OK, ladies and gentlemen, you're all very, very welcome. I shall allow our chair, Brian Robinson, to introduce our panelists. But obviously, to thank all of them for joining us this morning. And we have one more speaker who will be joining us a little bit later in the morning. My name is Ben Tomra from University College Dublin, along with Mary Cross and Patrick Keating. I'm a co-chair of the Security Defense Working Group here within the Institute. And as you'll be aware, this is the third of three expert seminars we've been running on security defense and small states. The first of those seminars was focused on looking at the threats faced by the European Union, small states in general, and Ireland in particular. The second of our seminars then looked at the capacities of the European Union, again small states in general, and then again Ireland, our capacity to contribute to security. So what we're trying to do today is square that circle. We're trying to square that circle by looking at how the Union, small states in general, and again Ireland matches or deals with its threats with their capacities through what kind of strategy. So what we'll be asking to do a little bit later on when you break out into small parallel working groups is to look at how the Union, small states in general, and Ireland, what kind of strategies are available to us to square the circle between threats and capacities. What are those options? Is there an evolution in those options? Do we need to think about change in those options? And what kinds of roadblocks lie between us and achieving the kinds of strategies that will, as I say, match our capacity to dealing with the threats that we face. As you'll be aware, we have a number of blogs from our contributors will be published on Monday. There'll also be a briefing paper from this working group. And we'll hope to take these themes on in the future. But as I say, at the end of this session. So without any further ado, thank you again very much for coming. And I'll hand over to our chair, Barry Robinson. Right. Thank you very much, Ben. And good morning to everyone. As Ben has briefly indicated, this is the final act of the Northshire Trilogy. And he has indicated he's recalled, of course, what the purposes and what the focus of the two previous events were. As he indicated also, we are completing the exercise today by looking at strategy building for small states on European security and defense. And the program follows the normal format for the series with one exception. Due to his travel arrangements, our keynote speaker, Sven Biskopp, will speak during the final session rather than at the outset of proceedings. We're relying on EU integrated single market transport networks for just in time arrival of Sven for his address. Before I introduce our panelists, a few housekeeping points. First of all, may I ask you all to switch your phones to silent and leading by example on that myself. Secondly, the opening discussion of the panel and the keynote address later in the program will be on the record. Conversely, the Q&A session is under Chatham House rules which means that participants will be free to use the information received but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speakers or those of any other participant may be revealed. And this format is intended to encourage frank open and free flowing exchanges. We begin with the panel discussion and I'll introduce each of our distinguished panelists in turn and invite them to make their opening remarks which will provide nourishing food for thought for the ensuing questions and answers session. I begin with Heidi Moore. Heidi is EU politics lecturer at the Department of International Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. She's also a senior CEO or fellow at St. Anthony's and participates in the activities of the European Studies Centre. Her research to date has focused on European foreign policy, Europe's role in the world, and EU politics. She was previously a fellow in EU and international organizations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. And she holds a doctorate from the University of Vienna and I might say in passing that while preparing for this event, I came across an interview that Heidi gave to the UACES, I think it's the Academic Association for Contemporary European Studies, on diplomacy, gender, and what was described as project-based learning, but I think it's more problem-based learning, isn't it, really? Yeah. And which I would commend to you if you have 20 minutes, I think it would repay the investment. Heidi, if you'd like to. Thank you very much. Shall I go there, no? Yeah, yeah. Or then maybe it's easier, but just these people can also see people a bit better. First of all, thank you very much for hosting us. Thank you very much for joining us. And also a special thanks to Klo Dach, your team, and also the Institute for making this cooperation possible with Nordia. So we spend a minute, we still have a discussion if it's Nordia or Nordia. After three years, we didn't settle that yet. But Nordia is our network on research and teaching EU-front affairs. And it's a three-year engagement of 10 universities and the University Association for Contemporary European Studies, where we not try so much to push our research forward, because we do that anyway. But where the aim is more to trade discussion, on the one hand, with early career scholars, with policy makers, but I think also more and more with political elites and the public. And I think in this regard, we are very pleased that in this third year, we can be here and can have this discussion, I think, which is very timely on small states secured in defense. And in this regard, I also want to give a special thanks to Ben Tonva, who is a very inspiring source for our network and keeps pushing us forward in our academic debates to think differently about secured in defense, but also gives us always great ideas of how we can make this conversation with policy makers more fruitful. Because I think, also as academics, not only the teaching side, also on the outreach side, I think we have still a lot to do in thinking of how we can best do that. So thank you very much to the Institute and to Ben for having us. The way I will look at security and defense of small states in the next eight minutes, approximately, is more that I come more from a foreign policy side, and especially from a EU foreign policy cooperation side. So I leave the security and defense details to the other experts. But I wanted to share with you three themes that I think came out of many discussions in the last few years about how foreign policy cooperation on the EU level changed, also what that means also for security and defense. And Ben was joking that maybe it was a bit in a bad mood when Ben came up, also with the blog post that will follow. But in the end, I want to talk about the danger of smallness and this danger of taking this notion of small and turning it into a very convenient collectivism in the European Union to say, well, we are all small, so maybe we should be small together and look away at what's happening in the world. And maybe that also can sometimes be and a good excuse for a lack of vision and inaction. And maybe that's a bit of an extreme, but I still think that sometimes it's to push this argument a bit that, well, we are all small states in the EU. And I think there was a very nice quote from a Danish minister who was saying, well, in the EU, we have small states and we have those states who are small and don't know it yet. He got reprimanded by the UK. But I actually think that there's really something very useful to think about in this quote in terms of, well, yes, the EU is made up of smaller member states. But the big question is how do we now, with the small elements together, create something bigger? And how do the small elements together think bigger together? And I want to make three points. The first one for me is that, well, what we see happening is that there's what I call a lot of smoke, but maybe a bit too little fire. So there is actually a lot of activity in the foreign policy domain, in Brussels and also in the member states. But especially in the 10, 15 years, you could see that it got a bit business as usual. There's a lot of technical cooperation. In preparation for the meeting, I was going through the Foreign Affairs Council conclusions and the agendas of the Political and Security Committee in Brussels. And the amount of topics that they're covering and in the end, the quantity of things that they cover in these meetings is remarkable. When I compare that to 15 years ago, it's really, you see, a lot of things that I actually discussed, a lot of things are going through the system. But, you know, once you really look a bit more into detail, it's sometimes like, yeah, that's all sounds very nice, but actually, do I really care? Maybe, as an academic I do, as a citizen, I'm sometimes not so sure. And that's what I mean with, you know, sometimes it seems a bit that in the European Union, we have, on the one hand, this hype, yeah, we have PESCO now, and I think we'll come back to this topic. And yes, it will change certain things in the member states. It will be a very useful tool on also the Defense Fund in helping those member states who want to reform anyone. But I find it fascinating that there's no talk about, so once we have better defense and structures and capabilities, what do we do with them? What is actually the aim of those? And, you know, what are our criteria? Maybe with, you know, again, with nuances because we have different member states. And I remember a very good event a few years ago where we talked about Nutella in Austria, Finland in Dublin, in Ireland, exactly here. So, you know, of course, we will have different standards that member states want to keep up. But I find it fascinating that everyone talks about capabilities in this technical side. But where's the politics? Where's the political side of saying, well, you know, what do we actually want to achieve with that? And what I find interesting in this regard, I had one of my professors, over the 1977, I wrote about European political cooperation, so before CFSP, and he always termed this notion, well, what we see is procedure a substitute for substance. And it's really interesting that he wrote this in 1977, but I have a lot of colleagues who come still back to this, that what we see in European policy cooperation, that common foreign security policy, but I think also in the security defense thing, is a lot of coordination, a lot of cooperation, a lot of exchanging on technical retards. But again, if you think about what are the big political objectives on the CFSP, do we really know? And you could say, well, we had the global strategy, but I assume there are a lot of policy makers in the room who will also agree with me that, well, yeah, it's a nice document, but does it actually give us a vision of where European policy cooperation should go? And I think that's really something very important to think about. Where's the politics? In my teaching, I always do an exercise with my students. So the first question I give them is, name me three, four ministers that you know from any time period that you want to, that you think were really important or successful. And I'll be make the list. The second question is, so now name me the 28 Four Ministers of EU. And these two lists don't overlap. So I think there's also, and I think we know this from research, there's also a general notion that foreign policy is losing in the thinking of governments. This idea that we need vision in foreign policy. And it can not just be governing, but it really has to be the statement ship, a state woman ship, if you want to say it, is important. And I think what we really see also in the EU, in the EU circles in the last five to six years is that there is a lot of procedures. We did a research on the political and security committee. In the past, we meet twice per week. It was really difficult for us in the last year to get any interviews because they keep meeting every day. So there is a lot of activity. But again, does this activity actually give us something bigger where we say, okay, from this activity, we know where we are heading. And if it doesn't come from the system and from the bottom up, well, at the moment, I don't see a lot of political leadership on the top that would give us this vision. So I think this is really an issue that we should think about. The second point that I want to make, and I will speed up a bit, apologies, is again, a bit this idea that, well, also for member states, it seems a bit that they go to Brussels and they do stuff there, but how much do they actually change at home? And I also noticed when I was thinking of, okay, what research do we have about member states really actively changing their policy, changing their security and defense strategies in the past 20 years? I think we have a tendency to pick those member states that are very active because then we see things happening. And again, as academics, I think we like things because then we have lots of empirics and we can really make conclusions. But what we forget is we have 27 member states and there might be two active ones in a certain field. But what is about the rest? I'm originally from Austria and we just got the new government now. So we went from a conservative right wing to a conservative Korean government. And I was going through the coalition agreement. Unformed policy, nothing changed. It's business as usual. Just before I went back 15 years and again looked at the foreign policy side. We are neutral and then there are different nuances of how the government's interpreted. We want to cooperate in Europe, but you know, subsidiarity. It's always the same issues. How can it be that 20 years have passed and Austria didn't really change anything in what it wants to achieve? And that's just one example. I think we will be able to come up with a lot of other examples in the European Union. And linked to that, there's one issue that I start really getting concerned about. First, I was a bit puzzled. Now I'm more concerned. And this revival of sovereignty as an issue that might stop our cooperation. And I think that is also thanks to the British a bit. You know, we all talk about taking back control and we have sovereignty concerns. And as a political scientist, this really bothers me because in the past we always talked about national concerns. You know, you had interest, everyone understood, especially also in the CFSP, in foreign policy cooperation that well, of course, geography matters. The past, the culture of countries matter in how they position themselves in foreign policy issues. And sometimes there were strong national issues that others had to consider and that others were willing to consider because everyone could understand where the country was coming from. But you know, this idea of a national interest inhibiting you to go further in European foreign policy cooperation is something else than saying, oh, I have a sovereignty concern and that's why I don't want to cooperate. And I really, I find it really fascinating that this revival of sovereignty as an issue because as a political scientist, sovereignty for me means that the country is covered in a way that people have to say, oh, that's a representative democracy or a democratic democracy. At no point in time, sovereignty meant that you can be a country that closes yourself off and then just hope that you get whatever you want on the international. That's not sovereignty. And I think that's again, in the Brexit discussion, you see that very strongly, this idea that, yeah, we want to do whatever we want and you know, if we don't get what we want, we don't cooperate. And again, what I find interesting is the UK is the extreme example. I think you see it there, but UK it is more and more for member states also on other issues. We were at a seminar in Vienna where we talked about the Russia sanctions and we talked, for example, about the global conflict on migration. And again, time and again, you have few member states who use the sovereignty card. Yes, we want to cooperate but we have concerns about our sovereignty. Not about national interests but about sovereignty. And for me, the interesting thing is if you put the sovereignty card on the table, you pretend that you have another solution to get the same goal without cooperating. And I think that can't work. I think we really have to question it a bit more. And again, what I find interesting is that this is popping up more and more but you have no more discussion about that. The last point I want to make and then I will close is about this collectivism. And that's again, coming back to this idea, well, the majority of member states is small. But I think there's a real danger that we all sit around the table and say, well, collectively, or we're all small, the world is dangerous, the world is very complex. And maybe there's nothing that we can do. And I found it quite interesting, Federica Mogherini did a tour through different universities at the end of her term and was talking about her experience. And one of the students asked this, so is this something that you regret in your leadership as the high representative where you thought that you actually didn't deliver? And she said, well, yeah, actually, I'm still ashamed that you didn't manage the Syrian refugee crisis. And it was interesting, but she was just saying, you know, Europe is a prosperous place. The EU has money, the EU is organized, the EU has institutions. The EU also sometimes has political wealth with all the member states. But she said as a collective, we didn't manage to take the responsibility or feel responsible to deal with five million refugees, a region of 500 million people. And I found that very strong. I was really surprised by that because I think it shows us this idea that while you might have each member state being willing to do, and maybe also doing things, but the big challenge for you from policy cooperation, I think, is to say, well, you know, how do we make the whole world? And I was really thinking, how could you visualize that? And I think for me, the easiest is to see the use of bubble, big bubble, and then you have to see small bubbles in there. And these bubbles, you know, all move a bit, some are smaller, some are bigger, some move a bit more than others, some move a bit quicker than others. The thing is, if you don't connect the small bubbles, the big one around it will never move in any direction. And I really think this is one of the problems that we have to think about in terms of structure, not maybe just in terms of objective, but in terms of structure, what form policy cooperation means in the European Union. How do you make, how do you connect the small parts now that actually all have the willingness in different directions to have an impact on the big? And I really think this is also something in discourse that I'm always surprised or frustrated when political leaders talk about their EU.  Well, maybe we should then stand up and say, well, wait a moment, aren't we the EU? I think this is really something that we have to get into our discourse much more. The member states are the European Union. The EU is us, we might be small, but the EU is big. And this is really something I think we have to consider a bit more. And also question, do the structures that we have, does form policy cooperation? CFSB and CSB is debated, do way this setup actually work for us? Does it help us to connect the small bits in a way that has an impact on the big one? I don't think that integration is necessarily the only way forward, but I'm also surprised that there's no more creative thinking saying, well, are we actually happy with the way the system works. I will stop here and I'm looking forward to our discussion. Thank you very much. Well, first of all, I want to thank Heidi for a very thought provoking presentation. I'm just going to mention a few points I picked out, but we will come back to a little bit, perhaps come back to a little bit later on in the Q&A. First of all, size is not a defining characteristic. There are cross-cutting elements of geography, policy, and that as well. So that's, I think, the first one. Second point, which did strike me very much when I was a practitioner, is the mismatch between institutional development and policy coherence. Procedure often becoming a substitute for substance. And I think that ties into the Syria point that you were making later on, that there wasn't actually the policy coherence, it wasn't a lack of capacity. The third thing, foreign policy is losing ground. I wonder is that not because foreign policy is no longer really foreign, and because the range of cooperation has begun beyond the political security of diplomatic and defense over the last 70 years. It's now reached into almost all areas of economic and social life, especially though not exclusively through the European Union. And this is possibly reflected, one of the reasons why you can't remember foreign ministers or people can't remember foreign ministers, is that we become more, international interaction has moved more to the level of head of state or government. And the fact that the European Council no longer includes foreign ministers ex-officio, I think is possibly a kind of an indicator of that. And then on the sovereignty argument, I remember to take the point, like we have always regarded, I think in our regard as sovereignty, as something that we use constructively in order to enable us to cooperate, we try to find collective solutions that take on board some of our concerns and amplify those to a certain extent, but not using it as a kind of a blocking mechanism. So I think I'll just leave those thoughts for the moment. And then I might move on to our next contributor, who is Daniel Fiot, a security and defense editor at the EU Institute for Security Studies, where he analyzes European defense policy, the CSDP, defense capability and industrial issues as well as hybrid threats. And I should say on this, that if you're looking for a sharper to guide you through terms such as Augustine's law, the Valley of Death in the areas of defense, expenditure, research and development, I think he's very much your man. Daniel is a visiting professor at the Free University of Brussels and at the Brussels School of International Studies at the University of Kent. And I asked Daniel to say a few words to us now. Thank you very much. Let me begin by saying good morning to everyone and thank you to the organizers for welcoming me here and for making sure that we could all be here together. I have the daunting task of condensing security and defense into 10 minutes, which is not easy. But let me begin first, perhaps, by providing some context to the debate. I mean, even today's news coming out of Turkey and Syria should send a shudder down our spine. Not only on the threat of migratory flows again, but also because Turkey seems to play the NATO card by quoting for article four, consultations. But of course, Turkey isn't the beginning and end of Europe's problems. There is also the question of transatlantic relations as well and the prospect perhaps of having a second term of Donald Trump may be, again, an excuse for a shudder down the spine. Although I must say that he's been quite helpful in stimulating the need for more European security and defense, I think. Also, it's worth probably keeping in mind some of the language which is emerging out of the EU institutions. And here I take Heidi's point about sometimes procedure masking substance, but I think it's probably a bit deeper than that sometimes and that the gap between rhetoric and reality can also be pointed to. And if you look, for example, at the recent interviews by the new HRVP, Borrell, he's been urging Europeans to relearn the language of power. So that assumes, of course, that we already knew what that language was, right? And that we just have to relearn it. Commissioner Breton has spoken about the need for more technological sovereignty for the European Union. This is the idea that geopolitics is not just about operations, but it's also about how we protect key technology areas and how we secure key critical infrastructure for Europeans. And then, of course, we have the president herself, the president von der Leyen, who has also said that her commission would be a geopolitical commission, which is a development of sorts because under President Junker it was the political commission. Now we've just inserted three letters at the beginning. And of course, Brussels as a set of institutions is still trying to make sense of what the geo part actually means in all of this because I won't go into a sidetrack long historical dissection of that term, but it seems to imply something which is that the Europeans are increasingly entering a world of power politics and of course of giants. And of course, the two giants are the US and China. And if I may say without specifically focusing on security and defense or the mechanisms per se, the big challenge the Europeans have is how we can adapt our multilateral system globally with the emergence of power politics because for me, the two don't necessarily go together. In fact, I always understood multilateralism as an antidote to power politics. And the problem is deeper because actually the idea of power politics is also reemerging, I think as Heidi has alluded to in her intervention, even within Europe. So the reemergence of nationalism, of populist movements, insistence on sovereignty, I think is also very, very clear. Now we have come in the last three or four years I would say, quite far on security and defense in terms of the instruments that we have developed. We have developed permanent structure cooperation, PESCO. We are developing the European Defense Fund and there are a host of other initiatives which are supposed to improve European capability development to support the competitiveness of the European defense industry and also to make sure that we have an operational capability. So we have that credibility also as a continent that will also deploy force if needed. We have the global strategy as our guiding light, I think still. Heidi's correct. I mean, it is by my count a 45 page plus document which includes everything. And I mean, if you want to be very critical, nothing. But at least that's the document we have to try to guide us a bit in the world. We also have following on from the global strategy, specific strategies or council conclusions on the way forward for European defense. Now, what the council conclusions from the past few years have set is that the European Union is still principally a crisis management actor. We're also an actor that is heavily involved in the development of the capacity of partners. And you see that principally, I think, through the military training missions and the civilian CSDP missions that we deploy around the world. But thirdly, it introduced the third concept which I think is important to the discussion today as well. And that is the idea of the protection of Europe and Europeans. And I think one of the big things that the global strategy has been responsible for is focusing efforts on the needs of European citizens and European interests. It may sound like a dirty term, but that is essentially the focus here. Now, on the basis of that, the concept of protecting Europe is to take European security and defense a bit further than just crisis management. It is to also think about how we might protect Europeans in case NATO is not there. And of course, we know increasingly that the tensions in the transatlantic relationship force us to think about how much more responsibility for our own defense we want to take on. And also here, we need to keep in mind the specificities of some member states who are not in NATO. And so they can only really rely on the European Union for their protection. And here, the idea of protecting Europe feeds into the treaties, which clearly states under the mutual assistance clause and under the solidarity clause, that the member states have an obligation to one another for their security and defense in case of a territorial attack or manmade or natural attack on the territory. Heidi's point is quite valid, though, of course, that it's very well to say that, whether or not that's a reality when it comes to it is a different question. So we have come very, very far. I think that at the moment in Brussels, we have a bit of a wait-and-see moment because, firstly, it is fair to say that the institutions themselves and the new leaders need more time to get into their posts. It's still a bit too early, even though H.R.V.P. Borel and the rest of the leadership have had a baptism of fire this year with Iran and Libya immediately coming out of the New Year celebrations. So the working methods of these new leaders will be crucial moving forward. And also, I would say, we need to keep in mind that all of the tools that we have been talking about for the last two or three years, PESCO, or even in particular, the European Defense Fund, are still not a reality. And I stress this point. And they're not a reality because we have not agreed to the multi-annual financial framework, the money you need to inject into these initiatives. That is still a very contentious argument. You can probably see over the last few days in the reports that initiatives like military mobility have gone from about the 6.5 billion euro budget over seven years to zero euros, which is hardly good for credibility. And I would argue probably not so good in the eyes of our allies or partners in Washington. So the MFF, the resources, the money you need, is actually quite important. Otherwise, you can't make of these initiatives a reality. The second point I would say is that we're also this year entering into a new phase in security and defense, one that I think probably moves the discussion away strictly from industry and capabilities to more to the operational side of things. And I think this has become quite apparent to leaders and to the overactive PSC that Heidi has mentioned. Even I find it difficult to keep track of the meetings and the content. And I'm sure even the ambassadors themselves did. There is the idea this year that we should move towards at least under the German presidency as some kind of initiative called the strategic compass. And I put that term in quotation marks because it hasn't yet politically been agreed even the title. But the idea behind the strategic compass and there are many theories and ideas doing the rounds in Brussels at the moment. But essentially the core logic is that the global strategy, countless council conclusions that have followed on security and defense still do not give us any clarity on some core questions. One, what type of defense actor should the European Union be? Especially in the changing geopolitical climate. So are we happy just to remain with CSDP? Or do we want to do something more than this? Second question that emerges from the idea of a strategic compass is how far are the member states willing to develop together a kind of common strategic culture? Now that phrase, the strategic culture of course has been forwarded mainly by the French president, President Macron. But I think also in the last few days and weeks HRVP Borel has also gone on record as saying that we cannot have a common foreign policy if we don't have a common strategic vision. So what is it that the EU wants to achieve in the world as an international actor? And also more specifically, what does it want to achieve in security and defense terms? Now as a prelude to the development of the strategic compass, which by my information should last about two years. So you can see what happens here. The reflection process begins with the German presidency and ends with the French presidency. Quite an interesting tie up there. But it's seen as a two year process or so. But before this begins, we have at the moment underway a rather important discussion on threats. So what are the threats that the EU faces face? What are the threats that the member states think are important to them and their national interests? This is supposed to lead in this discussion. And I think the format hasn't even really been put in place yet or the framework hasn't been put in place yet. For that we wait a bit for the PSC and for the EAS to come together. But the idea is that eventually we will have a kind of threat analysis in which the Europeans can see clearly in front of them what are the key pressing threats that Europeans face. Now this will be a politically sensitive but I think necessary exercise. Of course you can see the problem here. The moment every member state volunteers their most pressing security challenge, there will be a kind of beauty contest between which is the most important or which is the most pressing. We call this in the jargon prioritization which is a very, very scary word. But I would argue and I've done this for the last few weeks that I think as Europeans we should probably give a bit more attention not so much to specific geographical areas but those threats that cross geographical areas. So we see for example Libyan Sahel bleeding into one another even though they are quite specific conflicts they take up a geographical space. We also see that the threat that we would normally identify in the east with Russia is not actually contained to the east anymore. Russia has interests in Libya, in Egypt, in the Middle East, in Syria. So I think the question would be more about linking somehow these perceptions not withstanding all of the sensitivities that the member states have. Let me end by going into maybe some of the points that Heidi raised on the politics or the political leadership side of things because I think that this is an extremely important part of the conversation. And here there are also a few ideas that are circling or you can hear them in the corridors in Brussels. And that is how do we ensure that if we have the capabilities as Europeans, and that is a big if by the way, we need those capabilities but we're not there yet, if we have them, do we have the political mechanisms in place to allow us to act quickly? And that of course is a challenging question because we know that all sorts of countries, big or small, have different constitutional arrangements particularly on the question of the use of force if it comes to it. So the idea that the European Union has to be more agile in foreign policy making is not a new one as Heidi has suggested but now I think there is more thought given to how we might overcome the impasse. And the impasse of course is the problem of unanimity. We know this, it's a deadlock. The fact that any state can veto a decision essentially hampers the idea of quick and rapid action. So it will probably be no surprise to learn that one of the ideas which the Commission has forwarded and indeed even some of the member states, the larger ones it must be said are playing with is the introduction perhaps of qualified majority voting in foreign policy decisions. Now this of course is extremely sensitive as an issue. The idea that you could have a group of member states essentially agreeing on a foreign policy idea even though other member states may disagree, even though the action would essentially be put under an EU flag, so representative of the union without the consent of all member states, I don't need to tell you how sensitive that is. Now of course it is again, it's no surprise to learn that if the larger member states are pushing for this need for more agile foreign policy making, the smaller member states are generally, and I say generally it's not a golden rule, but generally quite suspicious of this move because it may seem essentially like the larger players are trying to cut the smaller players out of the picture. Now what I normally say is that I think I agree very much with the idea that we need a new kind of foreign policy making decision making mechanism. But if QMV fails, this is the hypothetical exercise, if it fails what would we put in its place? How would we rearrange CFSP? Because there's no good having capabilities or the resources if you're not going to use them when you need them. So I would say, and I've said this in my blog piece, which Ben says will come out on Monday, that the smaller member states have a particular responsibility here in not just saying we don't want QMV, but to perhaps think a bit more constructively about what else they would propose in its stead. And I think that that needs a lot more thought. One of the other ideas to jump from QMV is again another decision making idea and that is to develop a kind of European security council, which is another idea which has been put on the table. Again, I understand very well the premise behind it. This is the idea that of course, we should be able to take decisions quickly, but then the immediate question arises, which is, well, who would be the permanent members of the security council? If indeed you model it on the UN system, where would the small states play their role here? Would it be rotational or not? Would they have a permanent seat? Of course, I would advocate for Malta to have a permanent seat on the security council, but then everyone would, every country would. So the security council is also an idea as well, which has become quite controversial. I think Heidi mentioned this, the Brexit question. If the security council is also somehow to include the United Kingdom, well, can you imagine a scenario where the UK would take a decision in some kind of security council format that would essentially bind the hands of the 27 EU member states? Just imagine that situation, wow. So I would say that our leaders have actually not been lazy. They have actually come up with some radical ideas, I would say, and of course, it addresses the core problem, which is we're not fast enough when it comes to decision making, but of course, collectively we need to take on much more of a reflection on how that would look like, because the worst case scenario is that you know you would have one or two leaders in Europe proposing a big idea, only for a group of smaller medium sized states to immediately close it down. Well, of course, as we're all aware, the world will not wait for us in Europe to get our act together. Crisis will still emerge, we will still be called on to take a response, so we need to think a bit more about how we match our capability and security and defense initiatives with our decision making mechanisms, and I think that that's an extremely important part of the puzzle here. So 2020, I think for security and defense will be an interesting year. We will move, I think, rightfully away from obsession with industry and capabilities and I mean, it pains me to say it because that's my business industry and capabilities, but having more focus on the operational dimension is absolutely critical here, because if we are not able to prove that we can launch operations and missions to essentially protect our interests in the world, then we have a credibility issue, and no one will take us seriously, I think, if we're not prepared to do this. So we have a lot of ideas on the table, it's a very busy time in Brussels, I would echo Heidi's point here that I hope by the end of two to three years we're not still talking about papers and talking about structures or procedure, but that we can actually legitimately show some kind of output from all of this. Small and medium states, I will not get into defining what that means, but small and medium states I think have a particular responsibility here, not just in the EDF, not just in PESCO, but also for the overall direction of the union. We really need to think a bit more radically about how we change our structures, I think, in the coming years. Thank you. Once again, Daniel, I appreciate very much the way that you have outlined current developments and also rehearsed some of the dilemmas which are well known to us, and which of course are not new. Just to pick up one or two points very quickly, the emphasis on power, and you rightly indicated that there's a tension almost of an antithetical nature between power on the one hand and the multilateral system on the other. This, you mentioned recent examples of the language emanation institutions. I can remember language of this nature emanating going back into the last millennium even in the early days of the CFSP talking about power projection, and I remember spending a lot of time trying to replace this with promotion of interest and values, because I think that power does, I know in a sense you have to have power in order to be credible, but there's also the question, to a certain extent, that power projection comes across as being somewhat aggressive in intent and that sort. So power certainly is a reality you have to deal with, but the question is, do we manage it, can we manage it without necessarily emulating the actors that are involved? You mentioned the EU as still very much crisis management, but maybe some science that might be evolving, and on the global strategy, you mentioned the point about protection of citizens, but it's still, to my mind, a little bit in the context of the crisis management, international security provider aspect, because there is a phrase in the global strategy which says that security in Europe depends on peace beyond our borders. So it's still about trying to shape the environment around Europe in a way that is good for the neighborhoods and the regions concerned, but has the collateral benefits also in terms of European security. And then on the decision-making side, and you've rehearsed very well the sensitivities involved, and the pros and cons of the European Security Council idea, and I must say, as I look at it, there seem to be far more cons than pros, but we have looked at trying to, and you've underlined the need from small member states to look at how we might respond to this, but we've been going around this for many, many years, like we've had, I can remember in the Dublin draft treaty, which became the Amsterdam Treaty in the mid-90s, we looked at qualified majority voting for certain things, super qualified majority voting, consensus minus one, constructive abstention, which did find its way sort of into the treaty. We have passerell clauses, but it's still given the way, the extent to which the national identity and the profile and the sense of itself of a country is so much reflected in foreign policy. It's a difficult thing to give that away, and even if a government reminded to think about it, they would have to get it passed in national parliaments. Like even the passerell clauses in Ireland, there is a constitutional provision, I think it's Article 2949, which indicates that the approval of both houses of our parliament would be required in order for Ireland to agree to the passerell clause. These are the things we might pick up a little bit.


If you're like me, you love listening to podcasts while doing different projects. Today I'm going to share my top five Pagan podcasts. Hey there saplings, welcome back to esoteric moment. Today I'm really excited to share some of my favorite earworms with you. Druidry has a long tradition of passing information and stories on through oral traditions and storytelling. That makes learning about Druidry in the podcast format really applicable and useful for modern Druids and Pagans. And Pagans have been doing podcasts for many, many years. There is a backlog of great episodes and a lot of different podcasts out there for you. If you haven't jumped into podcasts, I really recommend getting a podcast player on your phone and downloading a few of these podcasts to get you started on listening and learning through podcasts. I use pocket casts. There'll be a link in the description to manage all my podcasts. I really like the app because it's easy to find podcasts and it's super great for like organizing all the different types of podcasts you listen to. Not a sponsored video, but I thought if you are looking for a really good app for podcasts, you might enjoy it too. I'm very particular about what type of podcast I listen to. Podcasts have to be between 30 minutes and 60 minutes for me consistently because I don't have time to listen to a two hour podcast. And many of my tasks during the day are only an hour long. I also expect really great audio quality. I listen to a lot of NPR podcasts, which kind of spoils me for audio quality. And I expect that in what else I'm listening to. I also want the content to be really interesting and focused. I enjoy listening to roundtables and conversations, but they have to be with really smart and interesting people. I don't want just a generic conversation. I want to learn and really get something out of that conversation. Those are the requirements I have for podcasts. So keep that in mind that as I'm recommending these podcasts, that's what I'm judging them against. My number five podcast is down at the Crossroads. It has been around for many years. It's changed and morphed as the years go by. I love the intro and it's a really great podcast where there's pagan music and really interesting interviews. The format right now is pretty interesting. There are two hosts and they interview someone and there's lots of music. I only wish that this podcast was reliably under an hour. It gets longer and longer, but this pagan podcast has stood the test of time. And I am sure that they will adapt and, you know, get into a really core and awesome format again. I think they're just experimenting a little right now. I also appreciate that this podcast will dive into some of the darker elements. They're not afraid of talking about controversial subjects or even voicing their own opinion. And I really appreciate that. Number four on my list is three pagans and a cat. This is a very new podcast, which has an interesting twist to the hosts. There are three hosts on this podcast and they are family. So you have the dad, the mom and the adult child. Each person who is a host has a different type of path. There's like an ADF druid. There is an eclectic green witch and there's a Norse kind of heathen. And they all talk about their own paths, talk about differences, the pagan community in general and how they work as a family with mixed paths. This is such an interesting idea and I love listening to them. Sometimes one of the hosts kind of dominates the conversation and the audio quality isn't quite what I would want. But they're very new and every episode gets better and better. So get on listening to three pagans and a cat right now. So you don't have to go back and listen to the beginning because I think this podcast is really going places. Number three for me is the witch wave. This is also a relatively new podcast, but you wouldn't tell just by listening to it. The quality is astounding and Pam, the host, does an excellent job when she interviews people. She asks really great questions and leaves the conversation flow going. So it's not just asking question after question. There's a real conversation that you're listening to. I thoroughly enjoy this podcast and I'm sure it's going to just blow up any day now. So definitely go back and listen to the old episodes of this one, too. Number two on my list is the story archaeology podcast. Now, these can be a little long and they do not come out regularly, but the content is crazy. The two hosts take the time to translate old Irish myths, Welsh tales, the whole kind of mythology behind Celtic paths. And then after telling the story, they talk about in detail the metaphors, the translation, how it applies to modern people, the history involved in the different relationships. There is so much packed into this podcast. And if you are particularly a druid looking to kind of reconnect to the ancient tales or use more of those myths in your practice, I think this podcast is definitely going to be a resource you can't miss. I love getting to learn these stories through that oral connection and listening to them tell it. They talk about the language in a really interesting way since I am not a Welsh or Gaelic expert, nor do I ever intend to be. It's still nice to get that element and add that to my practice. And of course, number one is Druid cast. I'm sure you're all very surprised. If you haven't listened to Druid cast yet, what are you waiting for? This is produced by David Bard and through oboe, the order of bards, ovates and druids. It comes out once a month, very regular. They use pagan music and feature really interesting artists that you might not have heard of yet and also interview people do talk different audio bits from oboe gatherings or interviews that Philip Kargam does. You listen to a wide range of authors, interesting pagans, creative people and just really dive into a specific topic of Druidry in an interesting way. I love that this podcast sounds amazing. It's only about an hour long and there's even a contest at the end of every episode where you might win a CD or book. It's just a lot of fun to connect to Druids around the world through a podcast. OK, those are my top five pagan podcasts. What podcasts are you listening to? I'm really curious to find out if I've missed any awesome podcasts that are out there before I go. I do want to give you some notable mentions, and those include Forest Spirituality by Julie. She is the same author of Australian Druidry. I like this podcast. It's just not quite regular or at the quality that I want, but it's really an interesting take on Druidry. Modern Witch has been around for a while, but they've stopped kind of posting regularly. They interview different pagans, authors, pretty good stuff. So You Want to Be a Witch is another new podcast, and it's pretty good. They do interviewing and topic episodes, but still kind of waiting to see what happens with this podcast. And then finally, the permaculture podcast. My practice is really heavily rooted in earth-based living and permaculture and working with my landscape. So for me, this is my favorite permaculture podcast. It's a really great look into what permaculture means through a lot of different lenses, practical information, and the conversations are really good. Today's sapling shout out goes out to Lichen Whip Stitch. I hope I said that right. He put a comment on the video Druid's Magic, and he talked about impacts and intuitives relationships to magic, which I thought was an excellent point and a really interesting comment. So thanks for commenting. If you want to be a sapling shout out on a future video, don't forget to comment below and talk to me on Instagram, Twitter or YouTube. Thanks for watching. And as always, may you find peace in the sacred grove.


Joe, take us through the 24 hours leading up to your decision to return home. Yeah, I guess the 24 hours leading up, you know, free agency is a little hectic. For most people, I feel like you just don't really know exactly what's going on. A lot of stuff kind of going on behind the scenes. And you're kind of the middleman a lot of time.  And it's like, you know, everybody's kind of reporting different stuff. A lot of the ambiguity, just a lot of uncertainty. But for me, I think, you know, looking back through all of it, right from the beginning, Brooklyn is where I wanted to end up. That last 24 hours, it's just a lot of stuff going on and you're just hoping to get things done. And I was just thankful. You know, when the clock hit midnight, we had all come to an agreement and, you know, I think it was one for the best for both sides. What were the factors that led to that decision? Was it something that you knew you wanted to return at the end of the season? Yeah, I definitely know. Even, you know, we're not strangers to the industry and stuff that's going on. So I knew I was going to be an unrestricted free agent coming the end of the year. And then you have talks and stuff with your agent over the course of the season. And then once the season gets over with, it's, you know, just a lot of kind of back and forth discussion, but things that really don't pick up until really later on, you know, especially later on in June. I had pretty good transparency with Kenny and Sean and I think it had been reiterated on both sides where I really wanted to come back. They wanted me to be back and it was just a matter of getting everybody on the same page. And, you know, once that happened, it was easy. And like I said, there wasn't any surprises there. It was set in stone beforehand. You seem that you really appreciate the opportunity that you were given here. Yeah, definitely. You're a different caliber player from when you got here. Oh, certainly. You know, I look back in it and my career has been an interesting path and I'm thankful just to Brooklyn for giving me an opportunity. And, you know, I look at the staff that's here. It's still the same staff as when I came in, front office, still the same front office as when I came in. And, you know, we're all kind of on the same page and trying to turn this organization around and get it going in the right direction. And, you know, I ultimately felt like they had played a huge role obviously in my development individually. But, you know, in terms of just the overall team I'm going to be a part of it.


You can hear me? Hi, everyone. Welcome to Map It with Python. In this talk, I'm going to introduce you to Maps and GIS. And then we're going to do some exploratory mapping with Python's mapping modules. My name is Christy Heaton. I'm a GIS analyst for an environmental consulting firm in Seattle. So I make maps and figures for our reports and meetings. GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems, and I'm going to talk more about that later. And I'm in Seattle. And I also organize a group in Seattle called Map Time Seattle. And we organize monthly workshops on various mapping technologies. And we also have fun mappy hours. So all of our workshops use open source data and software. So if you're ever in Seattle, please check us out. We're on meetup.com. So I love Jupyter Notebooks. This entire presentation is inside of a Jupyter Notebook. And just to prove that, this is a live Python slide. I'm using a library called Rise to make this notebook into slides. And it would allow me to run code right here in my slides. But that's the only cell I'm going to run live, just live demo kind of thing. So I ran the rest of the slides that I'm going to present just before coming up here. But that said, all this stuff is in a GitHub repo. So if you have any questions about anything, you can look at my repo. And there's instructions on how to get all set up in here. But just a quick overview. I mean, I'm running Windows. I'm using Anaconda. I'm in an Anaconda environment. And I'm using various mapping modules that I'll go through. So let's talk about maps. Maps are the most quick and easiest way to understand spatial information. So if you get off the plane in Washington, DC, and you go to the metro, there's no better way to understand how to use it than by looking at a map. And maps can also be very beautiful and really, really cool. And maps have been around a long time. We love looking at historical maps to see what places look like a long time ago and what was important to the people at the time. They've been used as spatial analysis for a long time as well. Of course, in this day and age, they're all in our mobile devices. And you may have used a map even today just on your mobile device. So we're kind of in a whole new era of mapping now. So I said I make maps for an environmental consulting firm. And a lot of times when I tell people I make maps, they can say, what do you mean? Hasn't everything already been mapped? So in order to explain this better, I'll talk about the difference between base maps and thematic maps. So a base map is a map that's used as a reference. And it shows you what's there, or a subset of what's there, depending on how zoomed in or out you are. So this is some aerial imagery from a source. My source is near map. I use this at work. So this is aerial imagery. It shows you what's there. This is actually Petaluma here. So this could be used as a base map. And base maps can also be based on data layers. Like Google Maps is a data-based base map. But I'm going to be showing you some open source options. So Stamen has created a bunch of maps that I really like. I'll just go to their website real quick. So they make some nice kind of traditional, I'm relying on internet here. So sorry for the little slow to load. But so some really nice data-based base maps. These are all based on open source data as well, as opposed to Google. They also have this really nice watercolor, really stylized base map. And this is the one I like to use for all my side projects, because it's fun and I can't use it at work. So not all base maps have been made, because there are always changes in landscapes and infrastructure. Sometimes political boundaries change, or natural disasters will change the environment. So I'll always need updates. But even if that weren't the case, you can always make a new base map by using different colors, different scales, and styling different features, different ways. So thematic maps are the kind of map that I make at my job. It's a map with a theme. That theme is usually shown on top of a base map, so you have that reference. And that theme is there, but it's not something you would see from above. So to give you an example, this is a cool thematic map that I just found. And the theme is climate destabilization. It's got a base map like the country boundaries, but it's colored in by, it looks like, temperature variation. And there are all these infographics there. So this isn't my map, but this is an example of a thematic map. So you've probably seen maps like this all the time. So that's the kind of thing I do. So even if all the base maps have been made, and even if all the thematic maps have been made, there's also other planets and galaxies that need mapping. And people have actually even tried to map like fictional worlds. I met a professor last year who had some students who were looking at mapping the Lord of the Rings. And Lord of the Rings, there's this hobbit named Frodo who has to carry this magical ring all the way to Mordor and they were looking at if he had taken the best path. And I don't know if they figured it out or not. So what is GIS? GIS stands for geographic information systems. And a GIS is a system that allows you to work with spatial data, to visualize it, analyze it, store it, do different things with different data sets in order to understand spatial relationships, patterns, and trends. And GIS is widely used in organizations of all sizes in almost every industry, like I use it in environmental consulting now, but it's used by NASA, it's used by every level of government, so very widely used. And what I really love about GIS and what brought me to it was that it's a really cool mix of data science, analysis, and maps. So we use GIS to answer questions with some kind of spatial component. So where's the Mystic Theater? How do I get there? You might have looked that up. But it's also used for site selection. So where should we build our next store so that we get the most customers? Where should we build our next wind turbine? Has to be in an area that would allow that kind of thing to be built there and also a really windy area and you can do that kind of spatial analysis. Same thing with solar panels. It can be used for disaster relief. Where's the hurricane gonna hit? Like we can focus on those areas in terms of relief by knowing where we expect it to happen. Something I do at my job is find out like where the highest concentration is of different chemicals and sites we're trying to clean up so that we can apply the best remedy in that area. And my least favorite spatial question, where should we place advertisements people are most likely to buy our product and this is a big use of GIS. So before we get into a workflow, there's a few things I want you to know. So the earth is spherical and all the data we look at is on a flat computer screen or on a printout. So every data set has been projected somehow. And whenever you do that, if you imagine like peeling an orange and trying to flatten it out, you're gonna get like that. It's not gonna be a perfect rectangle after that. So depending on which projection you choose, you're gonna get some kind of distortion in some or all of these areas. Another thing to know about is coordinate systems. This is how you locate a spot on the earth using two numbers. So it's like just like in geometry where you've had your Cartesian coordinates and the origin and your two numbers will tell you where on that plane you were. Coordinate systems can be based on the spherical earth or on a pre-projected area. So in our workflow today, we're gonna be using the geographic or un-projected coordinate system and this is also known as WGS84 latitude longitude. This is the coordinate system that's used by GPS satellites and by the file format GeoJSON, if you're familiar with that. So with this coordinate system, it covers the entire world and it has an origin at the intersection of the equator and the prime meridian and then otherwise it has four quadrants. So something you need to watch out with this coordinate system is it has an origin, a zero. So whenever you bring in data that maybe some of your data doesn't have coordinates, it ends up at Ndoll Island. And over the years so much data has piled up there that there's a whole island and this is the secret spot where us cartographers go on vacation. Just kidding. So when you work with projections and coordinate systems as I go forward, we're gonna, it's gonna be stored as an EPSG code. So that projection and that coordinate system kind of get mixed together and you tell it an EPSG code. That's what it's referred to and if you need to know the EPSG code of something, then you can look that up. Okay, so my special problem today is I wanna know in what cities will we be able to see an upcoming solar eclipse? And this all started last year on August 21st. It was my birthday and I live in Seattle so I went down to Oregon to see the totality and it was so cool. I was telling my sister about it. She wasn't able to go. She was kind of intimidated by people talking about bad traffic and she like didn't have enough time to plan in advance. So she wasn't able to go and so she was kind of talking to me about like, how do I figure out when the next one is and where I can go? So if you're not familiar with a solar eclipse, it's what happens when the moon comes directly between the sun and a spot on the earth. And when you look at the moon and sun at this time, it looks kind of like this. It only lasts for a very short time but it's super, super cool. So my sister wants to know when and where will she be able to see an eclipse? She missed last year so she needs to know what's gonna happen in the future. And she wants to be part of a big event like last year's one. It covered a lot of people, it got a lot of hype. So she wants to see an eclipse that's happening to a lot of people. She wants to see which one is covering over the most people. And then when she finds that eclipse, she wants to know what the largest cities are because it's probably not happening where she lives so she's gonna have to travel, fly into an airport, stay in a hotel. So she wants to find out what those largest cities are that are going to be able to accommodate her. So to do this, we're gonna need some Python mapping libraries. The first one we're gonna use is Matplotlib which is a Python plotting library that produces beautiful publication quality maps and it can be in both static or interactive formats. So we'll go ahead and import that. And then the other two libraries we're gonna use are pandas and geopandas. Pandas is a very well-known Python library for data science. It provides high performance, easy to use data structures and data analysis tools. And then geopandas is geographically enabled pandas. So it's like pandas but it uses this library called Shapely in order to perform planar geometric objects manipulation on those. So we'll import both of those with kind of standard naming conventions. So let's start by making a simple map. So when you install geopandas, you get some data along with it and one of the things you get is country outlines so I didn't need to go in and find that data by myself, I just can load it in and assign it to a variable. So spatial data has a spatial component and a non-spatial component in the form of like, we call it an attribute table but it's like the non-spatial information about your data. So I can just run head on my world data and look at the top few non-spatial rows. So I have names of my countries, I have some population and GDP information and I also have this geometry column and that's holding the spatial information. So before I look at the spatial component, I want to check what my coordinate reference system is for this data. I'm gonna need to know this if I'm doing any plotting or calculations, I need to know what my reference system is and I'm just asking for it to tell me what it is and it's in this EPSG4326 which is that geographic coordinate system that I told you about earlier. So now we can plot it. I'm just plotting with defaults, just simple plot method and you might notice that I was just telling you that this is in an unprojected coordinate system and yet it looks flat so it's been projected, right? So it projects it on the fly in order for you to see it but any spatial calculations you do are gonna be in its source coordinate reference system. So I can customize my plot as I make it a little bit bigger for you guys to see and change the colors of things and just as a reminder, all this code is on my GitHub so you're free to fork and clone and get it up and running and tinker with anything you want. Okay. So I have a basic map but I need to load in some other data. If we're gonna be talking about populations and eclipses I'm gonna need data for that stuff. So I'm gonna import OS and then I'll have access to my operating system paths. I put some data in a data folder. So I have actually GeoPanels comes with some city data but it turns out it's just country capitals and that's not gonna be enough data for me so I went and downloaded a larger city data set that I'm going to load in. And just as I like to do whenever I'm loading in a new data set, I take a look at the first few non-spatial attributes. So cities here has some columns of interest. We have our geometry column. It's a great population we're gonna use, name of our city. So those are the three columns that are important to us. And then as our workflow goes we'll check the coordinate reference system and just we see that it's in four, three, two, six which was the same one that we were using for our countries. And I can plot it out with a few customizations. So this is our city data that we're gonna be working with. Now I wanna plot my cities on top of my countries. So they need to be in the same coordinate reference system if you're gonna plot them on the same plot so I'm just doing a quick check that they are. And then I can put them on the same plot by assigning my base plot to a variable in this case called base. And then any other plot, any other data I want on top of it, I pass in this AX parameter, I tell it I want it to be that base. And then I can put as many layers on that base as I want to. So now we have cities and countries. Okay, so now we're ready to tackle my sister's questions. So she wants to know where and when will she be able to see an upcoming eclipse? So I'm gonna need some eclipse data. I actually went to NASA, I mean, some NASA website and downloaded data and then fiddled with it until it was in a form that was really easy to show. So I'm creating a variable that's gonna load in my eclipses and I'll look at the first few rows. So this year column, that's what I've got to tell me when this eclipse is gonna happen. We're ignoring day and month for now. And then I've also got my geometry column. Check my coordinate reference system. It's in the same one we've been using. Okay, and I can plot my eclipses. So I've made these eclipses look, this is my map, so I want my eclipses to look really eclipsy with like shadowy insides and like golden outsides. So this is like how I think eclipses look and you can customize it however you want. One thing you can quickly do with Geopandas is get the minimum bounding rectangle of each of your entities and this comes in handy when you're trying to like zoom certain things or find the centroid. I'll show you an example of where this comes in handy. Okay, so we'll create a better map of our eclipses because now we've got our base. So we don't know when these eclipses are gonna happen until we can color them in by the year they're going to happen. So in this case, I've created some customizations. I've made my eclipses kind of see-through and I've said, well, you color them in by some random color depending on the year they're gonna happen. So now we have a legend here. We can see, I've actually kept in last year's eclipse just because there was space for it and it kind of looks same. But other than the 2017 one, these are all in the future. Okay, so now she knows where and when she'll be able to see an eclipse. So to tackle her next question, we're gonna ask what upcoming eclipse will pass over the most people. So now we're gonna need to plot our base, our countries and our eclipses as well as our city data all on the same plot. So I'm just doing a quick check that they're all in the same coordinate reference system. And then I can plot them all together. So we see, it looks like there's a lot of cities that are gonna overlap with some of these eclipses. So I think we're on the right track. So in order to get the cities that intersect with an eclipse, we can do a spatial operation. It's a spatial join and I'm telling it, I want to create a new variable that only has the cities that intersect with any of those eclipses. And I can look at the table of my data. So I have all my cities and now they have a year column and that's telling me what year that they're intersecting with some eclipse. So I need to summarize those populations of the cities depending on what eclipse they're in. So I'm gonna pull out, as a pandas data frame, just the population and year column from my new intersected cities data. And that looks like this, it's a pandas data frame just with a population and year columns. And now that it's a pandas data frame, I can do a group by and summarize my years, which are represent eclipse years and summarize the population of all the cities that are inside of each one. So the results of that look like this. So now I know what the population is gonna be of the eclipse in that year. But this is now like a non-spatial pandas data frame and I need to join it back into my eclipse data. So I can merge it back in because my eclipse data has a year column and my pandas data frame had a year column. So I can just stitch them back together based on the year. And then now I have my spatial data, my eclipses, now have a population associated with them. And in order to find out which one is gonna cover over the most people, I can just view my attribute table of my new eclipses and sort descending. So I see this top row has the highest population and that's the eclipse that's happening in 2024. And I can plot this on my map. Now I've customized my plot to show me the darker color. If an eclipse has a higher population it's covering then it's gonna appear darker on this map. And some of them are really hard to see. There's really just two that are covering quite a bit of people. And it kind of makes sense. They're passing through large land masses. They're gonna, this kind of like passes the SNF test. So it was this eclipse that this brown one seen, this is a plot I showed you before, but now I'm just, it's this 2024 eclipse and we can see that it's the one that's going through the United States. So now she knows which eclipse is gonna pass over the most people, the one in 2024. So what are the largest cities inside of that eclipse? So she knows where she can buy a ticket to and get a hotel room. So first we're gonna make a new geodata frame that's only gonna have that one eclipse in it, the one in 2024 and plot again. Now our plot is really zoomed out too much. We kind of wanna zoom in on that one eclipse. So we're gonna use the minimum bounds of that eclipse in order to customize our plot to focus on it right there. And I really liked my cities being orange when we were looking at like the whole world, but at this scale I'm gonna change them to be little black dots with white outlines. So there are a lot of cities in that eclipse path and we wanna find out what exact cities are in there. So we're gonna do that same kind of spatial join that intersected the cities that we used early on to get all the cities that intersect with any eclipse to get just the cities that intersect with our 2024 eclipse. And if we plot that we can see it worked. We see just the cities are remained that intersected. So one way I could see which of these cities has the most people is to size my city dots by their population. So now my dots are bigger if they have more people in them. So this is kind of cool. Still kind of hard to tell which ones are the largest. So I can just sort descending in a table and have it tell me which are the top five. It turns out just write a little bit of code to tell me some nice information. So it turns out there are 73 cities in my eclipse path and the largest five, I'm just sorting descending based on population are Dallas, Fort Worth, Montreal, Cleveland, San Antonio and Indianapolis. So let's look at those on a map. We'll turn those cities into their own geodata frame and plot them out, add some labels. So I've also lightened up that eclipse path so you can see the city's a little bit better. So this is the map I can give my sister. Yes. But my sister's not, she doesn't write code and she doesn't know how to use a Jupyter Notebook. She's more used to like the Google Maps experience and I call that kind of map a slippy map. It's the kind of map you can drag around, zoom in and out. So let's put this data on a slippy map. So to do that, we need a library called Folium, which binds the power of Python with leaflet.js. And so I'll go ahead and import that. And now I can quickly pull in web map tiles. These are all open source web map tiles. As the base maps, I showed you a few of them earlier. So it's really easy to just pull these in. So it's like drawing them in from the internet. And I focused on Petaluma. So we have a few options with web map tiles. So this is the organization Stamen that I talked about earlier. They have a really nice black and white base map we could use. But as I said, I really like the watercolor map because I can't use it at work. So we're going to go with this one. And then we're going to calculate the centroid of our eclipse so that we know when you are using Folium and that kind of slippy map, you can drag and zoom in as much as you want to. But it wants to know what zoom level you want to start on and what area you want to start on. So I just want to calculate the centroid of my eclipse so I can say, this is where I want you zoomed in right when I create you Folium map. So I can add my eclipse cities. These are just the top five cities in my eclipse path to my Folium map. And that looks like this. So this is my sister. She's like, OK, this is something I can use. But we don't really, from here, we can't really see what cities these are. So I can write a little more code, write a for loop that's going to generate pop-up text for me, and then put that all on a new map. And it's going to look like this. So now I can click on these cities and see what their name and population is. So I think my sister will be happy. She'll be able to maybe decide on one of these cities based on maybe some non-spatial attributes like maybe she has a friend in San Antonio or she's always wanted to go to Montreal. So she can, yeah, or weather. So yeah, she'll be able to choose from here. So hope you enjoyed that. Learning about Python's mapping modules? Happy mapping. Did I miss the end of the talk? Oops. So as a token of our thanks, here is a wonderful made-in-petaluma water bottle, designed in petaluma water bottle made by Camelback etched by Andrew on our team. Christy also did a wonderful PSF blog post about last year's conference, which saved us from writing a lot of stuff about last year's event. So we really appreciate that, and thank you very much. Everybody, please give Christy Heaton a huge round of applause. And.


Welcome back to my channel and welcome if you're new here. My name is Jen I'm a certified weight loss and nutrition coach and I'm on the WW personal points plan on happy Friday It's Friday. So it's way in day WW workshop topic day I'm going to share with you how my week went and we'll set some goals moving into next week So if you're excited for another Friday weigh-in video give this one a big huge thumbs up And if you're new to my channel, or you haven't yet subscribed, of course I'd love to have you here hit the subscribe button and click the bell right next to it So you never miss a single video check out that description box down below for my 2022 calendar We have just a few left So if you haven't picked this up for yourself or as a gift grab it before it's gone It is such a great way to track your life track your goals weight Water food self-care and activity all in one quick simple place So definitely grab your calendar before they're gone You're also going to find nutrition coaching where I offer personalized macros and calories and one-on-one coaching as well as links and Discounts to all of my favorite things and my Facebook group. We'd love to have you come and join us over there I have a lot and lots and lots to share with you So let's go ahead and jump in to this week's weigh-in workshop topic recap Setting some goals for next week and a recap of how my week went You had an absolutely wonderful wonderful week. I cannot believe it's almost Christmas That is so crazy how fast the month of December has flown by it is literally flown by Which is always a bummer because the holidays are my favorite time of year and I just feel like they fly by like it Drags getting to the holidays and then the holidays themselves just fly by but I've really been enjoying all the holiday Decorations doing some fun holiday things I'm actually going to sit down and wrap some presents today, which always puts me in the holiday spirit I turn on Christmas music and I break out the presents in the wrapping paper in the bows such a fun part of the holidays I've been busy with real estate I actually have two new sets of clients that were just kind of dropped in my lap over the last couple of weeks Luckily, we've already found them houses and we're just in the process of getting to the closing table So that's been great I've been busy with YouTube Planning my year-end content as well as what to expect on my channel moving into next year as you know, I've been dealing with some health issues and Lining that up and getting everything into place for that and to start taking my medication in January It's been going really really well I'll definitely share an update with you guys in another what I eat in a day video on kind of how things are going But it's been going well And I've had quite a few epiphanies since starting this different way of eating and just this different lifestyle overall The exercise has been great My food of course has been great because it has to be and also because I'm really enjoying the real whole food seriously Really enjoying them not because I have to necessarily but because I'm just feeling full and satisfied and content with the foods that I'm eating But before we jump into this week's way and I want to chat with you guys a little bit about this week's WW workshop topic and that is getting together Here's how to stay on track this couldn't come at a better time because we all get together over the holidays And we wonder should we track should we stay on track should we throw in the towel over the holidays? So here's some tips from WW on how to stay on track and still enjoy the family events There's three really simple tips really simple things that you can do when you're planning to attend a family event Or a holiday party number one is to imagine the upcoming meal or event think about what could make it hard for you to stay on track At that event is it that there's only certain foods offered? And maybe those foods don't fall within what you would generally eat on your weight loss journey Or maybe there's going to be adult libations that you'll grow that you're going to want to partake in and also What can you do to make sure that you're making good choices? That means enjoying the party the event the food the drinks But what can you do to make the better choice at that set event and tip number two is to choose a strategy? Once you've imagined what that's going to look like the event itself in the food It's time to set yourself up for success by creating a strategy think about the potential hurdles that you may face and use some of these tips and tricks to get over those hurdles at that party The first thing you can do is save up your points pile up your points use your weeklies your activity points Any roll over points that you have save those up for that special meal or event So that you can go and enjoy yourself and not worry about food the whole time Nothing is more disappointing than going to an event and not even being able to enjoy it Because all you're thinking is about is the foods that you're eating and is it in your plan? Is it in your points your calories? So save up so that you can enjoy yourself without only thinking about food at the event Focus on your zero point foods during the day so that you have the points available to you for that meal The second tip you can mentally order ahead Generally, we know or partially know what may be served at a meal or an event And we can kind of plan ahead for what we're going to enjoy If it's an event that's just drinks and appetizers We know that we can have a few appetizers for our points or calories because generally they're less than points and calories Then meals we may look up our favorite adult beverage so that we can plan to have one or two of those at the party as well And lastly bring in balance everything is all about moderation and balance Deserve your points to spend on something extra special Maybe you anticipate there being a really good dessert at that party And you want to save your calories and points so that you can indulge in that dessert And while you're there select the other options that are given to you that are a little less points Or maybe even fall on the zero point food list and tip number three is to spring into action Come up with a plan how when where why are you going to use the strategy that you had developed from step two There's also some really easy things you can do at the party or event that will help you stay on track Number one is step up to the plate and be the first one to order that way You're not enticed by what everyone else is ordering You've already made a decision on what you're going to have and you've been the first one to order So your order's in and it's done eye up your portions Choose a smaller plate, especially if it's a buffet style event so that you can only fit so much on your plate And on the flip side your mind is going to feel good that your plate is full Even though it's a smaller plate So if they have appetizer plates or salad plates use that for your food instead of a full-sized dinner plate And lastly is savor the experience eat slowly really savor and enjoy the foods that you're consuming If you're if you're going to have one adult beverage Make sure that you sip on that with water or another beverage zero point beverage throughout the night And really enjoy that one beverage or those foods that you have set yourself up for for that party We don't want to say no to every holiday event or party because we're on a weight loss journey We just need to plan ahead follow some of these simple tips and tricks from ww And we should still be able to really enjoy the party engage in conversation Be in the moment because we're not thinking about food The entire time and the reality of the situation is if you overeat or you over-indulge at one holiday dinner or holiday party It's not going to derail your weight loss Put a plan into action do your best to stick with it Step by step follow what you planned ahead and in the event that you make a mistake Don't beat yourself up one dinner one party one meal isn't going to make a difference in your overall weight loss success I really like this topic and I think it comes at the absolute perfect time considering that we're so close to the holidays I know that I've been invited to a couple of holiday events that I've had to try to navigate before I got there As well as while I was there and I stuck to what I told myself That I was going to stick with and I enjoyed the event. I didn't think about the food I went to my cocktail party for my real estate office And I planned ahead what appetizers and how many I was going to have that I wasn't going to have any adult beverages I was going to stick with zero point options and it just really helped me be in the moment and enjoy the event Even though these parties are around food That's not the only reason that we have the holidays or the parties Really enjoy your friends and family and enjoy the conversation and Enjoy your food even if it means you go a little over your points or calories now that we have our holidays planned Let's go ahead and jump in to this week's weigh-in So I officially started my new way of eating if you don't know what the heck i'm talking about I did an entire sit-down little portion in last week's what I eat in a day video Where I shared with you the reasons why i'm making these dietary changes I will link that video down below for you. So it makes sense kind of what I talk about moving forward But this was really the first week where those changes came into effect And honestly, it was easier than I thought that it would be. I actually really enjoyed the foods that I was eating I felt full. I felt satisfied. I didn't feel like I was missing out Even though I'm not eating really any refined carbohydrates sugars high fat high sugar things I really didn't feel like I was missing out. I was really satisfied with the foods that I was eating And the really good news is the scale has become a much closer friend of mine when I stepped on the scale I'm down 1.6 pounds. That's the most I've lost in a week in a while One and a half pounds is absolutely amazing and I'm not even on my thyroid medication yet This is just based on dietary changes, which is absolutely super super exciting I'm officially down 76.9 pounds, which is basically 77 pounds and I anticipate to see lots of more success on the scale moving into the new year So now I want to hear from you guys. Let me know. How was your week? Did you gain? Did you lose? Was it what you expected? Let me know what you think about pre-planning pre-strategizing before holiday parties and events And if you've been to some events, how did you navigate it? Let us all know down below We can all use the tips. That's for sure if you enjoyed today's video Give it a big thumbs up and if you're new to my channel or you haven't yet subscribed I'd love to have you here hit the subscribe button and don't forget to click the bell right next to it So you never miss a single video again Check out the description box down below for my calendar nutrition coaching links and discounts to my favorite things and don't forget We'd love to have you join us on facebook as well. Happy friday friends Happy weekend, and I'll see you all in tomorrow's grocery haul. Bye


The time is over that technology takes place just in technology firms. The time is now right that technology takes place outside technology firms and this is no different for virtual reality. The alumni master class series presents virtual reality, mixed reality and augmented reality. I'm Max Lauer, professor of cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence at Tilburg University and I have the honor to organize that master class. This is closely related to the Dove Technology Lab, a facility that we have at Tilburg University campus where the best of the virtual world and the real world are combined. We're going to present you virtual reality as you may have experienced on Oculus Rift glasses as well as mixed reality where we can see each other and yet a virtual world is presented on the walls. And not only will you get the theoretical background and a tour through the Dove Technology Lab, in addition to that we let you program, we let you build simulations that you can use in virtual reality settings and if you're scared of programming this class is particularly useful because within an hour or so you're going to feel more accustomed to building those simulations. Now when it comes to research virtual reality is not just presenting information, it's also measuring what it does to humans and this is critical for academic research but also research and development within companies. So in addition to the tour through the Dove Technology Lab, the theoretical implications and you building simulations, we'll also give you a tour through sensing technologies. What equipment can you use to measure human behavior? Human behavior related to brain activity, to gestures, to speech, to facial expressions as well as to heartbeat and blood pressure. So I'm looking forward to seeing you in the master class virtual reality, mixed reality and augmented reality.