I'm going to introduce Bo Yang. As you know, we invited her. She's the executive director of the Vermont Commission on Human Rights, which is one of those commissions that is part of our government. She was born in Laos and came to the United States at the age of three. She joined the Human Rights Commission in 2015 as an executive law administrator. And her work there was in advising government agencies, such as state employees and housing providers, legal providers, social service providers, so that they could interact with Vermonters in a way that is effective and considerate and respectful and fair. And she joined in 2015 as that. Before that, her bachelor's is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her JD, that's the law degree, at the University of Minnesota. She clerked with district court. And she did private practice and volunteering with organization on my notes. The Minnesota Volunteer Lawyers Network, which provides instruction and training for lawyers and non-legal professionals serving immigrant populations. I think I did mention the implicit bias training, which I'm a big fan of. It can be uncomfortable to go through, but it is so valuable. And I'm really grateful that my school system, that my children attend, provided implicit bias training for the teachers. It's been really great in our community. Let's see. And at the end of last year, of course, she was appointed the new executive director of the Human Rights Commission. And she continues to do implicit training. She trains other people to provide implicit bias training and provides implicit bias training and works on, of course, fair housing laws, bullying, harassment, and hazing. And we are delighted to have her with us today. Welcome. It's truly an honor to have sat with all of you during lunch and then also to have a chance to speak with you today. So my hope is that I would kind of talk a little bit about my background and then share with you the work of the Human Rights Commission. And then hopefully, at the end, have a chance to be part of a discussion about sort of the future of human rights and the future of discrimination in the state of Vermont. Sound good? Yes. OK, so as was mentioned, my name is Boer. And I am the executive director and legal counsel for the Vermont Human Rights Commission. And I want to start off today by sharing with you something that I heard at a conference a couple of years ago. It was a conference on employment discrimination in Burlington. And the guest speaker that day was former Governor Madeleine Cunin. And she said something that day that has sort of remained with me ever since. She said, it isn't the case that you cannot find men who care about women's issues. You can. But when they get into office, they face many competing demands and priorities. And the issues that impact our lives as women sometimes fall lower and lower on that list. And I truly believe that. Our personal experiences and relationships from childhood through adulthood stay with us. Our travels, our communities, how the world has received us, defined us, categorized us, what opportunities that we've had or have had to fight for or been wrongfully denied from enjoying. All of these things, they inform the work that we do. In the same way that someone without these experiences and relationships may have an intellectual understanding and appreciation of the issues, they will lack sometimes a deep and profound connection to those issues. When we elect women and people of color to positions of power, affordable health care and child care equal pay, sexual harassment in the workplace, these things remain at the top of that ever-growing list of priorities. And they have a fighting chance. So it was not lost upon me that when I became the executive director in November, I was bringing to this position all of my experiences as a refugee and an immigrant, a person of color, a person with a disability, a woman, a parent, a person who was socioeconomically disadvantaged for most of my life. A couple of years ago, I think it was mentioned I was born in Laos. And a couple of years ago, I made my first trip back to my first and only trip back to that country of origin. And I was sitting at the Mankong River. This is a river that divides Laos from Thailand. And for those of you who don't know, Laos is in Southeast Asia. And it's a landlocked country that borders. You've been there? Yes, that borders Vietnam and Thailand. So I found my way back to this river sitting in front of this river with my nephews and my sisters. And it was at sunset. And the river was wide that day and very low and dry. And I could see these tall patches of green grass separating the two countries, Laos from Thailand. I was sitting on, obviously, the Laos side. And the last time that I was in front of this river was before I could form really any memories, almost 40 years ago. The secret war in Laos had come to an abrupt end. After using men like my father and grandfather and uncles to fight on the front lines of a clandestine war, which was orchestrated by the CIA, we were deserted without notice, provisions, or any means of escape. And when my uncle returned with news that the Americans had left to the country, our family faced a dilemma. We could stay in our home country and continue to fight a losing war. Or we could walk across the jungles of Laos by foot, cross that Mankong River to Thailand, and hope that there's refuge on the other side. At this point, my father, uncles, and grandfather were really threats to the Lao Communist government. They had spent years in warfare. So they knew that the idea that they could just walk out of the jungles, lay their weapons down, wave their white flags, was just not very realistic. And obviously not very safe for their families as well. So they made a decision to trek through the jungles of Laos. There were many Mung people who decided to stay in the jungles of Laos. And they stay there today. They still remain there. There were some people that were able to successfully integrate back into the community. And those who stayed in the jungles, they were once heroes and soldiers for the CIA. And we're very proud of that. They are now considered terrorists by the Laos government and the US government as well. So I was less than two years old when my family decided we would escape to Thailand. My right leg was left paralyzed by the polio virus the previous year. And I was no longer able to walk. My mother carried me on her back. My father carried supplies and rice and supervised my older sister, who was about age seven at the time, and she could walk on her own. And I had another older sister who was a couple years younger than her. She was about five. And she was accompanied by my grandparents and two aunts who were not much older than my sisters. We traveled with extended family and others from the same troop. And we traveled in large groups so that we could share supplies and support and information. But there was a crippling fear of discovery and death. Parents were pressured to give their infants opium to sedate them because babies would cry. And when some of these baby died from overdose, parents mourned in silence. These were just a few of the many heartbreaking stories of death during that journey. When our group neared the Mankong River, they strategized about how they would cross at night. Being a mountainous people, no one really knew how to swim. And so they used plastic and whatever they had as makeshift flotation devices. And they taught each other to stay to float. But there was no certainty that they would make it. And there would only be one trial. The river was heavily guarded by the Petetlao soldiers who were shooting anyone crossing it. And my mother said that she could not sleep the night before they crossed the river because of the gunshots that she heard all night long. Unlike what it was when I visited the Mankong River a couple years ago, it raged the night my mother and I crossed it. It was in complete darkness. The sky and ground lit up only by rapid fire of gunshots. And years later, my father described in detail the image of bullets propelling blades of grass before him. At the river, my mother watched the current carry people away until they disappeared. It was complete chaos. Hundreds of families crossing at the same time. Faces and bodies no more than shadows. Everyone a stranger indistinguishable. My mom called up to a god she did not yet know. She blew air into the bags, tied them up, put them under her arms. And then with me on her back, she looked ahead and determined to kick her legs until they failed her or she felt solid ground beneath her. Sorry, I've got a feeling a little bit emotional just talking about this. So I've heard this many, many times and have lived through a lot of these stories. But every time I talk about it still. We made it to the Thai refugee camps, but we were lost for days. And my father and sister believed us to be dead and vice versa. And my grandparents, uncles, aunts, and five-year-old sister had been captured by the soldiers and detained. Later, my father asked for money from an uncle who had already arrived in the United States to send money. And then he used that money to bribe those soldiers to get them out of there and onto the Thai refugee camps. We lived in the Thai refugee camps for a few months until we were sponsored by an agency in Chicago. And in America, it was a difficult adjustment for my parents. They had post-traumatic stress disorder. They described hearing cars backfire and thinking they were in the war again. They slept on the hard floors until they got used to mattresses. And once we lived in villages with extended families, here we were separated from them by hundreds of miles. We lived in Chicago's poorest neighborhood, prostitutes loitered the street in front of our high-rise, and my father was robbed and beaten in the park's once. One of my only pictures for my childhood is of my father holding me next to my two sisters. And in the background is an old stained mattress and window frames with cracked paint. And I share this story because, one, that's my only picture that I really have from my childhood. But also, I know now as a parent that when you see cracked paint, it is signs of lead. When public assistance was insufficient to support a large family, my parents went to work as laborers and machine operators and later farmers. All nine of us lived in a three-bedroom apartment before my parents bought their house for $64,000 in South Minneapolis. And our neighborhood was made up of refugees from Southeast Asia, African-Americans, and Mexican immigrants. Then slowly, the neighborhood started to change. People of color moved out to the suburbs, and then white people started moving back into the city. It now became a trendy and nice place to live. And without doing any work on their home, their $64,000 house became valued over $300,000. We went to public schools. Growing up, we shared a small set of school supplies, a single packet of pencils and pens for all seven of us. And at the beginning of the school year, we each received two outfits, which had to last us the rest of the year. I wore winter coats that was donated from the school. And for Christmas, my parents wrapped up free toys they received from a charity for us. But it was still really nice, really wonderful. When it was time to go to college, I studied for the ACT using a book I borrowed from the school library. I didn't even know preparatory courses were even available. And even if I did, I probably would not have been able to afford them because they're very expensive. And I went to college on scholarships and financial aid. Then I went to law school and clicked for a really great judge who had been a former EOC senior attorney. I went to work at Central Minnesota Legal Services in Minnesota, and then I taught at a community college and practiced law part-time before moving here to Vermont. In the same way that my family's socioeconomic status and our immigration story has impacted the way that I see the world, so really has my sex and my gender identity. I grew up in a very patriarchal culture in which men played very dominant roles in the family. At large gatherings, men ate first and separately from women. The practice of requiring dowries at weddings meant that there were extremely high expectations for daughter-in-laws, expectations that did not exist at all with sons and son-in-laws. Women were left out of important family discussions and decisions. Interestingly, within my nuclear family, we did not ascribe to those norms and practice. My mother was a strong and opinionated woman, sometimes too much so, and she happened to have a more stable job and so she worked a lot. And by default, my father ended up being our caretaker. He cooked, he cleaned, he went to our parent-teacher conferences, and pretty much raised us. It was an interesting dynamic to observe my parents act out gender roles that were different than the cultural framework they existed in. And in many ways, this gave me permission to question my identity, my place in this world, and to confidently confront discrimination and startling statistics. And I just wanna share some of those statistics with you, particularly as they relate to judges and lawyers. So in a recent survey of lawyers, women and minority judges scored lower on measures asking whether they should be retained than male or white judges. They were significantly more likely to be rated not adequate. They had lower ABA, which is American Bar Association ratings, even after controlling for education, race, gender, political affiliation, and prior experience. While 80% of white men said they had equal opportunities for advancement, only 63% of white women said the same thing. 59% of men of color and 53% women of color. Half of all women lawyers, about 49% of white women and 51% of women of color, reported that credit for their contributions was stolen by somebody else. And women lawyers of color were eight times more likely than white men to report that they had been mistaken for janitorial staff, administrative staff, or court personnel. And that last statistic has actually been a reality for me. I don't know if some of you remember Karen Richards, she was my predecessor. And for those of you who don't know, Karen is a white, able-bodied, and she's about five, six, or five, seven. I hope I don't misrepresent her height. We're sensitive about that. And she and I were going, so I worked at the Human Rights Commission as an administrative law examer before becoming the executive director. And so Karen and I were on our way to a meeting about a case that I had just really resolved and really proud of too as well. And we were going to a building that was a secured building. And Karen and I went in there together. And so when you go into this building, it's secured and the security guards are supposed to take your phone if you are a non-attorney.  So we go in there and the security guards want to take my phone, but they are willing to let Karen keep hers. So then I'm like, oh, I'm an attorney. They're like, oh, okay, okay, great. Very nice communication, but clearly some difference here. So then we go upstairs to our meeting. There's an assistant at the front desk and she welcomes us and there's two sign-in booklets. One is for attorneys, the other is for non-attorneys. And she says, oh, sign in. And she points to the non-attorney book for me. So I'm thinking, oh, I see the book that says attorneys. And so I'm like, should I sign in there?  And Karen goes, yes, we're both attorneys. And so, okay.  They've put the booklet for non-attorneys away. So all that's left on the counter is the booklet for attorneys, which is the booklet I signed in under. And now there's a different assistant at the front desk. And I'm getting ready to open the book, find my name and sign out. And then the guy stops me and says, oh, you must have signed in under the other book. Okay, so yeah. So three times, I had three different people make an assumption that I was not an attorney. Had I gone to that meeting all by myself, I might have thought maybe it was something that I was wearing that day, right? And had Karen gone to that meeting by herself that day, she wouldn't have noticed anything. But we had this benefit that day of comparison and how we were treated differently by three different people, even though we were dressed similarly and were both attorneys. And that was really, it was fascinating. And recently I was at a mediation and the other attorney that was there asked me if I had brought anyone with me that day. So said no, I'm the executive director and I speak for the agency. And he was really puzzled by that. And then later when we were just talking naturally, he found out that I was an attorney or the legal counsel for the agency. And then he said, wait, you don't litigate the cases yourself, do you? I was like, yeah, I do, it's me, I do that.  And I said, well, the mediator knows because at the end of my name is Esquire, right? So he's like, oh, okay. That whole exchange was very friendly, very innocent. But it did leave me questioning. If I had been a man, whether he would have ever asked if I was there by myself or if there was someone going to come and help me make some decision that day. I also wondered if he had been a woman whether he would have asked me that question. I don't think so. We know the society has an implicit bias against women, women who are confident, ambitious, strong, and competent. These characteristics, they don't make, these characteristics make men more likable, but they don't necessarily make women more likable. We have seen studies and surveys that have shown that even when people rate women as strong, ambitious, highly qualified, they still don't choose them for the job. And often as women, we're sort of stuck in this really difficult ambiguous area where if we try to be like a stereotypical man, it backfires because we're not feminine enough. And if we try to be feminine, it backfires because it looks like we're not competent or qualified and so forth. So it can be a really difficult, narrow path to navigate. These biases, these implicit biases are true, not just for women, for people of color, for people with foreign sounding names, for people with disabilities as well. I mentioned earlier that I had polio when I was younger. My right leg is shorter and smaller than my left leg and I walk with a crutch and a brace.  Although that doesn't really count because I downhill skied in Minnesota and we know that's not real, okay? I have yet to downhill ski in Vermont and then I can probably count that. But you know that until I share that. So I've never asked for a reasonable accommodation, although now as an adult, I know that I've received them from my teachers. I just never made a formal request for them. They gave them to me. And a few years ago, I took an implicit bias test. Okay, Harvard does the implicit bias test and if you haven't done it, I would encourage you to do it. I took an implicit bias test because I was interested in knowing at the time I was teaching at a community college and I was interested in knowing whether or not I had any implicit bias because as a teacher, you have a lot of discretion. Sometimes students are late with their assignments or they miss a class and you have the discretion to decide do they get to make up that assignment? Do you deduct points or don't you? And I wanted to make sure that I was being fair, right? So the first thing I did was try to not be defensive and to question myself and to go, hmm, I'm curious about that. And the most interesting thing that I found out when I was doing that implicit bias test was that I, in fact, have a bias in favor of able-bodied people. What? What? I have had polio my whole life. I'd been a person with disability my whole life and I thought, this is shocking. How is it possible that I could have bias against people in my own protected group? And when I examined my life deeper and really asked myself questions about it, I realized that I have spent a lifetime denying my disability and denying an identity of being a person with a disability. And so, of course, I had developed this bias against people with disabilities in favor of able-bodied people. And that is really important for me to know because that means I have a blind spot. Just because I am a person with a disability did not, that did not make me inherently more sensitive to people with disabilities and I have to recognize that. And I have other blind spots. I'm straight. I'm cisgender. I don't have any mental health issues yet. Asked me, this job is really hard. Asked me in a few years. Or in the middle of the legislative session. And while I'm a person of color, I'm not black. People are not consciously or unconsciously afraid of me. And I get to navigate this world on afraid of the police. I'm from a two-parent household. Two parents who were incredibly resilient, supportive, positive, and completely unlined on my educational goals. So I know that despite all of my experiences, there are many experiences that I have not had. And as the head of an agency that is charged with protecting Vermont's most vulnerable, I have to be willing to confront these blind spots without being defensive and on a continuous basis. So what does all of this mean for the work that we do at the Human Rights Commission? It means that I promise, not just you guys and my staff, but all the people of Vermont that my personal and professional experiences, it means that I have an unwavering commitment and dedication to the work that we do at the Human Rights Commission. And I wanna spend a little bit of time sharing with you the work that we do and our mission. So the mission of the Human Rights Commission is to promote full civil and human rights in Vermont. The commission protects people from unlawful discrimination in housing, state government employment, and places of public accommodations. And when we think of places of public accommodations, we usually think of stores, businesses. But it also includes schools. It also includes hospitals. It also includes roads. And it includes prisons. So it includes a huge gamut of places. Any place where the general public gets to go and receive some types of service or benefits, that definition would include that. These statutes that I mentioned prohibit individuals or entities from taking adverse action against people in protected categories based on their membership and one or more of those protected categories. We have four statutory mandates. We have to enforce the laws through investigations and litigation. We have to conciliate disputes, pre and post investigative reports. We have an obligation to educate the public by providing information, referrals, and trainings. And we advance effective public policies on human rights. And that's what I'm really busy doing during the legislative session. Our investigators, we have three of them and they are attorneys. And then their responsibility is to conduct neutral investigations of complaints of discrimination. And then they make legal recommendations to myself and the commissioners who are appointed by our governor. And during the course of the impartial investigation, the investigators seek to resolve complaints through conciliation. They identify cases that are suitable for mediation and in cases that cannot be resolved through conciliation or mediation. They do a legal analysis and factual finding and they make a recommendation in an investigative report after reviewing the evidence in the law and that goes in front of our commissioners. I sign off on those reports and our commissioners have these monthly hearings in which they hear from both sides. They read the report and then they make, they vote. They vote on whether or not there are reasonable grounds to believe that discrimination occurred or no reasonable grounds to believe that discrimination occurred. If they vote no reasonable grounds to believe discrimination occurred, the case ends there. And if they vote that discrimination did occur, then as the executive director, I have six months to try to settle that case or come back to the commissioners and ask for permission and advise them whether or not we should litigate this case. We are an agency that is very small with limited resources and so we don't litigate every case even if we find reasonable grounds. What we take into consideration is one, the merits of the case, but also the likelihood that it could settle and the likelihood that we could win and also does this case have the chance to stand for something important in the state of Vermont? So these are the things that we're considering when we're deciding whether we should litigate a case or not. I mentioned earlier that the Human Rights Commission is also charged with increasing public awareness of the importance of full civil and human rights for each inhabitant in the state. And it is within these roles to ensure equal justice and equal opportunity and equal dignity that we speak across the state of Vermont and provide training to individuals and groups about their rights and responsibilities under state and federal civil rights laws. We have a lot of trainings around implicit bias.  We do trainings around bullying, harassment and hazing and fair housing laws. And fair housing law training is so incredibly important, especially in the state of Vermont where rentals are scarce. And we have a lot of landlords who are individuals and who are not in the business usually of renting. And so they lack the information and they lack the ability to hire attorneys to give them information about the law. We often come across those landlords and so training is really essential for them because otherwise they are not getting those kinds of trainings about fair housing laws. In 2018, we did over 37 trainings to over 800 Vermonters. We trained employees and managers of the state, law enforcement, community members, victims advocates, private employees, housing providers, individual landlords, private and non-private attorneys and service providers of all sorts. Some of the highlights of the work that we've done at the Human Rights Commission in the last few years include a claim that was brought by an individual who was deaf. She had gone to the hospital and she had never been provided an interpreter for the days that she was there. She filed a claim against the hospital and settled for a substantial sum of money and it resulted in significant policy and practice changes impacting the rights of all patients, not just patients who were deaf. In another case, a state employee who was experiencing hostile work environment because of her race, who was hearing the N word on a regular basis, whose colleagues and managers really didn't know how to address when those comments were being made. She filed a complaint to address that discrimination. She received some monetary relief and the agency agreed to training. But what was really important about that case is that it was the impetus to change some laws this year around how discrimination claims are settled. So oftentimes, we don't realize and the complaining parties don't even realize that bringing such a claim can have really long lasting impact on other people's lives as well. Even people outside that protected category. The Human Rights Commission has also done several cases involving people with mental health issues who have been segregated in prison systems. We've had several of those cases in which they were segregated for prolonged periods of time and we've done some high profile police profiling cases as well. There was a case involving an undocumented immigrant who filed a claim at the Human Rights Commission against the department of motor vehicles when he applied for a driver's privilege card and they contacted ICE and based on the way that he looked. And it resulted in significant policy and practice changes at the DMV and had larger implications for fair and impartial policing. So for the last 30 years, the Human Rights Commission has been chipping away slowly at an unfair and unjust system by working to hold people accountable and liable after they discriminate. I think that the law is an effective tool to force cultural shifts, but effective is not sufficient. It is not a sufficient tool. When I became the executive director, it was a tumultuous time in our state and our country and we find ourselves deeply divided. In Vermont, students with disabilities are three times more likely than students without disabilities to be suspended. African American and Native American students are two to three times more likely than white students to be suspended. A Johns Hopkins study showed that students suspended just one time in grade nine had doubled the risk of dropping out. Other studies have shown that disciplinary removal increases the likelihood of contact with the juvenile justice system by three fold. And other studies can drop out rates to a greater likelihood of incarceration as an adult and higher poverty rates. We saw the news coverage of a beloved legislator resigning because of racial harassment down in Bennington. We saw the African American kids who came to visit in Stowe being forced to leave because they felt that Vermont was unwelcoming and unsafe. And at the Alks Club, the Muslim girls who were honored guests that day were asked to leave by a staff member who presumed them to be rowdy uninvited high school kids. Nationally, we know that there are many hate crimes and hate incidents happening across the country.  Again, Louisiana, they were struck three times more often. In North Carolina, two times more often. In Houston County, Alabama between 2005 and 2009, prosecutors struck 80% of black jurors. Employment discriminations cases face a great, great barrier compared to other civil cases. Plaintiffs who bring employment discrimination cases only prevailed in pretrial motions 4.23% of the time. That's compared to 22.23% of the time in other cases, non-employment discrimination cases. Of the 4.23% of cases that went at the pretrial stage, the courts reversed those victories 54% of the time versus only 11% of the time of defendant victories. If a plaintiff in an employment discrimination case is successful in making it to trial, they prevail only 20% of the time versus 46% of the time in other civil cases. If they win a trial on appeal, courts reverse them 42% of plaintiff trial victories versus only 8% of defendant victories. It has become an impossible feat to win an employment discrimination case or any discrimination case. But yeah, discrimination is prevalent. We see disparities in our schools, in our places of employment, in our housing. And I knew, coming into this position, that we were not going to successfully eliminate discrimination by winning one litigation case at a time. That was just not going to happen. I was recently sitting on a Planned Parenthood roundtable and I noticed that the discussion there and the focus has been shifting. For years, I think the agency has been working to advocate for women's right to choose and they continue to do that, especially now more than ever. But the discussion of the focus is also addressing inequities around what causes unplanned pregnancies. I think that is an important discussion to have. In the same way, discussions around women's rights have to incorporate a deeper dive into issues that impact women of color. There has been an ongoing battle between women of color and white women in terms of women's rights and I think it's time to address that head on. It is no longer enough to react to discrimination. It is time to engage in a movement to prevent discrimination. And at the Human Rights Commission, that is our vision and our goals moving forward, is not just holding people accountable and liable, but having a discussion with the many great people that live in this state about how do we prevent discrimination from happening. My friend, Ellen, shared a proverb with me and I'm sure I'll get it wrong. She said, you can spend all of your time saving people at the bottom of the river who are drowning. At some point, you gotta make your way up the river to figure out what is happening.  I don't yet know what we're going to find, but I am really grateful to be here today and to be part of this group and hopefully this is the beginning of having a discussion about what causes discrimination and how do we prevent it from happening. Because I know how to address it once it has occurred, but how do we prevent it from happening in the first place? Thank you.


In our token transportation, the Minister-in-charge, Rotimi Amici, has met with the Finance and Advisory Unit for the construction of the Cano-Maradi rail line at the Nigerian Embassy in Berlin. Amici said the meeting was to seek ways to speed up the process and commence construction of the project. It was held with the representatives of KFW, IPEX Bank of Germany, who are seven, as an advisory in partnership with the African Finance Corporation for the Cano-Maradi rail project. Amici said the export credit agencies could come to Nigeria and become part of the process to ensure everything followed their recommended practices and avert hiccups in the course of the project. Following their concerns on the resettlement of villages that may be impacted by the construction, Amici assured that Nigeria had laws in place for that. And don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


All right guys, it's Andy Elliott. In this video, I'm going to talk to the people who need the babysitters that always go and get their managers. And I'm going to tell you how to destroy it and not have to rely on them anymore. Check it out. All right guys, Andy Elliott, I'm going to ask you a question. Grab a pen, grab a piece of paper, write this down.  I'm going to tell you how you know that, all right? Number one, we're in a world full of amateurs. So I need you underneath amateur, write down amateur, write down pro. Underneath amateur, write 99%. 99% of sales pros in any industry are amateurs. They can't close their own deals.  They don't even sound like one. They don't even talk like one. They can't close like one. They don't sell like one, but they don't even look like one. Underneath pro, write top 1%. I need you to ask yourself this question, okay? Do you need your manager? Do you need your boss to get involved in all the deals that you do? Do you need a second face is what I'm asking. Guys, listen to me.   They need daddy to come in and help close their deals because they're weak. They don't believe in themselves since they don't believe in themselves. The clients don't believe in them. They literally don't know how to sell value. Write that down. Explaining value is one of the greatest skills you'll ever learn as a sales pro. Do you know, by the way, listen, do you know how to speak? Can I ask you a question? Right now, do you think tonality, I'm asking you a question, do you think tonality is 70% of speaking or do you think the word tracks you use are 70%? It's not the word tracks. You can mess up on the words. It's the tonality that matters the most. Hey, guys, what's going on? It's Andy. A lot of you leave comments telling me that you need help. Do me a favor and tell you the best way to get a hold of me. Shoot me a text message right now,<PHONE_NUMBER>,<PHONE_NUMBER>, I'll help you with whatever you need.  Let's get back to the video. A lot of amateurs learn a word track, but because they don't know how to use tonality, they don't know how to use body language. They don't know how to use posture. They don't know how to use their eyes and eye contact. They literally don't know how to speak, so the words don't even matter. People don't always remember what you said, but they'll always remember the way you made them feel. When you're saying something right and you can say it right with tonality, you can move the client in the direction you want. That's called going pro. And the pros close their own bills. Listen, I walked into a company the other day and I saw some people playing around on their phone. You know what that means? They need a babysitter. They need their manager to tell them what to do all day long. It's not just about closing deals. It's about do you know how to do your job when you're at work all day long, or do you need a babysitter? And by the way, a lot of people don't like the way that I'm talking to you. Dude, it's never been easier to win. What are you waiting on? Like when you get out of bed in the morning, do you hit the snooze button? If you do, you need a babysitter. Okay? You can't get up on your own. You're always pushing the limit as far as you can get. What can I get away with today? That's you. That's why you're broke. You want to win. Hey, by the way, I'm not yelling at you. I'm here to change you until you change. Nothing changes. I walk into companies. I see people making way less money than they should be making, spending time away from their family, and literally they're in a level 10 earning opportunity, earning level two tight money. Somebody explain why because they need their manager. They need a babysitter.  If you right now, there's 60 minutes in an hour and how you work 60 minutes in that hour for the entire time that you're at work, even if you work less than everybody else, you'll give everything you got. You're coachable. You'll literally train yourself. There's three things you should be doing in sales. Number one, selling something. Number two, looking for something to sell. Number three, training to get better. That's all you should ever be doing at work. If you're doing those things, you'll never need your managers again. By the way, listen to me.  Absolutely. They are tired of telling people what to do. Guys, we're in a society right now that being lazy is okay. It's crazy.  Okay? When you decide to rise, there's going to be conflict. People are going to hate it.  You know why? It's because you're about to become dangerous, but I want to explain this to you. No one's coming to save you. You do your training when you don't have a client or when you're not making cold calls or you're not doing your social media posts to generate a lead.  I want you to do what no one else will do.  They're wasting it. Okay? And I want you to do me a favor. To never count on anybody to come save you. Guys, when I put my back against the wall, I'm dangerous. I can close anybody, anytime, any place, anywhere. It doesn't matter. Give me a phone. I'll do it in person. I don't care. I'll master a stranger of 30 seconds. I'll walk into any conversation. I will own that. That skill that I have learned over years of training. Guys, if you want to learn how to go to the next level, if you do, and you don't want to rely on your manager, you want to find your own self to believe, you want to have your own security inside of you where it belongs. And you want to be the elite and you want to earn the top 1% in your industry. You want to earn level 10 money. Shoot me a text. I would love for you to tell me what you think you need the most help with. And I'll help you. Guys, text me now<PHONE_NUMBER>. The cell is<PHONE_NUMBER>. Love you guys.  Let's go. Hey, guys. I'm going to tell you the true 1%ers you made it till the end of the video. Do me a favor, share it with the friend that wants to go to another level. Make sure you like the video, comment below so I know who you are. Set your notifications and then subscribe to the channel. We got daily sales training videos dropping. I'll see you soon.


On Monday, the United Nations Security Council finally passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. It's been over five months since Israel began its genocidal war on the people of the territory, and close to 32,500 people have been killed. And it is only now that the UNSC has managed the resolution. A major culprit in this has been the United States, which vetoed three earlier resolutions calling for a ceasefire. On Monday, too, the U.S. did not support the call. Instead, it abstained, leading to the resolution passing, as the remaining 14 members supported it. However, the major question is if Israel will heed this resolution. It does not appear to do so, as attacks continue on Tuesday. We go to Abdul to know more about the resolution. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. A very important vote in the UN Security Council, quite an unprecedented one. This issue has come up, the issue of the ceasefire has come up at the UNSC number of times. We know, of course, who has been the villain in all these discussions at the U.S. But take us through what this new resolution says, what is the exact text, and what was the pattern of voting at the UNSC? Well, Prashant, the resolution was quite different from the resolution which we were talking about next week, which was presented by the U.S., which primarily talked about, did not talk about that much about a permanent ceasefire or the need of it, but kind of, sorry, only was only expressing the need of it. But the resolution mostly prepared by the non-permanent members of the UN Security Council basically demanded in the clear-cut term that there should be a ceasefire, immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan at least, and there should be negotiations for making it a permanent ceasefire. That is the first part of the resolution. The second part of the resolution also talks about the need to release all the hostages which the Palestinian resistance groups have, the Israeli hostages. These are the two things which the resolution talks about. And as far as the voting pattern is concerned, of course, the U.S. first opposed amendment which basically, which was brought by some of the countries talking about kind of making a permanent ceasefire now, basically finally decided to abstain from the voting. And that basically allowed the rest of the countries, none of them, opposed it to vote in favor of the resolution which ultimately led to the acceptance of it. So 14 members, including the four permanent members voted in favor, which also includes France and UK, and the U.S. abstains. So that was the pattern of the voting. The most important part of the entire proceeding was that the U.S. decided not to veto the resolution which basically demands a ceasefire. And this happened for the first time. So the difference between the vote on Monday and the previous votes was that U.S. decided not to veto the resolution which basically states ceasefire, which clearly demands ceasefire in Gaza. We should remember that on the previous occasions, at least three times, U.S. used this veto wherever the resolution clearly stated the need, clearly stated ceasefire in the document. And that basically is the primary thing which makes it different from the previous resolutions, even those who were voted on the United Nations Security Council. Abdul Naim, in this context, the most important question is what does this mean on the ground? Do we see the possibility of this being enforced in any way? What has been Israel's response? And what happens if Israel just refuses to accept this resolution, which seems like a likely response from them? Well, Prashant, if you go by the international law, this resolution is enforceable. Of course, if the United Nations Security Council decides to enforce it, implement it, they can easily force Israel to do so. There can be repercussions for Israel. There can be sanctions. There can be other measures taken by the Security Council. But if Security Council decides to do that, and given the fact that U.S. has been reluctant to take any step to kind of make Israel follow or implement the resolutions which were adopted by the United Nations Security Council in the past, that is difficult at this moment to say that there will be a punishment for Israel if it chooses not to implement the resolution. As you rightly pointed out, Israel has so far has kind of completely, you can say rejected any possibility of ceasefire at this moment and in fact has threatened diplomatic repercussions to the U.S. in relation to the U.S., that if U.S. abstains or vetoes, sorry, accepts votes in favor of such resolution which asks for ceasefire, they will kind of have some kind of diplomatic some kind of diplomatic repercussion vis-a-vis the relationship with U.S. and that of course between them. But since the fact is the U.S. carries the veto power and any follow-up on the resolution will be taken up in the United Nations Security Council, it all depends on how U.S. votes. So of course this is enforceable, this should be implemented, Israel should implement it and if it does not implement, there should be steps taken by the members of the United Nations Security Council. But given the fact that the U.S. has a veto and it may use it in the Security Council, that makes Israel's case possibility that Israel may violate the ceasefire resolution more likely given the record and given the statements made by the Israeli officials so far. Well, thank you so much for the update. We'll come back to you for the next story as well. The High Court of Justice in London has delivered its verdict in a case on whether Julian Assange can appeal against his extradition to the United States. The judges decided that he could appeal on very narrow grounds, that is if the U.S. did not provide certain assurances on the trial he would face if he were extradited. The judges have said that the grounds of possible appeal have to do with Assange's First Amendment rights and the question of the death penalty. To clarify again, if the U.S. does not provide assurances on these counts, Assange will be able to appeal against his extradition. Legal technicalities aside, he still faces a very serious threat of being sent to the United States which could be deadly for him and will also be a huge blow to journalism across the world. We go back to Abdul for the details. Welcome back Abdul, the verdict of the court has come just a few hours before we are recording this show so could you maybe for the benefit of a viewer tell explain what the verdict is, what does it imply? Well Prashant, in the Julian Assange case, the court, the Royal Court in Britain, has basically in a way has granted, you can say Assange's right to appeal, leave for appeal in the other courts against his extradition to the U.S. on certain conditions and the conditions are that it has given basically the U.S. almost up till April 16th, you can say a chance to provide assurances on three counts and those three counts are that if Assange is extradited his rights under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, freedom of speech and expression will be protected. Second, because of his nationality, we all know that because he's an Australian and U.S. may use it as an excuse to kind of not grant Assange's right under First Amendment, because of his nationality, proceedings in the case will not be biased against it and the third that there will be no death penalty during his trial. These are the three counts on which the court has given the U.S. kind of till April 16th to file fresh assurances. If it files the fresh assurances, there will be a next hearing on April May and whichever date the court decides, maybe that is a tentative date to basically discuss, to examine those grounds, those assurances. If U.S. chooses not to give fresh assurances or not to clarify on these three stand points made by the court, Assange will be free to file an appeal against his expression, which we all know the courts have already kind of granted. So that's what the verdict says, that is what we know so far. But it does seem that the grounds are quite narrow because on the one hand, it does seem that all is needed for the U.S. is to give some kind of a document with assurances, whereas Assange has not been given the option of, for instance, claiming to be a political prisoner, he cannot bring fresh evidence about for many of those issues. So in fact, it seems to narrow the grounds a lot for Assange. Exactly, and that shows the overall proceedings related to this particular extradition of Assange is basically happening. There is some kind of, you can say, understanding between the courts and maybe the bureaucracy or the states here and there, that Assange needs to be extradited, that satisfies their kind of case against freedom of speech and so on and so forth, that such kind of journalism or freedom of press will not be tolerated. There is some kind of understanding which basically guides this kind of thing, because as you rightly pointed out, Assange has not been, in fact, denied some of the grounds on which he basically sought basically right to appeal to the higher judiciary, to the judiciary, basically appeal, file appeal to other courts. As you rightly pointed out, there cannot be fresh evidences provided and so on and so forth. As MNS International already pointed out, that even if those assurances are provided by the U.S., there is no guarantee that they will be carried out the way it has been mentioned in the submission in the court and in any other fora, because there have been records in the past that the U.S. basically state has been very vicious. They may take, give some assurances at this moment, but at the later stage, they might revoke it, finding one excuse or the other. So entire proceeding does not give, of course, much hope at this moment about the entire case and it seems that there is some kind of collaboration, of course, behind the scene, diplomatic understanding behind the scene, which basically prevents Assange's his right under the law, his right under the overall freedom of speech and expression, and freedom of press in particular, which basically has been, so the verdict overall, this verdict overall is not seen as clear on the point of extradition, on the appeal and so forth, as it should have been otherwise. Abdul, thank you so much for that analysis. And that's all we have in this episode. We'll be back with a fresh daily debrief tomorrow. Meanwhile, do visit our website, people'sdispatch.org, follow us on all the social media platforms, and if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button.


Before we start a couple of things, one is of course the anti-trust policy of the Linux Foundation which we follow. So everybody has to follow that policy wherever you are depending on your jurisdiction. The other is the fact that we respect each other even when we are disagreeing, we are not going to be, we are not going to be disrespectful to each other. That's the, these are the only two requirements and I have to also say that a lot of the material that I have in this was heard by the people who came to this, came to this, for the identity working group presentation and I think it is Cindy and Alfonso who were there. So forgive me if I repeat some of that stuff, especially the definition and everything around the metaphor, the metaphors and what it means for us. I'm going to share my screen and I have to, you have to tell me whether you can see it or not. Just a second, you can see this screen, right? Thank you. Yes. Wonderful. Hello. Hi. Elena. How are you? Just give me a second because I'm getting interrupted by somebody. Start with the presentation. So the rough shape is this that we are going to talk about what is the metaverse and how does it differ from a regular user interface? And what are the possibilities, especially in the middle of crypto winter? It is good to remind ourselves why we are doing all this because as you no doubt know things change, paradigm shifts happen but slowly nobody can predict the true arc of the transformation. We have all been working on these subjects for a long time, especially blockchain, cryptocurrency and the higher constructs on top of it which are basically the apps just like the web 2 apps like Facebook and others. This is going to be, you know, these apps appear on the higher levels, layers of the ecosystem. But for the higher layers to work, we have to have either very solid low layers or rapid changes in the lower layers to support this kind of, you know, the apps that are coming about.  Before we start, we have to look at the history of what happened. The earlier slide that I had identified the first person, his name is Emmanuel Goldberg. This is 1925 to 32. He basically was able to compress data into a very small area like a micro doc, which is a purely analog technology but it made it possible to compress entire libraries, entire ecosystems of knowledge into very small area that can be carried around by a person which is similar to the situation we have which obviously the content producers are scattered all over the place and we can access that information here. It's more about possession of that in a very small area, micro doc. Emmanuel Goldberg proposed something called a statistical machine which is obviously related to the universe contained in these micro dots. It becomes very difficult to search that. And as you can imagine, the rise of the search engines technology has demonstrated in the Web 2 world anyway that the power of that paradigm and everybody relies on the search engine. And if you think about the second one which is the memex and that was proposed by Vanuvar Bush in the 30s or 40s, then we have a bunch of people who are, you can say, novelists or theorists. Most of the ideas in number 3, 4, 5 and 6 have been realized in the games like the Neil Stephenson's coinage of metaverse in the snow crash has been realized to a certain extent in the gaming world. But the main thing to concentrate on there is most of these people considered the metaverse or any kind of immersive hyper reality a bad thing, which means it would turn people into couch potatoes or into somebody who was under the control of some super organism or someone, you know, the world was not a good world. But as we know the, any idea like blockchain or metaverse is a double edged sword. It has good and bad aspects. The bad aspects are things like, you know, total immersion in this world will obviously be not good for your mental health and would allow control to pass from a personal level to some other, you know, the collective and it becomes more and more difficult to express a personal viewpoint, opinion or something you build stand out in the sea of evenness or a sea of, you know, so many creators. So chance against plays a big role in the choice of who is to come. The number seven fortnight Roblox Minecraft, Microsoft Flight Simulator. These are the, these are the ways in which we have experienced the metaverse today. And the thesis in many of the, of the later visions for the metaverse goes much beyond games games of course are the sort of foundational use case for the metaverse, but already we see a certain aspects of markets and identity playing their part in getting the metaverse to the next level. Whether it will reach the next level or not is a, is a question, but it is possible to say that just like in the older transformations. One, the pace of change cannot be predicted. Sometimes it takes years, but then the whole thing snowballs into a, you know, like nobody could have predicted the rise of social media back in the 90s. Nobody could have predicted Amazon. Nobody could have predicted, you know, platforms like that. So the coming universe or, or in this case, since we are hyper ledger, I would say the hyperverse is also unknown. It's an unknown country, but we know certain things are happening. That is a combination of a engaging hyper three dimensional world combined with presence, not only of yourself, but of others simultaneously persistent world that will, you know, is either based on the real world or based on somebody's imagination or a combination of the two. So that's why the the last item here Planet Labs is a very interesting company that was started by a NASA X employee is a founder. It's been around for about 10 years and they've been, they have been launching swarms of satellites that map the earth, not just once, not it's not Google Earth. It is constantly circling the globe and sending a dynamic image of the world. So you can see how the world is transformed. So my contention is that that is a public benefit corporation, which means that a lot of the data that they have can be downloaded for free. And it can be used in constructing your own, let's say hybrid universe, which is very similar to the real universe, but at the same time can be can, you know, it can be rooted in reality, but at the same time, not. So from here I switch to the definition, you know, which we already went over a little bit that is a realism to cause psychological and emotional emotion. The psychological and emotional part is very important.  And he also called it a meta curse, not a meta verse.  My, you know, my eyes, my taste, my hearing, my touch.  And that's, that's how humans traditionally have. And obviously, to create a immersive reality, you have to use each one of these perceptions to create either an alternative world or an overlay on this world that enhances the experience or gives you more information. And the other thing is ubiquity that is accessible through all existing digital devices and from anywhere. Interoperability, which we will touch upon later. And scalability, which talks about the, you know, right now in massive games in the battle Royale or whatever, whatever they call it in Fortnite, only about 100 or 200 people participate. But what if the entire planet showed up in one of these so-called meta verses, obviously it will crash. You know, it cannot scale to that present to what they think is the definition of the meta verse. So obviously, the meta verse is not there yet, according to the ideal definition. But parts of it are there. And in each one of these definitions, I have highlighted just the part that deals with the economic or commercial interests and payments. But they pretty much agree on everything else, which is that it's an immersive world that where people interact and it is persistent. That means if I go to sleep and come back and enter the meta verse again, all the items that I had collected would remain that it's persistent across identity, but it's also persistent. I mean, persistent across time for a single individual and also persistent across space. That means I can go to worlds, go to areas that I've never been to where other people have been. And I will have similar, let us say, visual and auditory experience as they had. So that is a persistent across space. But in all of these you see there's two things that are constant. One is, of course, the notion of identity and a notion of value that is attached to the identity, which means property, basically a view of property. And then once you have these two, then property can be sold to others, can be lent, can be aggregated between several people. And then you can have other financial defy sort of agreements, arrangements on top of it that will take it to a market level. So these are the developments that everybody's working on, but obviously we are far from having realized all of those. And by the way, towards the end, I'm going to have a Q&A at least 10, 15 minutes so that you can ask your questions, but you can also put in any questions on the chat. So one of the ways in which these kind of collective collections are looked at is through a negation, that means neti neti, which is basically a concept in a dueta, which is sort of trying to reach the concept of Atman, the self or the universal unconscious. So it is by saying, oh, it is not this, it is not this, it is not this. Then what is left after all those negations are done is an approach to saying it is this or it is, you know, it's a spread over everything. So in that sense, it says it is not a virtual world. It is not a virtual space. It is not virtual reality. It is not a digital and virtual economy. It is not a game. It is not a virtual theme park or Disneyland. It's not a new app store. It is not a user generated content platform. So when we come to this user generated content bit, you can see that some elements of a marketplace can be formed there.  You can generate stuff so everybody, you know, you can choose to become a creator. That was unleashed a little bit during the web today's but in this in the metaverse it's felt that that would become much more prevalent. The two visions, of course, we have heard about before, which is one is augmented reality, which is you have a lens or a something that you look through that shows you the real world, but at the same time, that real world is created with with data that makes you, you know, actually make sense of the real world. For example, I look at a tree. Instead of just the tree. I'm also presented with a way to look at what kind of tree it is. What is the cycle. Does he do a street. What kind of flowers does it have. You know, you can watch. You can have rich content overlaid on the on the real world. The other is of course virtual reality, which is everything is obscured. You are wearing a space helmet.  And then you have a hybrid. Well, we come to this slide which was presented before. Also, in the earlier, you know, almost all the slides till this one, or even later have been in the first presentation on the identity working group, but here I can identify the elements of a market. There is a digital currency. There is a marketplace or digital commerce where I can advertise or prices. So a marketplace is basically where you can discover discover and something of value. And not only can you discover it discover also means somebody's offering it for sale. So there's a price attached to it. Then you have a non fungible tokens, which are obviously the, the lifeblood of the metaverse because it is just like us. These tokens are unique. But like we work for money, which becomes a fungible token, the non fungibility of our effort or talent gets translated into a fungible token because then we can engage in exchange with others. We can look at the way in which this non fungible tokens are in a spectrum between individual existence as a unique object. On the one side as a fractionalization of that object. And on the other side, as a collection of such objects that would provide cash flow and securitization. Digital assets. Then the events online shopping workplace social media digital humans and so on. The point is, it is a vast collection of various elements. This says a metaverse, not the metaverse. That is important to note because right now we only have metaverses metaverses that are either galaxies like Roblox, which the game where you can build your own game so it is providing a foundational sort of structure where you can build your own game or in Minecraft, build your own world Roblox build your own little worlds, or it is a fully immersive game which is no, you know where you cannot participate in terms of UGC other than probably creating something to be sold like a armor or sword or something else. And all of these are controlled by usually by the ERC 1155 standard that we money and I used to create the whole side wholesale CBDC token. So that shows you the interaction between, you know, copies of unique objects and currency itself, which is, which has got its own uniqueness built into it in the sense that it has it belongs to a country. There are no universal currency and there are ways in which you can interchange them through a foreign exchange marketplace. So similarly, the digital currency in a native token like in Ethereum is also limited to a world of Ethereum. Now I want to transform it to another world that I have to go through a blockchain bridge or some kind of a transformer transformation to create, you know, to be able to transport that value from one place to another, which is basically interoperability of some sort. So, so what does it take to take a metaverse and and transform it into a component of the metaverse. So, where do we, you know, in the metaverse, according to the EU and other people, there are so many different aspects that have to be looked at competition, data protection, liabilities in general, and how do you attach to identity, financial transactions, cyber security, health, accessibility and inclusiveness. And the other, you know, which I didn't actually go. I don't have the slide for it, but the metaverse itself will be a just like the internet. It doesn't talk about a single internet. It talks about the internet, which is every network that is connected by the TCP IP protocol. So, in order to have a metaverse become the metaverse, we need standards for value interchange identity and interchange of three dimensional objects. Obviously, this is far from where we are today. Here, I just listed, you know, some of the areas in which the metaverse is being used and education, architecture, engineering and construction real estate. That means you can actually build something or propose something and then go into it in a virtual 3D world and see where the problems are and try to make changes or sort of sit commons in the AEC part, which is architecture, engineering and construction. And then the second part, real estate where you actually sell the property, sell something or rent it out. Let's say you want to do it on Airbnb and you have a metaverse representation of your property and Airbnb has, let's say, millions of such properties. And you can go into that particular meta galaxy or whatever you want to call it and tour the different properties and be able to go inside each one and experience it and then make your choice for the real world. So this is metaverse used for real world activity, which is a marketplace also because you are the middle of all the different rental properties and you're in a particular area where you're planning to visit and you choose one of them. Then of course the retail lifestyle type activities, exercise, dating, weddings and of course, intimately connected to that as a sex work, which nobody of course talks about, but it's a big money maker. And I think there are some universes opening up where you can actually engage either directly or indirectly with sex workers, meaning in a collective sense or an individual sense. Then entertainment, including sports gambling and other events. So they, you know, of course fashion is a big player in the metaverse and they're advancing advertising and governance using NFT governance tokens in a DAO type setup. I'm actually a member of that city DAO setup in Wyoming. And you basically engage in city planning with the others who are there in that metaverse. So we already went through all this stuff. To a certain extent, the main thing that we need is a metaverse protocol of some sort that covers whatever we talked about. And the standards, usually the, you know, the standards that are mentioned for a three dimensional world is a universal scene descriptor. A lot of people have adopted this. Some of the biggest challenges in the meta to transform a metaverse into the metaverse are the individual companies triangle hold on data. Right now, there is a big debate, or let's say, a big play where Apple, for example, in the name of privacy has locked out. You know, and it's supposed to be consent driven. All the other companies and Apple themselves take like a 30% cut of selling games. So that economy is lopsided. There are definitely gatekeepers. And they are in the way in the in the, you know, blocking progress and taking a lot of the of whatever the metaverse is producing terms of value for themselves. 20 30% I think is the for game for games apps. And even in the other apps like Roblox, for example, the content creators who create Roblox worlds do only get 20 or 30% about 40% goes to the people who sell it. And the other goes to the platform. So the platforms are taking 20 to 40% of the value that is generated by the metaverse. There's a chat. Okay, so who should be involved needed to be involved in deriving a metaverse protocol. So we have we'll have to defer that to the towards the end I'll I'll I have my opinions but in a protocol sense. There's always a, there's always a balance between a standard development organization who will specify a protocol or ad hoc protocols being born, because of the scale of adoption, like for example, ERC 20 is an Ethereum based protocol and but it has taken the world by storm for a creation of cryptocurrencies. If you step back a little bit, you can see that the NFTs that are in the metaverse are being financed. Let's say, or or you can buy the NFTs using cryptocurrency so cryptocurrency is a payment frail and the NFTs are what you buy. Protocol wise, the USD developed from Pixar. So it is being, it is being adopted by a lot of the game development engines or platforms. So that's why it's getting a lot of play. So again, a an example of an ad hoc protocol growing. So I think one of the main roadblocks against all this is the fact that there were there was no protocol that is a metaverse protocol developed organically, or even from a organization like DARPA, which developed the TCP IP, which underlies even the metaverse, right, because everything is now based on the internet protocol, which is then topped by the TCP. And then of course you built HTTP and others on top of it. So similarly, the metaverse protocol will be built on the ground, you know, on the rock of TCP IP, whether it will be then built on top of HTTP, we don't know. So I'm going to the next slide. I'm trying to try to. Okay. So this is where the building happens, and you have the networks, devices, computing, virtual world engines, interoperability, payment rails, and identity. But what is, what are we buying value in the metaverse value anywhere is but is nothing but data, data is the key data that is carried around either on the blockchain, or elsewhere but pointed to by the blockchain and secured usually with the public private key pair. How do we escape from this into a different world where that all that stuff is there but is seamless. So again, I put together this stack that in the on the top is assets, which is the focus of today's presentation. And here I'm bringing in the various elements, which is called the ABCD of the metaverse or ABCD of DeFi or whatever you want to take it. But these are the components that AI, AI, blockchain, cryptocurrencies and DeFi, which is ABCD. So we have about five more minutes. And then I will open it up for questions. So, as we were saying, data is the representation of value. And the railroad according to these guys should be who has written a paper and it's in, it's in the, it's in the references section of this presentation which will be available. And as a railroad big data as a cars, which I mean, you know, it's a sort of a strained analogy, but here are the various markets that will arise from it. So, which underpins the NFTs and the NFTs overlay everything, then you have the FinTech, InsureTech and PropTech, which are the three areas FinTech in the sense of pure financial transactions and pure financial experience. And here, of course, the various companies that make up the key players in the US and China and China. And Shulte's book, Money Metaverse, deals with a lot of case studies, both in the US and in the other important market China. In China, the, we were talking a little bit about the public infrastructure. They are creating something called the BSN, which is going to be a platform where you can have multiple blockchains. But they're going to have strict control over how you get into it. In terms of the interoperability between the blockchains. So, there is that. Now, in the US, or in Europe, we don't have the government constructing such a public utility. Although, although in the US and in Europe, we do have public utilities like railroads, which are semi governmental roads. And, you know, some other forms of infrastructure where there is a lot of coordination, like electrical grid. So similarly, these constructs in the pub in in the US will probably be controlled by the regulatory aspects that control how data can be held and disseminated, especially if it is going to be GDPR type situation where you're supposed to be allowed to transport your data from one network to another network from one platform to another platform from one metaverse to another metaverse, creating the possibility of the metaverse. So that's how probably it's going to come about with one more slide. I stopped my presentation here. I'm just talking about the NFT markets. This is a generic slide, NFT stands in the middle. Then you have on the one side fractionalization of the NFT, which creates multiple fractions of the same NFT. Like for example, when you want a huge apartment complex to be divided into fractions and and you as an investor can own a fraction or two or more than one fraction. One way of going about it. The other way is you take multiple NFTs and originate a sort of a securitized NFT and then do the trenches like in a regular mortgage where the cash flows for different entities go into these trenches. Now we keep talking about cash flows. The cash flows have to be fungible token, some some sort of fungible token. Right now, it is the token of a usually of a single platform, usually a which can then subsequently be exchanged to a fiat currency to be used in the real world. Now I talked about security decision tranches, but I haven't shown where the security decision tranches go back to being sold as bonds, similar to the fractionalization of a single NFT. Now the transaction tranches then fractionalized to be sold as bonds, just like in a regular, you know, in a mortgage bond. So these are the references that I have and then we have Q&A. In case you guys have any questions, let's talk about that. One, Ron's question, who's going to be in charge. I've kind of partially answered that. Ron, please. Thanks, Vipin, and thanks for this presentation. I appreciate your thought leadership and all the metaverse work and I showed up a little late. So apologies to the group. I guess the question I've got on the metaverse protocol. I kind of wanted to dive into that a little bit and the reason I asked it was, it strikes me that to engage in a multiverse seamlessly. In other words, you Vipin participating in multiple metaverses seamlessly is a very different protocol than the world we come from think, you know, from an internet perspective where you reference DRC 20. It deals with things like identity and true capture and ownership of your identity, etc. I'm just curious if anyone had seen kind of foundational work in a metaverse protocol. And I know what you're talking about, Vipin, from the perspective of how that develops, but I'd love someone to sanity check me. It seems to me a metaverse protocol would be a very, very different thing. Yeah, I mean, it is by baby steps that is going to grow, but there are some interoperability work. There's some interoperability work even done in the metaverse itself. And that might grow into some kind of a metaverse protocol, where you're allowed to take assets from one one game or one metaverse into another. Anybody else has any experience with this stuff for Or just tell me if I'm perceiving it wrong. No, no, you're right that it is. It would enable a sort of a a leap that is totally not commensurate with the change that it will bring, meaning, if you really have a metaverse protocol that is globally adopted, then it would create, you know, in the identity part, for example, I say that the SSI and a edge wallet that has credentials in it could be used to transform identity. But as you know, the DID work and the SSI work about credentials is not just about identity, but it's on a bigger, bigger level. So maybe there's something there that you can use to. Okay, so there is an exchange between Sandy and Ron. Well, Sandy shared an article about meta and Microsoft kind of beginning the standards creation of the metaverse which Sandy thanks for that and I suspect there are parts some people in the world who kind of fear that meta and Microsoft are going to be doing that but interested in other people's opinions. Yeah, I'm going to stop the share here and let's continue our discussion with whatever, you know, I hope this was useful, especially for the people who came. Who came to the older presentation on identity. Anyway, anything else from Ron or Hi, no, this is Paul Bohan first time first time attending. Hi, my question and this has to do with with the metaverse and I'm trying to keep things more metaverse focus I have some other questions but yeah how do you address the uniqueness of representative assets and representative identities, and the real assets and real identities on which they're based if a meta identity owns a meta asset, which is representative of real estate or real dollar based asset, and the real person dies or is otherwise incapacitated or the identity is stolen. The real assets stolen as well. And I'm just, I'm just, I know it's a pretty broad question but I'm still trying to get my hands around. Okay, so representation assets, what you mean like avatar or something right. Yeah. Yeah, so let's talk. Let's first talk about about the same person going into different, different worlds. Before we start talking about dying, which is obviously not the same person, but somebody who's a delegate or was inherited that that property or whatever. So, if the control of all the stuff is using some kind of a private public key pair. The same world we understand that right, we understand, unless of course somebody steals it. In which case there has to be a property law of some sort applying to this. You know, I don't know how far the regulations are going to go to detect that theft and to have a property law properly enforced in the metaverse or in fact, in the cryptocurrency universe for that matter. The second is, how do you transform one as one avatar which I control. And now I want to take the same or similar avatar into another world. The problem is, not all metaverses use the same way to represent the three dimensional object, they don't have the same capabilities they don't have. So, there can be a rough simile of one in the other. For now, and unless there is a both. How do you extinguish or how do you say, okay, I want to transform this avatar into this other metaverse where I'm the same person or similar person. Right. Then the other the other possibilities that I take all my assets that are in metaverse a and take it to metaverse B, or I take only part of them. So how do you burn those assets in metaverse a and then how do you issue them in metaverse B. So, right now, there is, you know, it is all through intermediaries for cryptocurrencies. For example, you have the, you know, you have a way of transferring crypto from one blockchain to another. You have intermediaries who have presence in both, or you have a chain of intermediaries like in lightning or something but lightning of course interacts only with Bitcoin so it's only for interaction with the real one. So, you know, these are all questions that are extremely important and hopefully we will address them as time goes by and I'm sure that there are. What is what are these chats. I think the next group is already arrived on the scene. Take us out. Okay. It's a long question. I'll study some questions by email or whatever. Yeah, yeah, we can engage in this as a sort of conversation. And GDPR rules, by the way, because GDPR rules about basically we'll call forgetability of assets. Yes. And personally identifiable information to what degree we think that will apply in the metaverse. Yeah, I mean, we, the EU paper, which actually has a link in my, in my presentation, which I will put on the on the meeting page does talk about some of these things but obviously does not. I mean, they are still not in the rulemaking phase it's more like a research or a paper that is meant to be to provoke discussion, which is similar to our, you know, our discussion here because. Anyway, Nico is here, and I will close this call. And I'll post the recording on the meeting page. And maybe we'll, and from next time onwards, we'll choose a some some zoom that is not clashing with the next. You know, gotcha. Anyway, I'm going to close the meeting so that means Nico will. Maybe I can, I can try to transfer. I think I have a host code as well so I think I can just take it over. Okay, let's see. All right. Thank you very much. So let me, let me just stop the recording.