Hello everyone, my name is Kanakshila Thandan. I go by Kanak. Today I'm here to talk about B2B and B2C PME. So I start with a quick intro for everyone. I actually have around 20 years of experience and most of it is as a product manager. I worked in B2B space. I also worked in B2C space. So here I am to share my experiences that I have gone through and some tips and strategy. I start with a quick intro. I have worked in past I have worked with companies like like Microsoft, HP, Meta, bunch of startups. I founded my company also at the point of time and I started in PM space in 2006. So I would say what kept me into PME is probably the notion of tapping into unknown territories and then carving something out from those ambiguous situations, carving something out which is going to solve a crucial problem for the customers. This is what kept me going and with that I'm going to dwell into the topic that we are going to discuss today which is B2B versus B2C PME. Just give me a minute. Let me share my screen quickly. I already covered the intro. So okay the three topics I would be touching today.  This is something I would be talking through. Then we'll go through some cultural differences between B2B and B2C organizations and then I will share some strategies based on my experience how to innovate and lead in B2B PME. So with that let's move ahead. So first let's talk about this is this is a very light slide. Let's talk about what is common between these two. So the underlying PM principles I still a few here are common in both the both the areas. So these are the overlapping you know regions. For example identifying the problem. Identifying the right problem is the start of a successful product and that pays the part for the right product market fit. So irrespective of whether you are in B2B and B2C that is going to be the same. Customer empathy the ability to feel and live the life of the customer is going to take you long way in either of the scenarios. Especially in B2B where you have broader you may have broader set of personas than B2C. Then strong productions once you are done with the discovery of the problem space the customer and problem discovery and that time you know when you are exploring the solution having our strong productions is going to help you a lot. So these are the common underlying principles between B2B and B2C PME. Now let's talk about what's different in B2B and B2C. I would say the nature of the problem. The nature of the problem may differ in B2B and B2C. B2B often is more deep problem space that may require niche skills and sometimes industry expertise. However B2C is more broader problem space. You may have broader personas in B2C. So I quote a few examples here like think of cloud computing, think of networking, think of security. All these requires a deeper dive as compared to the B2C problem space. Now let's talk about the product cycle. B2B often have longer product cycle and may not have frequent releases. So if you have patients through it you want to go deeper into the problem space then B2B may suit you more. B2B is also many a times saturated with bigger players in market. So for any newbie to penetrate into such markets requires some strategies. A few examples are innovate, differentiate yourself so that you can create your own niche market. So you should be prepared to kind of ready to encounter these situations. Then data. B2C is more data driven. You will have ample of data to kind of go through it and make decisions which are backed by data but in B2B data may be limited. It may be qualitative but still limited. So often at times protect sense helps kind of moving ahead in those situations where data is limited. The next point I listed here is communication. Communication is an essential skill for PM in either case but in B2B it's more crucial. The reason is you will be having more larger portfolio of stakeholders, internal teams, external team, cross you know our team, global team and most of the time the flexibility is limited in B2B space which means you have to go through tougher negotiations to get everyone on one roadmap having concerns from everyone. So that requires elevated communication skills. And also the personality I would say if you are more towards relationship on end then result oriented then this is something you may want to explore. B2B requires investment in long term relationship especially you know with the sales counterpart. Make him an ally of yours. It's going to help you personally to be successful in the company. So long term relationship and working closely with the teams, building close relationship that actually helps in B2B space. B2B often requires deep and niche technical skills which I already test upon networking, security, cloud computing or maybe you know the industry expertise that would be required in B2B as compared to B2C. Also monetizing strategies may differ. So in terms of monetization if you are addressing the customer problem in a right way the willingness to pay is more. With B2C your product sometimes may fall into commodity market. There is always like you know you have to come up with a competitive pricing strategy to gain the market share. However in B2B you can try different pricing strategy. It could be subscription base, it could be allocate, it could be you know premium you know versions with niche features upsell, cross sell. So there are different strategies that you could claim based on your expertise. However contrary B2C is more broader problem space. It's more consumer facing. Sometimes UX heavy you would be paying more on volumes. Frequent release cycles are often observed and also opportunity to take feedback from end customer as you are delivering and lots of data and sitting with the CS team that you could leverage to finalize your predict strategy. Overall I would say if you have a tendency to go deeper into problem space, if you are a strong communicator, if you are passionate about technology and if you have background in some technical space, by personality you are relationship oriented, then probably B2B is a space that you may want to give it a try. Now let's talk about switching between B2B versus B2C PMA. If you started on one and you are thinking okay would I be able to switch? Yes that is very much feasible. I have done it in past a few times. More important is to have that underlying product principles strong and clear. So if you are a strong PM probably you know switching it's not a issue here. However I should be honest as the market is shifting. What I am observing is that nowadays more expertise are required in either scenario. So if you are building a carrier, your carrier track probably would be good to focus on certain expertise that you want to build as the track of your carrier which are going to kind of help you moving forward. And in terms of switching I would say a change of mindset is required on overall how we approach the problem and in B2B probably keeping yourself and your team more nimble and flexible to upcoming changes is going to help. In B2C you have more flexibility how you move. In B2B there may be you know certain scenarios when you have to kind of make some sacrifices. So how you approach the problem is different the change of mindset is required but other than that yes it's feasible to switch between B2B and B2C PMA. Now let's talk about some cultural differences here. How the culture differs between an organization who is more B2B versus B2C. The first one is B2B maybe more sales driven. The reason is see partners who have bigger share of pie who are bringing more business they often comes with customized request and if those requests are not managed well then that may lead your application to get a handful of the customer and in those scenarios the application may not be fit or may not be competitive to kind of to be launched to a broader market. Over time the company actually instead of being customer focused maybe become more sales driven or more delivery driven and for any new idea to try to do a short experiment in such scenarios going back and doing it would not be possible without impacting a sheer amount of your development. So that is something to kind of keep a record on and there are strategies to avoid those situations which I'm going to discuss in next slide. But before I touch the next point of innovation I want to share in my own experience working with with the company. So I was working in a startup and I myself have observed that there were a couple of very strong partners who were driving business and sometimes in time pressure or under fear of not losing those customers the product team was kind of taking those requests and most of the roadmap was then built by the customers in collaboration with the sales team and slowly I was noticing that how the product managers were shifting towards you know project management mostly the roadmap was preset and they were holding hands with their inch counterpart to run the development cycle. And in terms of innovation most of the time what competitors had launched is trying one or two add-ons on the existing features but that is not going to give the company a leave to differentiate or to stand or be customer focused. So this is something to be vigilant about and as I already touched innovation may stifles in those scenarios. Another reason is if you have customized versions multiple versions then experimenting or implementing something may not be you know may not be visible and that requires some cost. Product roadmap in B2B includes investment in long term relationship building so you will be seeing features like customer loyalty and retention. Also please keep in mind that technology integration adds another layer of complexity it may be a cross-platform integration with your partners it may be a cross cloud or hybrid also and so forth so that often requires deep and niche technical skills or at least the ability to kind of ramp up quickly in those technologies. Now consider the scenario if you want to go global in B2B so if you are going global in B2B localization is often required more catching to the needs of local market. You have to make the audience feel that you understand their culture and also the customers and personas are diverse in B2B as compared to B2C you may have different personas you have multiple persona and not to forget to list down the B2B to C as one of your customers because if you are catching the needs of your B2B to C well you are actually helping your customers really well so this is something not to be missed. Okay before I go to this slide if you have any questions comment you can just edit or find in the chat and I will try to answer those after after this presentation I just put something quick this time but I'm also going to join our on July 18th on a QA session so irrespective of B2B or B2C any question that you have in fact I have more experience in B2C so you can bring any PM questions and I would try to answer as per my ability. Okay with that let's talk about how to keep product or more focus and innovative what are the strategies you can take how to lead and innovate in B2B space first one as I already mentioned close relationship especially with your sales counterpart if internal teams are your partner then it may be your tech counterpart that is personally going to help you move those close relationship helps to kind of unblock many things early in the stages so being an ally of of your counterpart and keeping them on your side is going to go long term second is investing building relationship with your client so you need not to always go through your sales team to interact with your client and especially if you are a people manager and you have a team you have to make sure that your team is close to the customer it's okay to attend some sales call with your same sales team if possible interact directly to kind of collect the requirements you can also form user group for your research team or for your design team to work with the customers so these are the ways how you can bring your team close to the client and try to work directly CS is another way also to avoid kind of building a product which is so close to a few customers is to make a diverse user group so that you can hear their voice in early venues and you can steer those through as you build your MVP you put your blueprint together so make a diverse group just do not focus on handful of the customers and keep a percentage of investment for new ideas and experiment I share another example with you here so I spoke about the company and keeping the company innovative and customer focus is not just going to help the company overall but also going to keep your own team inspired so in one of the company I have noticed that as the leadership decided to pause on new ideas and investment and kind of adding through what has already been launched and catering to the customized request over time like six to eight months there was a good attrition especially from from the design function they were not seeing it's so inspiring you know all the new ideas experiment learning quickly going and moving so slowly we have seen that the company was losing really a good know how and talent so this goes to to the leaders as well it's a good tip to keep some percentage of investment on new ideas and experiment it may be 10 20 30 depending on the tolerance level of your company and broadcast it broadcasters truly in your all hands and to your stakeholders as well the next point is build consolidated roadmap across all stakeholders and broadcast it early so if you have multiple partners it essential to provide that visibility and make a consolidated roadmap so that they know what is going to cut if we run on you know any sort of resource crunch or time crunch and why you know those are the problem that we are addressing in the roadmap plus making them part of this journey of road mapping even if you broadcast it at the end of your quarter in your all hands meeting it it may know it may not land that well as compared to if you make them part of it you give them those wide spaces to internalize on the roadmap give you feedback and go through those discussion of not incorporating or cooperating their request there's also a good reason of doing that because you will get early chance of seeking a collective intelligence from all your stakeholders plus sense early signs of misalignment and you can manage them through so I would say it's it's a very good tip that I could share from my experience to kind of keep that visibility on and take them through this road mapping or exercise provide them that visibility now the next one is define ancient milestones especially for B2B because oftentimes as I said the product cycles are long and and what happens is over time if it's taking few months your stakeholders and your leadership may get curious of how we are progressing so if you define certain milestone you are providing the visibility of all the effort that your team is putting together and having that sensitivity you know towards towards your team is really essential for a for a leader to be successful or many times I have seen really talented people just working in silos and their effort is not kind of brought through or came in like came in light so it's essential if you define those milestones and then celebrate generate a report or broadcast then the last one take a conservative approach on customized request because that is going to bring long term consequences on maintenance costs on versioning if you're not sure of taking a request run the exploration phase just tell your partner okay I'm going to run exploration phase and come up with my findings to you until that you know whether you are going to take it or not going to take it at least you get time to kind of think through it um so and again um it's very essential in a B2B space that you do not take that pressure their request may be legitimate their request may may help to boost the product or may incur more cost or whatever it is you know it's no harm asking to run a exploration phase and that way you can discuss with your teams you can take their feedback inputs and you may have an ocean of solution to kind of kind of you know select from so that is something I also do you know whenever I'm not sure of going ahead with any any of the request um with that I'm going to conclude again um if you have any question just shoot a uh you know shoot it in chat or join my uh July 18 uh QA session I will try to answer it as per my abilities and based on my experience and just a quick wrap up on what we have covered I just I built this uh deck uh you know this deck quickly so uh we did covered a good ground we discussed uh the quiet skills um for B2B and B2C PMA uh the culture differences in both the organization and the complexity associated with B2B we also discussed how one could innovate and lead in B2B uh product states and what could be the pitfalls that you should be aware of and how you could uh navigate through the strategies uh you could try with that I am just signing off so thanks everyone for uh joining today thanks


QuickBooks Online 2023. Cash payment for inventory linked to purchase order or PO created in the past. Get ready to start moving on up with QuickBooks Online 2023. Here we are in our get great guitars practice file. We started up in a prior presentation with the 30-day free trial. We also have the free QuickBooks Online sample company file open if you want to have these two things open at the same time. Support a counting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. And we suggest using the incognito window or another browser to open the sample company. You can open the incognito window if using Google Chrome with the three dots in the browser and the new incognito window then search for QuickBooks Online test drive. We'll be using the sample company to compare and contrast the accounting view the view get great guitars will be in and the business view the view the sample company will be in. You can toggle back and forth between the two views by going to the cog drop down and toggle the views on down below. We're going to be opening up some reports now so we're going to go to the tab to the left right click and up and duplicate the tab as we do every time right click on the duplicated tab to duplicate it again back to the tab to the middle so we can go down to the reports on the left opening up the major financial statement report of the balance sheet as we do the every time by the way in the business view the reports are located in the business overview and then in the reports so you could find the reports there in the business view going to go to the tab to the right and then open up the reports again once again and then the P to the L the profit to the loss we're going to close up the boogie the hamburger and other words and do the changing of the range in from 010123 to 123123 run it to refresh it nothing's in it yet because we haven't done anything for the current period to the income statement yet we're getting there we're getting there though closing up the hand boogie on the balance sheet changing the range for that one too from a 10123 to 123123 run it to refresh it that's the setup process we do every time in prior presentations we have been putting together the beginning balances we put in the investments we bought our property plant and equipment and now we're in the process of buying inventory our scenario here being that we sell guitars so we're purchasing now guitars we're using a perpetual inventory system and we're using a purchase order which we did last time in order to request the guitars which is only a form that you would use if you have that capacity to request the guitars before you actually pay for them or whatever inventory that you are purchasing so in the prior presentation i'm going to go to the tab to the left we hit the new button and we made purchase orders the first step in the process to buying the inventory but one that doesn't actually have a financial transaction related to it so typically when tracking the purchase orders we do that internally so and that's normally done over here on the expenses side because that's kind of like the vendor cycle you've got your vendors down below and if you wanted to see that by the way in the business view that's going to be in the get paid and pay area and then you got your pay area down below and the vendors that's where it's located there and then if i close the hand boogie you can search by the open purchase order so there's five purchase orders so then i can see the vendors that have the purchase orders and you can see the number of purchase orders here another place often you can go to in order to see the purchase orders if i hit the hand boogie and we go down to the expenses and we go into the expenses tab this is located a little bit differently in the business view this item is in the bookkeeping area over here bookkeeping and then the transactions tab up top and then your expenses tab so it's a little bit little bit different in the business view then you might originally expect as you're switching between the two views so then in here you've got your expenses if i close this up you can filter then and possibly filter by your purchase orders so we go down to the purchase orders and then you can have all your purchase orders or we can filter by the open or closed purchase orders so if i go to the open purchase orders they're all open at this point in time now however step we do this the next thing the next item we expect to happen the next series of events that would happen as we can see in our flow chart over here would be that we had the purchase order now we're going to receive the inventory so at the point of receiving the inventory we could either enter a bill at that point which we can populate from the purchase order a bill is a specific form that increases accounts payable and then we can as in essence pay the bill or we can enter simply just a check for it at that point in time so we're going to imagine we receive a box of guitars which is our inventory from the vendor in this case we're going to start with epiphone that's who we buy our guitars from and in the box they have a bill with it so and and note that the bill might say invoice on it because to them if they were using quickbooks it would be an invoice but the bill from our perspective is is depending on what side of the table we're on when we think about the software so we might call it an invoice they invoiced us or they build us you can call it whatever you want but when you get into the quickbooks it's a very specific term even if it says bill on it i might not enter it into the system as a bill i might just pay the bill by writing a check or expense form at that point of time and that's what we'll start off doing this month and then next month we'll do more accrual transactions where we'll enter more bills rather than the exp then just writing the checks right now we're going to try to write the checks whenever we can for the first month and then we'll kind of switch it up when we do the second month so we could see all different kinds of transactions so that's going to be the general idea we're going to now go into these purchase orders either here searching for them here when we get the box of goods and then we're going to uh make make a bill or a check form out of it at this point in time now also just realize that if you had a larger company as the company gets bigger you might have someone counting the the inventory in like a warehouse or something like that oftentimes you would like them to be able to count the inventory without having access to the purchase order because then they'll actually physically count the inventory and they won't just know what the number is so that's one internal control you can kind of think about as you kind of as you scale up but typically we would expect the box of guitars to match the numbers that we had on the purchase order so over here we've got our options of sending we can send the purchase order again we can copy it to a bill but we're not going to make a bill this time we're going to make a check or expense type of form and so we're not going to do this step this time instead we're going to go to the plus button up top and we can go to an expense or check form remember these are two basically almost identical forms in that they decrease the checking account but the check form of course has a check number related to it imagining that we're actually physically writing a check or printing the check out of the system so we're going to make this for epiphone i'm going to say it's for epiphone there's our vendor and then as we do that notice quickbooks has this nice thing over here that says hey i'm paraphrasing we've got these two these two items and this bill down here we're just going to add these items in to connect it out so i'm going to say purchase order let's add the information from the purchase order that you entered last time and then i'm going to add this purchase order as well so we're going to add those now if i scroll down we could see the activity but let's just populate the the top of it here just to make sure i get everything the way we want it it's a cash and we're going to say okay mailing let's pay let's make it as of the 14th this time so let's that's good that's good date let's keep it there and then i'm going to make the check number now if i'm actually physically writing checks then i'm going to start with one oh i'm going to put 1004 in the check number here to try to match our bank reconciliations that we'll do at the end of this in our practice problem if you're actually writing the check then uh you could print it later meaning you'd have to actually buy physical checks put them into the printer and then use quickbooks to print the check or you might have a checkbook for example that you're manually writing the checks which already have a check number on it and you want to make sure that you're tying out the check numbers here to the physical checks that you're writing which you should only have to do the first time you enter the check because everyone after that should should automatically populate the check numbers now also notes you got the links up top so if you got two links that are indicated if you click on that you can actually go to the purchase orders that are used to and and to populate here that is a really good feature within quickbooks these links between the forms which if you've learned accounting from just debits and credits and like a classroom uh you might not have a full appreciation of uh so you want to kind of get an idea of how all these forms are tied together notice that we're not using the so if i scroll down here we've got the check number we're not using the category tag because we're not applying this check for something like the purchase of uh the telephone bill or something like that where we would just assign the category so i'm going to collapse that but instead we're using the items the inventory items that we set up and then we put them into the purchase order so the items are going to be what drives the transaction that will be impacted when we record this so we've got our list of items here that we populated directly from the purchase order and then we've got our amounts the amounts are the amounts at cost not the not the sales price this is what they put them on their at cost also note that we've got these two people here that we have the customer added because we imagined that we bought these items specifically for this customer and we want to turn around and make an invoice for them now that we have the items and this kind of gives us a reminder of that we also have the links over here that give us an indication that each of these lie items are linked we could add more to this check uh as well down here with items that are possibly not linked and so on and you could you could sort these two if you wanted to sort them uh notice that you have this billable option here that if you've used the desktop version this is one area where the desktop version I think has this kind of worked out a little bit better than the online version because you would think you can kind of check these off as billable items and then when you when you turn around to invoice Eric music I'll just test this out just to show you then then these items will pull over into the invoice but the problem is I believe they're going to pull over at cost instead of pulling over the sales price even though we're using an item so you might be used to that with the desktop version you got to be very careful of it here I'll just show you what I mean out right now but before I do that I'm going to go to the tab to the right right click duplicate another tab I'm going to pull that all the way to the left just so I can check out a couple things here so I want to go to the sales tab and just see where our products and services so if I go into a product and service here which if you were in the other the business view would be under the get paid and paid area and then under the get paid it would be under products and services so there it is under the business view if we looked at some of these inventory items notice we've got the cost and the sales price so those are different we're buying them now we're going to be buying them at the cost and then when we sell them with an invoice will be that that should populate with the sales price not the cost but oftentimes when we use this billable form in the online version it's not able to to pull over the fact that the item it's not pulling over the item it's pulling over the billable kind of component to it the cost kind of component to it so that that's a little bit a little bit wonky there or a little bit different than you might see on the desktop version if you're used to that so just be aware the other thing I want to point out is if I go to these options to turn that billable item on we went into the cog up top and we went into the account and settings then we went into the expenses and then we went into the bills and expenses and right here you see it says make expenses and items billable and then down here it says track billable expenses and items as income that means when I pull it over it's going to put it into hopefully an income account instead instead of like reimbursing like an expense type of account but it still may not pull over the actual sales price but rather the cost even though it's going to put it into an income account what we would like it to do is be driven by the item to determine where it's going to go in terms of the account that will be impacted but that's the feature that kind of tells you that that that billable thing is there okay let's close out this whole tab now I'm going to close out this whole tab and then go back to our check form the check form looks good what's this going to do well it's a check form it's going to decrease the checking account and the other side is going to be going to driven by these items the inventory account putting them on the books and then it's also going to have a sub ledger effect in that it's going to also be tracking the units of inventory because we have a perpetual inventory system set up so let's check that out so at the bottom we have the option cancel clear we can print the check we can order checks we can make this reoccurring and we can void and so on so I'm going to go ahead and say okay let's save and close it down below and then just to let you know what happens on the invoice we're not going to actually populate the the invoice yet or record it but let's hit the plus button and just imagine that we turned around and sold this to that customer which was Eric music so if I go to Eric music tab we've got this item to pull in but notice that if I pull this item in if I add this item in it puts it on there at four hundred dollars which I believe is the cost because if I was to type this in ELP it should pull in the sales price which is five hundred dollars per per unit that's the problem so we could kind of use this to to show when I put in Eric music that the billable items going to pull over but it's not like a perfect link right there because again it's not really using the item to record it it's kind of using that billable feature and so that kind of that'll mess things up a bit so be quite careful of that we'll talk more about some of the issues with that billable item later and we'll record this in the future and just show how that'll work so do you want to leave without saving I'm going to say yes I'm not going to save this yet we'll do that in the future let's go to the balance sheet now and run the report I'm going to hold control scroll up a bit we should see then the checking account is going to go down so if I go into the checking account we could check out the checking there's the check form number other side go into the split account because there's multiple line items that's why it goes to the split even though all of the other one went to the income or the inventory account there it is closing that back out and then I'm going to go back to the form the other side's also on the balance sheet under inventory so if we go into inventory then we should see that that check there it is there it is looks good movie B to the end and so notice it put it in here these are all the same check and it put it in here in multiple line items matching the line items that are in the on the the form for the check let's also go to the tab to the right right click on it and duplicate the tab so I can look at the inventory report just make sure that that ties out because we're using a perpetual inventory system so that's going to be on the reports on the left hand side and I'm going to close the bookie and I could just type in here inventory let's look at the inventory valuation summary and range to the change from 010123 let's just do as of 12 3123 I'll just say the end of the year even though we're at the beginning of the year but this is the year to date so we're at the 39976 here's our units of inventory thus far that should tie out that 39976 to what's on the balance sheet and it does that's good news if I go back to the tab to the left and I was to sort and look for my open purchase orders I'm now in the expenses tab and the expense items and we can see we have a lesser amount of open purchase orders if I look at my closed purchase orders we could see the ones that have now closed let's go to closed and then apply there's the two that I just closed you can also see those two if I went to the expenses tab vendors and then now we only have three purchase orders open if I wanted to just look at at clear the filters and I went into epiphone down here then I can I can look at the activity for the purchase orders and then the checks that is related to them if I went into a purchase order here for example I can see it's linked to the check and I can see that it is closed so that'll give me some nice activity for my facilitation of transactions with the vendors again this is stuff that is not having an impact on the financial statements so if you don't work in bookkeeping and you learned accounting from debits and credits in a textbook you might again not have an appreciation for some of this linkages within the forms but you need to get an appreciation for it because it's important on just you know the bookkeeping side to facilitate your transactions with the customer's clients employees okay let's do another one for epiphone so if I hit the plus button here and if I went into the expenses and we went to the vendors the next one is Gibson we want to do one for Gibson so I can say okay if I go into Gibson here here's our our open purchase orders let's do it the same way so I'm not going to create I'm not going to create a bill from it here I'm just going to enter a check and then it should pull that information into the check so we're going to pay it directly with the check we'll do the bills next time so we got a box of guitars that we we we requested with a purchase order from Gibson USA so if I type in Gibson USA QuickBooks is going to say hey there's two purchase orders that we have here do you want to use those we could add them one at a time like we did last time I could just add all of them just put all of them in there at once that's what we're going to do and then we can tap through this thing so that looks good I think we can keep the date the same check number is now populating automatically now for writing a check with it let's actually bring the date up to like the 15th I think that'll bring it up to the 15th and then the categories no categories because we're using the items the items of the inventory items that pulled in they're pulling in at cost we've got this one item here that we purchased specifically for our customer I'm going to click it off as billable again just so I can point out that billable item when we pull it into the invoices and look at the benefits and costs of that and so how we're going to work around that and so there is that one so let's let's going to do the same thing and what's going to increase the the it's going to decrease the checking account increase inventory and the sub ledger should be increased for the units as well so let's save it and close it check it out if we go back to the tab to the right and we've run it again to refresh it we only work with fresh stuff here just like the produce department at the local trade place Gibson I don't know what I'm talking about here it is there it is boom and we have that one there movie B to the end and then I'm going to close that out and then scroll up and go back and then the other side is in the inventory so inventory we've got two line items on the check form two line items here and so that looks good and then if we go to our report on the right the inventory valuation summary run it again we are now at the 46 868 this is the units of the guitars that we have that 46 868 should tie out to what we have here looks good if I go to the tab to the left then we can see that now in Gibson we've got the check which is now the next thing that after we got the purchase order purchase order request we paid for it with a check that looks good you can also kind of check out check that out by going to the expenses and go into the expenses up top and then I could say I'm gonna filter now by the items that are open still and now we only have the one that's still open the ukuleles diamond head one more round one more round why because I didn't hear no bell I only stop recording stuff when bells happen in my head so I'm gonna hit the plus button again and we're gonna go to the check form another time this time for diamond head diamond head your head looks like a diamond man what's wrong with you that's just how it's how it is so once again it says we're gonna add it so we're gonna add it there it is and then there that looks good so we'll keep the check number on that and then no category because the item pulled in so we've got the ukuleles now so and we're rounding it out with the ukes no one ordered the ukuleles here so no billable items we just like having some in the shop who doesn't like to have some ukuleles around laying around from time to time so what's it's going to do same thing it's going to be decreased in the checking account other side going to inventory driven by the item here and the the uh sub ledger is going to be impacted as well for the units of inventory let's save it let's close it let's check it out one more time because we've got that one more round you know run it you got to go strong through the last round go into the cash here diamond head there it is let's go back and then we're gonna go down to the inventory and once again we've got the gipson so that's we're looking for diamond there it is diamond head it's out of order it's out of order you're out of order okay okay just finish things up here you got you got to finish things up okay so then we also have over here on this side i'm going to run up the the valuation on the inventory we're now at the 469 40 for the the four ukuleles 469 40 tying out to what's on the the inventory that looks good if i go to the first tab then we can see that there's nothing open still because we've now received all the stuff from the purchase order so we only have closed purchase orders now at this point in time that is good because we've got all this we've got all our inventory we're ready to sell stuff now we haven't sold anything yet but we're on our way now that this is where the money's gonna start rolling in we're set to start selling stuff but hey on your income statement nothing's there yet you haven't sold anything not a thing and you didn't even record an expense for all the stuff you purchased because we're gonna expense them when we sell them uh in the future that's how inventory works we're gonna we're gonna put it on the books as an asset when are we gonna expense it we're gonna expense it with the invoice forms and the sales receipts forms that we'll do in future presentations so that's what we'll do let's go to the tab to the right right click on it and duplicate it and just check our numbers on the trustee trial balance so you could follow if you're following along you can check your numbers i think the best report to do that is indeed the trustee trial balance closing the boogie trial balance trustee tb not tuberculosis it's trial balance it's a good thing oh one oh one two three to twelve three one two three we're gonna run it here's our numbers if you're matching up to what we have great if not try to change the range expand the range if there's a change when you expand the range then try to drill down on it and if it's a date problem change the date that's troublesome to do in practice but it's good to do in a practice problem and uh we'll be doing the transaction detail reports at the end of the month of data input and that often helps to find any any issues at that time as well


But again, I just want to welcome everybody to our conversation this evening. I'm happy to see so many faces in the audience. I appreciate you all taking time out of your evenings during the week to be with us. I know it's a busy time of year with school happening and holidays approaching like Halloween. So I know that everyone has a really busy schedule. We're going to honor your time tonight and we're going to stick to our agenda. And before we get started, I just wanted to introduce some of the city staff and other resources that are in the building or in the room with us this evening. My name is Kathy Rodriguez and I'm from the Office of Historic Preservation. I'm the Deputy Historic Preservation Officer. And over here to my left, Shannon Miller, she is the Director of Historic Preservation. Over here we have Adriana Ziga. She is a planner from our office as well. Sitting down in Lavender is Jimena Copa-Wiggins and she is our Public Relations Manager. Sitting next to him is Orlando Ramirez and he is from District 2 Office, Chief of Staff. And over here to my right I have Claudia. Claudia Aguera is our Cultural Historian. And Mimi Quintanilla is our Facilitator for the evening. And then next to her is Corey Edwards. He is a planner from our office as well. Did I miss anyone? And Catherine Hernandez, thank you for being here. She is from Development Services. She is a planning manager, a zoning manager. So she's going to be a resource for you all if you have questions related to zoning. I also need to mention that we are going to have Councilman Tony coming in here shortly. He's finishing up another meeting. And when he arrives, he may want to say a few remarks to the audience when he gets there. Just some housekeeping. The restrooms, when you came in through the front entrance, you may have seen a yellow wreath. That is the teacher's lounge. So there's some adult restrooms there. Also, if you exit the room here and go to your left, there are some signs that will lead you to the pint-sized restrooms. So there are restrooms back there too, but they're the smaller ones, so the kids' restrooms. So just wanted you to know that they were there. We're going to go ahead and kick off by talking about the meeting, the goals for the meeting and an overview. And I'm going to hand it over now to Mimi Quintanilla. Well, now let me know if this is too loud because I have a voice that manages to carry. So it's okay, can you hear me? I still can. All right. Well, pick it up. Close to your mouth. Well, I'm worried about the feedback. Okay, first thing I want to do is want to go over the meeting goals for tonight. To also remind you that this evening's program and this evening's discussion is not about any specific neighborhood. It is about historic designation in neighborhoods around the community. I think that we have a number of people that some I know one couple came in that has a vested interest in this particular neighborhood, but they live in Leon Valley. How many people are from the Maki Park area? Oh, goodness. OK, how many people are from another neighborhood? All right. Would you like to tell me what other neighborhoods are represented? Yes, just Coven Hill. All right. Any others almost Park Terrace did witty. Alta Vista missions. All right, great. Well, this meeting and the concerns and questions and answers and the things that we're going to be going over this evening are for historic potential historic neighborhoods and applied historic neighborhoods and historic districts throughout the community. So it's not specifically about one particular. We will be able to answer all your questions. The meeting goals tonight are to present an overview of what historic designation means to you as a property owner to provide an opportunity to hear and record your questions and concerns to improve communications. I think there's there's an opportunity for the Office of Historic Preservation and the community to communicate with each other more clearly and then to learn from each other about communication and how to better provide information on historic district designation as with any meeting or in any family situation. There are a few ground rules this evening. And so the rules for this evening and I will reiterate these when we have our discussion are that all comments are good and will help strengthen the process. Because what we're here tonight to do is to strengthen the process and to strengthen communication among ourselves as neighbors and ourselves as property owners in potentially historic district designated areas and also with the city and the Office of Historic Preservation. We're also going to focus on the topic of discussion, which is questions concerning comments about historic designation. And then we're going to be good listeners. We're going to listen for comprehension and it does not require agreement. When we listen to each other and we listen to what's going on, it doesn't mean that we have to agree. And we're just hearing other points of view or different ways of interpreting the same language. And we're going to avoid talking while others are speaking and we're going to respect agreements about time in my apologies because we've already started a bit late. So we are going to more than likely with your permission run a few minutes over at the end of the commentary questions and answers at the end of the meeting. Are there any ground rules that I have forgotten at this point? Yes, please, if you would put your cell phones on this island. Also, I know that this meeting runs till 8.30 at a breaking point probably towards the middle of the meeting. We'll have a stretch break and anyone who needs to leave because you have other commitments at family or other things then that will be a convenient time for you to be able to leave without having to step over people. So we'll have a stretch break, a short bathroom break and anyone who's now cast that is recording the meeting. So that will be available also. All right, I'll turn it over to Claudia. Can everyone hear me? I'm like my colleagues. I do sing on the weekend and I do like a microphone. So I'll try to keep it from squeaking. You know that really squealing noise. So let me know if that happens. Someone back there can't hear me. All right, how's that? Got it. OK, so the hard part of this is that I can't hold my notes and the microphone at the same time. And I kind of like being in the driver's seat for a little bit.  I'm happy to see such a large turnout. It means that everybody really cares about their neighborhoods. And I hope that we deliver information to you that you find useful. Part of what I want to get across are three main points because you're going to hear a lot tonight, but if you can leave with three main points that I think will clarify. And I'm starting to categorize them in easy ways to remember. Two numbers, 30%. I think that would be a big clarification that we'd like to address tonight. I'd like to introduce another number that doesn't get spoken about very much. That's 99%. And that has to do with the design review process. And then the last one is not a number, but it's a letter. And it stands for you because we want to hear from you tonight. That's the entire point of tonight's meeting. And we also want to clarify how you are the keystone for the historic designation process in your neighborhood. So let's get right to the 30%. I know that this is a big question. And I think maybe the easiest way for me to talk about this is to say what it is not. It is not a vote. It is not leaving the decision up to 30% of a neighborhood. What it is is just a signal that 30% of the neighborhood has heard about an application to make a neighborhood historically designated. And it shows that 30% had decided that, yeah, I kind of want to hear about this a little bit more. It doesn't mean you're committed to becoming a district. It doesn't mean it's going to be designated. It simply means we want to open up a discussion and we want more information. Kathy? The next number I'm going to turn over to Kathy to talk about some more. But first I just want to lay out the groundwork by saying 99%. That's the number of applications to modify your home, anyone's home that gets approved. 99% of modifications to homes in historic districts are approved. And I'll pass this over to Kathy to explain further how we arrive at that in a minute. And just real quick, just to kind of put this number into perspective, if you think about the number of historic districts and the number of individual landmarks and the number of river improvement overlay properties that come to our office for requests when you're making changes to their properties, there's tens of thousands. And so we actually receive annually this last year, we've received about 1,400 applications. I'll move to the next slide, about 1,450 applications. And of those applications, I would say about 950 of those are applications that we review on the spot.  And then about 500 of those are applications that go to the commission to review, which doesn't really delay your process very much because if you're doing a project that has some significant changes, you're gonna be going through the permit process anyway. And so this process, the review is just concurrent with that. So the same things you would turn in for your permit, the same drawings are the same ones you would provide us so we can get you approval through the commission. So that 99% means out of that 1,450 applications, 99% of those are approved. Claudia. I'm trying to rush through this because we know you have a lot of questions and we've made this intentionally short so that we can get to some of the part of the discussion with you. But I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about what historic designation does not do. What it does not do is require you to retrofit your home. You do not have to bring your home up to some standard that the house existed in previously. You simply have to maintain the house. We also do not have any purview over the interior of your house. Whatever you wanna do inside your house does not come to OHP or the HDRC commission. Also, we do not have any say over how you use that property. It's simply an overlay to the house. An overlay meaning an added piece of information and protection for your house being historic. That's where Kat Hernandez in the back who you met earlier is our zoning guru. And so when we talk about the use of property, we're talking about whether you use your house or as in the picture, a cooperative, an art cooperative. It doesn't have to necessarily change how you use your property. It also doesn't mean your property cannot change over time. We know that families grow. We know that situations change. So you're allowed to change your house to accommodate those needs. And this is an example of, let me go back. This is what this house looked like and this is what this house looks like now with a new rear addition. And now this is about you. And I'm gonna give it to Kathy but just I really wanna quickly say you are the keystone for what happens in your neighborhood. You do get to decide.  OHP is a resource. We're here to give you information. We're here to give you tools. But ultimately you decide. Really, I just wanted to add to that that one of the things I have a little bit of a background in community development and people always ask me, what is community development? I don't know what that means. Well, what it actually means, the definition of that is just helping residents use the tools that are available to them to achieve the results in their community that they want. And those tools are the ordinances, local ordinances, review process, boards and commissions and city council. So that we are a part of those tools. We are a resource to a community who has concerns perhaps about demolition and other things that we'll talk about. The historic reservation and our office in particular are here to help you manage those changes in your neighborhood and those types of changes that come about. So I want everyone to keep in mind that whether you're historic or not, we are a resource to help you with either historic information about your property or your neighborhood or to help you with some development related questions, to help you engage with your community. We do a lot of education and outreach. So we are ultimately a resource for you all. And so that's why this meeting is so important to us because we get an opportunity to hear what you're saying to look and listen. And that's what we're here to do this evening. Many people will ask why preserve? And like I just mentioned, preservation, historic preservation really is a tool for communities who are concerned about maintaining the character. Usually you buy into a neighborhood because you just love the way it looks and feels. And so the historic preservation is a tool you can use to hold on to that. We all know that change is inevitable. It's about managing that change. And that's what this can be a resource for. Things in your neighborhood that you like, the streetscape, the landscape, the curves, the pattern of the driveways, those types of things. If you're interested in preserving those, this is a way that you can do that. Here for example, this is an example of a typical ranch dial sprawling house in the neighborhood of San Antonio. Notice it is of an era that maybe we think of being more modern, but it is historically eligible now. Also take a note of the trees. These are mature heritage type of trees, oak trees. And this is not currently in a district, a historic district. It's eligible, but it's not in the district. So I wanna show you what's going on in the neighborhood and why some of the people in this neighborhood are wondering whether they want to go to the store. This is not on that same lot, but it is down the street from this lot. It's a completely new home. I think the first thing I notice when we look at this is how all the trees were destroyed. The second thing that architects especially will notice is how the house does not fit the historic character either in size or massing. And then those are terms that architects will talk about and we will talk about as we start to discuss what historic designation means in terms of how property looks. The other thing historic designation really strives to do is to prevent demolitions, empty lots. And to us, an empty lot, the way we think of this, it's like a beautiful smile that's lost a tooth that leaves a significant gap. At this point, we wanna bring it back to you. I'm gonna turn this over to Ms. Kintania who will explain how we're going to work for the next sessions where we start to hear from you, Mimi. I'm really gonna try to listen to all of your concerns and all of your comments. And there are three main questions that keep coming to the forefront in the commentary discussion that's come through so far. And those three questions are, what are your questions about historic designation? What are your concerns about historic designation? And are there other questions that could be related to historic designation that you want answered? Maybe you're not sure. We have decided to handle the evening because there are so many of you, thankfully. It was looking a little legal house. As we planned a two-part information and listening session that we're going to be gathering. The Aama table, each of the tables and these elementary school tables have been divided up for us. So there's about six people to a table. I think there's 15 tables. There's about 15 tables. On that table, there are markers. There are what you might recognize if anyone has been in the school system recently, sentence strips. And we are going to ask that each of the tables discuss the three questions. And if there are other things that are not related to these questions that you want brought to the forefront, that you please record those. We are going to put all of those together at the end. We're going to give you about 20 minutes to discuss your concerns and answer these questions and any other questions. And then we will share those main concerns with the participants at the end, but we'll record everything. We're going to also put those up for everyone to take a look at. The second part of the session will have a short break and then we'll have questions and answers when we can address the entire public. We'll do a report out session for each table. We'll take about three minutes to do that report out based on your discussion. And then we will have everyone hearing everything, but we want to make sure to record what you're discussing. And so that's why we're asking you to please put that together on one of those long strips of paper so that we've got that accurately recorded. And those concerns and those questions will be put together in a compendium. There is obviously, since there's so much interest, there's a lot of communication that needs to be sure. The now cast is available. It's online at Google. They're recording to now cast website, of HP website. And again, we're recording what's happening in each of the table discussions. We have 20 minutes for that and each table will have three minutes to report out. We'll take a short break and then anything that has not been discussed or that you think needs to have some more time or some more illumination, some more discussion or a question that you wanna make sure gets recorded, then we'll have the questions and answers for the entire group at the end. And we're gonna be putting all of the sentence strips up so we can take a look at those before you leave this evening to make sure that we haven't left anything out. Again, the goal, one of the goals of this evening is to improve communication and to answer the questions, address your concerns and listen to your comments about historic designation.


What's going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards. I forgot to change the break title one sec We are ripping 2022 upper deck skybox metal universe champions hobby one box break number six random pack style We do the random now So you've got our 15 participants our 15 numbers of your packs one through 15 And we'll go ahead and roll it ice and go to is a reroll gonna go ahead and go seven or six times instead one two three four five Six that is Dean I down to Andrew T. We've got six times on your pack number one two three four five and six five down to three These copied on over six and six Got Dean with five Chris F7 Michael L 11 Thomas 13 Lauren E4 Robert R9 Michael R12 Richard H1 Dean I 14 Michael L 15 Dean I with six will and eight Michael L 10 Austin s are sad with two and Andrew T with three. So we got these copied over guys We'll get grab your link and then we'll get started results flaw up style copy paste alright, there you go. Let me get my Ducks in a row over here. I'm gonna hear a joke. Sure. I got fired from my new job as a bank teller The lady came in asked me to check her balance. So I pushed her over I know one through five six through ten 11 through 15 Oh, wow All right, Richard H at one. Good luck Richard master team Michael Jordan Z-Force. Nice. That's awesome I'm J action McGowan's and a Diego Jota Nice one. They're sad. Now it's a good luck here sad Gowens shields so on. There's our Marcelo at Meyer a Caleb Williams premium and Bryce young metal shredders There you go sad on to number three we got Andrew T. Good luck Andrew Roper Kenny picket Keaton slow slow this that is a cut above Garrett Wilson on the die cup. Nice one there It's a little damage. I'm gonna send the empty box and wrapper with that Andrew DJ you will a and Tiger Woods. I'll go with pack number three pack number for Lorny. Good luck here, Lauren Ria Sharapova that is a Carlin that is a Kangriffy junior intimidation nation the kid. That's when they're Lauren and Bryce young fresh foundations And number five we've got Dean. Good luck here Dean rounding out our first Brian Acuna DJ you go lele screw Anderson Johnny right Kenny picket universe and Peyton Watson Pretty solid there Dean Dean again at six Luck Dean that is a Caleb Houston nice Z-Force griffy Very nice. Congrats on that one Dean and Z-Force Uticappy and Steven Berge one. All right seven you got Chris F. Look Chris. We got a PMG. Yes We do Chris Desmond Ritter Armando Cruz shade on sharp PMG is Johan Dotson 29 of 50 on the blue Chris congrats, buddy Love that man. That's awesome. Jason. They just picked up a Sunday fun day spot. Thank you Justin or Jason and wills at all Taurus That's Chris nice set up PMG for you there, buddy. Will Emmett number eight now. Oh, yeah, dude Nice one there will picking up the Riley green. That is a metal shredder's audit Of course the Detroit Tiger outfielder top prospect forever Armando Cruz and a Bryce McGowan's fresh foundations All right, we're at to Bobby Bobby art number nine to lead a tag by low the Pettus Walker Kessler at his edge barry Smith universe a Morikawa and CJ Stroud fresh foundations and Michael L rounding us out at 10 here John Pack will zalatoris Ken Griffey jr. That is a Steven Berge wine premium And Caleb Williams all right Michael L again at number 11. Good luck here Michael Jabari Smith, Jr. Sartre Thompson There's a looking into the future will zalatoris nice Congrats Michael Malik Willis and Johan Dotson Number 12 Michael R. Drew Jones Salute Peyton Watson Jackson holiday premium and Kenneth Walker metal shredders Tom S. Now at 13 up here Tom CJ Stroud Jackson holiday strong Diego Jota Z-Force Caterina Macario Nice one there Tom Z-Force Jeremy Sohan and Kendall Brown metal shredders We've got Dean at 14 Dean at 14 Garrett Wilson Morikawa Ahmed Thompson Malik Willis. There's a Maria Sharapova universe a Henry Davis and fresh foundations Malik Willis Congrats Dean Nice one there for you buddy and on to 15 Michael L rounding us out Jordan as a spiller Coleman Aras. There's uh, 2500 degrees Marcello Meyer Very cool and a Marcello Meyer base. That's gonna do it for the break guys. Thanks again for the filth up next number seven


Now we have time for questions and answers, and I would kindly ask you to introduce yourself before asking a question, and also mention your affiliation, and probably also to whom are you addressing your question primarily to. Yes, so questions, please. Yes. Thank you. I work for, my name is Jorge Rivera, and I work for the International Dialogue and Peace Building and State Building, which is actually hosted at the OECD, within the same team that publishes the States of Fragility report. So I guess you know where my question is going. So it's interesting how we define fragility, and as a Latin American, you know, we're kind of allergic to this terminology, and I found it quite interesting to be working now on how the OECD defines and tries to rank countries or assess their, you know, current fragility. And it's changed in the past two years towards a model that tries to define it as a multi-dimensional sort of issue, covering the political, social, economic, environmental, and security dimensions. And so my question to you is, in terms of ranking countries, what do you see as the value added of this exercise? Are you familiar with the OECD model? And what are your views on this approach? And just in terms of understanding fragility as a, you know, as you can get wars, but, you know, it doesn't really desegregate sort of whether fragility can affect all sorts of countries or whether we should just focus on those labeled fragile. So I guess my last question in that sense is, what do you think of this marketplace with definitions of fragility? And what do you think its value added towards a conversation of the issues in these countries is? Thank you. Thank you. My name is Antonio da Costa. I'm currently the president ambassador to Finland, and I've been working for the president of government for almost 40 years now. Give or take some. I have questions all over. I wouldn't know how to start.  Part of it is like that. The one just said, which is, if we are going to address the issue of fragility in fragile states or fragile countries, I wonder, my first question would be, once you do that and you rank these countries by fragility criteria that not so sure how do you measure, not so sure how do you measure authority or legitimacy at what level you measure authority and legitimacy. But then it's very different authority and legitimacy in the US, Finland and Canada, and I lived in Jamaica and I lived in Africa, how authority is defined in Rio de Janeiro, for once, my city, or legitimacy of authority in that case. So it's a complicated concept, authority and legitimacy. But I would like to know what's the usefulness of this. And then, again, sometimes it's not the state that's fragile. It's part of the states that's fragile. Regions are fragile. Cities are fragile. You asked the question of the red light. In Rio, I don't stop at red lights at night, usually. But I wouldn't do that when I lived in New York and South Bronx either. So, you know, it's more complicated than that. On peacekeeping, finally. But I would like to understand the usefulness of this on the peacekeeping, which is something that I have followed more closely. I think part of the problem with current peacekeeping operations is previous success, to a certain extent. And to my way of thinking, the international community actually saw the success of peacekeeping operations in certain situations, very specific situations. And then moved to pursue peacekeeping operations in other situations in which two things were not there. One's consensus in the international community, let's say, within the UN system that that peacekeeping operation was useful and purposeful and had a mandate. Complications in getting the mandate. And, as you pointed out in the Central Africa Republic, intervention by UN member states in regions where peacekeeping operations were being pursued that actually undermined the peacekeeping operations. So I think when we look at peacekeeping operations, I think we should not lose sight of this political, let's say, background of what contemporary peacekeeping operations do. And a final comment on this. For some years, I participated on and off on the peacekeeping operations in Haiti. One thing that struck me, you're right, there are operational differences, language differences, there are a number of differences, but similar to what happens to diplomats, I think. One interesting thing that I found in Haiti at least, I'm not sure you can translate that everywhere, is that military usually have a similar procedural language. They seem to think in certain categories that actually allow them to communicate more evenly than we have expected. So certain difficulties of communication, equipment, procedures, when you get to the ground, they are simpler to solve than we would expect from outside the military, let's say, institutions. But I would like comments from all on this issue. OK, thank you. And here in front of the room. Oh, was it, yeah. OK, sorry, sorry. Thank you very much. I greatly enjoyed Graciana's eight or was it nine points. And I wondered how Lisa Howard in her looking at countries had seen the key point, the just one minute I have to hear, that economic reconstruction is not development as usual. And did Lisa and Jessica come across examples where that truth was ignored? The economic reconstruction was not the same as business as usual. Thank you. And please. Rofos, FEO. The first question is, but I was already asked before, but to David on how we would use these composite indices on fragility, particularly in context where the fragility or conflicts may be very specific to certain parts of countries. So it may not say a whole lot about the capacity of the state at large to take Colombia with its civil war that's now ending or Central American countries has used gangs controlling part of the country and destabilizing development in specific parts of the country. So how would one use that in such context if you just look at the fragility of the state at large, which may be more specific to Graciana who raised the issue of gender inequality and access to resources? Well, of course, at FEO, we pay a lot of attention to that, but it's also complex. It's not just giving women access to inputs, but do they have controlled land? Can they access credits? But also, and maybe that's interesting in conflict situation, is what information do they have to, for instance, know whether it's better to move out of the conflict zone or to stay put where they are. And it has enormous implications for food security. So what we found, for instance, with a social communication program in the DRC was that women and their families would be much better off to stay put in their areas rather than trying to move away from the conflict zone. And the way we helped them is just putting a social communication program where they could be in contact with each other to assess the situation and to see how they would decide on their situation. Of course, if they abandon the land and the household, that makes a huge difference. So that's something that needs to be assessed on a case by case basis. And then finally, and maybe that the whole panel has a view on that, so the FVO, we're looking at the nexus between the conflict and how conflict affects food security, but how food security could actually be, improve food security to be a source of peace building moving forward. And then how you would act on that both in during conflict and after conflicts. My own views on that, but I would like to hear a panel on that point. OK, thank you. Let's start with Graziana and move from left to right. Thank you. Thank you very much. First, as I said, I don't like this idea of fragility where you include conflict inside the fragility definition. I think in terms of policymaking, fragility outside of conflict is development as usual. I mean, they start from a lower base, but development applies there. What I'm arguing is that the conflict, the risk of falling back into conflict is so high that policymaking in conflict countries makes it completely different from development as usual, in part because it's development. There are countries at very low levels of development, so these countries have the normal social development challenges of any country at low levels of development. But in addition, they have to deal with rebuilding their economies. They have to reintegrate former combatants into productive activities to ensure that they do. And this is extremely, extremely expensive proposition. So in addition to the normal socioeconomic challenges, they have all these other challenges of peace consolidation and national reconciliation. So this is my answer to the issue of fragility. To the issue that you raise on peacekeeping operations, I want to, she will answer you specifically, but I want to mention something that Lisa mentioned earlier. And she mentioned as an example of the Central African Republic, she said, oh, we want to have UNDP as deputy SRSG. And this is something I'm always criticizing. Why? Because of the policymaking priorities. The mandate of UNDP is a mandate for development. So they are going to focus on the human development goals and they will focus. I mean, their priority in terms of budgetary allocations, whatever money they get, they will put it first for the development goals and for poverty and all that. And those are not the priorities I want to see in the post-conflict period. So I have a serious problem with that. I think the UN should have integrated operations, but they have to have somebody advising, as I was in Kosovo, advising Kushner as a special representative. But somebody who could deal with reconstruction outside the development framework of UNDP. So for me, this is the key. And then I come to Rich's question. And the first case of that was El Salvador. But then in this book that it's coming out in February next year, I have a whole chapter with evidence on that. The first case was El Salvador. So what happened in El Salvador was the UN spent three years negotiating this peace process. They were, it's very interesting because that's when I came into the cabinet of the Secretary General at the end of December, 1991, before Perez de Queixar left, they signaled this peace agreement between the FMLN and the government of El Salvador. This was December 31st at midnight. Six days later, the IMF and the government, six days later, ignoring completely the peace process, they signed an economic program for the next two years in which they didn't contemplate any budgetary allocation to the peace process. And they said, well, in October, this was January, in October, we are going to revise to see how is it going. Okay, it wasn't only the fault of the IMF, it's that the UN did not have economic advisors and they didn't even think of the financial implications of implementing the peace agreement. So they never called the IMF and said, look, we are going to have a few financing needs to finance these peace-related projects. So what happened was that a few months later, the FMLN, there was a very complicated calendar where the FMLN was going to do such a thing that we are going to demobilize in five churches and the government was going to start the Arms for Land program and other programs, blah, blah. But they never thought of thinking, where on earth are we going to get the resources to finance all these? So when the FMLN was going to have the second tranche demobilization, they decided that they are not going to do it and they were ready to go back to war. So after all this very painful process, they were ready to go back because the government could not start the programs. Thank you, Lise. No, there we go, on. Graciana, I remember one of your most beautiful analogies from one of your pieces on El Salvador where you likened El Salvador to a patient on an operating table with a curtain down the middle of the patient and you had the financial institutions on one side and the UN on the other side, both operating on the patient but with a curtain down the middle so they couldn't see what the other one was doing. It was Alvaro's idea. It was Alvaro's with DeSoto's idea. He's a brilliant man. I don't want to take credit for it. Oh, no, really? Okay. All right, I'll remember that. But I think part of the reason why UNDP is working with peacekeeping directly is for that reason, right? Because otherwise they're separate surgeons with not talking to each other and not communicating with each other. So I guess I, and especially in the Central African Republic which is not a typical post-conflict country. It is just not. It was never a war, a consolidated war. It's more a problem of, it is religious but it's more a problem of small bands of people, these neighborhood watch groups, nomads versus settled agriculture. It's more of a fluid type of conflict with many different problems that can't be easily depicted in one simple view of saying Muslims versus Christians which is the way it's often reported in the newspaper. And so in that sense, it's not a deep, enduring, violent conflict in the Central African Republic. It's much more a problem of development which I think that's why it's appropriate for UNDP to be a part of this picture but maybe you'll convince me otherwise. I just want to say one thing about peacekeeping troops which is we have this idea, there is a kind of a military culture so I think that troops can communicate with one another but it's very difficult to engage in military combat if you can't speak each other's languages. That's just one point. Another point is, and that's why peacekeepers can't do it and Haiti, they weren't engaged in combat, right? They're just patrolling and doing other things so it's fine, it's fine if they don't. My last point, there's this idea that European troops will be better at peacekeeping and given our experience in the Central African Republic there is, I haven't seen, and it's not just in the Central African Republic because it's in many different theaters, I don't see evidence that Europeans will be necessarily better at peacekeeping than peacekeepers from developed countries. Just my opinion, thanks. Thank you, Chesico. Great. Thank you for the great questions. I actually wanted to weigh in on this one which is an interesting thing because the USAID has an Office of Transition Initiatives which is supposed to immediately do post-conflict for up to two years and then they are supposed to transition over to the standard development side of the house so they kind of build in a midway between this and I don't know which of the other agencies do the same thing. Now, the problem is that Dacia and OTI don't hand off to each other. They like internally within US systems they don't play well with each other within a relatively small organization both headquartered in Washington. So that's like an internal coordination dynamic within eight dynamics. But so this idea of fragility, so I know those weren't directed towards me because we purposely avoid using the fragility idea but within ourselves, the three PIs on my project, we can't decide about whether we should be creating composite scores or not. Some of us want to and some of us think it's not appropriate. We wanted to do sub-regional within each country analysis of authority, legitimacy, effectiveness. So we have a picture at that sub-national to the national to gain some insight into the regional dynamics. What I think is interesting about your example in Rio, you know that you should, you just know that security wise you can't stop. But the fact that you think that you should to me is really important. It's how people kind of internalize the state. And in some countries, so the third of the people in the audience who didn't raise their hands, they don't have a state that they've internalized. I say it's authority that they've internalized to even think that there's a should, there's no pause about stopping. And we think that's a really important dynamic of authority versus legitimacy. And we want to be able to speak about those separately. Thank you. No, David. Okay. So I got two or three questions pretty much all related. I think when I do another presentation like this, what I'll do is begin with my results and end with the index because typically what people do is they glom on to the deficiencies in a single rank index and neglect the results, which we're basically hoping that you would find compelling and would stimulate some discussion. I mean, the fragility trap is a problem. Why are we fixated on single rank indices when the evidence that we derived from the use of time series single rank indices shows that there's a significant problem that's not going away. Now, with respect to the OECD, there was a time in which we were feeding into the NCAF and they were using our data as a source of information to rank countries. That stopped a few years ago and I found that the OECD is essentially emulating our work in trying to disaggregate state fragility and claiming it to be unique and novel and new. And I've written a terse letter to the OECD basically just telling them that far from being unique and new, it is essentially a replication of work that already exists, including our own. And so I think when you have a major organization like the OECD just now coming to grips with the need to diversify our understandings of fragility, I think that's problematic, speaks to a basic unwillingness to learn about how to unwrap fragility. There's institutional lag between understanding the nature of the problem and responding to it. I'd say up to 10 years, which is how long our project has been in existence, long before the Fund for Peace introduced its fragility index. Now with respect to the utility of a single-rank index, I mean, obviously if you don't think it has utility, then you're not the right person to be using it. The end user determines what is of value to them and they pay for that service for you to provide a particular kind of data source in a way in which you can use that information. It does have strategic value. It does highlight countries at risk at a single glance. Some strategic decision makers find that of great value. Of course, you want to disaggregate that to determine operational relevance and how you might fit in and responding to these particular problems within a particular fragile state. Of course, a single-rank index is not gonna give you the nuance you need to understand sub-regional dimensions of conflict and fragility. Of course it's not. But why should methodology be the sole determinant of how we should evaluate a particular project? It means you look elsewhere for your kinds of information to complement that overarching strategic assessment. That's precisely what we did on behalf of the European Union which said we're interested in sub-national conflict, Kosovo, you name it, regions within Eastern Europe, parts of South, South, South-Sahara Africa which are technically not part of any particular country but overlap between them. You create a new methodology for evaluating fragility but you derive some coherence between that methodology which is essentially dynamic or event-driven database analysis as well as stakeholder analysis with the structural database to identify key drivers of fragility. There should be continuity between the three main sources of information that you developed. So let's not kid ourselves, single-rank index isn't gonna give you a lot of information but it's I think a necessary preliminary step without which we would not be able to amass that time series analysis in order to determine whether or not there's a fragility trap out there. One year, one offs done once a year, limited perhaps utility for certain individuals. You do that over 15 years, you see a significant problem that is arising that it's not going away, namely the fragility trap. The World Bank so far has commented on the fragility trap but it's just hypothetical. We now have clear evidence that such a beast exists and it isn't equivalent to conflict-affected states nor is it necessarily affecting those states that are deeply mired in poverty, it's a combination of factors. If you wanna know more about how we disaggregate that and provide nuance and detail, yeah, profile a country. Let's go to town and detail that country but have some continuity and coherence between the overarching structural features of that country and the sub-national elements that contribute to that country's fragility. Okay, so with David's final comments, we need to close this panel. I would invite the audience to join me in giving the final applause to our great panel.


I suffered some severe hearing loss about 15 years ago and then I really hadn't considered using hearing aids. I think my problem is typically age-related and is in cafe and restaurant. I have the problem of talking to people or listening to people or hearing people sitting right in front of me. If we're together, the whole family, I find it difficult to hear what one or two people specifically are saying. I have been wearing hearing aids for about two and a half years. In my day-to-day life, situations like cafes, environment with a lot of people. In my job, when I'm in groups, it's challenging. With the hearing aids in, there's definitely a marked improvement. Even though we have quite a lot of noise around the table with music, I could clearly hear the persons when I was talking to them. I could actually hear the person sitting on the ear that I have the worst hearing in. And conversation was pretty easy. And there's a very big difference, first of all. My voice isn't as metallic. The sort of atmospheric noise and the white noise of the background was less intrusive and a little bit lower than it might normally be. It's very natural when I got them on, I don't feel them anymore. It was really a big difference. You kind of almost forget that you're wearing them.


Harvard Law School, the most prestigious law school in America, which is part of Harvard University, another Ivy League University located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.