Hey guys, it's Nate, AKA The Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. EA is just surprising us everywhere right now in this game. And especially yesterday, they surprised us with this loading screen right here telling us that Prime icons are dropping today on a Thursday. It's not even like a promo Friday where they like to focus on packs and trying to get people to open packs. They're dropping today on a Thursday. So I wanna take a look through everything related to Prime icons dropping in the game. We've got crazy market movements and panic selling on icons and just the meta market in general. And Boppe is 760,000 coins after he was 900K yesterday. Why is all this panic selling happening? I wanna take a look through that. And also today is the sort of a brand new season on FIFA 23 with the World Cup season ending, the rivals rewards, season rewards resetting. And some of you guys watch this video if you're early may not even be able to log into the game because EA is doing maintenance. Once again, every time they do maintenance they mess something up. So hopefully this time, there's nothing that they make a mistake of. And it's just very poor timing for maintenance, but I guess EA have a reason for why they do it when they do. But we'll talk about all that and more in today's video. Of course, we've got more Winter Wildcard stuff to talk about leaked icon SBCs. It's all going crazy in this game right now. And so is the market. So there's a lot to talk about. If you're excited for it, hit the thumbs up, subscribe if you're new. Let's dive in to the icon madness. And just the straight up surprise that this loading screen was yesterday. I mean, it's not that big of a surprise, but I guess none of us really thinking about Prime icons since we just had all of these World Cup icons dropped into FIFA in the past couple of weeks. I guess we knew that Prime icons usually drop in December, but I don't think I was expecting it after those World Cup ones dropped when they did. But alas, here we are. Prime icons are coming in packs today. Now, what does this mean? Usually when the Prime icons come into packs they replace the base version. So like on the loading screen here, we have Pelé, we have Zidane and we have Maldini. Most likely base Pelé, Zidane and Maldini and all the other cards that are in packs today as Prime icons, their mid versions will still be in packs and their Prime versions will be replacing the baby or the base version, right? That's how EA has done it in the past. We'll hopefully get some information today about if that's the case. They haven't told us too much about that this year, but that's what we usually see when Prime icons are dropped on this game. Now, how many icons are gonna be dropped? That's another question. Last year, and what we've even seen this year so far with the World Cup icons, is they like to drop these in batches. Since it's a two week promo with Winter Wild Cards, it just makes sense, right? They might drop one batch of cards this week with Winter Wild Cards one and then maybe next Thursday or Friday, they will drop batch two. This is the batch one that they dropped last year. Of course, they had Pelé, Zidane and Maldini in that same batch as well. But you see in this list, like they're missing some cards. Ronaldinho, Hullet, Kroiff, some of the names that are not in this list on this loading screen from last year in FIFA 22. I would expect kind of the same thing today. Like not all of the Prime icons will be out today, probably just batch number one, especially since this is a two week promo. Now, talking about Prime icons, what even are these cards? Well, there's nothing really new to surprise us here with, right? All of the Prime icons are the same from the last years on FIFA, except for the brand new ones, like Muller, Giorzinho, couple of the other new icons that we have this year. We haven't seen their Prime versions on the game yet. So that'll be very interesting to see what the stats look like. I mean, EA have revealed the stats, of course, earlier on in the year for some of these cards, but there will be some extra hype, especially for like Giorzinho and Muller, because that was the first time that those cards will be released on the game. And of course, since these Prime cards are dropping on the game today, people have taken to the market and have started panic selling other versions of these cards as they anticipate the new ones coming out. Mid R9, 5.7 million coins. He was like 6 million coins just a couple of days ago, even yesterday before the news bro, you can see a big time drop off here, right? Panic selling started to happen on most of these icons as people saw the loading screen and they saw the leaks of these cards getting released. I think like Mid-Hullet was another one I heard that was down big time. I don't track his price that much. 3.7 million coins yesterday and right now, look at this drop off. Yeah, he was down to 3.4. He's currently 3.4 million coins. So a lot of panic selling on icons across the board, including your World Cup icons. And I want to shout these out also because I'm losing coins on this Roberto Carlos right now. He was 1.1 million coins yesterday and now he's 900K. But why I want to shout these cards out is, yes, they might be a little bit lower statistically than the Prime cards in statistics, right?  Etto's Prime has got plus two pace, plus one shooting, dribbling and plus one physical on the World Cup item. It does not have a dynamic image and it also does not have the upgraded week foot, right? This Etto, the Prime has a four star week foot, four star skills. This moments or World Cup Etto has the five star week foot. So that's one thing to keep in mind with these World Cup icons is some of the World Cup icons have either an added skill move, boost or an added week foot boost that might make them a little bit more valuable than their Prime cards even, especially with the dynamic image. So take that into consideration today with these Primes dropping and if you own any of those World Cup cards, right? There still might be some panic on guys like Figo, the World Cup version, but I still think this is gonna be the best version of Figo that is in the game even after the Prime drops today just because of the five star skills that this card has, right? Now I wanna talk Prime icons just a little bit more. How are these guys gonna come onto the market today? Well, they're gonna be unlike the World Cup heroes. I mean, like you got, you saw these World Cup icons, I keep saying heroes, these World Cup icons when they were dropped onto the market, they almost had a similar weight to like promo cards. I mean, they were even packable from 84 times 20s and upgrade packs. These regular icons, I think they're just gonna end up being more rare. I don't think that you're gonna see a lot of the Cruyff or, you know, let's say like the Peleis and the loading screen. I don't think you're gonna see a lot of supply on an icon like this today. I know the market's cheaper this year and stuff like that, but whenever they drop new releases of pure icons onto the game, not like promo related icons like the World Cup ones, those cards are probably gonna end up being pretty rare just because especially today, not many people are gonna be opening packs because think about it, so many people are even just saving packs for the Winter Wild Cards promo. So I expect these icons to be pretty rare on the market today, except for the lower tier ones. And EA might even run Lightning Rounds today to try to supply those cards on the market a little bit more and try to get people to open packs, but I do really feel like, oh, they're running Lightning Rounds right now. Nice, untradable ones, but albeit Lightning Rounds. I would maybe expect to see Lightning Rounds again today just because EA will try to get some sales around the hype of the Prime Icons knowing that they can maybe sell some packs. So that's kind of what I would expect today with the Prime Icons is they're gonna drop on the game. You're gonna see them on the market and probably gonna be pretty rare. It will mean great fluctuations to trade with, right? I just talked about the Cerberto Carlos. I just picked one up on bid for like 855,000 coins. And now there's a couple up right now at 920s, but I mean, this guy was 1.1 million yesterday. It's a dynamic image and these World Cup Icons specifically are gonna be great to trade with because they have a dynamic images and they have a close stat range to the Primes and they have the image. So that's kind of what I like about those. Now let's enough talk about Icons. Let's talk about this crazy market and what we have going on right now because player prices are going every single which way on this game. And I think it's for a multiple number of reasons. Now the first one is, like we said, we've got Prime Icons coming today and that was a bit of a surprise, but are just Prime Icons coming into packs and making this Mbappe drop down over 100,000 coins in one day? I don't think so, right? 900K to start the day yesterday and he's literally just been dropping all day. Some cards I think are getting really low just because it's the start of a new season. We've got Winter Wild Cards. We've got pretty solid leaks for a Icon Player SBC, Jarzinio and Maldini are both leaked. This caused some panic yesterday. A lot of people would love to craft this Jarzinio card as an SBC just because it's a brand new Icon, really good statistically in the game and that would just be a card that a lot of people wanna craft. So in the combination of those leaks with the Icons coming out today and just with the Winter Wild Cards promo again on deck, Winter Wild Cards is such a hyped up promo and so many people are excited for what this promo could be and again, you just think in general of what's been happening this week on this game, right? We had a 75,000 store pack, 75,000 coin store pack to drain coins off the market. We've had an expensive Ronaldo SBC. We have had an 88 plus mid or World Cup Icon upgrade pack. We have had the DeMaria SBC. So many people have changed their teams because of that. There's been a lot of panics on them because of that SBC. It just feels like a lot of people have lost coins in this game in the past week or so with all the content that has been out in the store, in SBCs, et cetera. And I think that has just taken a lot of coins off the market and now people are fearing this upcoming promo and everything a part of it and they're just going out and they're selling cards. But it does seem to be centralized to more of the top tier part of the market. Alla Wayrun and his World Cup Hero card was like 600K yesterday. Right now he's 550. Like look at the drop on this card. One of the most meta attackers in the game. Guys, it just kind of feels again like people don't want to buy cards right now on this market. And that to me means that I don't want to be buying cards either if people are scared to buy and they're not buying, then I want to wait until that switch flips and probably that's gonna happen tomorrow and Friday and until we see some stuff start to move again. So it might be one of those Thursdays where the market is just kind of low and it stays low, especially on these like team of the tournament cards. I mean, guys, like we look at Phil Foden. Here's one just card that's coming to mind right now. Phil Foden's team, the tournament card was 290,000 coins yesterday. And I believe right now Phil Foden is like under 250, right? He's in the 240s right now. He just keeps going lower. And it's because I think people are panicking in general and nobody is wanting to buy that much on this market right now. And just like we saw last week, remember last week with the World Cup Phenoms, there was a lot of leaks for the upcoming team in tournament promo and these Phenoms cards got really low on Thursday. I think that might happen today with the team of the tournament cards as well. So just be very careful buying cards today. I think, you know, would you sell if you have cards still, it's not really a great time to sell either because if not many people are buying, you know, it's just gonna keep pushing card prices lower and lower and lower and it's gonna make cards go even cheaper if people are not wanting to buy that much. Now you still could see some swings in price today. I'm not saying that you're not gonna be able to make any coins on the market today. There's still a lot of hype around DeMaria and people today might be getting their season rewards. They might be getting their rivals rewards wanting to go out and complete some SBCs. So maybe some of these Argentina lads that have got the hype right now, of course. Los Angeles Martinez is still 170,000 coins, right? He's not moving on the market. This is the stuff that is hyped. The Argentina links and the Serie A links are still doing very, very good on this market and on this game. And I think those are the places today that you would maybe see the market move in a positive direction, if anything. So that's what I would say for the market today is keep an eye on those sorts of links because that stuff is kind of what always moves. Especially that's because what is the most hype right now. Now also EA yesterday finalized their dynamic image upgrades for all of the, or at least most of the Argentinian players, not all of them, but Messi got this absolutely stunning updated dynamic image of him with the World Cup trophy. So I think they've upgraded all the cards now. I wish they were gonna give upgrades to like Montiel and some of these other cards like the showdown. Correa, I think people really wanted the dynamic image upgrade for it, but it looks like it may not happen because EA retweeted a tweet yesterday that showed all the upgrades. Boom, there it is right there. This is a picture in the game. You know, it makes this seem like they've finished all the upgrades that they're gonna do. So really a big W for EA for putting these dynamics in, but I wish they could have done like all the Argentine cards that are a part of the World Cup promos, not just the select few, but that's neither here nor there. So guys, today on Thursday as well, new swap token, right? We're getting a swap token just about every single day. Let's talk about what other content we could see today as well. Of course, Thursdays, we got marquee matchups, right? I believe that we are gonna have marquee matchups not the World Cup marquee matchups anymore, of course, since that is over and done. Today's marquee matchups should feature some of the boxing day games and games that we have in the upcoming days since club football is coming back. So keep an eye on this section for some of the maybe big matchups that are happening in the next week in the world of football as clubs come back and as players return from the World Cup and as the leagues get started and going once again. This is where I think the Winter Wildcard swap token will be today inside of World Cup marquee matchups. Now the other place that we had a swap token yesterday was in kind of the place that we expected to be silver stars. Now I've already completed this one since it dropped yesterday. There was a Silver Stars, Anthony Robinson from the USA.  Win three games, score eight and assist six goals in the Silver Lounge game mode with a full silver team to get the swaps token from yesterday. So that is token number four. Today should be token number five via SBC marquee matchups I believe is where they were put it today. We'll just have to see. Now, other content that we could have today, of course with that supply coming onto the market with potential lining rounds if they're tradable, who knows. But specifically the marquee matchups packs, we're looking for these team and tournament cards to drop off in price. As we mentioned a little bit earlier, there should be supply on the market today a little bit at least and that might make these cards go a little bit lower especially if people are not buying that much. And what else we could see today is maybe the release of that SBC, right? The Jarzinio and the Maldini. Jarzinio's cards, Maldini's cards are all down a lot in price. I was kind of watching and hoping that these cards would bounce back a bit. It looks like Jarzinio has finally bounced back a little but he was like 1.25 at his absolute lowest here in the late night timeframe. He's only back up about 50K. Again, it just kind of goes along with how the market feels right now. It just feels like not a lot of people want to buy cards in this game. So you just have to be very, very careful with trading and that's why not a lot of cards are bouncing that much. Now that could change a little bit today. Like again, we said after the season rewards, after the milestone rewards, there could be some people that go out and buy some teams but I'm not expecting a huge market rebound today because just with the anticipation of the next promo and everything happening on the game right now, I don't think it'd be that big. Also, speaking of marketing content today, if we do get those Icon SBCs, you could see SBC fodder moving a little bit. I mean, you've got the low tier fodder right now, 83s are 1.4K, they were 1.7 earlier, 84s are 4,000 coins, they are a big but your high rated fodder, 88s, 89s, 90s, 91s, if a Jarzinio or a Maldini were to drop today, I think there is potential for, especially if Jarzinio drops today, I do believe your high rated fodder could have a quick bump up in value. If so, if you're gonna invest in fodder, you need one of these Icon SBCs or both of them to drop today. And not saying that's guaranteed or anything, I'm just saying you need that to happen if high rated fodder is going to go up. So if that's a gamble you're willing to take, maybe look to the fodder market. If you have 84s or 83s, I would be looking to sell those today after rewards because you might see a bit of a bump on those cards as people get the rewards, go out and do some other SBCs on the market. Now, speaking of SBCs, people might be doing, yesterday we had the goalkeeper showdown, Nick Pope versus Danny Ward. A lot of people are doing this Nick Pope card. If you take a look at goalkeepers across the game, some of goalkeepers are the highest percentage dropping cards on this entire market, like Dudeck, the hero card. Even some of your Icon goalkeepers have just like absolutely been destroyed in price because so many people are selling these to go and use Nick Pope. I think most people are doing the Nick Pope SBC. So especially with the Trippier card that is available versus Winter Wild Cards, Swaps, I think a lot of people are getting that done and that's why you're seeing goalkeepers drop. So that game is not for a couple of days but that showdown yesterday made 83s go up a little bit more and it made goalkeepers drop a lot on this game. So keep an eye on the fodder market today. Things could be very interesting there. Now, one of the last things we have to talk about is the season resetting today. Now, we talk about milestone rewards, right? People get scared about milestone rewards because they think that it impacts the market a lot. Milestone rewards are not tradable.  It's always untradable packs that are hitting the market. Now you can take, obviously you have the option in rivals rewards to take tradable in rivals but the milestones are always untradable and today people are just gonna be getting a lot of fodder and maybe able to pack a couple of team and tournament cards from whatever reward level they are completing. I really don't think that's gonna kill the market. I mean, I also don't think that is the number one place of why the panic-telling is taking place right now. I think it's a combination of things and people are just, people are just scared, right? And they know that people are not buying that much right now so it's just making prices go lower. It looks like Mbappe may have hit a low point at about 760. Looks like he's maybe bouncing back up a little bit right now. Same thing with like Ginola. Ginola was like 1.07 or something like that around 1.1. It looks like Ginola's maybe gonna bounce back up a little bit too. That's how panic-telling goes, right? You have ebbs and flows. That's why I tried to time the low here with Roberto Carlos. Got him at 8.55 on bid. Looks like he's not even selling at 9.25 now which would be profit for me if I was able to sell here but I need that card to go up a little bit more because he's down so much. I think he can go a little bit higher. So, you know, it's just, the market right now is just in a very, very interesting place and the rewards today might help fodder move a bit, might help some of the market move a bit but one thing that EA is doing today and again, this is just, it's really annoying and I mean, I wanna explain the new season here for a second but this is the most annoying part for it for me. They schedule maintenance. I believe this is three hours before rewards are paid out and this is the end of the season, guys. Like, people are probably trying to grind their games like myself. I was trying to play a couple more games to get the next level of season rewards and to get a reward upgrade from rivals but I'm gonna run out of time because this maintenance, Magic Creation's gonna be disabled when I'm recording this video in 30 minutes from now. So, RIP to that opportunity and again, we talk about this all the time. Last time they did maintenance, well, every time they do maintenance, they mess something up. Something gets messed up on the game every single time. Last time they did maintenance, they messed up the search here in the transfer market section. Like, when you go in, you search for somebody on the market, right? Let's search for like this Pele and then you back out, right? It clears your search. That happened the last time they did maintenance during rewards, right? So hopefully they fixed that today. I'm sure they're doing a whole bunch of other stuff or whatever but I'm not looking forward to today on FIFA in terms of the menus and to see what they messed up because there's probably gonna be something that they messed up. But with this new season, I did wanna give you guys a couple updates. With this new season, there will no longer be those annoying player picks for the World Cup limited time cards. Those are not going to be in packs anymore after this season restart, right? A lot of the World Cup stuff is going to be ending. If you have saved packs though that have those World Cup cards in them or those World Cup player picks, those will still be there. You'll still be able to open them if you're saving packs for a team of the year and you have packs that contain World Cup players in them during team of the year after all of those World Cup players have expired, you will still be able to open that pack. That pack will not disappear. Just when you pick the World Cup players out of that pack when you send them to their club, they will disappear and they will not be in your club. So don't be worried if you're saving packs that message that popped up in game a couple of days ago talking about that stuff. There's really nothing to worry about and basically just make sure and see what your level is. Like I'm almost to level 10. I'm going to have to go and grind through that 75 plus upgrade pack that gives out those World Cup players to get the last like 60 or 70 of those World Cup cards that I need. You just turn in three bronzes and it's an easy W. So I'm going to do that so I can get all of the level one through 10 rewards from that collection. But today in season progress, everything's going to reset. Hopefully they continue with the good packs. The 100K pack in here last time. A rare mega pack. They dropped some cool stuff in the World Cup season two this last season. Hopefully with season three today, they dropped some nice level 15, level 30 players and some nice packs in there as well. But just again, I'm honestly just asking the question like what is EA going to mess up this time? Hopefully they don't mess anything up. Super duper massive. So I'm going to list this Roberto Carlos overnight. Hopefully we can get a sale or two with maintenance coming. You never know. The maintenance on the market's always very interesting. Some people can get on the market. Some people can't. It's going to be a very interesting Thursday on FIFA 23 today with prime icons coming. Winter wildcards being one day closer. Watch out for the leaks on the winter wildcards as well. That could be something that moves the market a bit today. It's going to be an all over the place day today on FIFA. So if you have any questions, drop them down below. But if you're excited for today, hit the thumbs up. Subscribe if you're new. I'll see you guys in the Twitch stream today. It's been an eighth of an account and catch you guys later. Peace out.


Now I have something far less appealing to offer to the council, which is it's time for the ever-popular council initiated discussion Those of you that have been on council for a while understand that this is the time when we put our listening ears on not that We've been ignoring all your advice up until now But we we ask you if there are reports or other presentations that you would like NHGRI to prepare for future council meetings or as representatives of the scientific research community Are there issues out there that you want to draw to our attention? Wow compliant group go ahead Eric Since these often turn into guest speakers, you know a year from now or two councils from now I wonder if it would be good to get a council meeting on Eric Dishman's calendar once you know NHGRI was very much involved in the early planning conceiving of PMI It's now morphed two or three times and its reality has a new name Maybe it'd be good to have Eric come in great. So a lot's happening and and launches eminent and We're increasingly Interactive with them And so I think I could have a conversation with Eric and figure out whether September is the right time or more like February, but I think some one of those I think I would agree. It's a good idea Good to try and I I like I like the fact that I Like to see you know can you know regular touching base with them including with council including among the advisors would be a great idea Well, it was mentioned earlier today that I believe it's the Institute of Medicine that just issued this report on Genetic evidence and whether I downloaded it Like 150 pages whether what's record studies that are recommended for genetic evidence or evidence for genetic testing I was wondering if perhaps at a future council having someone that was on that committee Discuss those findings and more detail since we talk about it in a lot of our grant applications now thank concepts Yeah, we have this sometime Maybe two or three years ago, but With a change in administration and FDA leadership we get someone from the FDA See if there's new philosophies Yeah, interesting question, especially knowing they're gonna about to get a new leader There's been some churn a little bit of turnover in In that office in terms of the least one person we were dealing with no longer there So I dance a great suggestion will we'll talk I'll talk to our policy group and see if they have ideas of what's the right timing for that I Yeah, I think we should talk about find out find out from them when they'd be comfortable Yeah, Jeff You have a particular interest in the end site grants. We haven't heard about those in recent meetings So can we get an update on those at the next meeting or two? Okay, I will I will point out that I mean as you know child health Institute has when Diana presented here and the last council meeting Diana Bianchi and And you know lots of good discussions continue With them we have some meetings a meeting schedule coming up along long a detailed meeting to really discuss with them other additional opportunities for Collaborations in the extramural program, so I think maybe the timing would be good to look at that This may be Planning way way way in advance, but you know particularly thinking about as some of the bigger programs Come up, you know, I know someone just renewed but come up for renewal a couple years from now You know as we've discussed in the past having them You know having some presentation from scientists involved with those programs You know two to four council meetings in advance of when we'd actually be talking about it would be great So, you know, Jay, maybe I can make a comment without That being relatively vague because it's not structured yet, but but along those lines Maybe I should just point out and I'm happy to to be very open about this the fact that the date on our Street our current strategic plan is 2011 and it's now 2017 and by the time we blink twice it'll be 2018 so we started some internal discussions about You know The the likely need well, we certainly need to renew that strategic plan I don't want it to get too old probably don't even want it to get ten years old something short of and so I but once you sort of make a decision about Going through a new strategic planning process What that does is it creates a framework where you're going to be looking at a Anything that's big at the Institute like some of the programs you allude to are going to likely be swept into broader discussions that are taking place as part of a strategic planning process, so it's probably a I can't detail anything because we don't have anything yet to just sort of talk about but I would suspect Maybe even as soon as the next council meeting Maybe laying out something when we get our ideas a little better organized that I think will create a framework what that will really almost require some of the Detailed discussions about some of our bigger programs that might be renewed over the next two to two to three years Being part of a even a broader discussion, so I think you'll see this happening. I predict naturally Yeah, Carol so since There might be a new working group a Part of council centered on data science if that group has a chance to sort of get together and get the lay of The land and come up with some ideas Challenges recommendations. I would really like to hear from that working group. Yeah, absolutely So any yeah, we clearly need to have continued discussions around data science strategic planning it's time for me to read the conflict of interest statement and This applies to the all the applications that you will be reviewing in the closed session You must leave the meeting room when applications submitted by your own organization are being individually discussed in the case of state higher Education or other systems with multiple campuses that are geographically separated own Organization is intended to mean the entire system except where a determination has been made that the components are separate Organizations for the purpose of determining conflict of interest You should avoid situations that could give rise to charges of conflict of interest whether real or apparent For example, you should not participate in the deliberations and actions on any application from or involving your spouse or child a Recent student recent teacher a professional collaborator with whom you've worked closely Close personal friend or a scientist with whom you've had long-standing scientific or personal differences The NHGRI staff will determine the appropriate action based on recency frequency and strengths of such associations or interest Either positive or negative and will instruct you accordingly in Council actions in which your vote on a block of applications without in which you vote on a block of applications Without discussing any individual one application the on block action Your vote will not apply to any application from any institution fulfilling the criteria Noted above Please sign the conflict of interest and disposal of confidential materials forms which are provided in your Folders, they'll be collected at the end of the meeting So I have one last announcement to make In June and July we will be Bringing on board a new set of program analysts. They will be introduced to you at the September meeting but we'd like to say goodbye to a group who are Leaving us moving on to something bigger and better in life So could I ask the following people to stand so that we can recognize you and embarrass you at the same time? Julia Baker Colette Fletcher hoppy Kevin Lee and Jonathan Lotempio So these people are headed off to graduate school or medical school or as I said Something better than being a program analyst at an hgri. I think that There are plenty of things better I think council understands how many large consortium programs and hgri supports and Managing those weekly phone calls data calls report writing Organizing annual meetings It's it's an enormous amount of work and the program directors would be Bitter bitter folks if they had to do this without the dedicated assistance of the analysts Thank you very much, and I think you can gavel us into the closed session. Okay, we are adjourned We're adjourned for about 10 15 minutes. Let the communication staff take apart the video casting and then we'll resume 15 minute break


Yes, I want to be a pilot since I was a younger girl, because I love flying and military. When I was in school, I always talked about how female pilots in the movies and how cool is their job, and I was thinking, oh, why can't we have it in Jordan? Like, why not? Yeah, and then like six years later, I just saw the advertisement on Facebook. Real vision inspired Jordan Armed Forces to improve the existence of females at all levels, especially in graduating female pilots. The United States Armed Forces in particular, USAF, and the embassy in Jordan has a huge role in supporting and keep pushing to make sure that this program will be a success for JAF and RGF. I was especially excited when I learned that the RGF had nominated some female cadets to their Air Academy. Before women were widely accepted as pilots in the Air Force, that's kind of where Jordan is now as they bring female pilots into the ranks for the first time. The partnership with the US military, it was amazing how helpful they were and how understanding. The real involvement I've had has been with their female cadets when they started at their Air Academy. It helped me to help them navigate through uncharted territory here in Jordan. The mentorship allowed me to at least share my experiences, to share the challenges. Female pilots here can work under any pressure and under any circumstances. We can do as men do, no difference in tasks and requirements between males and females. A woman can do anything in anywhere and a woman, when works under pressure, will produce special things. The participating of Herald Highness Princess Selma has assisted in succeeding the RGF program. Herald Highnesses always was a motivation for us. It's humbling to play even a small part in Jordan's journey in advancing women's role in the Air Force. His Majesty encourages Jordanian girls to break through all glass ceilings and I'm happy to be a part of that in the Air Force. I was actually terrified of flying but my father, His Majesty, suggested I take some lessons just to get over my fear. The encouragement I received was all I needed to complete my training and now I really look forward to it and I think it's a part of who I am now. Both he and my brother are pilots so their support is really encouraging. My brother always checks on me after my lessons so he always comes and asks me how I did and he tells me about his own experiences with flying which was really helpful. The Royal Family inspired the Jordanian people. The number of applications for females for recruiting at King Hussein Air College has increased by hundreds. So His Majesty has been hugely supportive of this program as well as building a female core of pilots within the RGF. His Majesty the King and the Queen is the great supporter of having a more effective role for the women in the Jordanian society. It's not only on the armed forces. His Majesty would like to see women in all ministries, in all sectors, so either public or private sector. Male pilots from Arab countries, they were so surprised that we have female pilots in Jordan. I said no, I'm not the first one. I'm not the only one. The example that Jordan is setting by making women equal partners within the Jaff and within the RGF, that sends a very strong message of equality across the region. And I think Jordan should be very proud of that progression that they've started and I think that it will start to trickle into other parts of their society as well. I think it's important for Jordanian girls to know that they can do anything they put their minds to. And even if someone says you're not capable of doing something, the best way to prove them wrong is to just roll up your sleeves and show them you can do it.


OK, so the panelists are those who gave lectures today. And so I'm going to open it up to questions for any of the panelists on the topics that they spoke about today. OK, yes? I'd like to ask a question about political entrepreneurship, even if that's something we could talk about. So if the firm is a creation of the entrepreneur, what kind of role does a political entrepreneur play within, I don't know, a market process? Sorry. With a junior faculty member, with all that implies. Well, I mean, a political entrepreneur is someone who has the characteristics of an entrepreneur, but can't really calculate, but has the ability to, I don't remember the thesis of the paper, actually. But no, our thesis was that the political entrepreneur could forecast, could invest time, effort, and so on. Could, in a way, compare the payoff from the politicians with the time invested and so on. And there was a primitive feedback mechanism in the political process. But it's not the same kind of entrepreneurship. I talked about calculation today. There's no way to calculate. So it's really crude valuing of the return versus the cost. But it is something that could be, there are psychic profits. The difference between what you've, the value of what you've given up and what you've gotten, that can be captured by the political entrepreneur in the political process. Yes. I had a question related to Dr. Klein's lecture on monopoly. And Dr. Klein, you stated that many of the artificial monopolies that we see are flown from government regulations, such as, say, patents or subsidies or whatever. And I was curious that, as long as we have a state, given that they're all monopolies that are propped up by government regulation, now we certainly want to remove the regulation benefiting them. Is there any room for government intervention to try and remove the artificial market share that they have gained? Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting political economy question. So let's say, for example, you have a, the government gives a license to a private company to be the only provider of electricity on some community, as is typically the case in the US. So these are private companies with investors and owners, but they have an exclusive franchise on delivering electricity in that area. So let's say we agree that the ultimate solution to this problem would be to remove that artificial protection and allow free entry into the provision of electricity, let entrepreneurs figure out how to make that work. But if we can't do that, is the second best solution to let them charge whatever prices they want or to regulate the prices and say they can't go above a certain level or mandate universal service or whatever it might be. I mean, I don't think that, I don't think praxeology gives us a clear answer to that, but we can certainly, we can describe how the situation might look. In other words, if we add an additional regulatory layer, we could say as long as we're giving you, as long as you have the exclusive franchise, we're gonna demand that you, we're gonna control your behavior in some way. But of course, that's also gonna have secondary effects. There was a famous, in fact, there was a series of studies in the 1960s and 70s that the way utility companies were regulated on price, they had an incentive to over-invest in equipment and certain kinds of capacity because that was a way that they could legally earn a higher rate of return than what they could get from charging electricity. Plus you've got, now you've got a regulatory agency that's set up and empowered to do these things subject to political pressures, subject to lobbying and so forth. So I mean, it's a complicated question, but yeah, I think it's not an unreasonable argument to say if you have monopoly privilege, you can't then, any restrictions on your behavior are not automatically a restriction on freedom in some sense or an interference with the free market. I think we'd have to look at that on a case-by-case basis. Yes. So I actually have two questions, one for Dr. Gordon and one for Dr. Salerno and I'll ask Dr. Gordon's questions first. So earlier you mentioned in the praxeology lecture, talked about Rothbard's view on praxeology and you mentioned specifically something where he did say that some of praxeology is based on the senses, but earlier you said that Mises's view and then the view in general on praxeology is that it's independent of our senses. It's something we can come to without prior experience. So is this kind of Rothbard contradicting Mises or is it they're more to it? Well, that would be a contradiction if in fact that was what Rothbard and Mises said, but that isn't what they said, at least as I'm understanding it. What Mises thought is that there's from the notion of action, we can derive certain concepts from it, we can explicate the notion of action and then we can grasp and this requires observation of the world that the system of concepts applies to the actual world. And Rothbard thought that the concepts themselves are abstracted from the actual world so that it isn't that there's concepts or some sort of conceptual grid that are imposed on the world but they're abstracted from the world. So that at least the way I understand it is the basic difference between them. Okay, I wanna ask you to hold the second question because we have a limited amount of time and a lot of questions here. Tam in the back. This is a question for Dr. Baylon and Dr. Klein, whichever. I remember either in one of your presentation, you talked about the need for market prices, how companies need market prices to make decisions, but I recently, some time ago, I recently read David Koch's books where he talks about in his company, how he knows that certain services are important and useful, especially those parts of the business that are not necessarily profit-making is that they sell their services even within the company so he can compare prices with prices outside. If this is a decision that we should either keep using or something that we should outsource. I wanted to get your thoughts on that. Basically, as an accountant department, they basically sell their accountant services to other parts of the business. What are your thoughts on basically market prices within the firm? I mean, the short answer is that I think those are, sorry, it's kind of, I would think of that as more like a managerial technology, right? So I mean, the calculation argument requires the ability to calculate for the entrepreneur requires the existence of objective market prices. There has to be private property and competition for those prices to be established. But given that I'm operating a large entity, let's say in a market setting, I've still got to do some, I've got to make a lot of decisions about how to allocate my capital among these different branches or subdivisions or teams or project groups within the firm. How do I do that? Well, I could do that using my own conjectures. I could simply impose by fiat a kind of a structure or I could set up some kind of an internal competition, like a tournament among employees. I mean, a lot of firms have employee of the month award to get employees to work harder to try to produce more output or get more sales or whatever. And I could certainly set up something that looks like a market. I could tell a sub unit that it has to bargain with this other sub unit about how much it's willing to pay for its services as kind of a simulation. Or I could, I don't know, maybe I do a computer simulation. I mean, these are all, I don't think economic theory tells us that one of these approaches is necessarily preferred to another. They're just different managerial techniques that the operators of a large enterprise might use to try to figure out how best to allocate resources inside the firm. So I think Rothbard, correct me if I'm wrong, talks about internal prices within the corporation in many kind of states. And he talks about how those prices are just a technology like that. They do not represent actual valuations, which means, well, they're tokens, but they're made up. So you're still blind to what the market actually values those parts in the business as. Okay, gentlemen right there. Second row at the end, yes. Hey, thank you gentlemen so much for your talks. I have a question for Salerno. Okay. During your talk on calculation within socialism, you ran out of time talking about the more sophisticated responses to socialism. Do you mind just kind of going over in a little bit more detail some of the responses to some of those specifically when it comes to trying to use mathematics or computer modeling or more popularly is the artificial intelligence. You could just kind of go over a little bit of that. Well, so there were two more sophisticated, neoclassical objections. They were brought mainly by British economists who were trained in neoclassical theory, but were socialists. Well, actually, Appulsion Cops, Oskar Lange, Abel Lerner, and there were a few others, a guy named H.D. Dickinson. But in any case, so they came up with two solutions. One was the mathematical solution in which you collect all the data necessary to form a system of simultaneous supply and demand equations. And then you solve that, and it spits out the equilibrium quantities and equilibrium prices. And then there was the market socialist solution in which prices are arbitrarily set for various factors of production. If there's a surplus, you lower it. If there's a shortage, you raise it. So to make a long story short, Hayek and Robbins answered that by saying, well, the mathematical solution is extremely impractical to collect the data and to convey it to the director. And then you would have a long lag in trying to compute this. This would be for electronic computers if you could do it at all. So then your calculations would be a day late or a month late and dollar short. It wouldn't fly, it'd be very impractical. And Hayek went on to point out that market socialism had a problem of having people on the spot who had the knowledge. A lot of this knowledge was dispersed. So the prices that were formed by bidding on the market socialism, where the prices were set by the planners then changed. So Hayek said, well, how frequently would they be changed? And in any case, those planners wouldn't have the prices that emerge would not be the same prices with the same amount of information contained in them, that they would be if entrepreneurs on the spot made those. So he said, this is improbable. And he did admit that if one mind had all the knowledge in the economy, if it wasn't dispersed, they could in some sense come up with an equilibrium solution. Mises said this is all nonsense. The equilibrium solution is a solution that has nothing, no bearing on the real world where we have disequilibrium continual change. So Mises basically said, the mathematical solution is completely irrelevant to a world of people that aren't robots and aren't doing the same things over and over again. And he said that regarding market socialism, this is children at play, children making up a game because there's no investment. The investment is controlled by the state. And the state sets up the different firms and the industries, sets up the structure of the whole economy and then tells these managers to play at setting prices or at adjusting prices or producing at prices that they set and then they'll change the prices. This is just a game. So basically what Rothbard had asked Mises at one point, at what point does an economy become socialist? Mises' answer was when you abolished the stock market. That's the market where firms are created, destroyed, merged, and so on. So I mean, thanks for answering that question because I finished my lecture just saying. So she can turn it to get up to the table. Yeah, okay, this lady right here. My question is for Dr. Thornton. It's kind of a two-part question. So I'm wondering what your opinion is on what you think would happen if the United States did decide to legalize all drugs. Do you think that Mexico and other Central American countries that smuggle drugs into the United States would just create something new and synthetic? Or do you think it would have any effect on form relations, like if violence would occur or anything like that? Or do you think it would all just kind of go away, the smuggling and stuff like that? Well, if the United States legalized all drugs, Portugal has decriminalized all drugs and they've actually seen their social indicators, statistics improve. So the basic question is I'm not threatened by that or intimidated by that. I think it would be a wholly good thing except for the transition. Now, in terms of the US doing it alone, the issue here is that the US has been leading the global war on drugs from the very beginning along with Great Britain at the time. They're the ones that wanted to superimpose the will of the United States and its foreign policy on all other countries. And back in the late 19th century, early 20th century, the drug problem and drug control was the avenue, which they saw that they could get the biggest bang for the buck. And so the US has been a leader internationally and at the United Nations. And I think that if the US back down on the war on drugs that most countries would go along with that, even the producing countries, they're not happy with the situation because they're getting all the negative so-called unintended consequences in their own economies and in their own political system. So I think there's a lot of countries that would jump at the chance to follow the United States in a legalization of all drugs movement. And I don't see anybody fighting back, except for possibly those pesky Canadians, against all that. So it's a great question and I think it's an area of great hope. Someone on this side? Okay, this gentleman in the second row right here. Thank you all for your lectures, they're all awesome. My question is directed at David Doctor Gordon. And it's about how you went over briefly determinism. Now Mises was open to the idea, but I think assumed more of a free will or a compabilist worldview. And I was just wondering if Mises had any sort of pro free will arguments against sort of the determinist claim or if you had any arguments that you thought really gave free will a very strong case in the field of human action. Well, I think what Mises said was he didn't, he thought that the determinist view couldn't be proved. So he thought this was just speculation. So for at least free will is an ultimate given. Now this raises, which I didn't mention in the lecture, what does he mean by free will? Does he mean something like, put it in very oversimplified? Does he mean something like if we can choose to do something, if we had chosen otherwise something else would have happened, how is if we had chosen otherwise to be taken, there are various ways to take that in one way it doesn't go against determinism. It would just be if we had chosen otherwise something else would have happened but it doesn't follow that we could have chosen otherwise. It's just if we had chosen otherwise something would have happened. And I don't think Mises committed himself on this. I think he was sympathetic to that's called a compatibilist answer. I think he was sympathetic to that. Hayek explicitly took that position, this compatibilist position. Now on arguments for free will, one would be it seems given to us in our experience that we choose in a stronger sense of that. It's not just that if we had chosen otherwise we would have done something else but that in fact it's not the case that we could have chosen otherwise. It's just if we had, we would have done something. So it seems to us that we have free willingness in the stronger sense and absent any strong reasons not to accept what seems given to us then we should accept that. Now if you say, oh, but look isn't the determinist argument itself a strong reason for rejecting this ordinary view. I would say I don't think so. I don't think in fact that the determinists have given any real arguments for this view. It certainly, sometimes people will mention that appeal to various quantum phenomena and say well that quantum physics isn't deterministic but to me that isn't the most significant point it is classical physics isn't deterministic either. As people think sometimes said that it is but in fact it isn't or at least that would be involved rather difficult issues to go into but I don't think it's been shown it is. So I don't think there's any reason to reject what's given to us an experience and also it would seem that in our ordinary holding people morally responsible for things our whole language of responsibility seems to depend on the notion that someone could have done otherwise in a strong sense of that term. So I think as I say absent strong reason to the contrary we should accept that. Even the people who favor determinism will usually often admit that when we're acting we act as if we had free will but they claim this is just an illusion of our first person perspective but I don't see why we should think of it as an illusion. So this takes a very difficult issue but those are at least a few things I would suggest. Okay one more person on this side and then I'll go back to that side over there. Yeah. So my question is for Dr. Byland and Dr. Newman it's in regards to what entrepreneurs or management should do under artificial credit and like when facing a lot of over consumption and malinvestment like for instance the housing market. Like what does Austrian economics say when you see a huge housing price inflation should you continue getting a lot of like credit hire really expensive employers or save up your money until you see the market adjust itself. He said your name. Okay so praxeologically that's pretty easy because it doesn't say we should do anything at all. I mean the other question what kind of advice can I as a praxeologist give business owners?  So I mean it's hard to expand much more on that. If we had the answer to that then I probably wouldn't be sitting on the stage I would be in a big mansion somewhere. So like if I could perfectly time the market in such a way to make all the money during the boom and then exit right at the top then I wouldn't be here. So I don't think that there's nothing in economic theory that says exactly how to time those sorts of things because it's dependent on all of the many complex variables that are even the most complex AI like we were talking about with socialism wouldn't be able to boil it all down into something that says now exit, now exit the market. Question on this side. Can I add something quickly? Oh go ahead I'm sorry. When you're an entrepreneur I mean if investing in a boom means that the resources are pretty expensive and since entrepreneurs are expecting them to go up too prices have already increased which means if you enter as started new business in a bust things are actually on sale. So if you have a good idea and you imagine that there will be a market opportunity for you then starting a business during the bust is actually not a bad idea. But the problem with that is if everybody knows that like so suppose everybody knew that oh everything is undervalued then nothing would be undervalued. So like I said it's even yeah it's just impossible to time it because you don't know what other people know and what other people are expecting. Okay I'll take one more question on that side. Back there woman back there. Thank you. I think Dr. Dr. Violin sorry. I mentioned how to many entrepreneurs at the very least find the concepts of Austrian economics fairly intuitive. And I would say in my personal experience many more people than you would think find Austrian economics very correct in their own minds even if they can't put words to it. For example my mother who's never had a day of economic education in her entire life besides perhaps NPR went off about subjective value and like the layman summarization of a few of your talks this evening. But when they hear about Austrian economics they're kind of put off by it though they agree with it. What would you say that the solution to that initial libertarianism sort of reaction is?   Yeah okay. I think it's actually really sad that Austrian economics and libertarianism that there's no clear distinction between the two. And I try to have a very clear distinction. So when I talk about Austrian economics I do not talk about, well I do not say screw the government even though I would really like to. But instead I talk about the economics and then I put on a different hat and I talk about libertarianism. So I think we can do ourselves a big favor by separating the two. Because yes Austrian economics is free market economics but you have to start with a free market in order to see the impact of regulations. So it's theoretical tool but it's not a normative tool. I mean I'm not sure I can go further than that. All right thank you. We have to stop the panel now and at 545 buses will pick you up in the front. If anyone has any questions David Gordon will remain behind so you can answer.


I think there's more people who wanted to come, at least according to Shad, but I think we should just get started. Thanks everybody for showing up to this talk. My name is Christoph Wickerth. I used to be very active in Fedora. I used to be a package maintainer, ambassador, FAMSCO member, FESCO member, board member, council member and whatnot. That's what I'm going to talk about tomorrow, about my decade in Fedora. Now I'm going to talk about documentation, because I joined the SUSE documentation team a little over two years ago. Technical writing is my profession now. I've been writing technical documentation at KOLUP before, but I'm going to tell you some basic rules about technical writing. These rules are not only applied to documentation, but you can use them anywhere you want. You can use them, for example, in bug reports. You can use them even in technical emails. I would argue that technical language is more or less the same. Of course there's more to documentation, but for now we just stick to the basic rules, I suggest. I've made it six basic rules. After that we can have a question and answer session. At the very end I can give you some sources. Unfortunately not all, but we have more sources on the web for what I'm showing you now. All right, before I start, a little bit of fun. Avoid alliteration, always. These tips are from a website. First I found them on Facebook. When I googled for them, I found them on a website called plainlanguage.gov, which is a very valuable resource that I would like to recommend to everybody who wants to, not only for technical documentation, but for any kind of plain language. So plainlanguage.gov holds plain language guides for various institutions and organizations in the US, but also so many resources about language. And among them there's also a few more sections where these rules are from, and there's so much truth in there. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with. Avoid cliches like the plug. They are old hat. Comparisons are as bad as cliches. Be more or less specific. One should never generalize. Be consistent.  Don't use more words than necessary. It's highly superfluous. Who needs rhetorical questions anyway? Acceleration is a billion times worse than understatement. Don't use contractions.  There's way more of these on this website. I can show you some of them later. You don't need to follow all of them, but there's certainly some truth in every of these rules. I think it's 70 in total. It's just funny.  But there are some even more fundamental principles that you need to attire. First, you need to change the perspective. Who's the best person to write?  How many developers do we have in the room here? Okay, basically most of you. Who's the best person to document the program or the code that you have written? You are, right? You know everything by heart. That's true.  You make assumptions about your code. You know everything. Actually, you don't even need documentation. Just read the code. But that's not how it works. You need to learn to look at your program from a user's perspective. And I know this is very difficult. That's why in a perfect world, everybody has dedicated documentation writers like we have at SUSE. It's similar to quality assurance. You shouldn't quality assure your own program. You need to have a different point of view. You need to know the user's expectations.  It's a big difference if you're writing for system administrators or if you're writing for other developers. If you're writing an API documentation, for example, there it's probably pretty easy for you to switch the point of view. But if it's try to think as a mere mortal desktop user who doesn't have a clue what's under the hood. So basically don't tell them how it works. Tell them how to use it. That's all. They don't care about, if you have a car, they don't care about the engine. They want to drive. And they need to know how to turn on the wipers or how to turn on the light. How to drive when there's snow. How to change the oil. So just stick to what's important for your target audience. Try to find out who's your target audience. Maybe you have a clue about this, for example, from discussions on mailing this or from bug reports. Sometimes think you are also a user. If you file a bug against a program, somebody else wrote. At that point you're a user of this program. So try to remember these situations and try to write from that perspective. But that's really the crucial part. And if you don't get your target audience right, you won't get the documentation right. There are some hints to do that or some tricks. Some people use personas. I recall in Fedora, we did that too. On the Fedora homepage, I'm not sure if it's still online. But at some point on the Fedora homepage we had the different Fedora users. We were actually introducing them. So one is a professional musician, the other is a sys admin. The next one is a developer. But then you have a musician again. They all tell their user stories, how they use Fedora. So it's all about persona and user stories. A lot of people, if you're into professional documentation writing, you try to really have these different personas. You write them up and try to look at things from their perspective. Actually there are some people who even do real world user testing who don't make up these personas, these example users. But really have some users use their program and test it. But that's why I made it the rule number one. It's the most underlying rules of all. At SUSE, we often define the target audience. At the very beginning of the documentation, we say this handbook was written for. And then you would lay out administrators or users or whatnot.  So split it up into chunks. First things first. What everybody needs to know. Try to make a high level summary. Like say installation, setup, first time use, maintenance, whatever. These are the four, that would be the four chapters of your documentation. And then you go further down into this hierarchy. I suggest to not have more than three levels of, more than a three level hierarchy. But that should usually be enough. And within this three level hierarchy, you should usually only have seven plus minus two items. Yes, I know sometimes this can be hard. Actually having more is not necessarily a problem. If you have a consistent hierarchy, for example, I recall a project that I was recently working on. Where we describe a lot of command line options. Yes, I think we ended up at 11. So that's clearly against Miller's law. But if your hierarchy, if your structure is consistent, then it's not really a problem. If you have something that needs to be executed in a certain order, make it a procedure. A procedure is usually numbered and a procedure shouldn't have more than 10 steps. If you have more, you can think about sub steps. Well, first of all, you can combine steps. If the next step is just click OK, then you would just add it to the previous step. If you have optional steps, that would be sub steps that you can skip. If you could actually inside a procedure, you could also start using a hierarchy. But I would recommend only using two levels there. But again, it's all about the structure. If something is unrelated, then you can have basically any structure you want. You can skip stuff. Going back to the example installation setup, first time use, maintenance, whatever. They can just jump in on chapter two because the program is already installed. They just need to set it up. So here, order doesn't matter. But if order matters, then make it a procedure and make sure you have numbers. When you make this structure, think about the reader's goals. The reader's goals is usually get this stuff up and running or get this, use it. You have a certain purpose, a certain goal that you want to achieve with this program. So try to do everything with this structure from the reader's goals to clearly achieve. Every point in the structure should help the user to achieve another goal. When the user is finished reading chapter one, he should have installed the program. After chapter two, he should have set it up and so on. When you have instructions, you usually use the active voice. You address the user directly. I know there are programs that handle this differently. For example, GNOME usually uses the passive voice in all its translations. It's a difference if you say, do you use file or should this file be deleted? In documentation, I would suggest to use an active voice. Because you are addressing the user directly. You need to install this program, not somebody else. If you say the program needs to be installed, then, well, it's not my business.  Again, procedures with steps. If you have something difficult, make sure that the warning is before the step and not afterwards. Otherwise, people may be very angry at you if they have screwed.  If things go really south, they have deleted data and they are not happy at all. And the same goes for background information. For example, an architectural overview or what's an introduction. Of course, all of that has to go before the procedure. Again, before the procedure, you would say, you would clearly outline the goal. This procedure helps you to install that or to do that. And if there's any additional information needed about the goal, if the goal is until or before it has to go before the procedure. And now whatever, now you actually start writing. At least that's what I hope.  We all know it. Use simple words. That's not only simpler for you, but also for your readers. You're probably not going to translate your documentation into different languages. And you're not necessarily a native English speaker. I mean, I'm not. I know a lot of people here are not. And probably your users won't be native speakers either. So that's why you use a simple language. And even if your documentation is translated, even if it's translated by professional translators, at SUSE we have certain documentation that is translated and certain documentation is not. But even if you have professional translators, using a simple language makes it easier for them. You can be sure that the translated result is what you had actually in mind. So the kiss principle means you use simple words, use instead of utilize, show instead of indicate, requirement instead of prerequisite. I mean, there are lots of examples. It's not about, we are not talking about winning a Nobel Prize here. It's not about that it sounds nice or that yes, you should avoid, try to avoid duplications. But on the other hand, you shouldn't use 10 different verbs or 10 different words for the same thing. That goes back to the B consistent that we had before. Then grammar, click OK. The printer dialogue appears. That's straight forward.  You have the noun, you have the verb. It hardly can be any simpler. Try to only stick one idea into one sentence. Don't use complicated sentence constructions before, after or something. If you use something like that, make sure to indicate it clearly. If then, before, after, first, second, not first, next, next, next. Again, there you would make a procedure, first, second, third. Finally, for example. And try to avoid fillers. There are so many fillers that you can avoid, that you just shouldn't be using. If you read it over, you will find out better without them. Even if it doesn't sound natural at first, because you think it's too simple. But again, simple is good. B consistent, we just had that in the how to write good rules, but something that is very, very, very important. At SUSE, we have the SUSE style guide, and actually we have a terminology there, or in all projects that I've been working with. I've also been working with the XFCE and the LXSDE translations. I was the coordinator for the German translation team. So you usually have a dictionary or a terminology to make sure you are consistent. And it's really surprising how many different words you can find for the same thing, or how many different spellings you can find for the same thing. So really try to be consistent here. Okay, parallel constructions. Why white space is important. You see, it doesn't work here, right? You can hardly read the next lines. And that is not only because of the strike-through, but it's also because we have totally different stuff here that is not really related. Again, let's go through it one by one. If you want to emphasize a certain sentence, make it a paragraph of its own, even if it's only a single sentence, there's nothing wrong with that. If it's a step in a procedure, or if it's something the user must not miss, then it's definitely a paragraph of its own. So white space before and white space after helps to focus the attention. It separates the different sections. And again, it helps you to break the content into the different chunks that I was talking about earlier. And now I'm coming back to plain language. Avoid interruptions. Last year I was at a conference that is called Write the Docs in Prague. And there was a guy who gave a very interesting talk about how our mind works.  The code needs to be readable, or our brain needs to be able to compile it. And in order to make that simple, of course, you can understand. Just look at the sentence. There are not, however, marked as installed. However, there are not marked as installed. It's not a big difference. Everybody here can understand both sentences. But you will surely agree that the second sentence is simpler to understand. Because you're not interrupting the train of thought. Try to avoid this wherever possible. The next, the same goes for fragile verbs.  No, shut down the server. It's as simple as that. Even if it only takes a microsecond, if you only save a microsecond, even if it only makes this single sentence, it's a tiny bit easier to understand. There's a lot of potential. And they actually made tests when it comes to understanding or the reading speed for a certain paragraph. There's so much that you can gain with it.  Then please use real-word verbs. That's something that especially the developers often do. SSH into the administration node. That's a real-word sentence in a pull request from a developer. Often changed it to connect to the administration node using SSH. This also has the nice little benefit that you avoid the capital SSH. I mean, the command on the command line is called SSH lowercase at the beginning of the sentence. You're running into a problem.  Again, tiny, tiny little difference, but don't use, I mean, know that if you're familiar with a certain piece of technology, it's very common to use program names as verbs, especially, I mean, in the English language, you can turn everything into a verb, right? We can't do this in German, but in English you can do this. Please don't. Stick to simple verbs, stick to real verbs that everybody knows. And last but not least, order matters. We have two sentences here. Refer to suzer.com. slash doc for more information or for more information. Oh, there's actually a capital R that shouldn't be there. For more information, refer to... So why is the second one better? Because you start reading. In the first half of the sentence, you see what it's about for more information. And in the second half, go there.  And I'm almost through. Oh, I'm quicker than expected, but that leaves us more time for a Q&A. Last but not least, take your time. Write a draft, sleep over it, read it, or even better, have somebody else read it, and then edit it. You know Stephen King. He's a famous author, and he once said to write as human to edit is divine. The longer you stare at a text, the harder it gets. Or the longer you work on it, the harder it gets. Sleep over it. Usually there's this 80-20 rule. You can make a draft that covers 80% of the information, or that is 80% good. You only need to improve the last 20%. And this can be very, very, very hard. So take your time. Do something else. Start working on something else. Write the second chapter, third chapter, whatever. You can even leave the text aside for a week. It's actually better to look at the text after a week, and then you think, oh, what did I write there? So take your time, and that should help you to solve most of the problems. All right. That's the six basic rules. We could make it even more rules, but that's enough, and I think that's pretty universal. Are there any questions? Rule number one was... Oops, sorry. Change the perspective. Are you a developer? Formerly. Okay.  Formerly developer. Okay. The thing is, if you were a developer, don't look at your program from a developer's perspective. On the one hand, you're the person who best knows this program, therefore you are the best person to document it. But on the other hand, you are the worst person to document it because you are the bad person to know it by heart. You know the inner workings, you know what's under the hood, you know this perspective, and changing the perspective is... That's why it's rule number one. It's the hardest part sometimes, and it's the most basic part. If you don't get this right, if you don't know your target audience, know who you are writing for. If you don't know that, then you have no idea. If it's easy, if you're writing an API documentation, then it's easy. You're a developer, you are writing for other developers, but if you're writing for end users, that can often become a sum for developers. And that's why, in a perfect world, or in big organizations at least, you don't have the developers writing the documentation, but you have dedicated documentation writers or technical writers, just as you have quality assurance. I mean, you're not supposed to test your own programs because you will always cheat. I recall once upon a time when I was still working at Collab Systems, we actually outsourced some testing to India. And, can I say the word click monkey? I know it's not politically correct, but these people there were not, I mean, they were professional testers, but they were by no means familiar with our software. And it's unbelievable how many problems or bugs they found just because they were not familiar with it. Just because they stick, they strictly stick to our instructions and we had just made certain assumptions. We had just skipped certain steps or we had just assumed that everybody would be connecting to the mail server over SSL and not over an unencrypted connection and yeah, suddenly that didn't work. We just tried to change the perspective or if you can't do that, yeah, try to get a real world user. If you have already written it, give it to a real world user and ask them for feedback. Does that cover or answer your question? Okay. Any other questions? Any other questions on other rules or on that world? How do you start creating the persona? So you basically interview the users or roll out surveys or just make assumptions and test if they are working with you? Frankly speaking, the question was how do you make up the personas or how do you create the personas? I actually I accidentally already gave the answers. In most situations they will be made up. I don't think that I think only very little projects have actual numbers or user surveys or something solid data that they can gather that's on this one.  Usually you can think of certain roles. Don't think of personas as the first step but think of roles like the CIS admin the network engineer or whatever. And from that, personas are even more fine range than a role. The next step would be we are not thinking in terms of the CIS admin but we have the junior CIS admin and the senior or we have the CIS admin who used to be a Windows admin and just got his first training or so. That would be a valid persona but as a first step you just think about different roles and then you can make it more fine-grained. It would be nice if we all had that user data, if we all had surveys. I know that Infodoro, we did that. I know that other organizations I think Godzilla for example they do real world testing they test it with somebody said it's so simple even my grandmar can install it and they tested it on their grandmar. So if you have a grandmar who's willing to be your test animal then go for it. Dictionary or Translate? Great question! Translate for several previous projects and it would be so nice to have an operating system in every operating system the same now to be consistent. I'm going to repeat the question the people who are watching the stream so the question was is there a dictionary especially when it comes to translation I mean first of all it's consistency in the native language and then it's consistency in the translations you said you're a BSD translator ideally things would be consistent throughout programs, consistent throughout desktop environments consistent throughout operating systems unfortunately the world is not perfect everybody has their own terminology but at least within these projects you usually have consistency because they have some dictionaries I can show you some there are for example the GNOME translation guidelines which are very solid and then cover a lot of stuff then there are I think in XFCE we had the same well we had similar guidelines but we had difference we started from the GNOME guidelines but we worked them slightly I think at some point Ubuntu had their own guidelines I mean when it comes to German so Ubuntu always wanted to have this human touch and they were ducing their users instead of Z so that's something very German that doesn't work in English but it's just two different forms of addressing a user one is more formal and the other is more informal and in Ubuntu we are all French so they use the informal language the informal addressing the user in an informal way if you have a particular question I can show you some dictionaries but unfortunately there's not the one side fits all the dictionary that's why we have a recycling bin with a trash bin or yeah but there are some resources that are very valuable I think the ultimate resource is the IBM style guide that's just a giant dictionary it's been published for I have no idea how many years already it's just massive you can look up everything there there's also the global English style guide that is more into translation as well we have the SUSE documentation style guide which might help you as well yeah any other sources that I forgot and yes the plainlanguage.gov website that I mentioned earlier plainlanguage.gov plainlanguageoneword.gov that's one of the best online resources not necessarily printed resources but online resources is one of the best for plainlanguage in general not necessarily for technical writing but it already goes a long way I think are there any other questions if not I think we can just call it a day thanks everybody for showing up you all had a great first day of this vlog yeah and last but not the least it's a pleasure for me to be here even though I am no longer a blue guy but a green guy yeah it's great to be here I'm grateful to be back again by the way SUSE is still hiring questions if you're looking for a job we have over 300 open positions please talk to me thanks


I would like to invite the last of our speakers, Dr Laura Loughlin, who is a fellow in the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training and recently volunteered in the Ebola response. Thank you very much. I'm very excited today to discuss a project that was initiated in January of this year in Tunk-A-Lily District for the mobilisation of local people and technology in mapping for this year's Ebola epidemic response. Mae'r ffordd o'r bwysig yn Llyfrgell erbyn i'w ffyrdd i Llyfrgell sydd yng Nghymru, iawn i'n ei bod yn rhan fournod o'r 430,000. Mae'r rhan seven thousand kilometre ychydig, ac mae'n gweithio'r rhan fyrdd yna'r panlyw gyda swazeland yw'r gweith. Mae'r rhan fournod o'r dysgu yn ymgyrch sydd i 11 tiffdym a ffyrdd yn rhan 1000 bylygau. Mae'r 450 ydych chi'n bwysig yn y dyfodol yn y dyfodol yma, Yt yw deisimwyr 2014, y Ebolau Ymysgwyl Cymru wedi gilydd y Cymru yn ymweld i'r llai gynghwyl Magdorachau. Roedd hynny'n clywed â'r MSF Holland. A dyna, mae'r Ebolau Ymysgwyl Cymru wedi gafodd o gafodd yma o'r cyffredin. Yn oedd y cysyllt i'w wneud eich cyfroedd rymog a'r cyfroedd amser, mae'r cysyllt i'r cyffredin i'r cyfroedd sy'n gweld o'r gweithio a'r cyfroedd o'r cyffredin, er eich cyfnodd i'r cyd-gwyl yn lleol iawn, o gymryd y Bod prominent. Ond yna'n du'r gwarnio'n rhoi hefyd i'w cramffo'r problemo, ond rydyn ni wedi bod yn cyrraedill ar gyflodol derbyn amlwg, ond wefyn yn unwyd i weld o bwlytsio pob o bolygau ym brill. A'r bwlytsio'n gyfydlu ei rŵn, oedd yn bwlytsio iawn, oedd ei wneud ei chyfu sydd wedi gweld ei Ribs, o'r bwlytsio llyfiad o'r bwlytsio, were missing locations of recent villages and satellite villages, so there was many many gaps that were identified, Peattchodape aren't as bad as they were, but they were empty, but still there were many villages that were missing, so this led to the project in which the aim was to improve mapping within Toncl Formerly District by mobilizing local people in order to obtain reliable geographical information to tracing bullau cases under their context. So for this project, I'll discuss some other methods that were used and that's in yn mynd i boblnegirio'ch syniadol o'r cyhoeddoedd iawn i'r fawr. A'r trainiad yn dynnu'r roffinio'r pryd o'r shwt. Yn y bydd y mynd i boblnegirio'ch cyhoeddoedd, bydd y gallu'n cael ei gynnig yn amlwg ffoilio'r o'r McOchara'r cyhoeddoedd, oedden i'n gwyflandi ddiwrs motormall. Ond bydd yn y bydd'r cyhoeddoedd cyhoeddoedd Yn Ysgolrwyr yn gwefwllaeth. Felly, mae'n cyfle â ahogu gwahoddiadau a'r amser hynny, a wirioneddau o ran am arlwyng ein twofynu ar hyn. Mae'n mynd i'r gweithio i ddechrau'r technoliedig yn ymryd wedi'i zaerbyn arlawni. Rydych chi'n meddwl yng Nghymru, mae'n meddwl i'r ddysti future honi. A'r byddwch chi'n gweithio o hyfforddiad o'r warith. Mae'n meddwl sy'n ei, a'r phonesau oed Practi, ac mae'n meddwl ystafell o un i'r ddechrau ein gweithio. There is no language barrier because they speak local weirdest. There is huge advantage to mobiliatise the locals. The新 technology that is used... ...in open data kit and collect software... ...is an Open Source Tool that can be used to create and manage mobile data collection. With the open street map assignment this is a map and navigation application. To access high-quality phone street map data. There is a major advantage to using the Disc Gang collect software. It's available on the Google Play software for Android devices and you create your survey in Excel and then it can be transferred to the web platform and then you can then enter your data in the software and this is secured on a server that MSF controls. So any data collected is secure. And then in terms of advantages for using Asmund, this is again free. It's available on the Android, Google Play is for Android devices and it works both online and offline as coverage was an issue at times and also internet is an issue. So it's great to have these technologies available and all free and easy to use. So the information that was collected using this survey was very concise and precise because they wanted to collect accurate information about village names, the GPS locations, the alternate or you know, complete name of the villages as well as contact information of village chiefs or heads and also the number of households in the village to get a population estimation idea. Also another information was collected in terms of health care access. So what type of health care facilities in the village, where it was located, contact information for the health care workers and also the location of the nearest health care facility if there wasn't one present in the village itself. So to collect this information, it's very straightforward. Once you're logged on to the MSF server, then you just select a blank form, select the server that you want to carry out, fill in a blank form, begin the new survey, and then it's a very simple swipe action to go through the questionnaire to collect the information. And we kind of can give little like spelling is important, little notes to the collectors, they know to collect correct information. So it's very easy to use software and at any point you can save the questionnaire as you're collecting the data. So this is important so you don't lose any information. Then to get more accurate GPS location estimates, you can record the location coordinates that can also pinpoint favourite locations or they can track which route they had taken using the GPX recording feature with Asmont. So in terms of training and costs, 24 local workers were hired. These are just people that Ivan found around Mac Baraka. So 12 people with motorbikes, otherwise known as the cattle drivers, and 12, we call them health motors because we gave them a health motor wage, but 12 local people with Android smartphones. So the training, very short, one to two hours. It was fantastic because these people knew how to use their devices, it was a matter of explaining by the software, and also how to conduct themselves in the field and how to get informed consent, these type of things and of course their safety. So that was how long the training was, so it was very short, and the daily costs were also low. Motorbike drivers, they got 25 euro per day on average and the local people who got a health motors wage of 10 euro per day and that covered the rate and also the cost of phone use. So the village, 950 villages were surveyed in two weeks, which is a huge accomplishment for such a small team, and the villages that were surveyed were within the cashment area of the EMC in Mac Baraka. So each team surveyed around 80-10 villages per day, and they collected information not only about the GPS location and the names of villages, but also contact information, population data estimates and access to healthcare information. And the fact that they were able to collect this much information in such a short period of time and for only 3 euro 50 per village is a modest cost for such a huge investment in their time. So here is just some of the how, this is a very simple map, not quite as elaborate as the other two speakers presented, but this information is vital, it shows you, the red dots represent the number of cases that occurred in a village. So we can see that the distribution throughout the Tungalley district, this allows for lots of action. You can respond quickly when you know exact location of where cases are for distribution of hygiene kits. Also large turnover of expat staff in the time that EMC is open. So this also allows them to see the distribution of cases in the district and also to see, you know, also for survivor follow-up. As I said, there were over 450 cases in Tungalley during the Ebola outbreak and some of them have gone to different districts to receive treatment so we can map where all these cases are for survivor follow-up. So this just gives an illustration of exactly how many of the villages were mapped or surveyed by the team. So it's quite an extensive number of villages that were visited and surveyed. And then when we combine this, it's a very busy map, when we combine this with the data that was ready available, so in green we see this is the data that was collected by our team and then the red, this is kind of the pre-existing data. We can see that there was a lot of information missing in Tungalley district and this information collected really added to that. So there were many, many advantages to mobilising local people and one was that it would allow rapid implementation of a survey with lower source needs. It also gave the ability to train local people with technology on their own devices, so it instilled them with a lot of confidence they were able to partake in this Ebola response by collecting information on their own phones. So this gave great local and community involvement. So in conclusion, this is for an experimental project, it gave them the modest investment to gather large-scale geographic and population data rapidly. It also gave the ability to use locally appropriate technology in genuine partnership with local people. And this could most definitely be used for future emergencies to improve response and is actually being used in the Central African Republic at the moment for large malaria projects. So this is very accessible information and it's very easy to use. So I would like to thank the project team to Ivan Gaten who actually designed this project. I was very intrigued and fascinated when I heard about it, so big thank you to him. And to George Stanley Grotze and the local workers in my baraca who worked collecting this data. And also all the MSF staff in my baraca and to Jane Gragan Cos has done this for their help with this presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much Laura, an excellent example of the application of technology in the field. Does anybody have any, yes, questions straight in the front, in front of me? Thank you very much for your presentation. My question is, did you have any challenge during the heights of the Ebola outbreak when the government imposed restrictions and mobilities in terms of having your mappers go from villages to villages and perhaps even going into health centres when the government have recommended no movement between villages. Thank you. So at the time if you're working with MSF you're able to get a pass, so you're able to pass through the boundaries. So that was one major advantage and then you try to ensure that you're going to health facilities, that they make sure they didn't go inside. There was also protection measures but at the time if you worked with MSF you're able to get a pass to pass the police controls. At any time did you think that maybe perhaps the mappers were at a bit of an increased risk when they go from villages to villages? In general when, even in my bracket it's a case investigator team, so you always make sure that they don't go inside health cities, the nobody contact rule applies. So that's one of the main things with MSF is you know you don't touch somebody then you know you're safe. So you would not put someone in a risk if you knew but they were given advice and training during the time that they had the very short training to ensure that they didn't touch anybody and going to health facilities always kind of keep your distance. That's the general rule when you're in the field for us and for also for them. Thank you very much. Can we have the online? We've got a question from our online audience. So I have a question from the online audience about mapping for drug resistant TB in areas of high prevalence and how that could potentially help save lives and potential costs. That would be hugely beneficial. You know I think it's a low cost project, the software is available, everything is a matter of training. So I think in general that would be very beneficial for health facilities or for organisations if they kind of would be able to track where these, where high water prevalence and water resistance is. So I think it's a very low cost project that would be able to implement, it's accessible. These people had, you know, these were not highly skilled. You know, they had smartphones, they were in the training and off they went and they enjoyed the experience. So I think it can be done, it's very adaptable to any environment. Thank you. A gentleman in the check shirt. Yes, excellent presentation. I wonder, you didn't present it but did you use the track feature to trace out trails and roads to the villages so that that might serve provision of care later on? Yeah, that was also carried out. So yeah, they were able to track the trail the way the team operated that they would select a region where they would investigate and they would kind of branch out. So we kind of had an idea of the trails that they took and in general the roading because there's some mining that goes on in Sierra Leone. So some of the roads are quite well mapped but it's kind of added to that what was available. Great. One last question from the gentleman in the middle. Thanks Laura, great presentation. So you said it's a pilot and you learnt a lot from it. I'm wondering what you would think would be the next step if you could add one thing to this system to improve it next time. What would you do? Good question. Yeah, I mean every project has limitations but I think for this experiment we have a low number of workers and I think for the future maybe you can gather so much more information. So we gathered healthcare access, it can be used to try and gather as much more information as possible about socioeconomic status and also for advocacy as showed by Sylvie that was done in its free time which is very useful especially if you want to try and follow up on cases that were in quarantine. That type of information could have been collected also just in terms of trying to identify if villages, what the socioeconomic status was, if they were more at risk of being a party, a lack of food and all these type of things would have been very useful. Great. Thank you very much Laura. Would you like to join me here and I'd invite the other two speakers back up onto the panel here. We have 15 to 20 minutes now of open discussion.