Hey guys, Eddie here. Happy Saturday and welcome to another video today. We're gonna be discussing the German payment processing company Wirecard, okay, and explaining the 15 year long accounting fraud and this is the biggest Accounting scandal in post-war German history. Okay, we're going to discuss how their CEO Ended up arrested and all the parties involved. So first of all, who are they? They're essentially this German fintech company So when you buy something from a merchant online, someone who's selling a product They essentially collect your payment details and provide it to the issuer and the money flows From the credit card issuer To this fintech company called Wirecard. Okay, and they were growing extremely quickly Just like all the other technology companies at the moment that seem to be around like zoom and Similar to how we saw with zoom and not an accounting fraud but a privacy issue Okay with China all these companies that tend to grow very quickly They tend to skip a few things and let their standards slip Somewhat and hope that they don't get exposed before they can fix it essentially But essentially Wirecard were putting out these numbers that essentially didn't make sense And it led to essentially 1.9 billion euros in cash Not a small amount by any means Being unable to be located and short sellers like chain os actually said that it's very unlikely that the 1.9 billion euros was ever there. It was meant to be held in these accounts called escrow accounts third-party trust accounts That were obviously governed by the trustees But essentially this ended up never Existing okay, so it had these third-party companies in Dubai in the Philippines in Singapore In countries where it didn't have licenses and it was sending payment processing to these businesses and essentially receiving commission From those third-party companies that it owned And this kind of feels like I you know other scandals like Enron And laymen brothers right so Enron if you weren't aware it was a Houston based commodity energy and service corporation And essentially this led to 74 billion in shareholder value being lost thousands of employees And investors lost their accounts and huge unemployment When many of their employees lost their jobs, how did they do it? They kept huge debts off their balance sheet so different to what Wirecard did They basically said there was more cash on their balance sheet than there was Enron said that there was Basically less debts than they really had and the fun fact about Enron was it was fortune magazines Most innovative company in America six years in a row prior to the scandal Another one you may have heard of a little bank called laymen brothers in 2008 a global financial security firm They hid over 50 billion in loans disguised as disguised as sales and essentially the main players were the laymen executives and again the auditors and who was the auditor of laymen brothers when they went bust EY Ernst & Young Okay, and how did they do it? They allegedly sold these toxic assets to the Cayman Island banks with understanding that they would be bought back eventually Okay, and this created the impression that laymen brothers essentially had 50 million more cash 50 billion less toxic assets than it really did and the fun fact about laymen brothers They were ranked the number one most admired security firm by again fortune magazines And of course in terms of sheer scale of these two scandals the collapse of Enron and laymen brothers was much bigger than Wirecard and Wirecard has actually slid into insolvency since then So this is what it looks like from a time frame perspective the FT started running these ingest Investigative journalism pieces essentially in this at the start of 2019 and there were warning signs and essentially Auditors could not obtain the original documents from the banks and the banks in the Philippines They confirmed the documents provided by wirecard to the accounting firm EY And they were of spurious nature is the quote. Okay, so they were they were forging documents. So fortunately It's not for EY that is it's not the only company that or party in this transaction That failed to adequately monitor wirecard as a company. Germany's barfin. They obviously bear tremendous responsibility For this letting this kind of take place on their own turf turf And this obviously has is a German embarrassment and any companies looking to do business in Germany, of course This is what they're concerned about now in terms of the reputation or damage, but as you can see Wirecard is now trading a very attractive one euros and if you loved it a hundred euros in June Chances are you'll love it a lot more today And shorts made a killing. Okay, so short sellers profited 2.6 billion Almost or more than the cash that was supposedly there from wirecard's drop And of course short selling is capped a hundred percent without leverage But those that took advantage of the five-year CDS spike Okay, that essentially blew out From 500 bits to around 8,600 bits at the end of last week essentially benefited greatly and Jim chainos Like I referred to early in the in the video. He was the biggest short position and obviously profited greatly from this Going to near zero But he claims that that 2 billion in cash was never really there and of course who are the Guilty parties apart from wire wirecard EY have been sued now and they essentially failed to ask for key financial statements for three years Okay, so you wouldn't really expect, you know in order to audit things or companies, right? You would right but it turns out over the three years they didn't Okay, so they were requesting this crucial Account information from the Singapore Bank where wirecard essentially claimed it had up to 1 billion in cash And this is a routine audit procedure that would have uncovered the vast fraud, but it turns out they didn't request this Okay, so the big question is you know, why did they sign off on these accounts?  How did EY sign off on these financial statements that were missing crucial Accounting information. Okay, and this is the problem the CEO has obviously been arrested And in Munich on Monday and prosecutors were essentially investigating the rest of the management board again They did things like failing to disclose minutes from the from the meetings as well as everything so it was very very fishy From the start and obviously someone should have should have caught this He ended up posting 5 billion euros in bail after spending one night in police custody And now they fired from it for insolvency They had 2 billion in loans that needed to be paid and they've actually breached the covenants Okay, so on Thursday they collapsed and obviously it once was this high-flying German payment service provider But now it's filing for insolvency, but they have won a brief reprieve from from the creditors Postponing by a few days a decision whether to terminate the 2 billion loans So they're going through now a restructuring Just like companies that filed a chapter 11 like hurts Okay, so essentially They're being restructured By banks like hula hand Loki That they're now going to sale have a fire sale of the assets close their operations and cut jobs And this obviously will result in a much smaller wire card than the 100 euro Giant that operated in the german DAX Bank of america have got a very nice price target of one euros for wire card um From there from their analyst and that easily Has been achieved Unfortunately and just another party to look at similar to the films that you've seen that i'm not going to name in the subprime mortgage crisis where credit rating agencies were Mentioned in the film were almost as guilty as the auditors as they rate their credit, of course and Moody's actually rated wire cards bonds investment grade until last friday Okay, so they've just downgraded wire card to the lowest level of junk And actually withdrew the credit rating All together So essentially the auditors didn't spot this and neither did the credit rating agencies and of course neither did the equity Investors so it leaves to question Is there any other companies in this fintech space as we've seen this era of Software companies rallying dramatically, you know, what else is going behind on behind the scenes at these kind of software companies so, yeah interesting times For wire card and not very interesting time for their equity and debt holders But I hope you enjoyed this shorter video I'm more focused. I hope you have a lovely weekend and take care


And then I'll put 1040 and it's 182. Let's finish it. Okay, so then if I go back on over here and run it, I had to increase the date range to 531 and I've got location tracking and run it. And the basic idea here would be that if I was to see this by location, I can't break out the payroll by location. So they have it over here in the non-specified area. And we could do the same technique we saw in prior presentations. I might just run the payroll reports and look at each employee by location and then just make a journal entry allocating the wages from here to the proper column, which I could do with a journal entry just to wages, but just allocating a different location to them. But I normally wouldn't touch any of the payroll lines. So I would rather just make another account like we did with the classes and the projects and just make another line item down here to be equal and opposite to let's say that 800 so I can break this thing out to whatever I want by location then and not mess with the actual payroll line. So you can actually do that with the journal entries because the journal entry allows you to, if I go to the first tab, I'm gonna say plus and then we're gonna enter a journal entry. You might say, well, the journal entry is gonna just allow you to assign one location for the whole thing. But they actually do have a separate location line, line by line, similar to what they have with the class tracking with this form because it's not like a default like check or invoice type of form. So for example, I could just make another account called like wages for by location this time. Similar technique that we saw in prior presentations and I'm just gonna say, well, this is gonna be an expense type form and other expense, other business just for an example and I'm gonna say that we want to reduce the 800 that's not classified. So I'm not gonna put a location for that 800 and then I'm gonna put it into the proper classes. Let's say it's same account wages, what did I call it? Wages, location, wages, location. Right there, wages by location and then let's say that we had 600 that are gonna go into location for Nevada and then 200 wages by location, 200 is gonna go into California. So notice it's letting me break out line by line on the journal entry. Notice the accounts are all the same but I'm trying to break out column by column with a journal entry and reallocate this way, which isn't too difficult to do, it's not too tedious. So if I save and close that, let's check it out and see if it does what we would expect, save it or run it. So now I didn't mess with this payroll line item because I don't wanna have stuff in the general ledger that's gonna mess up any kind of payroll reporting. Instead, I'm gonna put something equal and opposite to it. You might even make it like this line item be a sub-account of the wages. So they're kind of connected so you can see they're right next to each other but it's gonna be equal and opposite typically and then I can reallocate to Nevada and California to my classes, to the classes that I wanted to allocate to. So that's a technique that you can use and use the location tracking. That's usually some of the complaints I've seen with the location tracking and so you could do that. So then to recap the whole thing, class tracking, location tracking are kind of similar. The class tracking has a little bit more functionality to break out line item by line item so it could be useful and more flexible for your reporting needs but the location tracking has that added thing where you can basically give your invoices a different name or something like that.


We're starting our meeting at 333. And big thanks to John, who's agreed to take minutes today. Paige saying big thanks to John. John Paige, this one here. I am going to summarize the statement from the governor. Because of the COVID pandemic, the governor has changed some of the regulations around open meeting law, enabling us to meet all virtually through Zoom. And that's what we're doing. So I'm interested, Angela, if she's not there. I've attended a number of town committee meetings. And a lot of committees, chairs, don't do that at all. So I guess it depends on who's doing it. So let's review the agenda. And I will pull it up here. I thought I had it right here. So we'll review the agenda. Our goal is to put together, finalize our plan for interviewing key staff and committee members, and to review the materials. So the elements of that are timing, confirming how we're going to report, reviewing the materials, and so on. I think that's the only thing we really have to do at this meeting. Does that make sense to everyone? So we've determined the minute taker. Big thanks to John. Proved the minutes. Huge thanks to Liz, who did a terrific job. Anything you want to comment on here about the agenda? I didn't. Did you send out an agenda in advance? Yes, I sent it out Monday of MLK Day. Yeah, I did not receive that. Wow, did others receive it? I saw it on the website, but I didn't see it. I'm not sure if it went through. I must have made another, made some kind of mistake. So is this agenda OK with people? Well, I think that the minutes that we're approving are from July 7. But also, I have a new computer on its way. This one is, at the moment, will not let me access any documents. So unfortunately, any changes that need to be made to any of the documents that I've sent out, I cannot, at the moment, access them on my computer without shutting and rebooting, which will take five minutes. So if we have changes, someone else can do that. Yeah, sorry about that. OK, I have, I actually, OK, that's OK. It's on its way, though. I'm so excited. We're all doing our best in service to the town. So thank you. Wait, oh, I just don't know how that November. And I didn't, when I proofread it, I didn't see that. Is this the right day? Yeah. Anything else about the agenda? So I did send the minutes out. Did you all get those minutes? I sent them out Tuesday. Yeah, I got the minutes. Comments on the minutes. I thought they were really captured. The discussion really well is. I have one extremely minor one. My name, the last name has a C and a S-C-H-O-E-N. So not minor. Well, no, because it's this is how everyone pronounces it. They all say everyone says shown. So if you take this, but anyway, that happens in a, in a, in a, in a, in a way, that happens in the attendance one and then down below also. Okay. If you want, I can, I can download it and make that change right now. So if we want to get to final or I can, I'll just make actual with a pencil. I will make notes and I will fix it once I reboot. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments on the minutes? Okay. I am going to stop sharing so that we can see each other. I'm all in favor. I'm, I think we're supposed to call the roll. Kathy, as amended. Yes. John Fenske. Yes. Holly Bowser. Yes. John Page. I'll abstain because I was not present. Okay. Good. One abstention. The Liz. Yes. And myself, Meg Gage. Yes. Great. And Liz, I just noticed I appear later in a few places too, when you do committee assignments. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you're consistently spelling it the other way. So you can search. I'm just going to text John because he missed the last meeting sort of by accident. It seems I don't have his cell phone number. So I'll just send him a quick email in a minute. Or does someone have time, since I'm facilitating to send John McCabe a quick email, although I just sent the notice about the link. He must have gotten that. Let's give him a, let's just keep going and give him a few more minutes. And Meg, your host now, let me just look on participants because if he came in with your link, he won't be with us. He is, he's outside. You have to promote him to panelists. Okay. Let me just see. Oh wow. This is a new thing. So that's why you don't want to send that link. So you know, what do I, do I click allowed to talk or more? You promote to, since you are the host, you have to click on him and you can promote to panelists. Okay. There he is. Thank you for that help. And start video. Here we go. I've been knocking on the door for a while. We just realized what happened. Sorry. Angela left and I've actually never had done that before. So I don't know what people heard me, but when you get that first notice from Angela that here is it, that's an individual panelist invite. If you try to get in on the one that's posted, you do get in, but you get in the way John just did.  Yeah, it didn't give me any way to get in. Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. We're all learning new, new tricks. Yeah. So we've just approved the minutes. John Page is taking minutes this time. And I'm going to put in our goal is to finalize our plan for the interviews. Just what did I, can I just ask a quick housekeeping question? I have been a little lax on getting the minutes onto our website. I noticed I've missed the last several meetings. So who has the, all of the final minutes? Cause I need to collect them and make sure I'm not missing any. So there's a different person for each different meeting. So why don't you and I talk Holly and I think I can figure that out. I need to update. We're going to have everybody volunteer to send the minutes to Holly that they have finalized. Why don't Holly and I just talk tomorrow morning and go over each meeting. I have all, I have all those, but I don't have them necessarily amended versions. Once they've been re amended, right? But I know who has them. I think. Okay. All right. I'll touch base with you tomorrow. So I will just live. Yeah. I'll, so I'll change that. I'll, I'll fix the spelling of Kathy's name in the current minutes and I'll send them to Holly. Thank you. All right. Okay. Good. So John, you could just note that Holly and I are going to, well, I've written it down here too. So are going to finalize that who has what. Thanks Holly for bringing that up. That's important. So why don't we start with reviewing the materials? Does that make sense? And thanks to Liz for doing, putting them together. I'm going to put, would it be helpful to have them on the screen? Is it, would it be helpful for me to put them on the screen? Yeah. Yes, please. Let's, should we start with what is participatory budgeting? Get it up here. And then Meg, are you going to be doing the changes into the draft that you've got since I cannot access it? Yes. I'm going to do that right now. Okay. You'll see that I've put one edit in myself already, but we can, not that it's going to, that we're going to discuss, what am I doing? That we're going to discuss. So this is the, it's not a page anymore. It's a little more than a page. So I've, I added one sentence, but this, why don't we all take turns commenting on any edits that we might want to make or additions or deletions. There are always ways of getting something on one page. I've just a question. This is what I'm looking at. Is it something you sent me or something Liz sent me? I sent it from Liz. It's forwarded from Liz. Liz sent it to me and I sent it to everyone. Yeah, I'm just looking for it. I just got it, Tuesday. So I have a general observation, which is that I think that, you know, the upper part, let's see, blah, blah, blah. Through point C, it all works for the three invites I'm going to send out. And those are all relevant to point B. And they're going to the town manager, to the council president and to the three CPOs collectively. But then I look at the questions and I really think that these questions all belong to the questions around point A. In other words, with possible exception, if you could scroll up Meg, so we can talk about them. Thank you. I'm sorry, down, I'm head down. So I think, so for example, the maybe the third bullet could work with the three that I'm sending invites to and the, I think it's the final bullet on the next page could possibly apply. But basically it would be at most those two bullets out of all these plus the points that we discussed last time that I introduced which are relevant, the questions relevant to point B that I would be issuing on my invites. And I just wondered if there's any dissension from that idea. I just don't see that the rest of these questions are relevant to asking about, you know, the things relative to facilitating and consulting with the citizenry on participation. I think when I, am I, yes, I am unmuted. When I was putting this together and I sent the, what I was calling the bonus questions, those are separately, that's that sent under, since they're just for the town manager, that is not on this document. But I was wondering if there's a benefit to telling the people who are interviewing, first of all, who else we're talking to. And also just so that, you know, here are the questions that we're asking of everybody. But when we go into the situation, when we go into it, maybe, you know, then we say, well, this is, you know, we wanted you to know all the questions, but here are the ones that we're really gonna focus on today. I think that's a great idea to let everybody know who the other people are. Well, excuse me though, for the town manager, there are actually two separate invites. There's an invite that's focused on these questions and there's an invite that's focused on the questions that are in the appendix, the separate document, the ones that I prepared. Right. So, I mean, I guess for the town manager, you could have them all together. But then of the three invites that I'm sending out, the council president and the CPOs, they're really only getting, or as I've understood it, they really should only be getting questions relevant to point B. And I just think it would be way too broad and it would be confusing them to give them all these other questions and to be talking about point A. Okay. I agree. And what I thought in my simple-minded way of thinking about what Liz has done is she's given us a Word document that you could say, these are the three things we're doing and I'm here to talk to you about, so you just send her sentence about B, dividing works that way and then you would do just what you've said, find the question and then you would only show them those questions. That's right. Yeah, I would be for... So you could edit this to the perfect document for that email. Well, that's my intention. That's another way of saying what I'm saying is, my intention is, and I'm gonna share with Liz the one for the CPOs and with Meg that one, but also the one for the town manager and the council president, a document that really basically goes through point C and then it gets to the questions that I developed around point B. Yep. But again, maybe the CPOs we could profit from hearing what they have to say about the third bullet and the final bullet that are here, but otherwise I think these points are relevant to the other set of interviews. And I think we've also agreed that we're sending these materials, but if the interviewees take it in some direction that isn't exactly what we anticipated, that's could be useful as well. Sure, yeah. There'll be dynamic meetings that we can't anticipate. Absolutely. I think that I have a feeling the CPOs are gonna be interested in this. Well, I'm really interested in to see what their questions are, but I think they all have a lot of curiosity about trying to do more along all these lines, A, B, and C, but. Okay, in other words, you would like, and again, I'm gonna send out a draft before I issue the invitation. I'll send it to Liz and you, but basically you're saying that for at least the CPOs, we ought to be asking all these questions as well. In other words, we're looking to get as much as possible in our discussion with them. I mean, I don't understand that much how what the long-run intention is or how much they participate already, but I thought that these questions were very specifically developed with key people who are already involved in Resident Capital Request Community Preservation Act, the CDBG, and so forth. I didn't mean that we would ask all these bullets of the CPOs. I don't think we would. I meant that they may be interested in A, B, and C. Oh, I see, right. We could talk about them in a general way without necessarily posing, putting those questions in the one pager to them. But for example, the first bullet, I'm not sure that would be useful to ask them. Exactly. So I would not send all the bullets to everybody. Kathy? Yeah, I think almost none of these bullets work for them. Yeah. But if you look at them, some of them have more about timeline outreach. It's timeline outreach, letting people know the length of time period. So certainly the last bullet would work on best of all, but it wouldn't be your committee. So we'd have to, I think whoever's doing the CPO should just edit these down to be relevant to they can do outreach, they can have ideas of how they could help coordinate, they can have ideas that in fact do cut across A, B, and C. Right. But they wouldn't know, is there flexibility in the budget? Right. You know, if I go through these specific ones. But we could come up those of, is it, John, is it just you and I and Liz doing that one too, right? Right. I'm sending out three invites. One is to the CPOs and that includes Liz and you and the other two are the council president and the town manager and that's just you and me. But I think we could come up the three of us with some bullets that would be specific for them. For example, having been in this job for whatever, what are your thoughts for increasing participation around, I'm not talking about great bullets right now, but I think we could come up with some that invite them to share their experience because they've all worked really hard at trying to increase community participation in a range of different ways. Yeah, no, I agree. This is the open-ended question idea. I would agree. I would say that A, B, and C are relevant, like Meg said, are relevant to everybody. Obviously you want to focus the conversation, but I think that any of these people might have comments on A, B, or C, but the bullets indeed would need to change. I'm thinking town manager, even town council president might have an idea around town-gown collaboration as well as B. They might even have a comment on the town council has a role in CPA requests. So maybe the town council president has some thoughts on that. So I think definitely talking about A, B, and C, but the actual bulleted questions might need to change for those books. So are we okay with entrusting the development of exact bullet points to the two or three people who are going to carry out these interviews? Yeah. And not, it seems to me that- Absolutely. We're all on this, we all know what we're trying to do here and it's not a good use of seven people's time if for us to wait till the next meeting or something, or let's get my pen here. Does that make sense that we'll all rearrange the, we'd agreed originally, so yeah. And I also think the questions that are in the other package, Liz's term them bonus questions, get at that broader scope, John Page. And so you'd still have this boilerplate on saying this is what we're thinking about, but then you jump at the Lynn and the Paul level and you can show them, I mean, Paul is going to be in at least two conversations. Lynn probably will be in just one. But- I want, before we can move on to that other document, is there more to say about this document? No, I don't, the only other thing I would say, you know, I'm thinking of the ones that I've been assigned to, I, the, probably the only edit, I'll edit, you know, formatting I will do is I'll say, we're seeking to talk to you about the resident capital request, right? You know, so I would just have one, you know, if that's what I'm reaching out to, or we're seeking to talk to you about the CPA process. So I would just have, you know, because it says, we're gonna, yeah, so that's the only kind of edit. It would be really minor because I think the questions are great. So that's the only thing I would do. Yeah, I think then that sentence that says below the questions we were putting, I think it's important that we let everybody know who else we're talking to, so that they're not saying, well, you have to talk to this person, you have to talk to this person, because like, yeah, we know. So that just, that would need to be edited as well, in the, below our questions, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm thinking that this is, you've managed to be so economical in the way you've written it, Liz, that there's enough- You said one page. You know, that the, at the end of this document, there's enough space where we can just say, we are talking to X and X for resident and Y and Y. I mean, we've got, we probably have enough space there if we just want to copy in from the minutes, you know, who's- Okay, are you saying at the end here? Well, just, I don't think we need to put names in there. I think as long as we say we're talking to representatives, because we don't know for certain that we're going to be able to talk to Sarah and Sam and whoever else from CPAC. Yeah, so I would just say, we are talking to, you know, at least two of us are talking to CPA, we're setting up- Right, right. Rather than specific names. Yeah. Well, I wanted to add a sentence up here just to leave open the allocation can come from the town budget, charitable contributions or a combination. Because a lot of, just to soften everybody's anxiety about where the money comes from. I know John McCabe and I have interested in exploring charitable contributions, but it's premature, because we don't know what we're talking about yet, but- Only one problem with that Meg, I mean, it certainly fits when we talk about the C, you know, other things. We went through with a percent for art. It's a fairly arduous process for Sonius to set up a way to take contributions to the town. You know, so it's an entirely, it's a very different concept if we're- Right, but in terms of laying out what participatory budgeting is in this first sentence, I think it's a paragraph. I mean, I think it listed an excellent job. I'm just suggesting adding where the funding comes from, but it's just my proposal, but we don't have to do it. Should we, other comments on it? You're saying you don't think we need it, Kathy? Well, because it's, well, because you're gonna raise objections from Sonia Aldrich, because the first sentence says, how does it spend part of the public budget? And it's not that easy to put in charitable contributions into a public budget. So I think we should definitely keep those words when you're, we're talking about, you know, what other ways that might be. I think you're just gonna raise flags. Are you talking about setting up a new fund where the town would collect? So I think it raises funds. How about we say in other, you know, in other communities are typically or- Well, I'm trying to explain what I think it will be a red flag that it will say, what do you mean by this? How would we collect this? It will take the conversation in a different way. But I think in the report, we can say that. I just think it's a red flag. Okay, others? Should we, it's not that big a deal. I'm gonna go along with Meg. What? I'm gonna go along with Meg only because I think it gets, shoulders go down.  I think, and I get your technical point, Kathy, but I think politically, when we saw it with Paul, he felt much more relaxed when we were saying, we think we could probably go find some money for this. And he thought, oh, oh, that's it. So just leave it in. You know, our focus questions are all about how do we rank? How do you distribute the money? So it's certainly in the conversation with Paul and Lynn or CPOs. I'm just, you know, we actually spent two days on this with Sonia explaining things that we couldn't easily do a public process with charitable contributions. I thought, you know, so like the anonymous donation to the library to build the library up here had to be in a separate, it couldn't be in a town account. It's just, it was interesting on. So leave it in. Kathy, I'm just curious. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded basically any participatory budgeting program in anywhere in New Jersey. Somehow they were able to do it. I'm just curious, Kathy, does it have to be, let's suppose the proposed to Robert Wood Johnson Foundation made a million dollars available to the town of Amherst, you know, let's just dream. Why would it have to be, and maybe it does have to be, but why would it have to be inserted into the budget? Why can't it be a standalone account? Well, it could be a standalone account in a 501C3 that the town wasn't running. So just look at the first sentence, how to spend part of the public budget. This sentence definitely goes with C, A, B, and C, potential town gown club. You know, it wouldn't have to run through the public budget is what you're saying. I'm gonna stop for some reason it was, you know, when the schools wanted to collect donations so that students could have Wi-Fi connections with hotspots, it had to do a go fund me. They couldn't run it through the school. So I don't know what the barrier is. I don't really know what the barrier is to doing this, but it was clearly collected for a public purpose and was, but it somehow, you know, I don't see why the town can't take donations. I think we can set up a charity. We might be able to set, leave it in. I'm spending way much time on this sentence. Is there any value to last thing on it? Is there any value to finding some town in Jersey and asking what they did? Yeah, on the road there is, I think if we're gonna, I don't think it's worth our time to. No, I said, just leave the sentence in. The only one who would flag it is probably, we're not interviewing her, so we're okay. But we could even say it in a different way that this paragraph here is about how participatory budgeting works generally in the, but we're doing it, we're doing a variation.  Just a way to finesse this might be just a small wording change. Funding sources might eventually be, might eventually come from. Or could eventually come from, oops, good. Yeah, right, that way, you know, Sonia would say, you're not saying they can, you're right. Right, I don't think it's worth our time. Okay, sorry, I flagged it. No, no, no, no, no, good discussion. Listen, let me finish my sentence, which this is an important topic, but in terms of preparing for these interviews, I don't think we need to spend any more time wondering how they do it. We know that places do do it, and if we ever have that opportunity, we'll figure it out, but we're not doing that. Is that okay? Any other comments on this excellent piece? So I just wanna summarize, I think we've agreed that each of the interview teams is gonna pull out and organize the bullets in a way that's appropriate to the particular interview. Right, and we don't all need to see it. So shall we look at the other piece that Liz developed? Well, that is specific to whoever's interviewing the town manager, and do we need to look at that again, or did we get all of it done last time when we... Well, let's just take a quick look and see what we think, stop share, and then I'm gonna start sharing again. So let me add, it would be a little misleading to say just the town manager, because those questions are again, therefore the three invites that I'm sending out, town manager, council president, and the three CPOs. Yep. I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I thought that these were for the secondary meeting that was with the town manager. The town manager is the only one of those three that has two meetings. You're right, it's for the secondary meeting, the one that I'm setting up, but there are also questions, and that's why I objected earlier on the other sheet to thinking that all those questions would go to the CPOs or the council president. In my view, the council president and the CPOs get principally these 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B questions. Yeah, I like these questions for that separate interview, and I think they work for Lynn quite well. I do too. And the comments? Other than adding one or two, and you've already talked about them for the CPOs because they have an outreach function, I think these work very well. Great. Okay. So excuse me, just as an illustration, one thing I imagine asking both Lynn and Paul, you know, thinking about residents that are under two, where you get detailed information on budgeting priorities to try to engage them in the idea that, well, right now you have these four major capital projects and there's a sequencing issue and there are forums to discuss these things and so forth. But in an ideal world, 2A and 2B are about getting more detailed information from the people out there to help make these decisions, to help with the sequencing and the prioritization of the four major capital projects. Does that make sense to people, to get them thinking in concrete terms about the current challenges facing them? Yes. Yep, yes. Okay. Great. So again, thank you, Liz. I wanna review what we agreed on at our last meeting about how we would report because a couple of people weren't at that meeting. So does somebody wanna summarize what we, it was in the minutes, but, so each team is going to, there's not, we're not gonna have a particular form for reporting that's got a lot of categories and answers. Each team will write a summary of what important points that came out of the meeting and circulate it. And then also questions that came out. I think the reports can be in bullet form, so it's not, doesn't have to be huge pages of notes. Does that describe what we agreed? Yeah, and what I said I would do when I get this document, now that I have this document, that goes in for the interviews, but I will set it up for myself to have lots of space between each question. And I'll just be, we'll figure out, one of us is scribe, one of us is lead or something. So someone is rat-a-tatting as we get into a discussion. Excellent. So maybe everybody wants to do that, put little creative worksheet with blank spaces. Holly? Nope, nothing, sorry. You know, I wanna thank Holly. I just read the minutes for the last CPAC committee meeting. And it says, Holly Bowser said, the Participatory Budget Commission is becoming to talk to you about outreach. It was a nice, it was a nice, you gave them a heads up. They were talking about kind of their plan for next year. And I just thought it was appropriate to let them know that other people are thinking about it too. Great, thank you. Okay, let's just also agree that everybody who participates in an interview will have a chance to vet the reports before they get circulated. I think that goes without saying, but and that you can circulate them. Let's now discuss the timeline for all of this. When do we want to carry out these interviews? Certainly by the end of February, our next meeting is in two weeks. It's probably- What's the date for the next meeting? The next meeting is February 4th. I think it's, well, what are your thoughts about timing? Schedule it. So what we have to do is, I think takes sometimes longer than we think, scheduling, conducting the interviews, writing up the notes. I don't think that can all happen in two weeks. What do you all think? I just have a question about the schedule. Did we, I thought we had worked on the schedule. So it happened, what were we doing at the week of the council meeting? Because the council, so I was just gonna suggest we might not be ready by the 4th, but target the 11th if we make- Okay. And it's, the council meets on the, I'm just suggesting this as, and then I think there might be time between now and the 11th to get these done or to get some of them done. So how does, so the proposal is to change our next meeting from the 4th to the 11th discussion. I thought we had already discussed in the last meeting that we were gonna try to shoot for the last week in January, first week in February on these because budget season was gonna be coming up quick and people were gonna get busy. And we were gonna talk about getting them scheduled as soon as possible, I thought. Yeah, and that's, I'm saying the same thing, Holly. I just think if we can get it scheduled can actually create- Right, I don't think we're gonna have them all completed and answers and ready to share information by the 4th, but I thought that our goal was to be having these meetings like next week or the first, the end of January, early February. I mean, we wouldn't be ready with the information to come back until probably the second meeting, not the next meeting, but to schedule them. We had a discussion right at the end of the meeting last time and I- So I agree with you. I mean, I was thinking of getting them scheduled next week and if we couldn't next week then the very first few days- I just meant I don't know for sure we will have reports ready by- Right, we might not be ready for that discussion at the next meeting, but we should shoot to have them definitely scheduled and hopefully completed. Let me ask this in a different way. Given that the work we're doing now is conducting interviews and then processing them- Maybe we should skip the next meeting. Well, the proposal was to have our meeting on the 11th rather than on the 4th. So let's just, do we all agree that it's asking too much to expect them to be scheduled, carried out and reports, you know, census reports written ahead of the meeting.  Two minutes before, right? No, I think that the 4th for the meeting- Okay, so we all- Would be too early. Conduct these as soon as we possibly can, hopefully before, you know, by the beginning of, you know, as early as possible in February. Shall we have the meeting on the 4th and have some other agenda? Shall we move our meeting to the 11th or shall we skip a meeting? I think we should skip until the 21st. Not with some looking wrong months, sorry. Eight to the 8th. So we have the 4th and the 18th for our next two meetings. Yeah, I like that idea that we skip. We aim to have all the reports ready for everybody else and distributed up to a week or at least a few days before the meeting of the 18th. Okay, good. So that's, I'm not- So if we got them out like- I think we take longer to do it. I'm just, if we want our reports to be thoughtful and to have a consensus of everybody who carried them out, review them and add things. Okay, so there's a proposal that we- And then we'll have time to read. And have our, instead our next meeting will be on the 18th. Okay, any more discussion? One thing, please. Meg, you had sent me an email saying that you said, John, you and John are going to do a community development block grant, is that John Page? Oh, that's me. I'm sorry. So we should decide. One of us will have to- That's the problem with John. Okay, let me see. Is it you and I, John? Is that John Page and John McKay? It's John Page, I'm so sorry. Okay, well I'm pretty friendly with Andrew, so I could reach out to him, but what's your idea? Sure, I was going to say we just need to choose one of us to write the email, including the questions and ask for a time. So if you want to do that, that's great. If you just copy- We go to the chair, I went to the meeting last week. The only person I know is Andrew Grant-Thomas. I didn't recognize the chair and they're way backed up because the feds are so out of control due to Trump, I think it's probably what it was. They have no money or information at all. So they have time on their hands at the moment. I think they've ranked their stuff and they've got no money. At our last meeting, we discussed who would do the calling, you two weren't here, so I'll just put nevermind, I'm not gonna, I don't have to pull it up, nevermind what I'm doing here. I don't have to share the documents. So I'm gonna put John under community development block grants, John Page, is that what you just agreed, or no, John McKay, right? So both of us are on that one. Is it not appropriate to just approach a member just because you know them? Should we approach the chairs? Is that the way it's probably- Yeah, you should send an email to Gail. See, I don't know who the, I can get all that from the town website. It's on the town website, yep. But I have talked to her over the garden fence so she is aware that this question is coming. Oh, that helps. And did she smile when she heard that they were coming or did she cringe? Well, I mean, no more so than my husband has cringed. Oh, that's right. I did see your husband was there. Yes, I did. I think it's important to follow the process that we agree with even if these people we know. Yeah, no. So yeah, Gail's information should be on the website. So why don't I do this? I don't see Gail's email, but I know the staff email is there. So I can ask for the chair's email and I can plan on sending that request. But we'll both be on it, John, McKayton. We're gonna request a Zoom meeting, yes? Yes. Great. That also works. Thank you, Liz. Right. And just, I think we probably said this, but these Zoom meetings can be personal Zoom accounts, right? Yes. Absolutely. Yes, it's not a committee. It's not an official committee. It's not a public meeting. It's not an anything. So you can use whatever you have access to. We're also, we're even allowed to use that for district meetings, personal. It's just there. We have to be willing to take on the risks of it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's unreasonable to expect Angela to set all these up. Great. So we need to review. So I just wanna make sure that we've agreed that we're not having the meeting on the fourth. Did, I don't think we need to vote on that, but looking around, does anybody object? Okay. And just to summarize, does everybody clear about who's doing the outreach? I think so, because we went over at our last meeting in detail. Which of us on which team? Okay, great. And also it's in Liz's minutes that we just read. So if anyone forgets. Right. Okay. Terrific. So I think we're all, can't believe it. We're almost finished with our meeting. Okay. Should we commit to sending our, if we had the meeting, which hopefully we all will, we need to commit to sending those, the report of the meeting to Meg, to the chair, or how would you like to handle that? By the 11th, I think was what it sounded like. I would say, yeah, if we got them to Meg a week early, so we could all get them, by that Friday or Monday to have time to read them, that would be helpful to me. Would you like to get them as they come in or all in a packet? Because what if somebody's really slow? It seems to me, what would be better? I think it would be better to have them all come in at one. Okay. Rather than, because then they don't, you don't have to worry about things getting lost and. Okay. So by the 11th. Excuse me. The idea is that by the 11th, the subcommittees or whatever we call them, the panels for the interviews will have agreed among themselves on a final draft. I mean, it may not be absolutely final. We might come up with more ideas, but we're, so for example, Liz and Meg and I are agreed that the CPO interview report is relatively final by the 11th. That's my vision. So I sort of liked the idea of having, and I don't remember who said it, like just your sort of notes or your bullet points. And then when we get together on the 18th, after we've all read them, then we can ask more detailed questions. Well, what did you mean by this? What did you mean by that? So it doesn't have to be, you know, a seven page report. It's just your, you know, notes, bullets, and then by the 18th, we'll have all read them and be able to ask for more information. Great. So I just want to summarize, we're going to get them into me by the 11th. That would be perfect. Okay, great. And I just, and okay, terrific. Are you going to send your format to everybody or are we all going to do something similar? Kathy's going to do a sort of worksheet. No, I'm taking Liz's Word document and hitting, if you do control, return, multiple columns, you open up white space. That's my very... That's how I do it. I do. That's what I do. I get a pencil. And if I had, if I'm typing on my iPad, when, if I ever succeed in setting up my second screen, which I bought and I just haven't done it, but what I'm typing on, I can just, it will get larger if that paragraph gets longer, you know, but I will have pre-opened it up. So I don't have to do that. But my question was, we'll all do that for ourselves. Yeah, because it's just, it's my simple, you know, a few of these things I think have yes, no answer. Some of them I'm going to open up with a big block of white space because it might be a more nuanced, you know, kind of chat. I want to say just about the scribe that we've set, just to clarify every, each group might, should probably choose someone to be the note taker, but everybody should be probably writing down little notes to be sure when you process the notes, so that you're not only, thank you, the light just went on, so that you're not, everybody can contribute to the notes. I'm a compulsive note taker and I completely agree with that. Very good. Very high. My notes sometimes are different than other people's notes, even though we were in the same meeting. That's why, you know. If you guys have pads, I have stickies. Yeah, actually, I kind of find it difficult to act with them. That's why, you know, there's so much clout and who does the agenda and who does the minutes. You know, that's where you create history. You know, just as a quick, just short anecdote, I worked with a woman who was taught when she was in graduate school to take copious notes because you remembered a conversation by taking notes. You know, it was a different way of remembering and so the challenge, she was the head of the foundation I worked with and often was chairing the meeting. My challenge to the staff person who was supposed to take notes is that they would get their notes more complete than Karen, who was chairing the meeting and they never succeeded. And I just said, how does someone chair and take notes at this level? But it is, it's, yeah, she was kind of amazing, but. Well, we're lucky we have those recordings so we don't even have to worry about, you know. Should we record this thing or no? No, no, no. I think. I think they need to be informal. Open meeting law doesn't apply so that these can be dynamic discussions that you can take in the direction that the interviewee has ideas and you know, where their creativity is or where their questions are. The other thing is whoever's zoom it is, you can record it but it's just on your computer then. Right. So if you wanted to capture the actual, you could do it. It's a hog of, it takes a lot of, pardon. We would have to inform them that we're doing that. Oh yeah. Yeah, so I don't think it's a good idea but it doesn't have to be posted to, it won't, it doesn't become a larger thing anywhere. It's not part of the public record. Yeah. We can take advantage of the fact that these are personal dynamic exchanges to get people, people clam up when they know they're being recorded. Sure. So, terrific. I think we're moving along here unless I'm wrong. I wanna, are we, I think we're finished with item four on the agenda. We're down to topics the chair didn't reasonably anticipate. I have one, which is, I was, I've been contacted by Scott Merzbach wanting an update on what we're doing. And my instinct, you know, my habit would be to pick up the phone and chat with him but I thought I would check with you to make sure that you don't, you would pick, read the paper and say, what the hell did she, why does she talk to him? It's his job to ask. I think, I personally think it would be great to have a kind of, we're moving along, we're interviewing people. I don't know if he would find that newsworthy enough to write an article, but I wanted to get your thoughts on this and this happened since 48 hours ago. Right. My preference would be to stay at a fairly general process level.  We have some directions we're investigating, but I wouldn't want him to write something that, you know, suddenly sets off a minor. Actually, right before the interviews we're doing with the rest of the folks. I don't think anything that we would say would be newsworthy, would be worth writing anything about, frankly, but we'll have to get more discussion. Is it best, maybe we should just do a, you know, a little press release kind of update that's in writing and then we don't have to worry about him. Then everything's in writing. We can say this is what we said and we can keep it as vague as we want. Happy? Yeah, I worry a little bit about it. I agreed with what John said, Fenske said staying very general because we need to get these interviews done which may, you know, be, I hate this idea or it has a kernel or something and we don't want to feel like there's newspaper, there's media pressure on anything we're thinking about. So you did a nice interview the very first time, you know, what is participant, it came out a while ago. So I was, I would almost say can he wait, you know, until the end of February. No, yeah, John. I just want to second Liz's point. I mean, I'm not going to speak ill of Scott but I've had my moments. When I was on the library board, I resigned for, I was a really angry person at that particular moment and I wrote a 700 word reservation note that was really cogent and thoughtful and he picked out 25 fighting words. Yeah. And Mass Live called me and said, did you really call the tea party? And I was like, oh God. And I said, would you like to print my 700 word statement? And they did. I think you need to, whatever, because you never know how it's going to play. You know, I burned pretty badly. And it was fine. Yeah, that's really good at respecting off the record. I've given him, but so it's really important when you're speaking with anyone to choose your words extremely carefully. I like handed in the written statement and said, could you publish how he said sure? And then he called out all the nastiest things. Wow. And it was like, oh, come on, man. And sometimes he misquotes people as well. So it's important to put to the, I, John? Well, some of the things that have been said reminded me that we do have a public forum phase coming up. And I think it might be most helpful if Scott's article could happen around that time. We should try to use it strategically to create interest in the public forum. Yeah, based on this discussion, I'm proposing that I get back and say, just carrying out some interviews. It's really not, we don't have much to say. I have, I never mind. I was gonna say how I've learned how to manage Scott Merzbach to say thank you for your, I'll make him eager to find out what we're doing in three weeks or four weeks that we're interviewing people. I will have a lot more to say soon. Okay, is that everybody satisfied with that decision? Great. I think that's smart, yeah. Okay, I'm gonna check if there's any public, which there isn't, I don't think. Is there any public who wants to speak? I'm looking at this participants here. Zero, no attendance. No attendance, okay. So I note there's nobody here. This is great, we were so efficient. I'm gonna review what the followup that we agreed. And if anything I say is not what you thought it was, speak up. Holly and Meg are going to determine where the minutes are and get them filed. Each interview team will finalize its own materials, will determine the note taker and the reporting format. And each team will approve the notes, let's call them notes and not minutes, the notes that will report on each conversation before they're submitted. All of the reports will be sent to me by the 11th and I will send them all out in a group. And I'm gonna do it right away on the 11th because so people really have a chance to process what comes out of these. We also agreed we're going to skip our next meeting and our next subsequent meeting is on the 18th to 18. I didn't, any other followup that is important to be sure we all agreed. I think it also was agreed that each group will create its own, we'll take what Liz did and we'll create its own invitation and summary to the each preparatory summary of what we want to talk with each group about. Does that summarize our plan? Yeah, is it helpful at all to like just to take two seconds and rather than email back and forth? I mean, John, when do you want to start like that sort of can we just nail that down verbally or? Sure, I, after this meeting I can probably, if I, once I get Gail's email, I can send that off but why don't I edit the CDBG one which I don't think I would change very much at all besides saying greetings Gail and adding a few things. Why don't I send that to you and I try to do that this either this week or this weekend, so by Monday. That'd be awesome. Yeah, school starts on Monday, but we'll get it done. And for my three invites I'll share those with Liz and Meg before sending them out and try to get likewise by this weekend at the latest I'll send you a draft and send the invites either on the weekend or early next week. Great, and I'm just looking at the notes. Kathy is going to contact Paul and Sean and I'm sure you've got that under control. And I'm on resident and CPAC, right? But you want to switch that with somebody's so you don't have to do it. No, I wanted to do both, yeah. So I sent out with the materials for this meeting, this I'm not going to try to share the screen because you don't really need to see it, but this I think is accurate list of the teams and the three asterisks mean you're the person who's doing the sending, the scheduling. Okay, so those materials, I don't think we received, but also that is in the minutes. It is the minutes. It's in Liz's minutes. Yeah, it's in the minutes. This you didn't, okay, I'll send it right after. No, it did, yeah, but it's in the minutes, so. Okay. Anything else? I just want to thank everyone for this level of hard work. This is a real hands-on project that we're undertaking with these interviews and I think it's terrific. I think we're going to get some good information and really appreciate everybody pitching in with thoughtful ideas and willingness to do this level of work between meetings. So it's, we earned missing a meeting. We earned skipping to the February 4th meeting because we're going to all have to work so hard between now and then. Any other comments or before we adjourn? No, okay. Well, I'm going to move that we adjourn and it is 4.30. Record time. Anyone in, anyone if they are all on tape? I'll second that. Let's just copy, yes. Second discussion, goodbye. Holly. Yes. You don't need to pull. We can just say. Yeah, we don't need to. Everybody agrees. Okay. Bye, everyone. Bye, everybody. Thank you very much. See you in touch soon. Okay, thanks, John.


Here at the ID Tech Act. So who are you? I'm Alfred Pore. I'm the author of Health Tech Insider It's an online site newsletter about wearable technology for primarily for health and medical applications I'm Dan Rosenbaum on the publisher and editor the wearable tech insider Which is also about wearable technology, but for the whole range of applications not just health tech So what's going on right now? With this industry everything as one of the I've been saying all week I started off writing with for PC magazine and the the height of the personal computer With John T. Dvorak or no, I actually absolutely with John Dvorak. Yeah. Yeah, and had lunch with him yesterday So that was a surprise. I know I know that's so And the thing about that 30 years ago was this this incredible excitement it was an explosion of a new industry with all kinds of supporting technologies and and things going on and and And the problem is that excitement is gone from that market. Everything's commoditized. It's just not Not as exciting as it was what I find that same vibe here with the wearables the printed electronics the 3d printing The energy harvesting all those topics have a synergy and work together in a way that's very exciting We're in that explosive stage where everybody's sort of tripping over each other doing the same kinds of things But there's a lot of really good stuff that's coming out of it What's going on in the wearable tank? Well wearable tech is also very exciting these days There are three billion people who have access to the internet and there are a trillion sensors coming online this year What's exciting about About telecommunication with the site about technology at all is is when people communicate with each other and that's what wearable technology Allows it allows people to put sensors on themselves and make their lives better understand their lives better in ways that are just unimaginable and what's exciting about this show is You're you're at the bottom of it You're seeing that the component you're seeing the thought you're seeing the people Falling over each other and talking to each other and discovering the commonality of interest and the commonality of goals So this is a really good show what well I I mean I would love to be a fly on the wall here because I have a feeling there's probably a deal a minute Going down here as people are discovering that they have technologies that support each other's projects and Need you know need what each other has to offer Does this mean that some of the guys around this hall right here and this conference are like In the middle of what's gonna happen. Oh, absolutely. I mean the next Bill Gates is probably walking around here somewhere Really? Oh, yeah, which one which I know if I knew that I wouldn't be talking on this I'd be over buying drinks I'd like to put you on the spot actually, so the most exciting What is the most exciting advancement that you hadn't seen before that you saw here at I detect? You know, I would was expecting to be blown away by something. Yeah, and so far. I haven't right It you know, it's everything's been incremental from what I've seen so far. I mean I haven't seen that One oh by the way, that's the coolest thing. You got to make sure you go over that booth and check it out Which surprised me a little bit, but But again, it's all new it's it's what I would call very frothy there's a lot of suds in the whole thing and Trying to find you know handicap who's important who's who's got the development that's really going to make a difference I That the signal to noise ratio is is a little low So I'm not you know, it's tough to pick pick the big story coming out of this So yeah, I think at this point what we're seeing is we're seeing The engineering we're not so much seeing the products. There's some very exciting products. I mean the the folks from sensoria I've known for a couple of years. I'm very excited to see what they're up to the folks from clothing plus the people who are Who are assembling the technologies together into products is very neat But by the same token, there's a lot of people here who are who are presenting who are engineers presenting to other engineers So today that may not be exciting come back Tomorrow next year and when that starts to to enter the ecosystem and start being being Manufacturable that's going to be cool. I mean 30 years ago intel was a boring company Yeah, it was a company that made Microprocessors big deal And now they're not born anymore. Well, I be IBM PC came out and all of a sudden they became extremely important so um, you know You know, they're this hall is filled with a lot of future intels And and it's also filled with a lot more companies that won't be here next year And so that's part of the excitement and part of the the energy that comes out of all this What do you think about the printable electronics? Well, is it cool? It's not only cool. It's essential. Okay. We're not going to get to scale We're not going to get the lightweight flexible Low-cost kinds of devices that we're going to have to have in order to make wearable sensors and and wearable body networks disappear. I mean Strapping something on your wrist is invasive and and obtrusive and it gets in your way We're going to be talking, you know in order for this stuff to really happen to get that benefit for both the individual And for the the whole community where you aggregate all the data You're going to need systems that require more than an enthusiast To to adopt it's going to have to be something that just disappears into your normal life And printed electronics ice Believe is is the only way that we're going to be able to get there I'm going to get also sensors everywhere Going to have sensors already are everywhere. I mean how many sensors are in are in your phone I mean, you know it used to be a phone was a transceiver for for voice And then we got text that we got a camera on the back We got a camera on the front. We got accelerometers gyroscopes, and you know, who knows what's all in there. So The the sensors you know better than I but you know the sensor Market is probably growing 10 times faster than the wearable market Reflections is that about right? Oh, it's not just where it's not just where but there There's a whole a whole track here that that it's really about eye beacon and location and marketing Understanding where people are and where they're going and what they're doing That's all sensor driven So it's it's about improving your life is improving marketing It's about delivering information to people when they want it what the information they want when they need it That's all sensors and it's it's happening in wearables. It's happening in cars. It's happening, you know in smart homes you know We want to know more about our the world around us And the prices are falling so quickly and they're becoming so available and so easy to integrate into into devices and services that Yeah, it's just exploding and it's the communication. The communication structure is in place right it's here We have the internet. We have wi-fi. We have we have beacons It's it's now a matter of what are we going to communicate over that infrastructure? And that's what sensors are I think the great thing about sensors as well when you see the implementation that's going in You think a heart rate monitor just going to tell you about heart rate But the great thing is when you put them all together That the total number of things it's almost the hole is greater than the sum of its parts in such a huge way because the insight that you can gain from this this huge number of technologies being developed is incredible to know where you are on the earth is one piece of information If you know where you are and how fast you're moving that tells you a lot more If you know where you are how fast you're moving and in what direction you know That combination of three pieces of information is so much more powerful than any of the one that you have So if you have something that can sense a dozen biomarkers in your sweat at the same time That's got heart rate and respiration rate at the same time. It's got body temperatures at the same time It Knows about your gait and your motion, you know what the forces on your at the bottom of your feet You can extrapolate from That multiple sets of information in conclusions and And analysis that you just could not get from any one or two or five of them alone I mean it's it the power of additive information is just enormous one piece of data. Does you know good at all? Five pieces of data ten pieces of data 20 pieces of data all about the same thing that becomes really fascinating To know that you can walk into a store and walk to to to this chaos and your heart rate goes up What does that tell you as a marketer? Right, you're on the right track. Yeah, we were speaking to people in advertising agency We were speaking to people in advertising and trying to to give that a number In terms of a dollar value and let's just say it was it was huge. Yeah, so this this sort of There is no question that the market is going to and growth is going to matter and that value Again, look at google. I mean that value Drive so much innovation and so much New services and and value to the to the end user At the consumer who who doesn't have to pay money in order to get that You know to get the benefit without having to invest anything themselves. So and it's Um, yeah, it's amazing. Did you see googlers here? I did not see the google. It has to be here, right? Coming with a google x project Well, they have to be here, but google has to be everywhere. Yeah, what struck me was that there was someone from clorox in the clothing Sessions Clorox cares very deeply about the maintainability of clothing The the clothing guys can say this thing can wash 50 times and that's great But can you put soap in it? But is it going to be a problem? Is it going to be a problem and you put bleach on it? What happens chlorine bleach on on electronic circuitry silver electrons that that could be a problem And they want to be here at the table discussing those things with people who are making it happen Yep, cool. Thanks a lot. You're very welcome. Get what you need


An atheist is someone who believes the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything. No, you're wrong. None of that has anything to do with atheism. Atheism is a single issue. Are you convinced that a God exists? If the answer is yes, you're a theist. If the answer is no, you're an atheist. You can be an atheist and believe all kinds of really silly stuff. You can deny science and think that the earth is flat. The atheism isn't a worldview. There are things that are, you know, if you don't believe in a God or if you don't believe in the supernatural, which is separate because some atheists could in fact believe in the supernatural. I don't.