on the politics of misinformation. And I think we all can agree in the fact that this is a very hot topic at this moment throughout the world. Everybody in the media, in politics, in governments, social, civil society, we are talking about fake news, misinformation, post-truth being the word of last year or a couple of years ago. And I'm just going to make a brief introduction. Then we'll go for questions here. But then I want to engage the audience here at the forum in Sao Paulo. And also, those people who are following us online, they can use the hashtag LA18, which is LA18. I'm David Alandete. I'm the managing editor of El País. I'll be tweeting what we are saying through my Twitter account with the handle Alandete. And then you can address questions there, too. So I can ask them to the audience here. And as I said, my handle is at Alandete, ALA and DET. And then from there, after the initial discussion, we'll be taking questions. Now, I wanted to frame this discussion in the fact that fake news and propaganda is not something new. We've seen it for many years. I always remember when I'm about to talk about misinformation and fake news, about that famous newspaper cover of Dewey defeats Truman in the United States, which was actually fake news. Fake news printed in the front page of a major newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, because Dewey was the editor of the Chicago Tribune. And he was so convinced that he was going to win, but he didn't. And I worked in the US Bureau of El País for some years. And at the National Press Club, we had this photo of Truman playing the piano and Lauren Bacaldi, the actress reading the newspaper, Dewey defeats Truman. Something that didn't happen. Many examples come to mind in the international arena. Like, that claim that Al Gore invented the internet, which he never made, or how George Bush dodged the draft in his country. Fake news, too, coming from the Democratic campaign in 2004. But what changed? And what are we facing in Latin America and the rest of the world nowadays? I think we are seeing an industrial machine that feeds fake news throughout democratic processes that has effects. And I'm not claiming that this has effects. I'm claiming that the UK Parliament is investigating if this fake news had an effect in the Brexit referendum, which is something very traumatic in Europe. The Spanish Parliament is investigating if fake news had an effect in the Catalan crisis these past months. And we at El Pais reported on this and found massive activity of fake accounts interfering in this crisis. And the same in the United States with Donald Trump. So with this idea, industrial size and effects on democracy and democratic process, I'm going to introduce the panelists here. We start with Esteban Burriz, who is a senator from Buenos Aires in Argentina and who has served as minister of education in his country. We have Yajin Park, who is the chair of the Infolusion Zero Foundation and founder of the DQ Institute. We have Leandro Machado, who is a Brazilian political scientist and who's a co-founder of COAS, a consultancy firm that advocates for sustainable development and the political movement agora. And we have Maria Cristina Frias, as a member of the board and columnist at the Folha Group. And, well, Folha just turned 97. It's a very well-respected newspaper and a reference for journalists throughout the world. So welcome everybody. So I was talking about democratic process and what politicians can or cannot do regarding fake news and misinformation. So Esteban, from your perspective, you're an elected official. Is this a cause for concern? Like, when you think about running for office again, do you think you're vulnerable to misinformation, to fake news attacks in this industrial level? First, to frame the answer, I would like to add an example to the ones you gave, which is Kevos. He said, lie, lie, lie, something will remain. And I think it shows, I think it strengthens the idea that it's all about leadership. How leaders convey what they want to pursue and how they face power, how they look at power, and how they look at government. I think fake news can have an effect and have an effect. But after decades of populism in my country, we had to face a regime. And at the beginning, our party was not seen or perceived as a party that could beat the old regime, in a way. And in many ways, I think the changes that are happening within the population are what are driving the difference. And they are pushing a change towards truth. And you can see that not in the presidential election that we won two years ago or two and a half years ago, but in the election, the midterm election where there is a lot of misinformation, but a lot of a different way of looking at politics, of involving people. Because social media can be a threat, but it can also be a tool to approach and get closer to people. We have been working very hardly on getting close, on working on explaining very clearly what are we going through. And so we were able to win an election, even though we were in a process of putting the economy on stage after decades of having a deficit and having to bid that, in some cases, to raise taxes. And all of that in an environment where the country was not really still growing, people were voting more on the hope that something had really changed and there were parts of something bigger that was happening in the country. You're mentioning populism and how populism can be linked to misinformation. And it's something that, beyond Argentina, we've seen in the international arena. And this actually gives way to the question that I wanted to address, which is like, with this rise of populism, what happens when a populist and a bully who feeds fake news comes to power? You're an expert in children's education and how children can be protected online from these threats.  What can we do to prevent this as a society in a whole? We just published a recent study of how young children are exposed to the cyber risk. We look at the 29 countries and how 12-years-old children are using online. And surprisingly, we have a very consistent result.  So it's actually showing that the significance of the cyber risk among the children's. We are not talking about teenagers. We are talking about young children. And actually, it hits really harder for the ITC developing country who are actually experiencing the rapid digital transformation. So there are certainly the dangers for the children and what you just described contribute more to the children, for sure. So what we have to do is a really fast intervention and education side to ensure that children are equipped with the right discernment and critical thinking skills based on the value. You mentioned about the leaders who are talking about bullying others. But real leadership has to be rooted in the moral authority. And then we have to actually teach children how to behave online in an ethical and safe and responsible way. Moral authority, it's a great point because we can agree that politicians or leaders have always had moral authority that it's somehow receding in this international crisis that we're seeing with the rise of populism. And this is a threat to Western democracy. Not only in Europe, also in Latin America, we've seen it more with Hungary, other elections, the Brexit referendum. But we could say that moral authority and due process strengthen democracy, right? And I wanted to actually to jump to Leandro, because you're an expert, you've researched democracy a lot. And with this rise of populism, fake news, misinformation, is democracy really at risk? Is the democratic process really losing ground? And I'm actually thinking about the rise of an illiberal state that has role models outside of the European Union, Latin America, North America sphere of influence. Yeah, David, indeed I believe that democracy is at risk. Because if you think about democracy, democracy is a system that we humans design and to live in society. And if you're talking about humans, I just read MIT article that was published last week stating that it was made by three scholars of MIT stating that humans, not bots, spread false news more quickly. Humans, not bots. So we are talking again about humans. And when it comes to politics in the same study, the amount of false news spread, the politics was the largest number of false news spread in this. They studied over 3 million Twitter users for two years and tried to track all the false news. And they discovered all that. So yes indeed, we are at risk. And the work like Dr. Park is doing, or even the role of free media is in the utmost priority to fight that scenario. Free media. You were talking about how the media is under attack. And I'm glad to have Maria Cristina here. Because we've seen how reporting has turned into a risk activity sometimes. You can publish something, and then you will have a world leader or an elected officer saying, your fake news, you don't have my truth. I'm going to actually bypass you to address my followers directly. That happens not only in North America, also in Europe and many other places. So other people, Maria Cristina, claim that actually this is a golden era for journalism, that our job is more necessary than ever, because fact checking is on the rise. So what do you think? Is it a bad or a good time for the media in this context? Maybe both. Because we already have so many problems, so many issues to deal with. But as you said, David, there is a distinction between fake news and distorsed news. News that maybe sometimes people call fake news. Those news, those information, that are only those that I don't disagree. So for me, this is fake news, like Trump does. But I think people are going to get used to this. It's a learning process. As you said, maybe it's me. Let's see. Sorry. It's a learning process. I think we're OK now. Sorry. The professional media that has a criteria to publish things, it's a source. I think it's on, yeah. OK. So I think professional media that has a criteria to follow before publishing things is a source that people can appeal to. And well, taking from what I said, Leandro, I think there is a risk indeed for democracy. But I also think that electoral courts shouldn't punish or try to protect too much the voters. I don't know about the other countries, but in Brazil, the electoral court tries to be too protective. And I think this is a learning process. Voters have to be under many influences and learn how to deal with it. Yes. And try to decide what is best for him. But what about the public interest? What about that? I'm just going to throw this question out there, and then any of you can answer. But OK, we have to respect the voters' independence, and we don't have to patronize them. Either at the media or at government.  This has happened in Europe. And this has happened in the United States in the presidential election. Like there's a case here to be made for like, actually, you can manipulate groups of people. So what do you guys think? Is this also something that can be prevented with education? Or what types of actions can we take? There's a certain difference between fake news. It is fake news when it's made on purpose, by a new purpose, or to earn easy money, or to political manipulation. So this is fake news, and this has to be banished. But not the only information is that with those that I don't agree, if you see. Stella. I was going to add a point that I think comes up from what Leandro was saying. That is, I think we are learning that democracy is not only voting every two years. Democracy is getting involved with the government. It's government of the people. But it's not government because you voted who's going to govern you.  And so I think as a society, we're learning that. And I think populism has helped to do that. And I think fake news is also helping to do that.  I think the involvement of all society in democracy is, I think, one of the biggest parts. And I've seen that in Argentina. We started a movement to get private sector more involved in politics and has been very successful in getting people to what I think democracy has to be, which is something where you color it through your life. You give some back through government action. And then go back to the private sector. And this involvement really breaks out this idea that used to be used by the political leaders, which was it was kind of a club. The politicians were like a club. And I think several countries still have the club. Actually, you raised a very important topic that I want Leandro to address. It's like, is voting everything that there is to democracy? Because we've seen in Spain recently, in October, a crisis where a part of the capital on people wanted to vote on independence. And this was less than 50%. But they said voting is democracy. And then there were a lot of fake news fitted from some Russian channels and other outlets. And many political scientists and experts were saying voting is not everything to democracy. You cannot put everything to a vote. You cannot put women's rights to a vote or immigrants' rights to a vote. This has to be protected. So what's your opinion on this? Yeah, of course. In that case, we can have the dictatorship of the majority that's awful for any society. And I think that fight, that war against false news or even misinformation, has to have multiple approaches. Education, of course, is one of that approaches. Free media, but also more improvement in studies on behavioral science and so on. Because otherwise, we will have that kind of society of the last century that thought voting every two years or every four years or five years is the only thing that you have to do in a democracy. And people are willing to participate more. Of course, they have all these tools nowadays. You have Twitter. You have Facebook. You can spread your word. You can make a video fighting against some public policy. So they are willing to participate. And if we are stick it with this type of democracy of the last century, it will fail, of course. I think it is also important why this is actually spreading this way. So I think the fake news, this information, whatever information, misinformation, we just called it, let's say, fake news. Why is it really the bad? Because it shapes a people's perception and people's worldview towards their own circumstances. And what the Twitter study shows is that fake news actually spreads much faster and much deeper and much wider than the true news. So they are performing the true news because it's much more the emotional provoking. And it's actually made it much more with the deliberate effort to convince people. So it's how technology is currently is shaping is that it's also creating the filter bubble. So when users click one news, they are hooked with the fake news. And then they're going to get the more and more fake news to be recommended to them. Because that's how technology has been formed up. So the way it has been designed actually gives this unintended negative consequences. Actually, it impacts on children very much. Because there is another study in 2016 in Stanford showing that the children and youth are particularly bad at detecting the fact from fiction. Then they have a hard time distinguishing what is the news and advertisement. And then they're looking at what is the high-ranked news in the Google rather than what is the credible sources. So this is actually what has been done. And then it's impacting on children's news and the voters and everyone's, the world views. So it actually affect the vote later on. But it's actually grooming that way. So we have to be aware of how this disinformation and fake news has been groomed. This is a really good point on the generational gap that we have too. Because we can claim that 10 years ago, we didn't have these devices or telephones. This is like when we wake up, the first thing we do is we go online and then algorithms filter the information that we get. And then there are news that jump to the top. And they can be news from Folia or from El Pais or from the New York Times. But they can also be news from outlets that have an agenda behind them, public outlets, private outlets. And this type of literacy teaching children who are gonna be the deciders of the future, what is news, what is not news, is very important. So Maria Cristina, I wanted, before we open the room for a little debate, is technology making journalism and its main task more difficult nowadays or more, or easier? We've been working much more. As you said, we wake up with the news and we have to cover everything 24 hours. It wasn't like it was before that we were worried about the edition the following day. But we have to deal with a duopoly. And this makes everything more difficult, certainly. All right, let's take questions. I have some questions already lined through Twitter. As I said, we have the hashtag LA18 and we'll get some questions after we take some here from the audience. So please, the gentleman there. I'm a little bit preoccupied of the situation of the media and I wanted to ask Ms. Frias. I used to work in the media some years ago and the financial security of the press is in question now and I wonder if the press is still able to fight with the strengths it needs if it's battling because of the difficulties it is having as a business. And also when you see social media and then you compare it with what the, let's say serious press is publishing, you get the impression that the media is no longer focusing on what is relevant but more on what is popular. And what is being discussed in social media is actually influencing a lot what is ended up in the first page of the papers. So how do you manage to still provide information and opinion based on facts and not on what is just being popular on social media? Yes, thank you for the question. Well, this is always a debate on newsroom, in newsroom because at the same time we have to publish attractive news, sexy news, but I think at some groups like LPEs and Folia, we know that the best way to act is to have credibility. It's our richness, it's credibility. So we are always worried not to put this in danger. And yes, the financial problem is financed is a problem sometimes, but we have to find other recipes and we are trying to do this. We have a good situation at our group, fortunately, but it's always a target. And I will add that we have to do this and we have to be attached to serious news, to our criteria to follow the news and to protect our credibility. Yeah, I think, and actually the rest of the panel to weigh in on this, like how important it is for the democratic system to preserve a press that is free, sustainable, independent. Is this a matter of concern to you, for instance, Esteban, the situation in Argentina? I think there is, we had to unveil a system that was creating fake media, even populist create fake media and so they have their own papers and there was the whole system that you had the traditional papers that are very objective and there is free media in Argentina, but they created these other papers that could compete and flow, they have almost no readership but they get a lot of money so they can use social media and so we had to basically unveil it first and then start to basically break it apart. But I think it's a concern and I think it's something that doesn't have really a solution because this idea of involvement also creates very immediate responses and sometimes the fact-checking makes that some of the traditional media is coming like a little bit behind and so we need to look at the effect of social media and technology and the immediacy that that brings to news, especially to when you're governing and trying to maintain this open and honest system. There was a wave of solidarity with many Argentinian publishers in 2012. There was a very targeted attack against independent media at that time. Jejun, from the point of view of education? Well, I want to take at different angles because in Korea, I think it's unlike most of countries in the States, the portal is becoming a filtering system for the news. So for instance, in Korea, Naver is the number one, the portal in the news, actually the news portal. So I work with Naver to actually filter the fake news and provocative news for about the five years. And one thing that we found is that the way that was filtered, the way that presented in a portal actually linked with the revenue in the media company. So they're inevitably tried to be very fast and try to be reactive, not reactive, proactive in promoting provocative news to get the more clicks. So with this economic ecosystem, the free media and a lot of media's are bound to have or not really the accurate fact-checking system and behind. So I think there's a more whole ecosystem has to be worked together, not just the media. And also the portal and the social media has to feel responsibility in promoting the more correct news. Let me address a point of great concern for journalists and media companies here, which is what the social platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Google also can do in order to improve media literacy and distinguish what is actually news coming from independent media and what's not. And I have a little example before I go to Leandro but during the Catalan crisis that El País covered extensively for the world, we saw how in the top 10 of news, nine spots were occupied by the same type of news coming from a Russian state-owned outlet, RT, which it's an outlet that can report on whatever they want but the bias was clearly against the government in Madrid and its action. So we actually researched a little bit and saw how they were actually bypassing the algorithm in order to create more influence and portray Spain as being like, and I'm sure you all have seen this, Spain being like an authoritarian state, crushing democracy, and this was clearly biased from the center, right? So it's a matter of great concern to us. And I think Leandro, as you were saying before, this is a real threat to democracy and the political process, right? Yeah, and I truly believe that not only free and independent media is one of the pillars of our democracies, but nowadays with all this face and misinformation, false news and misinformation. It's in face with false news. Yeah, yeah, false news and misinformation. We have another responsibility to free and independent media that is fact-checking. If you take a poll that was conducted in Brazil by Idea Big Data, almost half of the people in Brazil check maybe a false news and a major newspaper or a major magazine. So the role of the free and independent media now is increasing, not only being a pillar of democracy, but also being this role of fact-check. The challenge there is that more and more there is some dependence on public money for sustainability. And when you start depending on the government to be alive, then that's it. So what we're looking at, and we don't have an answer, right? But we're looking at is how do you break apart from that sustainability from the government and make it really plural? Because I mean, you might have good leadership, ethical leadership, but the moment that that leadership is not ethical anymore, then all the media depends on the government. If this is, we're always worrying, worried about this, to be independent is the biggest start from the government, otherwise you can't publish with independence. And then if I would, I can add something. You mean financially, financially? Financially, yes, I mean both, both I would say. But if I can add something, I think it's a bit dangerous to give the task of controlling social media to the Duopoly, Facebook and Google because they are not, first of all, it's impossible to control. Secondly, they are not committed to free speech. They are not committed to checking facts. It's not their task, it's not their role. Let me add something here, Maria Cristina, because you addressed something and we've all throughout the world have been talking about Folha's decision of pulling out of Facebook very recently. Everybody was actually surprised that the major news publisher in Brazil, huge market for Facebook. And I know it because at El País Brazil, we feed something to Facebook and immediately skyrockets with a lot of readership. So does this decision of pulling out from Facebook have to do with this idea of the platform not taking responsibility? Yes, we decided to stop putting our news at Facebook in February because as you know, David, there was a change on algorithms. And Facebook is giving a priority not to the news but to direct exchange concepts between people. And this is indirectly promoting more false news. So we decided to put the sources that we were investing in at Facebook in all the sources that could be, give us more readers and have more visibility for us. And it wasn't a bad idea, we lost some visibility there, but we are still, our journalists can put their content on there. All right, so I want to open the room for as many questions as we have and I have some questions here. So I'm just gonna ask for you to be briefing the reply so we can take as many people as possible. So we have that gentleman there. My name is Belisario Contreras from the Organization of American States. Actually, my question is totally related to that panel. Fake news, now it's a boom because the amplifier, which are the social networks, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, you name it. One it or not, you will need to work with these technology companies. And actually we were discussing that last week how to work with the technology companies on fighting this misinformation and this fake news. But my question, I want to see your opinion, how should be those partnerships with the technology companies. Now we have the vision from Facebook, but actually besides that partnership, how to fight those fake news of the misinformation without threatening freedom of speech and fundamental rights of the citizens. Because of course, we don't want to, we want to make sure that there is no censorship or that media outlet is blocked by a technology company. I mean, we see censorship by algorithms, which is something that amazes me. But we had the example of posting a photo recently of one of these like me from the very old ages, like a Venus, like a little statue and it was like the image was blocked from Facebook and works of art have been blocked from Facebook. So I think maybe the question can be also, like can we teach an algorithm not to censor arbitrarily? So what do you think? I would say that again, I would go to my first statement about leadership. We make it a role, every leader in our party makes it a task to every day have a direct contact with small media outlets, for example. I mean, I speak every day with three small radios from inside the states, not from capital cities, but small towns, not because it's gonna have a big impact, but because it's a way of communicating with everyone. We make it an issue to go every week to meet with people directly in their houses through Facebook. We use Facebook to meet with them and we go to their houses. We have to break that contact. I don't think we need to partner with technological. We need to understand as leaders that there is a citizenship that is our boss and we work for them. And I think it has to do with that ethical view that Eugen was talking before. I mean, it's a moral leadership that has to change. And I think people are waiting for that. You can see that, I mean, I think in Latin America, unfortunately, and I would like to take the time to make a call for that, but we have a good example of what population can get to when it doesn't change with its Venezuela, right?  You have a leader that is coming out and, I mean, everyone in the world understands that speaking is nonsense, but still is at the leadership of his country, but it's breaking apart the country. And that's populism taking to the strain where free media has disappeared, they have been kicked out of the country, business have been kicked out of the country. So we have that example. And I think at the end of the day, it's all about the people. I mean, Lincoln said it long ago, way before we talk about fake news, you can fool some people all of them. You can fool all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. And that's still true. And so I'm very optimistic about how things are gonna turn out because I trust that people know that what's going on. And there can be some intervention, but these interventions, as David was saying, come out eventually. We know the Russian intervention is, so now everyone is aware that something like that can happen. And so they are much more careful. And I think that's the social control that social media gives us, that technology gives us, is I think the most important aspect of this. So what we need to partner more is with the truth. That's the partnership we need to build. Partnership with the truth. Can I add one more thing? Yeah, of course, yeah. I really love your comment, but I think also at the same time, we need to have a partnership with transparency. Because currently the gatekeepers, previously the editors of the big newspapers. Now the gatekeepers are the robots or some other algorithm. But we don't know what this algorithm is about. So there's a lack of transparency from the social media because I worked with some of the companies. So there is certainly their judgment call, whether it should be in or out. And that judgment call is not purely algorithm. It's actually intention of full road algorithm, right? So it is important for the media company and as a technology company work together to make it more transparent, to enable for the leaders like Esteban to have a promoting more truth and more transparency and more accountability is really, really important. That's a great point. We have another question here. In order to become a major political system and a core value of the reward, democracy has faced a lot of problems. Democracy has cost a lot of valuable, brave lives in order to become this major system we have today. And right now the whole world is discussing fake news as a major threat to democracy. My question is, fake news are that kind of threat, that huge kind of threat, or is democracy as a value vulnerable right now in the big part of the world? Tiago, fake news is not a recent phenomenon, right?  I think that the threat for democracy is that how quickly these fake news are moving and how that they are going. So that is the threat, the threat. But democracy itself is not the perfect model as we all know. So it's one of the threats that we are facing in our modern democracies that there are so many other threats that we are facing. But in this particular case, I think it's not the novelty of fake news because they are not news. But is the, you know, how quickly they move, how that they are.  Germany is about to fall down because the far right is on the rise. Spain is like an authoritarian state like crushing democracy in Catalonia. The United Kingdom is going to break up with the rest of the union in order to, so you see like how the Western world, the democratic world is coming to pieces and who benefits from that? Who benefits from that? I mean, just like you can guess perfectly, you know, type of state, illiberal state that actually has leaders and prime ministers and presidents that have been there for ages. And that's the real benefit from this campaign. I want to give the chance to this gentleman, I think. Yeah, he was first actually, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Thank you, Philip Hauser from ANGIE. You said that not everything is up for voting so there are fundamental rights and the question is if truth is not a fundamental right. We know that free speech is a fundamental right but maybe the right to truth. So the question is to what extent is it feasible to prosecute fake news? So to have a legal system that is capable, even if not going after 100%, but that somebody who uses fake news for clearly illegitimate purposes and not related to honest mistakes, which are possible, can be prosecuted? What experience do we have? What are the dangers? And would that not be an important tool for our democracies? Anybody, can we prosecute fake news? There was a saying by Benjamin Franklin that said anyone that is willing to give a little bit of freedom for more security doesn't deserve none of the truth. As a politician, I prefer to have fake news than a limit to expression. I prefer free speech. I prefer freedom of saying whatever you want to say even if it's fake because if you leave the judging of if it's bad, it was a bad intention or not, it was intentionally saying a lie or not, then you're starting to limit the freedom of speech. And I think that's the biggest threat we have today because what they are betting on is fear. And that's the biggest problem. We have leaders that are betting on fear instead of on the potential of the people. And that's what's creating all these movements. So I think we do not have to fall to that idea of limiting freedom of speech. We have 10 minutes, so we're gonna have that question get. I was curious to know what you think would be a viable arbiter of the truth. It's easy to throw out the expression fake news and everything falls under that category. That's the problem. There's always an element of fakeness out there. It's getting to the truth that is really the important thing. And in a democratic system, information flows more freely and therefore you have more opportunity to find the truth. But I think the institutions we've relied on to find that truth have themselves broken down and are no longer capable of doing it as well as they did in the past. And I'm talking about the very large network news organizations who actually talk about the falling apart of Italy. So it isn't like some conspiracy out there that's saying all of a sudden this is happening. It's a catastrophe. It's a lot of people feeding to this fake news. And so we don't have good institutions anymore. And I just wanted to know whether you think the same and whether there are some solutions out there. Institution crisis, for instance, Leandro. Can you just repeat, please? I think what he meant is if we have gatekeepers that were actually in charge of telling you this is truth, like the major network, CNN, NBC. Now there's a situation of crisis there and who can be a good arbiter of the truth? And if this institution crisis is affecting the democratic system as a whole, so. Yeah, I'm kind of with Esteban here. I think, of course, we have a clash of values. And I'm in the position of giving the people the power to define what is good or bad for themselves. Not someone saying this is not what you supposed to be reading right now or you don't have to rely on this. Because if we take those spools that I just mentioned even in Brazil, almost half of the population know where they can go to fact check. So they don't have to rely on a judge to say, no, that's bad, you don't read that. So I'm more pro of freedom of speech, no judgments, but of course some kind of tools to avoid some international influence or even commercial or other endeavors in the sense. I think there's something very interesting in what Maria Cristina said before and that affects your question too. And there are some questions on Twitter about this which is emotional truths, like what you're willing to believe because you're on the right or on the left and you're more prone to believe in this politician or the other one. So I'll introduce a question that we have on Twitter and maybe you guys can jump to it too. How to combat these emotional news? People who are already willing to believe something before it happens. I mean, that's a point that you raised before, Maria Cristina. Again, I think how to deal is having a decent education and let people be under these influences and decide what to believe in. I think about this and that's why I think we have to support and the business community should think about this, to support initiatives that help children, especially children and teenagers to learn how to discern from the news, what is credible and what is not, to see from where, what are the sources? I think Dagen can elaborate on this, right? I want to echo what the audience say. The trust towards the government, media companies are all the more low these days. And what you describe as nowadays is like World Wide Web is like a wild wild west. We are having all kinds of unfiltered and censored information in the internet. And what has been, the algorithm has been designed is for people to see what they want to see rather than what they need to see. So they tend to believe what they feel like to be believed rather than they don't believe what is really need to be believed. So related to education, what you say about the discernment, a lot of people usually thinking about only about the fact checking, whether this is fact or not. But sometimes I think it's more important issue is that we have to actually teach children about the value, what is right. This information is promoting the respect towards the people, to the community. Or is it actually promoting the hatred? So it is, I think we have to go one step further than just fact checking. Is how this whole our ecosystem, information ecosystem is fostering about the truth which is containing the value plus the cognitive skills. So we have to actually evaluate both rather than just putting the weight on the defect. I think that distinction between what's a fact and what's a value and what's of value. And I mean, that is like actually a really good strategy in order to teach children how to distinguish between misinformation and what's not misinformation. Esteban? I would say not only children, also adults, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, I think it's important to call out these, you know, leaders that are using fear. I mean, we need to trust people more.  At the end of the day, it's about people trusting and building that trust through the call out of those that use, you know, the idea of the enemy of hatred, of fear, to build walls, come out as messianic leaders that can solve every single problem. I mean, we came out in Argentina that was completely populist and unveiled a lot of problems and said, we're not gonna solve them in four years, no? And we're not gonna solve them alone. We need all of you guys to participate in this change that the country is gonna go through because it's a cultural change. And I think it has to do with that kind of leadership. Honest, truth-rule, transparent, but also very, very concerned about making the more, the most of the potential that people have in changing their own lives. So we need to trust them that they can do it. I wanna take a last question that we have online through Twitter with the hashtag LA18 and it's what happened for journalists and politicians to have the lowest trust in society nowadays? And I think it's, I mean, you see some polls and it's true that the prestige of those two professions have fallen a little bit. I mean, I think it's true because we really didn't do a good job. I mean, if you look at the last years I'm not gonna talk about Argentina because it's the item that I know the best but for the last 100 years we had a country with a lot of resources and we, I mean, leadership basically was not able to deliver and they started hiding the truth behind fake news, behind populism, behind trap media and not free media. I mean, a lot of things that had happened for these 100 years. And I think today, and that's why I'm so optimistic about the changes is it's not because a party change because it's not gonna be our party that's gonna change. A change has occurred in society and I think sometimes we need a huge blow to change and hopefully the blows we are having in the world will help all of the world to change at the stage. I think, I mean, just to wrap up it's good to have people from some different backgrounds and I think we've learned some things today and that's great and I think as a conclusion I just highlighted three ideas that I want to share with you and then we can finish the session. One is like how populism and fake news usually have been coming a long way until reaching this point. How education, not only for children also for adults and news literacy is very important. How algorithms and news platforms have also a responsibility to help news publishers do what they have been doing independently which is actually fact check and add value to what's the fact. So thank you very much. It was a pleasure and let's keep enjoying the forum. Thanks. Thank you.


Cool, I think we're gonna get started here. So thank you everyone for coming to the Kubernetes deep dive So this is a session about working with a global team and also with a global community So we have some representatives here from IBM and AT&T to talk about how it's worked with their distributed team So people in the audience. I'm guessing all of you work in a globally distributed team Like two time zones three time zones Anybody four time zones? Wow, that's it's tough for meetings, right? Yeah So I'm Emily Hoganbrook as you probably guessed for me being the only girl up here I'm an advisory software engineer at IBM. I work with Bob and our team stretches across the US and China And I have a great panel here. So let's get started with some introductions. Thanks. I'm only my name is Matt McEwen I'm an associate director at AT&T and I help lead our community upstream development for OpenStack on behalf of AT&T's integrated cloud platform and I'm Andy Yacasic. I'm a senior systems engineer at AT&T and I I was instrumental in actually in launching the team that Matt now leads and I work with one of our working groups that we initiated a little bit less than a year ago called the large contributing OpenStack operators or LCOO Which is has a global, you know globally distributed membership And I'm also part of the product working group and I have you know been working with well Distributed teams for probably 20 years My name is Bob Hansen I As Emily had said I work for IBM and I've worked on a variety of systems management related products over You know IBM offerings over the last 20 years and I have to say out of that 20 years I can't remember a team that I either led or worked with it wasn't distributed, right? They've been all over the planet. You know as Emily mentioned the current team We have members in OpenStack, but we've had you know members in Europe Brazil You know just rattle off your favorite countries wherever any kind of technology development is doing now And we've had people that have bumped into that most recently. I'm working on the OpenStack stuff I primarily do the continuous integration work for the the ZVM operating system Cool, so let's get started with some questions I think the the first question is how do you build that team camaraderie with a globally distributed team? You know what do you do for for team building exercises like trust falls are a little bit difficult across continents, so Andy you want to start? Well, you know, it's it's it's not always globally distributed, too when you when you ask that question, I think of our our well our Community team that Matt Matt spoke of when when that was first launched that had a lot of young team members And they were you know distributed all around the United States I think it's significant to you know whether your distributed team is one where you know you have You know one or two people here another one or two people there Or if it's sort of more in clumps, you know where you have a large number of them in one place Maybe another clump in another place and in our case. It was more like the ladder Yeah, but so we did you know we had to do a lot we did a lot of deliberate things And you know since was a young team, you know We had team building exercises and you know different things icebreaker kind of the things and in our meetings And so forth to try to you know build camaraderie as you say like You know like asking somebody out to you know, what kind of shoes they're wearing and what does that say about them? Things of that nature Bob or Matt you want to chime in a Really hard problem, right? I know most of the projects I've worked on at least if when the when the people are actually within the United States or travel was actually easy like from Europe, right? We really did try to organize somewhere to meet right not not too unlike what's going on here Right, these happen every six months and most recently there was a PTG So we would find you know some you know design thing or something to rally around Right so that we could at least have lunch together You know and have some conversation that we can do and we then try to shore that up with with the basic tools That we're all familiar with you know, we've done IRC which is Effective with some groups and not so effective with other instant messaging kinds of things We've even tried to do video chats, you know There's anything to just try to make eye contact, right? It is really big to get people to kind of you know essentially Call less a little bit and so that we can work on some of those harder problems together Yeah, and that that a face-to-face is huge when you can get it and that's why you know Andy and I work together every day and and it's great to actually see him face-to-face But the same thing holds true, you know on a day-to-day basis with engineers, right? And being able to pick up the phone is really valuable to teleconferencing of course with video Because you know IRC is the lingua franca for communication an open stack, right? But any kind of if you're relying solely on text-based communication It just opens up a real opportunity for miscommunication and If and you have to keep an eye out for that, right? You almost want to within a team have intentional periodic Verbal or video sync ups just to avoid falling into that trap Yeah Just following up on what you said Matt Yeah, it makes me think because you may you know you mentioned IRC for example and when I first started You know I first you know wanted to get involved with the product working group You know I started to go out attending their IRC meetings and so forth and you know and frankly, yeah, I Was I was trying but I was no participant Yeah, it was very difficult to follow You know what really was going on why you know where what the focus wasn't so on it wasn't until I went to the product to their Their meetup their mid-cycle meetup where we you know met in person all day for you know for two days That everything clicked together and then after that subsequent to that the IRC meetings are very effective You know, but it's because we all already know You know, it's like the conversations already happened and now we're just putting down notes, you know and providing status You know, but you know when no one there are things that we still you know They're really call for more discussion Then there are you know side meetings where we'll use phone bridges and you know will work that way Yeah, so Next topic meetings, you know other than IRC and and phone You know it what works best for meetings And is it good to have a mix of of ways for people to communicate in a meeting so Bob Do you want to start with that one? So I've had actually had really good results right with with some kind of a meeting at some frequency where people try to get On the phone and talk to each other now. Obviously with a team that's partially in Beijing. That's extremely difficult, right? So so I have to say what Emily had done was actually we kind of split the pain, right? So like one week, you know, the meeting will be at 9 o'clock in the morning, you know, Eastern time You know depending on what standard time is or not and the following we would we would pick a time That was a little easier for the team. That's actually in Beijing That's a good second best to have those annual meet those those meetings at a certain frequency because you get to talk to each other Now it seems that English seems to be the language of choice for most most people right obviously, you know In a country like China the English sales might not be you know as good as you might like But we seem to find ways to struggle through that and and we're able to you know Just have a conversation right because I'll have to say you know the IRC's and the chats and the instance messaging The written word is is definitely and I'll second your point is often up to interpretation We're just the simple inflection of your voice Actually communicates more than you probably realize so we've had pretty good luck with that You know we try to do it once a week sometimes it's every other week But at least get get you know have that communication happen on a regular basis One thing I'd add to not to disparage IRC or tech space communication too much because it is incredibly valuable one thing You know like Bob and Andy were saying right we come from companies that have been doing global telecommunity Teleworking for our entire careers, so globally distributed teams is nothing new It's always been a part of the way that we all do our jobs But then the interesting thing for me coming into OpenStack and coming into community development Is that you're entering a culture where that's the only way of doing? teaming and as such from the ground up everything is organized around Distributed teams and so when your team adopts OpenStack norms and OpenStack conventions, you know the that have been laid out as you know guidelines for project teams it actually can alleviate some of the challenges that you know within AT&T or otherwise that you have with globally distributed teams So IRC for example, right? Maybe it's not the only solution for meetings, but it does a great job of Handling the challenge of folks in all different time zones working at all different hours really well Yeah, so has anything not worked well on your teams? Any any horror stories or that that time you type that thing in and somebody took it completely the wrong way I don't have a horror story. I I mean just just something is probably would be pretty obvious But in in LCO. Oh, we have you know members from all around the world Yeah, and so and as a working group, you know for us It's really not effective to try to have our meetings with IRC We've tried that sort of thing, you know, it really calls for being able to have discussions. We're a working group we're you know and so Scheduling those though is is just difficult because no matter what time you pick It's going to be very inconvenient for somebody, you know, and so we the best We're really able to do there is is to just rotate the burden So that you know, it's in not always inconvenient for the same people But it it is a problem because Inevitably, you know, you have a meeting and then some of the people won't be able to attend because it's for in the morning Where they are, you know Bob or Matt you want to The only the only horror story I would say is just in general what we mentioned before miscommunication miscommunication miscommunication It is it's it's the in my experience the biggest danger with the distributed team is just getting people off sync from either a technical standpoint or a you know communicative You know interpersonal standpoint and a lot of problems just go away as soon as you get these folks actually Like you know syncing up, you know verbally or on the phone something like that So that that's something that I'm sort of hyper aware of now As a lesson learned and that we're actively working around I Guess I can give one story of a combination of tools that didn't work out real well And I say this tongue-in-cheek right because this is I'm really am joking I was working with a team that we used to have our weekly meetings And there was one in the individual that we did have difficulty understanding I mean, it's just it's just the communication was wasn't kind of there So so what I had done was I used the combination of the tools right? So we were on that we're on the phone and then what I asked them is Do me a favor, you know, can you also type it into our instant message client that we were using at the time and He did that he was very patient But when that phone call and ended I got a phone call from him And basically I got called out because I couldn't understand his English and all that and it was just a very negative different things So the reason I bring that up is you need to be very careful Right on how you communicate things like language barriers and that sort of stuff Because you can make mistakes like that where you actually you find yourself offending somebody and that's really not what we're after You know when we started AT&T's team of community contributors it was This was a situation where you know, they were clumped and the majority of the people were Well, we're located in st. Louis and then there were smaller numbers that were in some other, you know, outlying regions and and What happened was is the people who were in these other outlying regions, you know started feeling really marginalized and Were, you know being in void, you know and spoke to me told me about you know How frankly very unhappy they were how because they felt, you know, just like they were Out outside of the loop, you know, they weren't and so we you know We had meetings as a team and to address that and and you know We made a number of decisions to be very deliberate in how we change the way we communicate it so that it would be more inclusive of everyone For example, you know because of course when you're all together in one location your tendency is going to be You're gonna want to just meet face-to-face have your discussions face-to-face. It's quick. It's easy but then you've left out your other team members and so, you know We made a point of we started setting up chat rooms so we could make make use of that That was very effective. They were everyone was in that all the time that really helped a lot You know, but we also and we also established team meetings where we used You know video conferencing and so everybody, you know was present and We used we were able to create an environment where you know, everyone could see everyone and all these things really began to work together to change the culture and Change the way people communicated Which is is actually it actually just brought things to be more in line with the way it is in the open-stack community Where everybody's so distributed so you just begin to adopt those practices. Yeah Yeah, and I'll add a story about not using any colloquial isms or You know local language at one point We were having problems with a lot of new team members always stomping on our test systems and and bringing everyone down And so we were adopting a team motto of don't be a bull in a china shop So it's a US phrase for you know, not stomping around and and ruining everything for everyone else And and one member of the team came up to us and said, you know That's really offensive. I'm not Chinese. I'm Korean and we said, oh wow We we totally did not realize that that would read as as offensive It's just a saying here in the US and she had never heard it before And so yeah, we learned after that to be a lot more careful about using those colloquial isms But let's talk now about the open-stack community So what do you think the open-stack community can be doing differently to make it? You know easier for the the team around the world to To contribute and and get more involved I can add one thing I mean first the open-stack community has been Incredibly welcoming as a rule and so I I think that it's a really outstanding place for new contributors to get involved So I think it's already starting out really well. The only thing I'd add is That you know, there's probably a small minority of folks out there that are just innately suspicious of contributions coming from large companies like like ours And you know, don't don't err on the side of being suspicious everyone who works for large companies and comes in and is contributing is at least At least from our team is coming in with really good faith trying to make a great difference in the community With the best of intentions and a lot of good work. So, you know, just Give people the benefit of the doubt Andy or Bob any any thoughts on how you'd like to see the community work differently I'll let me yeah Let me say that one of the area that you know the area where I'm focused in now is something that that the community has really been trying to nurture In particularly over the past couple of years and which is is to be to really to try to inject To a much greater extent the needs of the users the needs of the operators the users of open-stack Into the open-stack roadmap into what really drives, you know, the direction of the development evolution of the platform And so, you know to that end there's been a number of steps that they've taken You know one of them that you'll you'll experience, you know here this weekend for the first time, which is the forum and And so This is one of the things I guess I would say that you know, we're we're really trying to do better is to try to try to open up The voice of the user and there are a lot of barriers to that practical barriers that People in the community don't really Tend to think about and once you're once you're well embedded in the community you become something of a community insider You've got your nose in the mail lists and all the different things that are going on and you're aware of all sorts of things But other people simply will not be and the tools that the community uses Can be pretty Obscure to many people out in the typical business world and and so trying to tell somebody that you need to contribute Your idea is about requirements and so forth in in a text file in Garrett as is a bit of a barrier It's if it's going to take them, you know more than 30 minutes or more than an hour to be able to To just even set up, you know an environment to be able to do it You know, they're going to disengage and so these are some of the things we need to address Yeah, I've definitely noticed that with Women of open stack and the way that their meetings tend to be run versus like the tempest group meetings You know tempest is is really good about having, you know, the agendas set ahead of time and You know, we all come into IRC and have a lively discussion And women of open stack tends to do more phone calls And and do things that way More so yeah, definitely I can see the the difference between the more developer technical focused Versus the the working groups and and people who are maybe not that Techie background necessarily Even that they're very technical, but they're just not, you know, they're working in the normal business world They're not working in the open stack community world, which is its own culture So I think now we're going to open it up for some audience questions and in the theme of trying to be more inclusive and Use different ways of communicating we've set up an etherpad that you guys can go out to So it's there or I'll bring it up on the screen here If anybody wants to Type in questions on the ether pad That's one of the things you'll experience in the forum sessions to this weekend Is that everyone has every session will have an ether pad and there those are meant to be discussion oriented You know the conversation really flows from what's happening in the ether pad Can I just talk at the microphone instead cool? So one of the questions I've got we work I work for a Dutch company based out of Netherlands But we're in I don't know 12 time zones or something So we have a very distributed team and we've tried to implement things like follow the sun and When you're off hours on one region you're supporting another one You know and trying to use the environment and your infrastructure the most efficiently with open stack Are you seeing a better model for large groups collaborating globally and running the same infrastructure and supporting each other? Or is it not gotten to that level of maturity yet? So I can speak to part of that. I don't think it answers your entirety of the question But one thing that I've seen work really well and work really poorly is that whole follow the sun model, right? And I think this is one of those areas where doing things in sort of the community focused way works much better There have been times that I've worked with distributed teams where the developers on one in one time zone are not really Involved hands-on person-to-person developer to developer with the team members in another time zone There are various kinds of proxies in between them right to sort of mitigate cultural differences or Organizational barriers or things like that, right? So it's a little bit more of a throw it over the wall Just from the get-go because this that's just the way it's set up but you know again open stack is as a community project is geared entirely around developers talking to other developers and That has been really key in my experience to achieving successful follow the sun kinds of approaches where you have a relationship established between a couple of guys who can Hand off work in a meaningful way and have it continue Bob do you want to weigh in on that? I don't think I have much to add I mean today that particular question because I think what I would give is the fall of the Sun pitch right and and And I'd have to agree that that that only works if the teams actually are very you know knowledgeable of each other's technologies and And most of the cases they're not right. I mean that's just the way we structure our teams right by by locations in in the product working group actually what they've done is They know we have we have two different meetings. There's one you know There's one that's you know timed for the people basically in the Western half of the world and another one that's for those in the Eastern half of the world and so you know, there's sub teams, you know two sub teams and Why that can work is because Four times a year we all come together face-to-face and those on it really honestly those you know those intense long term You know sessions together they they set the tone then for all the work, you know That's being done in the intervening period So that everyone is in sync because we all understand the objectives and what we're working on our goals and And then of course there are you know various You know side meetings and things that still connect people but that that actually is working, you know pretty well So I think we have a couple questions at the bottom of the ether pad here to scroll down So I think there's one here about mentioning that you have chat rules to help remote people not feel excluded from the Conversations, so what are some chat rules that that you like to set up? Think we mentioned maybe like idioms not not using those colloquial isms as it is one of them Well, it's certainly basic courtesy You know and to be positive it's always I think it's you know It's certainly important to be positive about things or at least to try to express things in a positive light You know we've thought this isn't quite what you asked but you know we've also had you know Situations where you have a meeting, you know like this only it's a discussion And at the same time you're in an ether pad kind of like this in fact that's how all of the ops meet-ups work and and that actually can be really effective because the people who are Less vocal, you know and so forth. They're still putting their stuff in the ether pad or You know with somebody states something in the ether pad other people are putting little plus ones plus ones plus ones to show That they support that idea and and this stuff's all kind of happening dynamically or you can ask a question You know and put a few different lines in the ether pad for answers and everybody's just kind of voting You know and they're all this is all happening as a subtext into the conversation And it it can really work very well because you know as you're moderating you you can see The kind of reactions that you're getting from all you know in the audience And it puts everybody on an equal, you know equal level Yeah, and I'll say it doesn't have to be ether pad I know that there are a lot of different Technologies out there that let you do the sharing so we've used like box notes on our team And some of the like Microsoft Office 365 even lets you do some of that stuff with word documents or PowerPoints Or or something like that so you can really work on them collaboratively as you're talking about them If I can add on to that, you know we mentioned before how you can have sort of a clustered kind of Thing where you have a big group in one area and other groups in other areas, right? And it really takes an intentional effort on the part of the folks that are Co-located to to go out of their way to make sure everyone else Doesn't feel like they're not part of the main group, right? It's it's not it doesn't happen automatically and you know if you're in that that center of gravity You probably don't feel like everyone else is an outsider But the other folks might so it really behooves you to go out of your way And one way, you know pulling us back to the question that we Approach that recently is you know we had some folks in that location doing whiteboarding and Explaining some things to the located team and some other folks on the team were like oh man I wish that we could we could participate in that and We did we just set up a webcam pointing at the whiteboard and the guy was you know going through the exact same Conversations and it worked out really well everyone in you know in the meeting room Locally there was you know no fidelity lost and for the remote folks. They got quite a bit out of it as well So that's a very simple low-tech approach to introducing remote whiteboarding Cool have you guys used mural at all? It's a whiteboarding app. We've tried it a little bit Mostly good for like sticky notes like can ban boards and stuff like that I see that there's a question about any advice for supporting cultural differences or is it best to just just avoid culture in a team Just just pretend we're all robots right where they're at a code 14 hours a day right there there are yeah, there are absolutely cultural differences, you know that that factor in We you know Americans in particular we tend to be pretty outspoken. We tend to be pretty brash in comparison to some other cultures And so you know what I'll find as well in a meeting say within LCO We'll ask a question or you know, we'll have you know, we'll be having a conversation And if there's you know one or two seconds of silence, I I feel like I need to say something, you know I need to keep it going But we have to just sit for about five seconds or so before many of like our Asian members will then speak up They're much more, you know, they're they might say polite or you know, they don't just barge in with their comments and And so you know, yeah, as you said, you have to be intentional about all those kinds of things One thing that is really important is If the team members will go out of their way to help their remote team members That can cover up, you know a whole lot of ills, you know, a whole lot of misunderstandings If you go out of your way to help your teammate And I mean really go out of your way and demonstrate that you're working to help them They'll cut you a whole lot of slack in the future and you've made a friend and a colleague So it's another one of those things not to take for granted. It's worth going out of the way for it It helps build your team With the question on the work-life balance, do you guys use anything to differentiate? I need an answer whenever you're free versus I need an answer now Like I work in operations our QA teams in Lviv, Ukraine And there are times I'm like when I'm finishing up my day and I want to hand off work or any questions But I don't care. I don't want them to get get out of bed to answer my question. What do you guys use any specific? Ways of differentiating what you how much you need something I Think a lot of that Like if like operations, you know things can be need to be fixed like now, right? Whereas whereas development questions, you know or some question about a technology could probably wait, right? So for the operation kind of things at least we have a management structure in place that helps us with that, right? So I'm not going to call somebody in Beijing, you know at four o'clock in the morning their time because I have a question about their API Right, but if I am supporting a system that breaks down that affects our customers Then we need to run the management chain to solve that so so big, you know in some ways It's back to the cultural thing right let the management team in that country handle it the way that you know They do there right and we don't tend to interject ourselves in that kind of thing You know you do it you have to have an understanding Which again and means you have to actually talk about it and decide, you know, but you know how things would escalate, right? you know because Certainly, you know and certainly the tools really are great as far as making it possible for us to You know to for people to be you know engaged in conversations in their own time You know offline by going in and contributing a comment or what have you but then you know So there's you know things that where you might be putting comments and you know on a wiki page or something But then there's also something that you might send somebody a message about in Slack or you know or IRC You know the way in my mind and have worked it out with some others You know if it if it's really serious then you send a text message, you know And what I actually what I when you first asked the question of what flashed my mind immediately was Just a little system that my my girlfriend and I have which is that yeah She'll call I'll be in a conference call or something. So I won't pick it up But the deal is if she calls right back again, then that means it's something really important And I'm I'm gonna put my call aside for a moment. I'm gonna take hers And that's the understanding Yeah, I'll say I know our China team as well uses we chat and obviously they don't put anything confidential on there But I'll notice that that if I have a question that that needs to be answered right away And and I ping any member of the team then they'll put a ping out on we chat, you know Oh so and so can you respond to Emily's email within the the next couple hours So having having like a code that you can use in some outside chat If you really have to to get in touch with someone is useful, too and like like Andy was saying there's a We have so many different kinds of Communication tools and we probably talked about a dozen of them that we all use up here on stage And that wasn't even getting into the ones that are internal to AT&T, which we probably have another dozen and so they've just Naturally kind of fallen into a prioritized order on the team So depending on how urgent a question is you just use a different communication mechanism and like Andy Said at the end of the day if you need to get a hold of somebody faster, you just text them or call them Yeah, so I guess we'll end with an easy question. Maybe what's what's your favorite method of communication with your remote team and Bob if you want to say lotus same time, I don't Think that's probably our least favorite one around the lab That's the one that seems to work the best though And it's the one that we like the least so But that one that we're mentioning it isn't persistent So if the person isn't actually, you know logged in, you know, they lose the message So so you usually it's email, right? That seems to be the best way, right at least for me I'm gonna go for the easy crowd Please are here and say that my favorite way of communicating with my remote teams is to meet them here at the summit Them drinks, right? I That's actually something it's It requires some thought Because on the one hand, you know We all you know the milieu in which I work at least a lot of a lot of developers a lot of technical people Everybody seems to love the instant messaging tools. They just for whatever reason It seems that people don't want to communicate verbally and yet of course Verbal communication in my experience is the most effective form that we have You know, you can get something, you know communicated much faster much more effectively verbally yet yet We really don't do that very much And I'm in so I often think how how could we improve on that? You know, how could we you know Make it easier for people to do that. But of course when you communicate verbally it requires Attention and it you know it requires immediate, you know engagement and response, you know Whereas you know popping something into a chat room You could ignore that for a few minutes, you know, or what have you and then you can respond You could take your time to think about it. Then you can respond Emails the one that I actually hate the most It's it's just the bane of my life There's just a constant flood of email and just even you know sorting through it to see which ones are even You know worth answering just takes away too much of your time Yeah Well, cool. I think we're just about at time. So thank you everyone for coming and hope you have a great summit And we'll we'll keep checking the etherpad and and responding to questions on there periodically too So if you think of something later


As you peruse those, we're going to head back down to Barclay Center and welcome back in our Ryan Rucco and Sarah Kusta. Well, thanks a lot, Chris. Sarah, we talked about this a little bit at the end of the game. You know, the Nets have played incredibly well against the top teams in the NBA. And tonight they also did not have their best player on both ends of the floor, Kevin Durant. But they have talked a lot about needing better desire on the defensive end. We heard Steve Nash say that before the game today. Better effort, better focus against teams with losing records, and they have not learned that lesson yet. And tonight was another game. I mean, this was the team with the worst record in the NBA, who was last in field goal percentage, and they shot 56% from the floor against the Nets. You know, that is the kind of performance that the Nets just they want to stop having yet they keep having tonight was another one of them. And it's one thing to acknowledge it, but then it's another thing to actually address the problem and execute things in a different manner that you've went around, went about going with things. And I think when you look at a team like the Detroit Pistons, it's similar to so many other teams that are below 500 or teams that on paper don't have the record or the cache that the Nets have faced.  And of all the numbers you can look at for Detroit that aren't pretty, the one area they are second in the league in creating the most opponent turnovers. It's an area the Nets have struggled, but they took advantage. They capitalized. They were able to get early easy baskets, whether it was points off turnovers, second chance points. Have you heard me say this before is the areas where the Nets have issues with. And because of it, teams find a lot of confidence because they're getting those easy looks, you see the ball go through, and they're able to get into a fluid rhythm offensively. We saw that out of Detroit, the Nets pulled to within two there in the third quarter, but then it's just small miscues that again compound and lead the Nets to looking at another big deficit in the fourth quarter that they just couldn't come back from. And it did feel like the Nets were about to go on a run right after they beat the Clippers and then the saga with KD happened and it sort of threw off the equilibrium, but they just were not able to bring the effort they needed in these games against teams with losing records. And in the midst of this, Kyrie Irving also sprained his right index finger and Sarah, it's going to be interesting to watch Kyrie. We know it's clearly something he can play through, but it did look like it may have affected his incredible shooting prowess tonight.  And so much of the responsibility in many cases is put on Kyrie Irving, is put on James Harden in these games and in these circumstances with Kevin Durant out. However, this has got to be a top to bottom continued contributions from everyone. And that's why should anyone be panicking? No, but it's about building the type of foundation that you need for what you want to do later. And we've seen enough examples of the lack of energy to start out with with games like this that it's some point you've got to make sure that you have the sense of urgency to get it corrected. Well, we will see if the Nets bring it tomorrow night against Indiana. It's going to be a great opportunity for the Nets to get a quality win before they head on the road for a big time West Coast trip as we send it back to you guys in the studio.


Who doesn't love Derek Lewis? One of the most exciting heavyweights of our time began his MMA career in 2010, though they gained nine and two record before joining the UFC in 2014. After memorable performances against guys like Gabriel Gonzaga and Travis Brown, and even in a loss against Mark Hunt, he quickly became one of the biggest names in the sport. Following a win over Alexander Volkov in October of 2018, he took on a fight against then-World Heavyweight Champion Daniel Cormier on just three months notice. Unfortunately, he was submitted in Madison Square Garden, for the first time in his career that November. With a four-fight winning streak, he quickly rose back up the ranks, earning an interim-World Heavyweight title shot against Cyril Ghan, in which he lost by TKO last August. He's making one final push for the World Heavyweight Championship, and in his way is Sergey Pavlovich at UFC 277. For more, follow Fandu on YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, Instagram, and TikTok.