It's one o'clock on a Monday afternoon, so you are watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manoa. I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark, and I'm your host today, and I'm delighted to say that we have a really interesting discussion planned for you. We'll be interviewing Matt Barbie, who is a researcher at the Coastal Studies Group at the University, and Matt is going to be telling us quite a lot about the changes in the Oahu coastline and potentially the impacts of sea level rise. So welcome Matt. It's a pleasure to have you here, and hopefully we're going to have a really interesting discussion. You've brought along a variety of slides, but even in our background we can see, for example, here we've got Cocoa Head and Cocoa Crater, and some shorelines where we've got some salt marshes, for example, and I understand at the University you and your group actually spend a lot of time working on how the coastline might be flooded, where we would expect to see some new marshes developing as sea level is rising. But this is a pretty new technique, and it obviously has many implications for people living here, not only on Oahu, of course, where we live, but around the Hawaiian Islands as well as on the mainland. So this is a really important topic as we're facing, say, changes in sea level due to global climate change, for example, as well as it has economic reasons that we should become interested because obviously people will be living along the coastline. So tell me a little bit about what do you do? So my position at the University is looking at research and research technologies that go into shoreline change analysis, sea level rise around the Hawaiian Islands that specifically impacts the coastline and low-lying areas. So most of the areas where we have all of our population development, or the vast majority of our population development, and we're looking at those impacts and the potential impacts that might happen under different sea level rise scenarios and erosion regimes. And so by shoreline, you don't just mean the Sandy Beach, presumably it's a little bit inland. Are we looking at, say, 10 meters or 100 meters or what? It kind of depends on the location and the configuration of the coastline. Most of our interest in our study actually goes into the larger coastal area. So the whole coastal plain, which in some areas, like on the west coast of Kauai, can go all the way two or three kilometers inland. And so anybody who's living along this coastal plain, for example, you should be paying attention, because Matt's got some interesting illustrations. But I think it's a value for our viewers first to get some idea of how you actually do this technique. And I believe you brought along a few images that we can take a look at. You're using a technique called LiDAR. Can you explain to us as we look at the first image here? So LiDAR is a light detection and ranging technique. It's in this case, it's aerial mounted. You can see the plane on the slide. And it collects a single point of elevation directly below the plane. And as the plane's flying, it collects approximately 30 million points per second, or sorry, 30,000 points per second as it flies along. And therefore, you can imagine, it collects upwards of a billion points in a single survey. Okay. And presumably we know where the plane is flying. Yes. We have good control on the plane. A lot of that post-processing or processing of the data goes actually on inside the instrument in the upper right. And it gives us a whole set of data, both immediately it gives us the elevation on the land and also in the near shore bathymetry, which means the ocean floor along the coastline. You can study the shallow water topography as well as the elevations on the dry land. Absolutely. And that becomes very important when you're trying to model waves and near shore processes that happen along the coastline. I understand. And waves, of course, may become more of a problem as sea level is rising, they might overtop parts of the coastline. Is that why you're trying to study what the shoreline is like? Yes. We have researchers in our group that actually model the waves as they develop and change over the near shore reef. And as sea level rises, the estimate is that that amount of energy that's available to be erosive increases because you have more water over the reef. Understood. All right. And you brought along an example of what the data set is like after. So tell the listeners or viewers what it is we're actually looking at here. Yes. So you're looking at a portion of the south coast of Oahu. This is near Eva Beach. And this is just an aerial photo that you could find in Google. But in this case, it's a satellite image. And the ocean's down to the bottom of the image. Correct. You can see the ocean. You can kind of see that it has different colors of blue and some of the darker colors are reef. And you can see a few waves captured in the image. And this is just essentially a regular aerial photograph. Correct. This is like what you would see if you looked out the window of a plane. Now your LiDAR system, I think, is shown in the next slide. And it's for exactly the same area. Correct. This is exactly the same area of Eva. And you can see that this is actually a hill shade of the elevation data. So you could see that the offshore, the blue area, is kind of rough. And that represents the roughness of the reef. And then you can see all the structures, the houses, trees, open fields, and roads. Now many of our viewers are probably familiar with the topographic map where you've got contours showing equal elevation. How does the hill shade surface model we're seeing here differ? Well, this is a surface model. So this is actually a complete picture of the elevation. You can imagine that contours are lines of equal elevation. So if you wanted to turn this into a contour map, it would look very complex. Because the resolution of this image is one meter versus the contour. One can see the roads, for example. Correct. You can see the roads. The individual structures and houses, trees can easily be resolved. And because these are digital data, you can process them further. Is that correct? Correct. Yes. And perhaps the next image would show us a little bit of how you can go, this clearly has been worth. So here we've identified the actual features, the structures and features. So the trees, the buildings, anything that we don't believe belongs in what we call a bare earth or part of the actual topography. It is a constructed surface. So all that's turned gray. I see. And so you have to compile this kind of data set before you make predictions on where the low points are along the shoreline. Correct. Yes. So to use this in our studies, we'd like to remove all these features. And you can do that in the next image. I think we can see this is, you call it a bare earth. What is the bare earth image? So that's what we call a processed digital elevation model that looks at or is an example of just the bare earth, the naked earth without any structures or features included. You've removed trees, buildings. Trees, buildings, mostly bridges as well, but you can see in this case that there needs some further processing. And this would be the starting point presumably for where you'd say this is a low point on the coastline. Exactly. This is where we might either get waves coming on shore or presumably water rising up through the ground as the aquifer. Yes. And in a lot of cases around Oahu, we've channelized our streams. And so those streams, those canals that enter the ocean actually become the perfect avenues for sea level rise in a dating farther back into the communities. And channelized means you've dug them out, we've lined them with concrete or just expanded them. So that's the pathway that the ocean would take is the path of least resistance. Absolutely. I understand. Okay. I wonder if we've got some examples. Let's take a look at one of the next slides. And so this is a little bit different. I think I recognize Magic Island and Alamoana Beach Park here, right? And so is this the kind of product which your group would actually be generating? Does this depend on the topography or is this something else which we're seeing here? So this one is actually a historical shoreline change map. And these are all available to the public on our website. We use this, this does not technically include the topography other than it is a representation of all of the historical shorelines, all of the historical positions of the shoreline as it changes through time. And then we develop statistics based on that. So this is a separate product that we generate. And our viewers may not be able to read, but I see at the top there 1927 is the first shoreline going all the way down to red in December 2005. So you've got almost a hundred years or so of where the shoreline was and you can observe how does it change? Yeah. You can track that through time. Okay. And I guess the changes, is that what those little blue and red bars are showing us? Yes. Blue bars are erosion and the blue bars are where we've predicted or where we've mapped that there is historical accretion or the seaward movement of the shoreline. All right. So collectively where you're studying the historical changes along the coastline and then you've got topographic data to show us what it is today, then you can combine those two and get a much better picture of what actually is projected to happen in the future. Is that correct? So in our group that's exactly the next step that's happening is an integration of this 3D topography and the 2D historical shoreline change and to trying to assess what is the potential for impacts in the future perhaps identifying an erosion hazard zone. And that is a good lead into the video which you brought which is actually providing us I believe for Waikiki projections going into the future. So if we could run the video and Matt just talk us through what we're seeing here. Sure. We're looking at sea level rise scenarios mapped onto Waikiki and a very high resolution surface model. And the buildings that are painted in red are impacted by mean high water today. That means they have points that are lower than mean high water today. And then each separate color is a one foot interval. So orange would be impacted by one foot of sea level rise. Yellow is impacted by two and green is impacted by three and then purple is impacted by four. Let's run it again. But this doesn't look very good for people who are living in Waikiki. What time frame are we thinking about here? So that's where there's a political nature to science and that time frame is a very political question. We're in the science of it and so the best scientific way is to see what these different scenarios actually three foot scenario matches up roughly with about 2100. So people live today probably won't see Waikiki flooded by three feet of water but the one foot elevation change do we know what the rate is of sea level rise? Is it? Oh yes. The rate of sea level rise today and that's you can go to the tide gauges today and actually see it. They have a separate website or a webpage just for sea level rise. And so we're seeing some of the buildings in the video potentially at risk are there things that people can do to sort of mitigate against that sea level rise. I would imagine that it's the basements or it's the roads. Is that the kind of thing we should be concerned about? Yes. We should be concerned about infrastructure, all of these important things that we take for granted roads, sewage, storm drains, everything that we have below the surface or at the surface. We should be concerned about them and we should be planning for change. Okay and this sort of planning for change we're just coming up to a break right now but I'm hoping in the second part of this show we can actually think a bit more about change and how it might occur on various parts of Hawaii's shoreline but also perhaps we can talk a little bit more globally around Hawaii as well as around the rest of the world as well because this is clearly a problem where we're starting to see a lot of flooding along various coastlines. So let me just remind our viewers you are watching Think Tech Hawaii and this is research in Manoa. My guest today is Matt Barbie who is a researcher in the Coastal Studies Group at UH Manoa and I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark and we'll be returning in a few minutes time. Bye. I'm Ethan Allen, host of likeable science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world. Scientists who talk about their work in meaningful, easy to understand ways and they'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking, way of knowing about the world. You'll learn interesting facts, interesting ideas, you'll be stimulated to think more. Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii for likeable science with me, your host Ethan Allen. Hi, I'm Cheryl Crozier-Garcia, I'm the host of Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii. It's a program where we discuss the impact of change on workers, employers and the economy. So join us every other Tuesday from 4 o'clock to 4.30, we're live in the studio on Working Together in Think Tech Hawaii. Take care, see you soon, bye. And welcome back, you're watching Think Tech Hawaii, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark and this show is research in Manoa and today's guest is Matt Barby, who's a researcher at the Coastal Studies Group at the University. And we've been talking quite a bit about how you measure coastal changes here on Oahu. But Matt, during the break we had a brief discussion about how can you convince me that it's sea level rise as opposed to the ground subsiding because presumably it's all relative, right? Either the ocean comes up or the ground goes down. How do you tell the difference? Well, we have a whole network of tide gauges set up around the state at most major harbors. We also, so we can monitor the tidal and how the tide gauges themselves which are of course anchored to the island, how the islands are changing. And there definitely is, there is a spatial variability. There is a difference in the sea level. It's not all the same around the whole state. No, it's not. Can you give me an example? Where is it sinking as opposed to? Oh, we have Kauai High Harbor on the Big Island is a good example of where the uplift due to the mass of Mono Lua and Mauna Kea is actually pitching the tide gauge up and therefore they are not going to have to worry about sea level rise as much as areas of Hilo which are on the back side of that process and they're actually going to end up being in more danger. As a volcanologist, I've been out to Kapoho on the Big Island for example and quite often that the roads are flooded. So that's not due to sea level rise. That's due to ground subsidence. Correct. So there's, there definitely is there geologic processes that affect not just the whole state but individual islands and how sea level is going to impact the different islands and communities differently. But on Nahuahu or Kauai, presumably the older islands aren't subsiding as rapidly as they would be. Not as they would otherwise. No, but there are different areas in the world where you do not have to worry about sea level rise and other areas where you are going to experience sea level rise much sooner such as the Western. So it's complicated and then presumably sea level rise is a global phenomenon and it's not uniform across the entire planet. So if you're in the Maldives Islands or if you're in Holland, it will be different than here in Hawaii. Yes. Okay, okay. So we really need to see some specifics which is my cue. So let's take a look at one of the examples of the images which you brought in. I'm not quite sure this looks as if it's Kailua. Okay. And here we're seeing just part of the canal system around Kailua. And I see a lot of light blue areas. That presumably is where flooding might be taking place. Correct, yeah. So the areas that are blue are those that are being directly impacted by sea level. And so those are connected to the ocean. You can see a light blue area on the left side of the screen. Those are being impacted actually by wave inundation and some more changes in the coastal processes that are going on. This is the result of the channelization that you mentioned earlier before the break. Is that correct? The blue areas in the channel are definitely, I wouldn't say the flooding is due to the channelization, but it definitely lends itself to exacerbating a large problem. Okay, and let's take another look at a different example. Okay, and this seems to be what, Hawaii? Yeah, this is Hawaii, and you can see the neighborhood adjacent to the ocean right there where the green and the blue overlap. That's where our models show that the wave impacts in 2100 actually will then overtop the existing beach system and flood the back beach area in that neighborhood. So our viewers shouldn't panic. This is your projection for 2100, if the rates stay the same. If the rates stay, there are a lot of ifs in that statement. We have to make a lot of assumptions in order to. We don't want to be scare mongers in this. This is purely scientific data, and you're projecting if the rates stay the same for the next 80 years, this might be one of the consequences. And I'm guessing that the causeway has been broken because you took that out of your line. Yeah, that was part of that filtering and cleaning process. So although those types of structures lend themselves to hardening and might in the future become a type of mitigation effort. And I see that part of the highway to the lower right is actually flooded as well. Yeah, so that looks like it's the harbor area and the small boat harbor there. And so that area is low lying and might be in a dead end by waves. Let's take a look at another example. Oh, and this is just mentioned that you might be losing a road system. Yes, well, these are if we're this is the historical shoreline change rates for that portion of the Oahu coastline. And that's based on the historical shoreline positions. So in the past, we've had a shoreline that was significantly more seaworth than it is today. And this kind of just approximates that. And that's presumably one of the things I see when I go up to Kahuku to get some spicy shrimp. Is that the coastal road seems to that the rebuilding parts of that coastal road? Is that a risk or is that something which is it the sea level rise? Or is it that you're voting away to the beach material? All of the above. Well, in that case, the current sea level is rising. However, it's not rising at the projected rates that we're going to be seeing in the future. It's rising approximately six millimeters per year or per decade. Sorry. And that type of sea level rise is not what we're mapping here. We're mapping a potential scenario based on some global models being run. But all of your observations must be incredibly important. You know, if you were to step away from just the scientific data and anybody who's living here on Oahu around the state of Hawaii, how do they get to know about where the safer place is to build a house along the shoreline? Or what are the different agencies like NOAA doing to help us prepare this? Because it's going to happen, correct? Whether it's 2100 or 2200 whenever, this is potentially a very serious issue the state's going to have to face, isn't it? Yes, and the state is facing it and they are some of these products that we developed for them. And these are perfect planning materials. You don't plan for the most average, most occurring event in your life. You plan for those unexpected ones, for those ones you don't plan, that you didn't realize were going to happen. So we plan at like a 95% confidence interval, which means that's going to happen maybe 5% of the time. And that's what you want to build, or that's how you want to plan or generally want to plan when you're talking about infrastructure or you're talking about these large works where whole populations will be impacted by the ability to access and access. So in those illustrations where you had areas of flooding, they may not be, but we're not going to be like Venice. It might be that at high tides, we might have flooding for a few hours, several times a month or something. Is that what you would expect? That is what we kind of expect. I think, I mean, currently today we have our sea level at the tide stations is about six centimeters above the normal. And that's not sea level rise. That's an episodic event that we don't know how long it's going to last. But it's sort of a preview of what six centimeters of sea level rise will look like in the future. That kind of frequency, that flood frequency, will increase through time. And soon you'll then get to this point where you say, we have experienced one foot of sea level rise, but you'll get previews of it before that. OK, but this is a wonderful example. Viewers who are watching us live will realize we're just two days past Earth Day this year and the March for Science, for example. This must be a wonderful demonstration of how, say, the university research group doing basic studies, either with your LiDAR or studying shoreline change, producing information that has direct relevance to everybody's lives, whether you're trying to buy a condo in Kakaako or you want to drive around to Turtle Bay. This kind of dialogue, which it sounds you've established with the agencies, is really important. Science matters, for example, right? Yeah, I derive a lot of value from my job. And which agencies? You mentioned NOAA, correct? Is that the main group you work with? We work with federal agencies like NOAA and USGS, and then we work with local agencies like the Department of Land and Natural Resources and Department of Transportation, if asked, and facilities and management. And hopefully they build your recommendations into their plan for 2050 or plan for 2020 or whatever it is. Yeah, it's a process.  But making people first aware so that they have a frame of reference when they see more frequent flooding, they can actually start to understand, well, this is what we knew this would happen. Very good. But what would you do next? Where do you go in terms of the discipline of coastal studies here on NOAA? What factors do we need to further investigate? One is, I think, identifying those sections of coastline that we want to preserve as beaches. Beaches are going to be more and more scarce commodity as they start moving more landward and intersect with hard shoreline, either privately owned or valuable infrastructure. And so there should be a program set up that actually identifies these sections of coastline we want to save for our Kiki, for our generation. But this is just a wonderful demonstration of how research at the university has practical significance for our community as well as perhaps extending out to the rest of the globe. So it's really important stuff. Well, we're getting to the end of the show, Matt. So, you know, I just want to thank you for bringing some of this material. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show. Let me just remind the viewers that you've been watching Think Tech Hawaii research in NOAA. And I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark, and my guest today has been Matt Barbie. Thank you for watching. And please join us again next Monday at one o'clock, Hawaiian Standard Time for Think Tech Hawaii. Goodbye for now.


We all work really hard and we all deserve a little rest and relaxation sometimes. Welcome back and congratulations on taking one more step toward becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. I can tell you from experience that sometimes people who are really driven to succeed have a hard time relaxing. So today I've got three tips for you that will help you disengage from work and take time to relax. And stay tuned to the end because I'm going to give you a link to download our free leadership development plan workbook and that'll help you set goals for your career for the next two, five and ten years and build a plan to achieve them. I'm just starting my spring break week from my MBA program and I'm looking forward to it because I've got a few fun things planned for myself and a few things I want to accomplish for my business with my downtime from school. Now I'm one of those people who has a really hard time letting go and relaxing and I tend to get focused and gravitate looking back at work and school and those other things but I'm really supposed to be taking time to relax and rest and recharge. So these four tips I'm going to give you today can help you if you're that same kind of person if you have a hard time letting go from work whether it's because people at work won't let you let go from work or because you just stay focused and gravitate on work like I sometimes do these four tips will help you disengage from work, disengage from your office and stay focused on resting and relaxing during your downtime so you can come back to your workplace with charge and that's what I plan on doing next week getting back to school rest and recharge while still getting a few things accomplished for myself and for my business. The first tip is to prep your team before you even walk out the door for your vacation.  Make sure they know where they need to find that where they can find all the background information that might be important if they have to make a decision while you're gone. Make sure they know have all the access to the files or the cloud drive or shared servers or whatever it is that has the information they might need while you're gone. Also make sure they understand what decisions they're allowed to make while you're gone and what decisions you really want them to wait for you to come back for. Just like we talked about in our delegation video a couple weeks back it's important they understand the authority that they have as well as the responsibility you've given them while you're gone. Finally make sure they understand how to get a hold of you in an emergency and have a conversation about what a real emergency is.  The second tip is commit to a few fun activities you want to do on your time off whether you're taking a vacation somewhere or you're just kind of staying at home and I'm doing this one this week with myself this one's really important if you're like me and you find yourself gravitating back towards work and wondering where did my vacation go all I did was work on my vacation this one's really important. Pick a few things that are fun that you want to do commit to them put them on the calendar if that helps you pay for them in advance if that helps you. Just over the weekend as I was getting ready for spring break I talked to a couple friends we've got two or three activities planned a couple I'm doing by myself and a couple I'm doing with friends but you got to get yourself committed to those activities and bringing other people into the activity will help raise your level of commitment to the activity I know it helps me but now that I've got friends committed to do some of these activities this week I'm going to be committed to doing them so that I'm not letting my friends down and that we're all going to go have a good time together so make sure you commit yourself to a few fun activities on your vacation whether you're going somewhere or you're staying at home but make sure you don't just let your time float and you don't want to be wondering where your time went and why you didn't have any fun on your vacation when you were done it's not always possible but try to cut the cord while you're on vacation get rid of that electronic leash between your phone and your email so you can focus on having fun with your family and friends and doing those fun activities that you planned on doing if you use your phone for your personal life if your phone your computer for email for your personal life try to schedule some times of the day during your vacation that are electronics free that you're not carrying your phone or your laptop or whatever devices you like to use with you and if that's not possible if you want to take your phone with you you want to take pictures you want to post with social media because that's fun for you and you want to share your vacation there are a lot of apps you can find that will let you block off certain other apps during certain times of day or for certain periods of time and then you can stay focused you can you can I know it sounds crazy to talk about staying focused on vacation but again if you're like me and you gravitate back towards let me just check my email a little bit let me just check to see if I have any messages I'm just going to do it real quick and then two hours later you said I just spent two hours of my vacation answering work emails that's something I don't want to do anymore and I'm probably it's probably something you don't want to do anymore so try to cut that electronic cord cut that electronic leash get yourself away from it and if you can't leave your devices behind entirely try to use some other tools and systems to be electronics free for certain periods of the day on your vacation the last tip I've got for you today is it's okay to learn a little your vacation doesn't have to be completely frivolous you can put a little personal development in there some things you're meaning to do read that new leadership book you've been wanting to read or or that new personal development or goal setting or whatever it is you've been wanting to do and you just haven't had time to do for work but do it in moderation right work that in around your other fun planned activities that you scheduled if you're just going to be sitting on the beach or sitting by the pool it's okay read that book a little bit but make sure you put it aside and take some time for those other fun activities so there are your four tips for leaving work behind when you take some time off I know it's a little crazy to put so much thought into taking your vacation and taking time off and resting and recharge and relaxing but for a lot of us who are really driven people without without some kind of plan in place I know I would gravitate towards back back towards work I know I've done that in the past and I don't want to do that anymore so I'm using these four tips and I think if you use these four tips too the next time you take some time off whether it's a day or a week or whether you stay at home you go on vacation I think these four tips will help you stay engaged with your loved ones your family and friends and go out and have and do fun things with them instead of gravitating back towards work and it'll really help you leave the office behind if you found this helpful please like comment and share it with a friend or co-worker click on that link below in the description and that'll take you to our free leadership development workbook which will help you set goals for the next two five and ten years of your career and help you build a plan to achieve them if you have any business or leadership questions leave it in the comments below or email us at info at evilgeniusleadership.com evilgeniusleadership.com is also where you can find information about all of our coaching programs so if you're looking for a little more one-on-one training to help your sticking points and become one of the great leaders of tomorrow check that out and hit us up for a free consultation we'll be happy to do that with you thanks for watching today i really appreciate it and remember the future is out there lead the way


So, love and money. About two weeks ago, on August 20th, a despondent young man walked into the Ronald E. McNair Elementary School just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. He had an AK-47 and 500 rounds of ammunition. Fortunately for everyone, the first person that he ran into was Antoinette Tuff. Despite the fact that he had already fired upon the police. She was able to convince him to surrender. In a subsequent interview, what she said was, I just explained to him that I loved him. I didn't know his name, I didn't know much about him, but I did love him. I would like to suggest that just as we look to the ledger for profit as evidence of success, we must learn with intention and rigor to look into our communities for love as evidence of success. All of us have experienced love. All of us know that love is real and love is valuable. But unlike money, love cannot be aggregated or hoarded. We can only realize love in the context of vibrant communities. Antoinette Tuff showed this with clarity. I am here to convince you, the reason why I am standing here is to convince you that we must learn to realize love with at least as much rigor and intention as we are currently realizing revenue. This is a strange and uncomfortable goal. But I don't think we can get to where we need to be unless we can teach markets to build vibrant communities. As I see it, the goal of social capital markets is to use money to build effective organizations that contribute to vibrant communities. I like the idea of vibrancy for three reasons. Originally it was two. I now have a third. And the third is that at this conference I've heard it a lot. When people talk about communities, when they want to talk about healthy communities, they say vibrant communities. It's in Mercy Housing's vision statement. The other thing I really like about vibrancy is that I believe that it's probably measurable, but not in the ways that we normally measure metrics in this space. I believe we need to think about communities as networks and we need to borrow from the other sciences, fractal mathematics, peer-to-peer networking, the network sciences and general social networking, big data. All of these disciplines have a way to look at networks and understand activity and health. I believe that we can borrow from those networks to understand community vibrancy. And third and maybe most interesting to me is that vibrancy, I can only be valued in terms of my contribution to vibrancy. I am valuable in terms of my capacity to give and my reputation for giving. That's interesting. However, building vibrant communities is absolutely not what our markets do today. Economists tell me, and I actually talk to economists, there's a couple that answer my emails. And they tell me that the purpose of economic theories is to influence policy in order to maximize social welfare. A very interesting example that I got from Deborah Satt's book that's called Something Should Not Be For Sale, which is a fantastic book, I would recommend it, is that Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, the quintessential capitalist economic theory, it was actually created as a way to encourage fairness, to decrease inequality in the context of feudalism. So it goes with our current dominant economic theory, wealth maximization. So wealth maximization has three essential tenants. First, everything, everything, everything, everything has a price. All value can be reduced to a monetary equivalent. Second, wealth comes from productivity or the job creator corollary, which is the wealthy are de facto productive. And finally, markets grow forever. I made, when I was building this, trying to put this presentation together, because this is not the kind of presentation I normally give, when I was putting this together, I made dozens of slides tearing apart what to me is a truly asinine set of tenants. And what it ultimately came down to was that wealth maximization is killing our communities and reducing our capacity to love. In our wealth maximizing economy, if you are not productive, you are lazy. If you're not a job creator, you're a welfare queen. If you're not a bootstrapping Horatio Alger, you're a drug smuggling illegal immigrant.  If you are not a have, you are a have not. By focusing on the health of our communities, I actually believe another world is possible. Our communities are the context where we experience value beyond profit. Our communities are the only context where love is actually a currency. So let's talk about actual vibrant communities and actual interventions for vibrant communities. This is a remarkable person. I don't know her. She died recently. In 2009, Eleanor Ostrom received the Nobel Prize for economics. There's at least three reasons why this is extraordinary. Number one, she's the first woman ever to do so. Number two, she's not an economist. She's a political scientist. Number three, she got the prize for disproving the tragedy of the commons. So the great thing about this is that the tragedy of commons is a central tenant of the canon of the wealth maximizer. What the tragedy of the commons says is that if there are exploitable resources, if there are resources that individuals can exploit to their own short-term benefit that are owned by the community, that they will indeed exploit those resources, even if it's to their own long-term detriment and the detriment of their community. Eleanor Ostrom showed that this is actually not the case, and that it's entirely possible for communities to self-regulate, to self-organize. In this case, it's lobster fishing in Maine, where the fishermen were able to self-organize to find a way to fish sustainably over time. They now evidently actually have too many lobsters. Another great example is the transition network. So transition network describes itself as a quiet revolution unfolding around the world where people like you and I see crisis as the opportunity for doing something different, something extraordinary. The transition network has several different towns around the world, several cities around the world that are building self-reliance. A favorite example for me is Brixton. In Brixton, the mayor is paid in Brixton bucks. They have a local currency, and that's how the mayor gets his paycheck. In Brixton, they have cooperative food production, they have a cooperative brewery. And the picture here shows they have a cooperative energy nonprofit, where individuals buy into solar panels that are placed on local businesses that provide power to local residents. That's so blindingly simple. Why isn't that happening everywhere? This gentleman is a banana farmer in the Uroba province of Colombia. We work at Grameen Foundation inside of global supply chains, and we work at the source of the supply chain with the smallholder farmer, and we work at the other end of the supply chain with multinational buyers, suppliers, and consumer companies. What we're trying to do at the source of the supply chain is build agencies for the farmers, give them standing in the market so that they can negotiate price for their goods. What we're trying to do at the other end of the market is to convince large multinational corporations that poverty alleviation is good for their business. What keeps me up at night is not that argument, because I think that argument, if you can cast yourself out past a quarterly report, is not very hard to make. What keeps me up at night is that I don't know how to convince a corporation that they shouldn't just aim for sustainably poor, that they should aim for vibrancy in the communities that serve the planet's food. In a few moments, we'll see Van Jones talk about Rebuild the Dream. Van Jones is a wonderful native son. We're lucky to have him. Our world needs new models for advocacy, new models for community organization, and I'm very excited to hear what he'll be talking about as well. I just heard Todd Johnson talk about a virus. I agree completely. I think of it more. I'm a tech guy as a disruptive innovation. So how can we, the social enterprise and impact investing ecosystem, encourage vibrancy and resilience in our communities? I believe we must indeed embrace this fact that we are a disruptive innovation. Last year there was a conversation around whether or not this was an asset class. I'd say no, that this is a better way. While we intend to leverage the power of the market to bring great ideas to scale, we reject the exploitation inherent in the market as it is implemented today. So let's start acting like a disruptive innovation. In the early days, we built a handful of slogans to advertise ourselves as legitimate financial services. I think that worked well, but I now think it's time for us to pivot, for us to be more aggressive about the better world that we know is possible. We used to have the slogan, and sometimes unfortunately still do, do well by doing good. What this really means is make money, then tell a story about it. It needs to become do good over time, because that's what money is for, the overtime part. Social return on investment. It's about the muddiest meaningless phrase that you'll ever hear. And what it really means is measuring social outcomes is really hard, and people only actually care about money anyway, so let's reduce social return to dollars to make everyone more comfortable. What it needs to become is effective solutions to real problems, because that's actually valuable. And finally, my all-time favorite, the double bottom line, or the triple bottom line. Sometimes the quadruple bottom line. Which really means we're really serious about this social stuff, and you know we're serious because we're letting it share the most valuable space on the ledger, the bottom line. However, we can't actually measure a social bottom line, so it's not really on the ledger. But we're working hard to make social a part of everything we do. What it needs to become is no mission, no margin. There's a reason why we're here, there's a reason why we do the work. If you don't, if it doesn't matter, then get out to review. We need money to build effective organizations to contribute to vibrant communities. Commercial markets are, I believe, the most powerful and likely the most impartial engine available to us today to create the change that we need. I truly believe this on this point, I am indeed a capitalist. I don't shy away from building businesses to make money to do things. Where the wealth maximizers have it all wrong is that profit has no more inherent moral value than does a hammer or even a gun. Profit is neither good nor bad. It is, however, very, very useful. The purpose of profit is to build effective organizations because effective organizations solve meaningful problems. Engaged people and effective organizations are the constituent parts of vibrant communities. Communities are the context in which we live our lives and our communities are where we regularly realize value beyond profit. It's where love exists. Antoinette Tuft's stunning act of grace was realized by many members of her community. How can I as an individual, how can I as an entrepreneur, how can we bring that to scale? How can we build communities where Antoinette Tuft is ordinary? Thank you.


So for the last three years, I have been trying to become a better typist. Now for those of you who don't know, professionally I write for a living and I have for over a decade, basically since I got out of university. And I've always considered myself to be a fairly good typist, a fairly good, you know, typer of the keyboard. But I was trying to improve myself, I wanted to get better. So starting at the beginning of 2020, I started to do daily typing tests to try to improve my speed and more importantly, my accuracy. Because when my accuracy goes down, my typing speed really goes down because I'm not very good at ignoring typos. I go immediately back and fix them because they annoy me. That squiggly red line just makes me want to murder people. So so I decided to go right back and fix them. And that means that I type slower, right? So I wanted to improve speed. I wanted to improve accuracy. And the way I did that was by taking daily typing tests. Now I've been doing that basically every single day since the beginning of 2020. Actually, since the like the last day of 2019, I believe is the day that I started. Now I have missed a few days because of COVID or because of the fact that I didn't have power or something like that.  Now I've been using various sites. I've been using monkey type type racer, which is basically a typing racing game, which is pretty cool and a few others. And basically what I wanted to do today was kind of talk about my experience with this process and just talk about some of the things that I've learned along the way and just share with you my experience. So before I jump in, if you'd leave a thumbs up on this video, I'd really appreciate it would really help the channel. So when I started in 2020 at the beginning of 2020 or late 2019, I guess the last day, I had an average word per minute typing speed of around 70 words per minute. Now that's actually pretty good. The average for most people is between 40 and 60. So I was above average and I would say that my accuracy was around 92 to 95%. Now again, not a horrible accuracy, but even the fewest mistakes would slow me way, way down. So since then into three years that I've been doing this, I've improved my typing speed from that 70 words per minute to an average of 95 to 130. Now that is a very large spread of average, right? It's not usually when you're talking about average, you just give one number. My average varies significantly based on what I'm actually typing in the typing test. So if I am doing something short, like you'll see in the B roll, I can get up to 130, 140 words per minute. I don't think I actually got that while I was doing recording it, of course, because of course not, but I can do pretty fast on short spurts because I tend to make less mistakes. If I do a longer typing test where I'm doing it for like 30 seconds or a minute or whatever, I tend to make more mistakes and my average goes down a little bit. So I usually average around 95 or so words per minute in that scenario. When I'm doing typing tests that aren't based on just random words and I'm doing things that actually make sense, like sentences and stuff like that, I can type around 120 words per minute. So I have significantly improved my words per minute when it comes to typing speed. In terms of accuracy, that's where it's kind of been a mixed pack. I feel like I'm typing more accurately. The statistics say that I'm basically not. Now, I have a problem with my hands when I type. I randomly type wrong letters for no apparent reason.  I don't know what's actually going on there. I've never understood it. It's something that I've suffered basically since I've been typing on a keyboard, which is goes all the way back to the typewriter days back in the 90s. So I've had the same problem for a very long time. And I continue to have that problem and I have certain words that just don't do well for me. I type the word the wrong basically every time I type it. Now, I know how to spell the T-H-E. Everyone knows how to spell the. At least everybody who knows how to speak English knows how to spell the. But I type it wrong. I mixed the letters up. Some of that is probably my dyslexia acting up. I've always done that. But, you know, that's something also any word that begins with P, I can't type accurately public for whatever reason, monkey type, which is the main site I've been using for typing tests, likes the word public. And they put that in basically all the typing tests. And I can't type it accurately. I know how to spell it. So it's not me being a dummy for whatever reason. The P is in such a weird place. And even though I'm, you know, I try to do the whole type, touch type and thing, and I've gotten better at it, I still can't spell that word accurately. And that one always catches me up there. And there are several words like that. A lot of them start with the word P or the word with the word P with the letter P. So, you know, I have problems with that. So in terms of accuracy, I'd say it's a mixed bag. It does, I feel like I've become a better typist in terms of accuracy. I, the statistics don't really back that up. I went from like a 92 to 95% accuracy to a 95 to 96% accuracy. So I suppose I have improved a little bit. The low end of the average has gone up a little bit, but it's, you know, it's basically the same. Now, if you look at those numbers, you're probably saying, well, there's wasn't that much room for improvement anyways. But when you, when I make a single mistake, I stop and go back and fix it.  It's just the way that I've always typed. It's probably the way that I always will type. I have tried over the course of the years to wean myself off from that habit. But it's just something that I've not been able to do. So, you know, I'll continue to try and see if I can't get better. So the three-year experiment of doing this hasn't seen, has seen my typing speed increase. My accuracy basically stay the same, although it feels like it has improved. And what I would say that I've learned most from this is that if you're going to do this, if you're going to try to become a better typist, focus on accuracy, especially if you have a very low accuracy score. Like if you go to monkeytype.com, which is an open source, by the way, a typing test, you can host it yourself if you want. You can go there, take a typing test. You don't even have to sign it if you don't want to. Taking type of test, if you see that your accuracy scores really, really low, focus on that more than speed, because you're going to increase that speed over time as you become more accurate. That's the one thing that I've learned. And even though my accuracy hasn't improved that much, I think that because I've been focusing more on accuracy than the speed, it has helped that speed increase just a little bit, at least as part of the reason why my speed has increased, because I have gotten to the point where I can get through an entire typing test without making many mistakes or at least no mistakes at all sometimes. So focus on accuracy more than speed, you'll get to the speed. Now, one thing that I want to talk about before I end this little rambly video is that a lot of people think about switching to a different keyboard layout. Now, I have tried this, so obviously I'm an American, so I have been traditionally using the QWERTY layout for basically my entire life. And I honestly had never even considered using something different until I started to do this challenge. And I have tried over the course of the last three years, a couple of different formats, I tried Colmec and I tried Dvorak. Now, I will be fully honest and say that I did not give them the amount of time that they needed in order for me to actually switch to those layouts. But I will say this, and if you watch other YouTube channels that are dedicated solely to typing, which is if you have a YouTube channel that's dedicated solely to how fast you type, I applaud you because that is quite a niche, but that's beside the point. If you watch other people who are more expert at typing than I am, they will tell you that you don't switch keyboard layouts to get faster at typing. It's just not something that you do. You switch keyboard layouts to make it more comfortable for you to type. And if you get faster because of that, you know, that's good. But it doesn't necessarily guarantee if you switch to a different layout that you're going to get faster. And that's basically my experience. Now, like I said, I did not give those layouts long enough to kind of sleep in my muscle memory in order to figure out whether I could get faster with those. But I would say that QWERTY is where I'm most comfortable. And while I do still want to try a more ergonomic keyboard layout, I probably tried Dvorak again. I don't think that I would do so expecting to be able to type any faster than I do now, even after I were to learn that layout and kind of make that my official thing to do. So the whole layout thing, if you're going to do a layout change, what I would say is don't expect to get faster, especially at the beginning, but even as you go on, you're probably going to find yourself a disappointed if you switched because you wanted to get faster. So bottom line is that I think that my experiment here of trying to become a better typist has been mostly a success. I feel like I'm a faster, more accurate typer than I was at the beginning of 2020. So I think that that's a win. I don't think that I'm ever going to get further than where I am right now. That's the last thing that I want to talk about because I feel I've been at this 90 to 130 mark, depending on what test I'm doing for probably six months. Like it's been at least six months. I've been there. I have not seen any more improvement since then. Now I'm going to keep doing this every morning because it's basically become a habit at this point. And we'll see if I improve more than I have so far. But it doesn't feel like I'm going to. It feels like that's about the limit of my ability to type. It's about 130 words per minute is my top, tippy top end. That's basically where I am now. That's not anything to sneeze at. 130 words per minute is double what everybody else can type at least double. So at least on average, you know what I mean? So that's not really all that bad. And I can live with that.  That's just not ever going to happen. At least not with these hands. Maybe some AI will help me out. I don't know. Anyways, that's me talking about a challenge that I actually completed three years of doing a typing test and improving my typing. And it has been a experience. Let me tell you that. So that is it for this video. If you have thoughts on this whole thing, you can leave those in the comment section below. You can follow me on Master's Honor Odyssey. Those links will be in the video description. I'm also on PeerTube through TILvids. That link will also be in the video description. So if you want to watch me on PeerTube, you can do that as well. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash the Linuxcast. I'm also on kofi at kofi.com slash the linuxcast ko-fi.com slash the linuxcast. You can support me there. Thanks to everybody who does support me on Patreon and YouTube because we're all absolutely amazing. Without you, the challenges would not be anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you so very, very much for your support. I truly do appreciate it. You guys are awesome. Thank you so very, very, very, very, very much. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.