy to answer any questions at the end. And if you do want to contact us there's our contact details. Thanks Jen. I do encourage people to use the chat, even from now for questions because I realized that we're getting very quickly through the hour. So yeah, do use the chat if you have questions now and we'll be trying to respond to them while Katie's also talking. I'm going to hand it over now to Kaylee from Open Food Network. Thank you for being here with us today. Thank you for inviting us. I'm just going to share my screen and get my slides up in a second. Cool. Okay, so I'm from the Open Food Network UK, we're a global collaboration of essentially people all around the world who are driven by creating systemic change in our food systems. And the Open Food Network was founded in 2012 in Australia and now it's an international community, but it's locally led. So even though you can kind of see this as being like a network of networks around the world, or a co-op of co-ops. And then each local instance in each country is kind of organized on a local level, but then also that kind of feeds into like our global vision as a wider community as well. And also all of the resources that we create on a local level is then also accessible to the whole global community. We operate in just over 20 countries and more join us every year, which is really exciting. So we're always growing. And essentially we're working together to develop shared resources, knowledge, and software to support better food system. Our software is actually a flagship project, but it's not the only thing that we do. And it's an open source software platform that can be used for food enterprises to set up an online shop. But it's designed specifically to enable collaboration between food enterprises and food producers, etc. And lots of people have used the power of this feature to create food collectives, food hubs, and to take farmers markets online. And then also independent food producers have also used it to be able to put their produce online as well. But we're more than just a software. We're a co-learning community that focuses on innovative solutions to solving food system problems. And also we're a community, not just a business, so we're a co-operate sociocratically. So I'm going to talk a bit about the Open Food Network UK, but just also one of the great things about being an open source technology is that it's not owned by anyone. Everyone can contribute and you can build a community around the software. And also being open source tackle some of the problems that you can see and that Vika explained earlier on around the problems with intellectual property rights, what happens to people's data, and also capitalism. And so our vision is the Open Food Network K, and this is also maybe a shared vision for all of us is a world in which every person has sufficient access to high quality food that's produced in a way that regenerates the planet. Because some of the problems that we're seeing in the way that the current food system operates, we're seeing massive social and economic inequalities, environmental devastation, with the use of pesticides and more issues of carbon production around the really long, complex supply chains in the current food system and transportation costs. Also the production of fertilizers, the production of nitrate food fertilizers constitutes a massive carbon output. And also these long fragile supply chains are quite fragile. So we saw in COVID empty shelves in the supermarkets, which just shows that when, you know, if they're increasing as we might be seeing more kind of global issues that these fragile supply chains can break down when if a supply chain is owned on a local level, it's a lot more solid. So there's a lot of issues around food waste and producers struggling to be able to continue to produce food with the margins that they're given, for example, by the supermarkets. And so the Open Food Network UK, we are going to talk a bit about a founder's journey, but I'm not a founder I joined the I found about three years ago so I might not do it as much justice. I was founded by Sarah Nick and Lynn, and they all came together to improve software that they were using for food enterprises at the time. So actually bring it. And then they knew about software that was that was being created by the Open Food Network in Australia and then brought that to the UK. The Open Food Network UK was founded by people who were embedded in the movement towards better local food systems and have been working in that area for about, you know, I think each of them for like decades. So really embedded in the movement towards better food systems. First of all, when we launched we gained funding from Esmue Fairburn for the first three years. And then the pandemic hit a few years ago so things were quite kind of very small scale for the Open Food Network in the initial six or seven years. And then when the pandemic hit we saw a massive growth over 1000% growth over a few weeks which was quite intense. It also led to more funding. So since then we've really expanded the team and we've grown now I think there's about 12 of us, which is really exciting for us in the coordination circle. So, outside of that we also consider part of our cooperative, the food enterprises that use our software as well. So, but we have a central coordination team of which we have 12 members that are doing kind of things like software support, so we have a lot of our friends creating resources for our community, and lots of different things as well. And all of the funding opportunities that we gained since COVID has really helped us to to grow and build our reputation in the movement.  If you're an enterprise you can use it to set up your own enterprise and it's free at the point of use we only start charging if you trade over 500 pounds per month. So it's a really great way for food enterprises to get online at no cost. And we also have the ability for shoppers to start to the local area what food enterprises around them so you can see here on map. One is for more diverse food systems, agroecological production of food and healthy communities, and wanted to talk a bit about, I've mentioned before that we're not just software platform. One of the things that I joined your friend to do was to create more resources for our community. So I did a lot of kind of one to one consultations with food enterprises individually and then whatever was learned from that was then rolled out in resources for the community. And then also that's something that's happening on a global level so in each of the different instances around the world if we're creating resources or that could be resources anything from marketing how to use through to accounting has pretty much anything that would help local food enterprise to thrive. That's kind of bounced back into the community for anyone to be able to use. So everything that we do is essentially used to help or support all the members of our community but it's all free to access so even if you're not part of the open food network you can use and access our resources as well. And so something I wanted to just say about what's great about being a platform cooperative is that what we're doing is grown from the real needs of food hub and food hubs and farmers across the UK and globally because it's been created by people who are most of the people in the open food network are have been or are running food enterprises themselves. And also building software social aims are sometimes difficult to fund but our funding models spreads the cost a nice example of this is that we've identified recently that we really need to improve our subscriptions offering. For example, making it easier for our software users to set up a veg box subscription option on the platform. And now that we've identified that we've been able to talk to the whole global community and pull our resources together to create an action plan to apply for funding for that software feature. So that if one instant identifies the need, then we can pull and if it is useful for the rest of global community can kind of pull their resources and work together to gain funding to to improve improve what we're offering. So what we're doing is in our FN UK each instance around the world organizes, maybe slightly differently, but all based on sociocratic and cooperative principles, but for us in the FN UK we're non hierarchical we're a sociocracy, a holocracy. All of our decisions are made by consent. And we prioritize transparency, operating like a sociocracy means that we have we operate as a circle structure. So the coordination circle of all 12 of us is the main circle. But then within that we have different circles that essentially have not ownership is the wrong way but like empowered to work in their sphere of zone of genius, I guess, without me. I could explain a bit more about that, but I'm just aware of the time. We've been on a bit of a journey over the last year of really working on our governance structure together and how we operate as a sociocracy, what that means and it's been a really interesting process for every member of the team. I think that's it. Yeah. That's it for me. Thank you Kaley for that. Really interesting as well. I'm just going to leave a bit of time if anyone wants to add any questions in the chat, please do. I'm really sorry not to be able to see you all. It's just a webinar format is what it is. Yeah, do please. Put some questions if you have them. There's a question about how do platform cops in general later open source software so I'll just give a general response and then maybe Kaley you can expand on that as well from the point of view open food network. So, so when I in the unfound accelerator what I tend to distinguish but of the platform called business is sort of three layers. One is the business. One is the tech infrastructure and what what it's built and one is the data that is collated and managed and so on. And it's really up to each platform co-op how they manage those things and how open all three of them are or how managed the membership and the use of them is. And also how true to their values they can be with all three. So, it might be that you can be like okay 100% co-op values from the point of view of the business but at the start you might need to start using preparatory software just to test your business case. The idea would be that you can build all your own software, but some might just need to be using, you know even Google phones at the start or things like that to just test your to your business case. And so it's really up to the co-op then to decide how much they want for example that software to be open, how much they want their data to be open, how much do they want their membership to be to be open or how much they wanted to remain controlled so they can manage it in a different way. And so from the point of view of software we've seen different cases we've got open food network that is mostly open source. And correct me if I'm wrong but Kaylee I'll hand it over to you afterwards but I think it's the brand that it's licensed rather than the software but I'll let you fill that talk more about that. We've seen others like co-op cycle where the software is only can only be used by other co-ops and they won't allow other people to use it. And then we have the mobility factory which is actually for electric cars. And there it's a network of local organizations that you can use to rent cars and for them the software is preparatory and only for the members of that platform co-op to be able to use it. So everyone approaches it in a slightly different way and their advantages and disadvantages of both aspects. But Kaylee I'll pass it over to you if you want to just comment a bit more on the case of open food network which is really fascinating and interesting. I can comment on it from my perspective. I'm not a technical person but the way that I understand it is some of the issues around the food system that we're seeing are access to land. And so I think from a philosophical point of view, believing in the commons is a belief that I think many of the open food networks share so it kind of translates that open source technology being almost like a digital commons that having that as part of our business or organizational ethos is important to us. But obviously that can come sometimes cause issues. I think there's been a case of the software being used in the US by a big tech took the software but I don't know all the details of that case but it means that it's not that the software is essentially open for anyone to use. And yet the in terms of our brand that open food network where we have a global team that's involved if any if any country wants to set up a new instance, then that's a process that's kind of held by the global team as a whole. So our brand is, is yes, it's licensed to couldn't just set up an open food network without kind of engaging with the whole community. But yeah, I don't know if that's been an interesting answer or not. And also I would say you've got a lot of information on your website as well and there's a community handbook as well where you can find out more more about that so. And then I don't know if you want to comment on this particular aspect or if you want to comment more generally on the tech side of the challenges of tech. It's an open source but we did actually use an off the shelf. SAS system so software as a service service. To do ours and we've got future plans to move away from that potentially in future, but it's quite a costly process for us as a relatively small platform co-op at the minute so when we scale the challenges will be quite different. There's a lot of potential for us in the future. I always love hearing about open food network because there's a lot of potential for scaling across whether we do it as more of a federated co-op structure with lots of smaller co-ops or whether, especially globally or whether it's not but in terms of open source we'd like to collaborate a bit more in future and we have actually got some funding to look at something around that as well in the future. So I think those opportunities will become more apparent to help us in the future. That's exciting. Thanks, Tim. And there's one more question that I just wanted to take before we wrap up this. Do you know of platform co-ops that use token blockchain to manage ownership and governance. And so, excitingly on the last unfound accelerator, last year's fund accelerator that was a platform co-op that does use blockchain and they're called the platform DAO. And it's a publishing platform. I won't go into detail because it's quite complex. What is interesting that's coming out of that is that we are developing articles of association that can be used by DAOs which distributed autonomous organizations. So there's been a lot of learning through that process and so as soon as we've got the template for the articles of association will be putting them online. There is a growing interest from the DAO community towards co-ops because there is such an overlap. So I'm accepting to see more and more examples. We internally at co-ops UK don't have experience and knowledge of DAOs but what we can do is provide what sort of articles of association can be mapped onto a DAO. I hope that answers your question. Just let me see. I don't know if they have, just as just asking for details. I don't know if they have an active website yet. Let me just see. Any other questions before we end? Just if I find the website I can email it to you as soon as I find it. Okay, any final questions before we wrap up? Great. So just to conclude, I'm just going to share my screen again and I also just wanted to say if you hear of anyone who wants to set up a platform call, please let them know that the accelerator will be starting in April and the applications are open until the 5th of March. And do put them in touch with me. I'm always happy to have a chat with anyone who's interested in starting. And do check out, sign allies and open food network. The websites, the platforms are really useful for anyone. Great. Okay. Thank you everyone and thank you very much to our hosts, to our speakers and to Jen for helping with all the tech in the background. Thank you very much to everyone.


Today people I bring you a great method in ranking up that stuff stupid fast literally from level 0 to 20 in 30 to 45 minutes tops and at the same time earn some great XP too. If you need street credit there's probably no other quick way in the game that everybody can do than actually doing this farm which is just absolutely amazing. How's it going guys my name is dpj and if you enjoyed the video leave a like really helps out and if you like what you see I want to see more cyberpunk on a daily basis be sure to subscribe. Okay so to do this is actually very very simple. If you guys saw my easy street cred video farm I posted a couple days back then you already know about this spot it's the same rooftop but it's a just much much quicker method and at the same time here guys using this method you will earn that stealth xp too. So on screen now you'll see my third character use this method and earning a ton of street cred as well as that stealth xp definitely one of the fastest in the game to get that up. Now to get that stealth xp which is a perk within that called attribute you need literally one thing which you can purchase from a ripperduck which I'll show you the location to in a second. The item you need is to project our launch system arms cyberware with explosive rounds which I'm pretty sure most of you already have then jump on this roof you as I do which is basically running along the left side until you get to these vents or cooling systems whatever they are then just aim that projectile launch system using your grenade button aiming for the car on your right let it loose and you'll see it will take out everything blowing up another car which in turn will take down five or so enemies and this will earn you a ton of stealth xp and using you are getting stealth xp is due to you getting annihilation kills which should normally associate with killing an enemy from behind but I do believe it's any kill where the enemy doesn't spot you and when you take out five or six at a time you get a ton of xp for it. Now you can do this with a sniper at this range but as soon as you get a kill the other enemies clock you and it's just way way longer so you're only getting one kill before you have to basically reset these enemies and you reset the enemies by running to the back of the roof once you do this and run back they respawn due to rendering so yes shoot that projectile launch system aiming for that car take them all out without them knowing earn that xp then simply run back a little then run back forward like I said this respawns them due to them rendering in and out now theoretically here you can use any weapon which will blow these cars up with one shot but this is something way easier to get and you can do this from a real low level literally from the start of the game now doing this I was earning stealth levels literally every couple of minutes and if I'm honest I wasn't even pushing it you can probably do this way way faster now for those that don't have the projectile launch system cyberware arms you can see the location to where your body is from this ripper duck on screen now but once you do get these guys it's as simple as applying them at that ripper duck then come to this spot this roof the location which you'll see on screen in a second and if you want to while you're here you can take the enemies out from around the building that's up to you but if you do they won't respawn so you're good and you can just farm away and earn a ton of xp like I said street cred xp stealth xp you name it people you get it yeah now obviously your stealth levels are limited to what your core attribute level is so if your core attribute level is a level seven then the highest your stealth xp and your stealth levels will take you to is a level seven the highest your attributes can go to is a level 20 so if you got a cooler tribute of a level 20 then your stealth level will also go up to a level 20 and like I said that I believe you can probably get to a stealth level of 20 from zero in about 30 to 45 minutes tops using this method so guys do this if you want a stealth xp and I hope this guide helps you out if you're new around here and want to see more cyberpunk on a daily basis be sure to subscribe if you want to get my videos first and never miss a single one turn notifications aren't by hitting that bell button and if you enjoyed this video and enjoyed your stay here and want to see more drop a like on the video really helps me out but guys thanks as always for stopping by and to continue to support on my cyberpunk videos and hopefully I will see you on that next one


Today marks the 48th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire. It was NASA's first tragedy, and it's the story we're going to go through in very brief detail today on Vintage Space. On January 27th of 1967, the Apollo 1 crew, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, was going through the Plugs Out Test. This was a routine pre-launch test designed to put the spacecraft through a simulated countdown and launch using the spacecraft's own internal power systems. The plugs, connecting it to the external power from the ground, were out. The test was problematic from the start. Grissom smelled something like sour butter milk in his oxygen feed. There were communications problems, and a high flow of oxygen triggered a master alarm. These delays all led to holds, but at 6.31 in the evening, the crew was finally ready to get back to the Plugs Out Test. But at that moment, instrumentation from inside the spacecraft registered a spike in oxygen flow, and at the same time, movement of one of the astronauts in their couches.  Fires in the white room leapt into action in an attempt to free the crew, but the flames licking the side of the spacecraft made it impossible. The pressure inside the spacecraft built up until the hull ruptured, and flames poured into the white room, sending some men fleeing. But even those who stayed couldn't free the crew. By the time they got the hatch open, all three men were dead. They had a fixiated when smoke got into their oxygen system. The 8-Man Apollo 204 view board, that was the mission's internal designation, was created just hours after the fire. The spacecraft, spacecraft 12, was taken apart piece by piece alongside spacecraft 14, an identical block 1 model of the Apollo command module. The two-month investigation revealed exposed and frayed wires and a possible corrosive fluid leak in the coolant system. A spark from any one of these wires could have started the fire, which would have become explosive in the test environment. The spacecraft was designed to be pressurized with 5 pounds per square inch of pure oxygen in space. But to simulate that pressure differential at sea level, the spacecraft was actually pressurized to 16.7 pounds per square inch of pure oxygen. Any kind of spark would have immediately turned into an explosion in that kind of environment. Sealing the crew's fate was the hatch design. It was designed to open inward, which meant that the crew lying on their couches would have had to reach above them and behind them to pull against the pressure rising inside the spacecraft. It was the same for the men on the outside in the white room. No one could push against the pressure building up inside the spacecraft. After the fire, the hatch was redesigned, the plugs out test was reclassified as hazardous, and the spacecraft's environment was changed. During launch it would be a mixed oxygen-nitrogen environment, and it would slowly bleed out to be replaced by pure oxygen for the rest of the flight. With the end of the decade fast approaching, NASA recovered extremely quickly. In October of 1968, the first manned Apollo mission, Apollo 7, flew a textbook flight demonstrating that the redesigned, blocked-to-apollo spacecraft was indeed ready to fly to the moon. If you have any favorite anecdotes about the Apollo 1 crew, about Grissom, White, or Chaffee, leave them below so we can remember the men for all they accomplished. For more old-timey space content every day of the week, be sure to follow me on Twitter as AST Vintage Space, and with new episodes going up every Tuesday and Friday, subscribe right here so you never miss an episode.


So you can exert your option, and Jean-Claude as well. So that makes for the two comments. Yes. Thank you. My first question is about the problematic of the buildup of a new core macro model or not. Picking on what Marcus said about risk-premia driving the economy and being the important factor, we find that in the new textbook of Blanchard. He introduces two interest rates, one just adding up a risk-premia. But then we are in the sphere where there is no theory of the risk-premia. Depends on confidence, this and that, though, is social psychology. So where is then economic theory and economics itself? Because then we've fallen the field of animal spirits, believe functions of Roger, and perhaps non-ergodic time, which, as someone else has said, would be a condition to do any economic science. So from that starting point, can we hope that we have some sort of new macro model or not? And that question is also for John, because he said, I don't believe in small models. But then what do we put at the core of a macro vision that can incorporate some of the very good elements, which I totally agree, as you know, of what you said about consumption, all the effects, finite horizons, and all of that? That is my first question. The second question, it's more of a comment because Marcus gave me perhaps one of the first subjects for my blog, which is to really write about the nature of money. Because I don't think that the nature of money will change fundamentally because of the change in the technologies. And I don't believe in the theory that money was a creation of the private sector to facilitate the changes. I believe in your compatriot, Knap, that money, as Charles Goodhart taught us in the two concepts of money, classic paper, it was created by the state. And by the way, Keynes took the example of the up, the big stones you showed, to demonstrate that for him, and I agree, the basic function of money is being a unit of account. And a unit of account has to be stable. And only the state in the end can guarantee that. And that's why all free money and free banking in the 19th century failed. As these private fictions of creating private money and do away with banks and central banks, will in the end fail. But okay, that's more of a comment than a question. Well, I will also concentrate on Marcus if he accepts. First, you made the difference between the anchor, the currency, and then the third category. Don't you trust that at the moment where all the currencies issued by the major central banks of the advanced economy have the same definition of price stability, we have an anchor which is incorporated in the currency itself, not only as a concept, but by the way, also as a convergence amongst the same, along the same definition. So that's my first comment question. And second, I joined totally the vice president. We have clearly three characteristics of money, according to Aristotle, and I think we all agree on that. There is the good instrument for exchange. There is, of course, the unit of value of account and the store of value. So what do you do with the store of value function which remains absolutely essential as a main characteristic of money in your token currency system? Marcus, please. Okay, thanks a lot. Thanks to Ricardo for clarifying some of the risk-centric model, in particular putting in the speculative components with heterogeneous beliefs. I think it's a very important element, especially for macro potential interactions. On the risk premium, I totally agree that we need models where the risk premium is an endogenous animal, so it comes out endorgenously. And then in these models, it's indeed also in Ricardo's shop ratio, which is the risk premium. It comes out, it's endorgenously affected, so it's moving around. And so we need a theory for that. But I would not rule out animal spirit, so I'm not one of the many economists who hate multiple equilibria, I don't. I like them to some extent. Of course, I'm also puzzled on which equilibrium should be selected, that's a challenge. But it also opens up a richer discussion, what we can have, and also opens up points of importance of communication for central banks. So once you have multiple equilibria, you can do a lot through communication and also through central bank intervention, which is very cheap. So one needs to understand these phenomena. On the nature of money, also Jean-Claude's comments, I totally agree that government money will stay and will be the main thing. But it's just for an academic, it's very fascinating to see these new forms of money and think about them and actually go back to all these historical concepts and everything replays there. And I'm not surprised that your first blog entry will be on this topic. Because it's such a fascinating new topic and there are new elements which are coming up. But if you go to Asia and all this, there's a lot of this token money floating around. And I think the core will always be the government money, but there will be derivatives inside, forms of inside money, which might emerge from that. And the anchor will be given by the government money at the end of the day, and I'm convinced about that. Let me leave it. Can I say something about the first question? I share what Marcus said, but I think that the shock doesn't need to come from uncertainty itself. I believe very much in knight in uncertainty. You generate a little balance sheet problem somewhere and very quickly, and then you can endogenize. Meaning, it's the first line of response to some problem in the financial system, add on top of that knight in uncertainty. And the point is that that can move very quickly. And so the point I had with that diagram, with red boxes and so on, is that very quickly can be the bottom part of the, even though it may have a start from the top, very quickly can be the bottom that dominates the analysis, the required response and so on. Thank you very much. Oh yeah. Sorry, John, please. Yeah, just a quick comment on Marcus. Obviously the model is highly stylized and I think the credit part of the story is kind of buried in there, but it wasn't made explicit. I mean, I work on the demand for money of households suggests that credit liberalization making access to unsecured loans much easier has reduced the demand for money. So there's clear substitution there. People can access other sources of wealth. And of course, in the U.S., where home equity withdrawal is cheap and uneasy, that's another buffer of assets that's available to support expenditure. But of course, when things go wrong, that you really have to look at the balance sheets and the credit supply that's linked with the effects on balance sheets. It isn't just, I think, a risk premium story or the risk premium are important. Thank you very much. That was a fascinating discussion. We have to digest everything we've heard. I have to say I'm very, very grateful to Marcus for putting good theory on the issue of digital currencies and tokens which we are just discussing intensely as you know in the BIS and other places and we've been very restrained and prudent and conservative in our approach, in particular out of fear that this would disrupt a lot the fractional banking system. We were referring to and the stability of our deposits and we care about that. But so far that discussion has been a little bit dominated by tech people and it's good that economies start coming back. So thank you very much. Thank you to the discussions and to the speakers. I am told that we've deserved a short break resuming at 440. So we are not making up entirely for the delay. So it's probably closer to the wind devote model of shock adjustment and the rocking horse. But still please be back exactly at 440. Thank you very much. Very good presentation.


Lamello Ball is no stranger to any basketball enthusiast. Averaging 26.7 points a game throughout his 2016-2017 season, he is on the road to becoming one of the biggest names in basketball. Welcome to World's Best Videos, we've compiled a list of facts about Lamello Ball, let's get into it. Lamello Ball was born on August 22, 2001 in Chino Hills, California. He still resides in Chino Hills and he is currently 6'3". Lamello is the youngest in the family, he has two older brothers, Lonzo and Leangelo Ball. He began playing basketball at the age of 4 with his two brothers, Lonzo and Leangelo. Growing up, Lamello played on teams coached by his father, including big ballers VXT of the Amateur Athletic Union, where he would continue playing until high school. Throughout his childhood, Lamello usually played against opponents that were several years older than him. By the age of 13, Lamello stood at 5'7", before even starting high school, he verbally committed to play college basketball for UCLA. His parents have mapped out him and his brothers playing basketball for more than a decade. Their intentions were to have all three of them playing in the same team for at least one season. That meant Lamello skipped a grade to be able to play with his brother. It was a great decision because Lamello won the California State Championship along with his brothers. Ball has been described as relatively tall point guard with a long wing span and was considered one of the top freshmen in the country. He often attempts long three-pointers, which is drawn comparisons to Steph and Curry and has also been criticized for cherry picking. He often waits too close to the half court to get an open shot on his next possession instead of trying to prevent the opponent from scoring. In late December, Ball made a half court shot only a few seconds into the game. The shot received widespread media including ESPN, CBS Sports and Sports Illustrated. Steph and Curry commented on the shot saying that that was some confidence right there. The fact that he made it, I wonder if he's done it before and missed it. On February 27, 2017, he scored a record 92 points in 146-123 victory over Los Osos High School. He dedicated the game to a friend Lexi. Lexi desperately needs new heart and her condition keeps getting worse. He tweeted saying 92 points, hashtag love for Lexi.


This study compared the performance of various trend estimation methods when applied to long-term normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI, time series. The authors found that the best performing methods were those which removed the seasonality of the data before estimating the trend. These methods produced more accurate results than other methods which did not account for the seasonality of the data. Additionally, the authors found that the presence of fire events could lead to false positive detections of breakpoints in the data. This highlights the importance of understanding the underlying causes of any changes in vegetation productivity, as well as the potential impacts of these changes on ecosystem services. This article was authored by Marcus Reichstein, Miguel de Mahetcha, Christopher S. R. May, and others.


Hello party people of the K West chaos West stage. How are you guys doing? It is my honor to introduce to you a well-known man known by the name of Dimi who is presenting about a Android wallet Which has amazing features. Is that right Dimi? Yes, that's right. Okay. The floor is all yours Thank you Privacy is a human human right and Monero I think Also stands for this for this concept and today I was asked to talk about Muno Ruyo the Munero Android app that I made in the beginning alone and then with a team of designers around the world So in the next 30 minutes, I will show you my journey and in the end we can have some questions and answers Open source software I will be talking about Have to press here as well Okay Open source software what tools we use The wallet itself what kind of conversations there are about it what security issues may or may not be in it Then we have some presentation about the team behind Muner Ruyo so you can see the real people and Our newest feature the XMRTO integration with With which you can pay bitcoins directly from the wallet using only Monero Okay Floss free Libre open-source software. What does it mean for me? Well, it's free. It doesn't cost anything It's open-source everyone can look at it everyone can download the code inspect it see if they like it see if they don't like it and One thing I learned in this project. It also means very importantly There are no obligations for the developers. I can do whatever I want my team can do whatever we want And I can stop at any time and leave because it's free Open source software encourages collaboration because well the source is out there Anyone can participate. So if you want to be part of the Monero movement, you can download Monero Install it check it out Anyone can fork it Forking means you just make a copy of it and continue your own strain of whatever you are doing. I Called this first part floss starting at zero because I had actually no Previous experience with actually participating in an open-source project I have more than 30 years experience in software development and hardware development, but Not not so not so open The first point I think is very important and it's why I've managed to stay so long with this project. Let the project find you I started in this year in the beginning of this year looking at cryptocurrencies What that's all about research for a month or so and Came up with okay Monero is me and I am Monero So I wanted to do have something there The vision was at that point. There was no no mobile wallet for Monero and the community simply needed one so what you want to change and Why do you want to change it you should just know these things otherwise you won't be able to Get very far I think the howl just happens later on open source software is Hosted public in this case the core is Monero itself the Monero core It's hosted hosted on github Which is a git repository? Which is really really horrible. I just watched the talk by Lino Storvaltz the other day explaining what's behind the git and His philosophy was what would CVS not do So dealing 20 years with CVS that was a big problem for me and you just can't change it just takes time You need to get the code running if you want to participate in such an open source software, of course You need to set up your environment Most instructions you find online are not complete. They would just not work for you It didn't they do not work for me It took several weeks to get everything set up and running Read the code understand the code structure So you know where you can do stuff on where the voodoo happens don't don't touch that So I said good. I will try this Android wallet. I have some spare time. Let's see what what I can do out of it With the basic idea if you build it he will come If you build it they will use it or if they don't then you can just stop at any point So I did at first I did it for myself so I can have an Android app where I could use Monero So I'm my own customer For me, it's important to have a short short implementation cycles where with every cycle you have more functionality You see that something is happening. It's pointless to have a three-year plan of well in three years We will have an Android wallet. It just won't happen ever So That's the one thing the other thing is I wanted to be the first and I did not believe that's possible because everyone was working on the Android wallet. Well, there still are working on the actual wallet mmm, and of course you can also post it into the internet Post it into I use mostly reddit for for information and to see what the community thinks of it It's the crypto world. Everyone is paranoid But somehow it worked out Accept all input means and Be open the next point Assume everyone involved is just smarter than you because they are so accept everything They tell you and evaluate it discuss it and you can Do whatever you want anyway Try to avoid Adding new functions for our cycle. So if you say, okay, I want to release every two weeks Decide, okay, what is it? I want to release what new function is there? Is it two weeks? Maybe it's three weeks, but just stick to the functions and don't say oh, but this is also cool I will add that that's a Well, or you will never finish and there's a really big functions where you need a couple of months Then just break it down into smaller blocks Which is nearly always possible because they're always small functional blocks you can you can add implement deploying parts here So if it's good if it's good then others will join they can see that something's happening. It's worth it's worth the time So others will join the project they will either submit changes to github contact my email reddit or whatever I Say I want to be part of this. I want to add design to this My design in the beginning was some say crap. It was functional. It worked. It was dark The current theme burns your eyes when you look at it, but okay So it was important for me to get the function running and then to talk to the designers so after the first Release which had covered all the basic functionality I got involved with some designers who are already lined up and said And said okay, let's do something to the together in order for such a team to work. I Said later on I've got a An introduction to the team. It's around the world from Australia to Argentina Sorry You need a common language which in our case is English You need a common and clear vision everyone has to be on the same page, especially since you are Around the globe with different time zones. You need to be stepping in the same direction All of you at the same time Clear communication structures. How do we communicate? How do we get a message across? What is important for us? clear responsibilities if You're all in the room then it can be chaos and at the end of the day it will be fine If you're not in a room It will be chaos. So You won't get anything done. I think So it's pretty clear Who does what what the responsible for it's okay if the responsibilities are not Perfectly defined, but it should also be clear that they're not perfectly defined So who does the help file as well? Whoever wants to do help files because no one wants to do help files for example Coding style and approach to coding is is important for me as a coder. I had some People talking about coding in there and it Some of them just did not fit to my way of reading code Maybe my read way of reading and writing code is crap, but it's my way and it just needs to fit So I found luckily a guy who's exactly in my in my direction. I look at that this code and said, okay This is this is this is good Also, of course, you need a task management, especially again if you're a diverse team We use a Kanban system. I've got a couple of screenshots later how we use that then there's the Fight the war between designers and developers. I want the stuff to work. They want it to look good so And it's difficult to make it look good so what we've Come to an understanding which was from the beginning is that the form follows the function we wanted to work and It should look sexy in doing that. So that was our approach we had a couple of designs and Basically just mock-ups of how the things should look I implemented it the way that I interpreted it they were Mostly different from what the mock-ups were But it was the idea of what it should look like and that's what it looks like and that were that's what it does So it's important to see what matters what matters for the whole team What is important for this project and what is what is not so important? And again, let the deadline dictate the scope. We've got the deadline in one week There's no point in putting one month of work into it. It's okay. We'll do this now and we can put the rest on the backlog and Things disappear from the backlog Mysteriously because it turns out that we're not important in the first place Not everything disappears and then there's the support issue I've made a screenshot of a thing I got a couple of days ago. I Wanted to use hello. I wanted to use your wallet to storm on my moneroy So I did I can no longer access my wallet or see the balance What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? So of course you need to deal with with these kind of support the things as well in a normal cordial manner Please give me more information what what is it you want to be trying to do and that kind of stuff This should not be ignored. Of course I can tell this person. Well, don't use the wallet But it's not the idea of of the of the community Okay, what tools do we use I have to use this tools We have some collaboration tools We use the tiger which is provided by the Monero project There we do Kanban tasks which we shuffle around the team the tiger we use for For the project is a public tiger so anyone can actually see what's on our backlog What are we working on what's done? What is ready to be tested and? We use matter most it's a sort of like slack or IRC or some communication thing which we use a lot Only only text and only typing But of course posting screenshots and videos so if I like change something I like keep posting videos What does it look like now and they're like this is too small. This is too big It's not round it's that kind of stuff so it's pretty good and you get immediate feedback Cold repository our code is also on github and for the design we We use a website code in vision where you could do mock-ups of of some of Apps I've got a screenshot soon. This is what the tiger looks like if I press this button Okay basically you have tasks Which short with a short description of what the task is For example the second one up there is a dark theme so you don't get blind every time you use the app The second column is ready in progress ready for test and done and when you Move the status you just move the card across You can also like ask questions and answers and basically everyone knows what what's going on The next slide is how we Design design the screens. This is a screen of what? The XMR to your integration looks like or would have looked like if I had implemented it that way It's pretty great because you see what colors are used You can measure you see the measurements of the screens so you can try to approximate that Approximate that when you're implementing What we did from the very beginning from day one. We had a we had a sure fix Every Monday The whole team except Australian because he's asleep We we meet for one two or three hours sometimes in the in the matter most and talk about what have we done How far are we? What do we continue doing? What we talk about the screenshots about the layout about We draw funny pictures and have fun generally and Talk about what is the social distance between people in Argentina in comparison to Sweden? So all kinds of fun stuff Sometimes we prepare an agenda if we have a lot a lot of points that we want to cover and this always takes place also if someone's not there and This is very important. I think because it just keeps the project running It was it all he's not here or have no topics then it just slows down and then you can you can forget it I think a lot of throwing ideas at the wall. That's how the team works. This is how I work That's why I said we fit pretty well together. You just throw things out and people tell you to shut up or oh, this is great Let's try it try it that way Keyboard I said we only type we don't have any video stuff Yet, I don't know if we need it and a lot of screenshots Painting on screenshots this envision actually allows you to paint In the web interface and the other people That are also watching this see these changes, so it's a very very interactive Hmm Okay, the wallet Notice the fantastic Guy with the Monero jacket there. He's called gunter He's going to from Argentina. It's not me. Someone asked me today. Is it you? No, it's not me. I just wear him Okay technical challenges for the actual well wallet Setting up an environment. I said that's Sort of difficult it's easy when you know how so I've documented exactly what you have to do Luckily my heart is crashed completely everything was lost so I had to do everything from the beginning So I documented that I've missed of course a couple of steps in the first round So now if you go to the github repository, you can do it yourself and it will probably not work for you Compile the Monero code for Android this had already been done Thank You Hick and A lot of a lot some compiling Warnings which you have to check are they applicable? Is this something important or is it just well? Noise and some errors there were as well to do with With the Android Development kit that I was using and the prerequisites of course a lot of projects have a lot of Dependencies and prerequisites you need to get those compiled on the Android as well the biggest problem here was the open SSL Which most people try to copy it from the phone and use the Google Libraries the Google source code for that that did not work at all for me I compiled it completely from from source code. It turned out to be a matter of two hours and It's it's fine The biggest problem and the biggest technological challenge was to Android your program in Java as a language and The Monero code the Monero core is a C C++ DLL and you need to connect those two and that Does a lot of threading as well So you need to use threading in both directions and to get that working without having memory leaks is a is a bit of a challenge so That challenge has been solved. We haven't had a memory problem in At least six months So I managed to get get that running and of course All the Android concepts I had written an app for Android maybe ten years ago where there was everything was different So I was learning everything completely completely new about services permissions Threadings are threading which is only available available since Android 5 So that's why the lowest Android support is Android 5 The API which keeps changing between Android versions and between Monero versions to like deal with that you compile it again like nothing works and The emulator is quite cumbersome So I gave up using that quite soon and debug everything on the device But only have one device with Android 7 so from time to time I need to start it up Wait for half an hour for it to do something And As I said dealing with new versions of Monero core, there's a testnet mainnet We had a couple of discussions today about that that this needs to Change if you want to have more stuff integrated to Monero Because right now the testnet is actually the development Version really the cutting-edge version and there's nothing you can test The current production version with so you actually have to spend real Monero to like try stuff out And we don't have that Some security aspects which keep coming up in in different reddit threads and on Github as well Where to store store the wallet files in Android? There's a sort of sandbox environment for every app Which is internal storage if you will and there's the external storage where every other app has access So if you store the wallet files on the external storage Every other app has access and people say ooh Every other app app has access to my wallet files Yes, they do they all every other app you have on your PC also has access to your wallet files. So There's that if you store it on the internal storage No other app has access to this internal storage so you cannot back up your wallet files for example Plus I'm sure this can be hacked and good hackers will get into your internal storage And you think that you're safe, especially if your phone is rooted. So It depends what you want to do. We decided to go for the external storage location With well with the side effects that other apps have access to your wallet files like in other operating systems Basically, I think the problem is that people are lazy to enter good passwords, you know on an Android device If you have a good password, it doesn't matter where your wallet is stored The other thing is I want to delete wallet files. Yes, I understand that there's no deleting of wallet files as such there Because I cannot guarantee that if I erase something from a SD card someone can't take the SD card and do undelete Secure deleting is a is a science of its own So we can't tell you okay, I've deleted your wallet and be you're sure you're safe You are not safe. So we don't even try to do that if you want to Do that you need to find an app which deletes everything on the On the on the device Okay Password entry. There's always how to enter the passwords Do you want to have an increased interval always if you type a wrong password?  So it does it doesn't really matter That's the destroying of the wallets, of course Then there's the fingerprint fingerprint is on the next slide. We want to use fingerprints as passwords We've also decided not to do that because No one can accept Guantanamo can get a password out of you and a fingerprint anyone with a knife has no problems in Dealing with this problem So We are leaving it at a password. Just pick a good password and you will have no problems. I think Then there's the idea of proof of writing down Where we Need to force people to write down them them on exceed the way that is or should be Done for all wallets. Keep your seed. Keep your password. Keep your keep your private key safe in multiple locations and And We the hardware wallets do that. They actually make you repeat The mnemonic seed after they have dictated it to you to make sure that they that you actually have this We might do something like this. I don't know we've prevented screenshots To prevent other apps just from screenshotting. Whatever you're doing on your phone I understand the most banking apps if not all banking apps apps also do this for the same reasons So we decided to do this as well It's a bit of a bummer for support because I can't tell people will send me a screenshot of what doesn't work So maybe we need to reevaluate this this decision Some people are saying oh, but you're using the exchange exchange rate from Kraken and That doesn't work well with Tor and we want something else Yes Maybe we want to talk about this Also, of course as soon as you call up an exchange rate from somewhere They know that you're doing something and they know where you're doing it from So maybe if you're paranoid don't exchange rate like this and that you are Tor integration I've never tried it actually. I understand that it works in with Tor and VPN mode So I don't think we'll be doing anything in that direction apart from that Monero is doing its own Covery which is a secure Secure Transport layer anyway the team look to people Bit of a social slide I've spoken about most of this already no one is paid everyone's doing it for fun. Everyone's doing it for free out of conviction Because we all believe Monero is a is a is a good thing for our society There's no obligation to deliver. So it's a it's a completely different Way to work when You expect people in all the team to deliver, but they don't have to so you you really have to fit together with with the way you work with them In both directions, of course There are no customers again because there's no money flow their consumers And the consumers are not used to being treated like not customers Yeah, so this is also a social aspect. It's all based on respect and the Monero community is is really great I was told to point to the Monero cat down here. Very important With this movement. Okay Monero cat got it close-knit community and You get support you can talk about things. It's very it's very amicable our team If it comes up Six people So it started out with me then we got the rara who does the website. He's reworked the get Monero website now as well I think Bouts are who does the user interface? Andre is also user interface and he did the cool gunter guys Key Jeff everyone needs a kangaroo fighter in Australia. So we have one And we have this second developed by in Germany as I said spread around the world So we have a bit of a time zone problem. So that's an advantage of matter most when we discuss When the left side of the of the slide discusses things the right side can read it then later and comment on it in in block a Short introduction maybe of everyone Me I've been Doing everything from embedded systems to you name it The second point is more important a crypto annoyance to all my acquaintances colleagues Family and everyone else. I keep bugging about it. I can't stop talking about anything else. I don't do anything else either and Yeah developing making music and Well reading code We decided this is the most funny funny picture in the whole presentation. So this is the Swedish designer who's well, there's all the designing of course and At night he does Munero and other stuff what is he right? He says I he puts on his suit and designs stuff for Munero He exactly in the beginning. He said I have maybe one or two hours per week to To spend on this project and then it turns out. I think he spends more like 10 15 hours So it's it's quite a lot of of work also during the week Okay Yeah, why Munero? I also asked everyone like why why are we doing this and basically it's all the same reason that It's political and social developments that that we want to support with this project Fernandez Cordon Andres Fernandez Cordon. I think as I said it right now A long time you see it an illustrator and filmmaker He has a co-founder creator the creative director at Sloop, which is a Creative animation studio. He does all our cool cool stuff with well this kind of thing and He's also crypto annoyance with acquaintances and loves railways and time travel movies and hard cheese and wine the Why is he still why is he still with us because we immediately made him feel part of the team and It's just such a great great team to work to work with I Think his other statements here. I think lack of privacy leads to coercion a dream I dream of a world where incentives are so Well implemented. There's no need for filings. Of course. This is utopia, but this is where we want to go and Monero is a step in this in this direction. So that's why we're there key Jeff who's also does not only a kangaroo fighter, but Also user user interface and help files He's still studying and he's helping us Well get our English straight because he's the only native speaker He was I think one of the first people who contacted me to fix my English and Yeah, and then we have a real Android developer a professional Android developer to help us Especially also with testing so we have a bit of some testing framework in there by far not enough. It's just one drop of on a huge fireplace But we're we're starting there. Yeah And yeah, Monero needs a good Android wallet Okay, that's the team just a short timeline Of our newest feature maybe to understand the way that we we work we had the I Looked up these dates. It's pretty fast. So 6th of November We had our first contact to the XMRTO guys. It's okay. Well, do we want to do this? How do we want to do this? Then talk to this with my team on the 9th of November. We said, okay, we'll do this in order to do this though We had to restructure the whole sending workflow in order to convert We had one screen where you could send Monero and We needed a couple of things in order to send Monero because in between sending Monero and receiving Bitcoin we needed to Access an online service the XMRTO in order to get exchange rates and create orders and query orders and stuff like that So you see from 9th of November to 15th of December is a long time. It's a month but in between that we restructured the send workflow and That was one update to the app. So we had took two weeks or maybe three weeks. I don't know now and And We had already set a date we wanted to present this at the Monero meet-up in Vienna on the 15th of December So after two weeks, we made one version with a new send flow see if it works. It's pretty fantastic And then two weeks later we got this thing actually working and we showed it to the guys at the Monero meet-up with the XMRTO integration and now a couple of days ago We redid the the user interface so it now looks really fantastic and Since well since 24th Since Christmas we have it in the public beta so everyone anyone can register and Do stuff I Think that's it and the the logo is just really cool Okay, this is the Mortal Kombat Gunther So and this is the will code for XMR Gunther Yes, you had a question But there's the microphone. I think it's coming to you Okay, a little applause to Demi, please It has become a tradition that I first asked three questions to Demi And you just recap all the amazing input that you got and then the QA is later But let me be first. Is that okay? So this was about the Android app and You have two UX developers UX UI and you have two real developers Yes Okay, is that enough developers or is that enough UXS? Well, I think the mix is is pretty good I'm the main one doing the Developing the second guy is helping me when when I when I need help or when he has ideas and The two Interface designers are are I think they're enough otherwise will be more of a more of a mess but I have no experience so maybe I Don't think I don't it's not more is not always better I thought it was very interesting to to see how a a project really works and a free floss project From people around the world. Thank you for showing the tools, but how high is the test coverage? The test coverage I have no idea So who's doing QA or so? No one is doing QA as an as an official as an official task we're all testing it, but It's not the real testing It's more trying things out and the second developer I'm hoping that we can actually get instrumentation tests and actually have a number for for code coverage Yeah, so that's one of the next steps in in actually having a QA which is real QA and not trying stuff out yeah Last question in the hot seat. I forgot Where will I find you when I remember the question? I'm back there with the Munero guys Okay, then you're lucky. Thank you I will now go down to the stage with my microphone and you come with your questions You can also enter the stage, but be aware you will then be On screen and then maybe some time tie someday in the internet But I thought some I saw some questions just just come here and join me and ask me your questions now Is that a question? Hello Thanks for the talk very inspiring. I was wondering if you know about the fdroid Android app store and whether your plans to publish your app on fdroid Yes, that's a good question. It's a question which comes up a lot Understand also why? I There are no plans as such I Tried to Do it But I gave up after a couple of hours when I could not get the fdroid stuff running on my system and Decided that functionality is more important than getting it on there That was a couple of months ago. The functionality is is pretty far and yes We want to get it on fdroid and yes, we're looking for someone who actually Can do stuff on fdroid and understands how to have to how to make the stuff work We may be able to do it here one idea was to actually do it here the Monero assembly to get people working and At least getting it to compile with that in the fdroid ecosystem so yes a Plan is something with a date. So no, we don't have a plan, but we really want to do it, right? another question I Have two questions Why do you think has the official team not released any? official Android wallet yet and the second question is Do your plan to support any real light wallet? protocol like the open open Monero back end which is Supporting real light wallets instead of remote Using remote nodes The first one it would be speculation. I have no idea. I have no contact to them I know I have read probably less than you have read about why they're not getting further. I don't know The second question integration to or talking to a light wallet the protocol is completely different the functionality is completely different So no, we want to be a real standard own Client where your keys are on your phone. You have wallet files, which you can exchange with your PC So the the wallet files you create on your PC or Mac or whatever you have Linux you can actually copy them to your Android phone and they will work there Just like they did on your PC and that's where we want to stay. So it's a standalone thing. Yes You need a remote node. Yes, the remote nodes are very flaky. They don't Well, mostly don't work a lot But a lot of the time they do and We need I think a solution to this problem is to have better instructions on how actually to run your own node because it's very simple when you know what to type It's it's it's so simple, but I had a stupid conversation with on Reddit no on IRC that there's no Instructions how to run your node. So they sent me 20 links But you have to combine these 20 links in a week To get the one command you need to run. So maybe we can make that easier Hmm. I have one question. I have a big problem with the iOS X wallet Wallet they are charging a fee on top of the monero fee. So I want to ask you if you can swear to us that this That your problem with your project will never be start any type of monetizing That's a trick question. Never say never I Don't want to answer that. No, I've never had the idea to do that. The idea is it will be free forever But this might change in the future. I have absolutely no idea because oh, yeah, I Yeah There's no there's no idea to actually monetize on this now Okay. Thank you very much. Demi. No some tough questions to answer Remember to Mike third question. What do you know about the the actual one Gerald users? How many We have what I do with it. We I Don't have direct contact with the monorail users We have feedback with emails on on forums on reddit We try to solve all problems which are mostly related to nodes. So I understand that this thing we have offer that we have about 12 I think alpha testers We have about five or six hundred beta testers and the app is installed on about 5,500 devices active devices. So that's quite something and Since we don't get a lot of feedback usually feedback is more negative I think it's it's it's running well and the feedback we do get is it's positive. So I'm happy for that. Yeah Okay, Demi. Thank you very much. Thank you for your attention. I will also like to thank the The amazing people of my team in the in the back making all this possible So when you're up here on stage and you you're put in the hot seat Demi is the fourth person who survived it. You may like me You may not like me But my team is more than happy to take your presentation and then you can stand here just like Demi and all the other great people Show your project show your love and have a great time on the Congress. This stage is for us It's for for all of us on the Congress. So please send me or my my team or the team basically Your papers. I'm looking forward to it