A decade ago, the World Bank published a book called Golden Growth, restoring the luster of the European growth model. And the authors very lucidly documented how the European growth model has been a powerful engine for convergence, helping the developing countries in Europe to become high-income countries. In fact, of the countries that are members now, only one, my country, Bulgaria, is not a high-income country, and it will be probably next year. For all countries that have become members of the EU, have become high-income countries within five, six, seven years, Portugal took a bit longer. But they pointed out also a decade ago that recent changes at that time, necessary change, and what were these changes that they proposed, they said we need adjustments to trade and finance to make them even work better. These are the parts of the European convergence machine that work best. They're parts of the enterprise and innovation machine that in some countries in Europe have begun to lack and also had to address shortcomings in the functioning of labor markets and governments. And so that convergence machine, this is the term the report pointed out, that convergence machine is all about making the enterprises much more competitive and affording the Europeans the highest standards of living in the world. And now a decade after this was done, where are we? And I'm posing this question because I think when we address the challenges for the countries of CZ, I think there are two crucial background factors. One is where the EU is, because EU is pulling these countries, right? It's driving them towards high-income. And so therefore what is happening in the EU is crucially important. I think the topic of our conference, the geopolitical fragmentation, global inflation, these are by all means very important factors. I think something that trumps this is what is happening in the EU. And so I'm looking at what's happening in the EU. And then in 1990, at the start of transition from command economies to market, the EU accounted for 28% of global GDP, the US for 26. Last year, the European Union has dropped to 17%. And the same as China, which, by the way, in 1990 accounted for just 2% of GDP. When the weights of the European Union and global economy has so dramatically collapsed, I think we have to be worried. Can the EU fulfill its function of a convergence machine for the CZ countries? Yes, these countries do not have many choices. They are right here. The EU is the natural trading partner. This is still the largest trading bloc in the world. It's the lifestyle superpower. Everybody wants to come here. Everybody wants to work here. But we have to think that fixing the EU's convergence machine is something that is absolutely essential. Now I just point one fact that innovation in the EU is working very well in some countries, not very well in others. Two-thirds today, two-thirds of the global patent applications are filed in Asia versus less than 50% a decade ago. For the EU, the number of these global applications was 30% a decade ago, now it's 10% versus 20% for the US. So we have substantial challenges here. And I think, obviously, everybody is worried about where the EU is going. I think it's so super important. Another factor is when we look at the growth rates of the EU over the last decade, compared to the decade before, and the decade before the first decade of this new century, when we actually had the most dramatic convergence of the countries of CZ to EU level, we had really a very buoyant global economy growth rate in the EU, 2.2% the first decade of the century, 1.6% the next decade. Obviously when the EU is growing much more slowly, its share in global GDP will decline. Its pull for trade, for people, for invention is dimension. So now let me turn to the countries of the CZ, obviously there was a very strong expansion as I just referred to, the decade before the global financial crisis, supported by very robust reforms, EU integration, but economic expansion pretty much in line with what happened in the EU declined after the decades of the global financial crisis. So you look at the EU members among the CZ, so I'm going to use the term EU members of those that are within the CZ, not in general, EU members, growth slowed from 5% to 3% for the candidates, slowed from almost 6% to 3%, so very dramatic slowdown. And so as a result of COVID, when I look at consensus estimates, the consensus estimates for both sets of countries over the next decade or at least through 2030 are 3%. So when we think of the candidate countries of the CZ, it is very hard to imagine a successful accession with 3% growth rates. When you're growing at 3%, it is very difficult to do the things that you could do when you're growing at 6%. And so therefore strengthening the growth potential of these countries, strengthening the inclusive green and more sustainable growth, I think that should be the prime concern and that should be the prime opportunity and the prime policy prescription. I mean, this morning we heard a lot of the countries are pursuing ambitious reforms. They are negotiating to join the EU, but something has to change in the structure of reforms that they push to expand really that productive capacity of the economy.  One is in the decade before the COVID pandemic, the contribution of total factor productivity to growth in both members among the CZ and the candidates was substantial. Sorry, slow substantial, right? Slow substantially from the previous decade, from the first decade of this century. But while among the EU members, it's slow to about 0.6% percentage points contribution a year from more than one. Among the candidates, it was actually a negative contribution. When you have a negative contribution from total factor productivity, with all the concerns about whether the growth decomposition reflects the true factors, whether we are measuring things correctly, very true. But when you have a negative contribution from total factor productivity, it's very hard to imagine, again, strong growth potential, strong growth, and a successful accession. What are the reasons behind this? I'm going to talk about investments, human capital, and then I'm going to refer very briefly to demographic and other issues. You know, the fixed investment relative to GDP among the accession countries increased about 25% over the last decade. But 25% while if it was maintained for three, four decades, you could say this is a very decent investment rate. This investment rate is not adequate, especially with lagging productivity. It's not adequate to replace aging capital stocks. And especially now when we're faced with a green transition, the need to spend two, three, four, some countries even five, seven percent of GDP in my country, seven percent of GDP a year to ensure transition to net zero by 2050 or 2060. And so one, these countries are not investing enough. Why are they not investing enough? Well, it's not surely only the government. It's the business environment, it's the private sector, the availability of FDI and so forth. Second is the human capital. You know, among the countries that are in this region, CZ, some of them are the education champions of the world. Poland is the sixth best country in the world according to OCD's PISA. Estonian is number one among the OCD countries. But while we have these education champions, we also have countries in which education, even though declared priority, is not actually pulling its weight. For example, we look at functional literacy, you probably know. The PISA test measures literacy, mathematics skills, science skills among 15 year olds, eight graders or so. And those who score two or less on a scale of one to four, two or less are called functionally literate. So in some countries, I'm not going to name them, but as many as 65% of the 15 year olds score two or less than functionally literate. And it's really problematic. Others, as I mentioned, Estonia, Poland, Slovenia, Czechia, scored much, much, much better than among the top in the world. So we have this huge disparity. And that huge disparity, I think, should be an impetus for education reform. You know, also let me mention the quality of tertiary education. When we look at the disparity between, again, candidate countries and new members, the disparity is wide, but for many, it's about three times as wide, right? Between the top three, Estonia, Poland, Czechia, and the bottom three, three times as large quality of tertiary education. How do we expect with such quality of tertiary education to have the qualified engineers potentially later inventors to pull forward these economies? A large share of the population of the youth are neither what is called NEET, neither in education, nor in employment, nor in training. 20% on aggregates, on average, in the candidate countries, 12 in the members, some countries, much, much, much worse. So let me leave it here that without appropriate high level of human capital, it's gonna be very hard to maintain good growth rates. So another area of structural reforms. Institutional quality, right? I mean, transition or accession, if you will, or I'm gonna talk a little bit later, very briefly about going to high income, right? Most of these countries, some middle income countries, they have to cross what we call the middle income trap, this development trap, institutional trap that prevents them to become high income countries. This is what the transition to high income is, right? They have to overcome institutional barriers. So when you look at regulatory quality, obviously with accession to the EU, whether it's formal negotiations, whether it's alignment behind the scenes, regulatory quality has improved. But for the candidate countries, while it is three, two-thirds, so two-thirds of the countries in the world have regulatory quality that is worse than them, which is a fantastic achievement, there is still a big gap with the EU members. So therefore, I think for enterprises to thrive, they really have to push to create these institutions, enable markets or create markets when they don't exist, create a level playing field for all enterprises and support contestability among all the echelons, whether it's on the enterprise side, political side, social side, and so forth. I was gonna talk about corruption, but I'm gonna take a long time, so I'm not gonna do that. So let me come to a conclusion with two points. One is the convergence. So GDP per capita, in purchasing power parity, for the member states has risen from less than 50% to 80% in 30 years, dramatic improvement. A large part of that convergence happened before the global financial crisis, a large part of that substantial part happened before the global financial crisis, but okay, that's what happens when you have lower level of income, you converge faster. For the candidates, that convergence was from about 25 to about 40. Still convergence, but much lower, keeping the ratios between the candidates and the EU member states constant. So one could say the candidate countries are converging to the levels in the EU, they're not converging to the levels of the EU member states in this region. Finally, final thoughts. Since 1990, 33 years ago, for the last three decades, 25 countries in the world have become high income countries. 13 of them are in the EU. Two others are Korea and Uruguay. Everybody else was either oil dependent, commodity dependent, or tourism dependent. And so therefore, growing to high income is not very easy, involves a minor miracle. The EU is that provision, if you will, of these miracles, and I hope the countries of CZ, the applicant, the candidate countries for EU accession, will take advantage of their proximity to a region to become both high income and to have a very successful accession. A lot of that depends on the EU. A much more dynamic, faster growing European Union that can pull both talents, exports, and innovation. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ifilo, for what I think is a very stimulating vision. And maybe also a positive note, at least a way forward, if you get it all right. Thank you very much. Anita, the floor is yours, and you've noticed that I've been a little bit liberal with eight minutes, but there are some limits to my liberalism. So I'm just, thank you. I think there's a point to it, but I don't know where. Oh, I see. Did you have it there? I'll take it. So, okay. Floor is yours. Thank you very much. First of all, many thanks for the invitation to be part of the European Central Bank Conference. In my intervention, I will focus on implications of the changing geopolitical landscape for the income convergence of the Western Balkan economies. A recent study on 68 global risk, global events risk since 1962 points that geopolitical events typically have had a short-lived impact on markets and economies. However, it seems that this time is different. Practically, if we look across many different surveys, one of the most important identified global risk both in the medium and long-term is geopolitical fragmentation. I think it does not come as a surprise given that the latest crisis have a present one of the biggest stress tests to the globalization, which has been a long-standing process, beneficial process, which through trade, financial, and technological integration has significantly boosted the global income. For example, according to some estimates, 10% in one decade, especially the income of smaller economies, acting as an engine of income convergence, including the Western Balkan region. Okay. Thus, clearly through the charts here, we can see that trade and financial integration significantly increased in the last two decades. Trade integration was increasing across all economies, reaching on average 100% of GDP. Most of it, not most of it, but to be more correct, significant part of it being through involvement in the global value chains. Trade integration was coupled with financial integration in the region, which doubled in the last two decades, reaching about 200%. Of course, I'm looking at through the international investment position, about 200%. Still significantly lagging behind EU. We are not comparing with the openness of the European economy, but still significant progress. What is also important is that significant part of it was through FDIs in the tradeable sector, which meant only not access to external source of finance, which was more than needed, giving the relatively low domestic savings rate, but it also meant access to technology, knowledge, and how. Both trade and financial integration practically acted as a catalyst for growth and income convergence, which clearly from the chart, we can see that almost doubled in the last two decades, but still remaining significantly low, about 40% of the average EU income level. However, if we look dynamically, what we can observe is that the pace of convergence significantly decelerated after the global financial crisis. Practically, about half of the total convergence in the last two decades took place in only five-year period preceding the global financial crisis, as since then, it started significantly decelerating. Why we have observed this deceleration? Practically, the deceleration to a significant part can be attributed to the structural issues as the potential growth in the region has broadly halved, from about 5% to about 2.5% in the Western Balkan region. In comparison with the EU, this deceleration has been even stronger. What does it mean? It means that looking forward, the convergence may be even more challenging. Why we are observing the deceleration or why the potential growth has halved? Practically, there are structural hurdles remaining along all the three long-term growth, determinants, physical capital, human capital, and particularly productivity gap. Just let me quickly reflect on each of them. Productivity, catching up process definitely sluggish and productivity gap remains significantly wide. Currently, the productivity on average in the region is about half of the EU productivity, which clearly points to a need of policies focused more on innovation, technology, more efficient use of resources, but also lifting up the quality of institutions as according to some surveys, average rank of the Western Balkan region is 80 out of 140 countries, in comparison with 20 EU average, clearly huge institutional quality gap. Concerning the physical capitals, a physical capital accumulation has significantly decelerated and one of the reasons being, one of the key reasons is that investments following the global financial crisis has plunged across almost all region. They have been not adequate to narrow the capital stock, which remains wide and this refers equally to private and public capital stock. So gaps in both two segments remain. If you look the chart, seems that the Macedonia is outlier, not Macedonia is outlier, because investments following the global financial crisis accelerated and they are hovering around 30%. But capital gap remains. What does it mean? It means that it's not about the quantity and the size of investments. It's also about the quality and efficiency of the investments. Concerning the truth factor, human capital, we are observing significant challenges in this segment, as I already mentioned in the previous panel. Working age population has been declining from about 70% share in total population in the last decade to about 65% and according to some estimates, it's set to further decline because of two reasons as already mentioned, adverse demographic and immigration. If we take into account that according to some estimates, one third of immigration is a highly skilled labor force. It implies that immigration is not challenged only for the quantity. It is definitely a huge challenge for the quality, which comes on top of all the challenges which the colleagues already mentioned was currently the quality of the population, especially in the Western Balkan region. So huge emphasis needed to policies that will mitigate the effects of migration, focus on policies to make the maximum, to maximize the benefits from emigration through I mentioned remittances, investments from diaspora, strengthening the ties with the diaspora, but also policies to increase the use of the potential that we have, but it's not used. This particularly refers to low participation rate, especially of women and young people and skills mismatches, which are gains boiled down to education and quality of the labor force. Thus, it seems that the serious catching are processes ahead of us, even without factoring or embedding the geoeconomic fragmentation risk. Just one exercise that we did in the central bank at the historical relative growth speed, it will take Macedonian economy to about 40 years to converge to average EU income level. Geoeconomic fragmentation creates, of course, additional challenges as cost of the globalized world can be severe in work through a number of channels. Some estimates point of permanent loss of global GDP to about three, four percentage points depending on the assumptions if trade fragmentation is coupled with technological fragmentation and financial fragmentation even more than 10% of GDP. And what is very important from our angle is that according to some estimates, the effects might be disproportionately higher for smaller and open economies that are more dependent by their nature on external trade and finance and plus have bigger knowledge and technology gaps. The estimated, we try to estimate the impact on the Macedonian economy from geopolitical defragmentation practically effect seems non-negligible ranging in being in the range of about three to 8% loss in the GDP in the medium term. Of course, the impact, eventual impact will depend on the policy efforts to cope with the risk but also to use the opportunities some of them were already mentioned such as near-shoring given the geographical but also cultural proximity of Western Balkan to the European markets as well as the fact that despite the increase of the unit labor cost still we are one of the cheapest labor force in the Europe. Especially in the context where we are seeing revisiting of importance given to economic efficiency vis-a-vis security and operational resilience of the economies. Overall, if we look the UNTAT Productive Capacities Index which is multi-dimensional index we see that the Western Balkan economy significantly lack behind EU especially in the quality of infrastructure segment and given the high correlation coefficient with the GDP per capita it seems that we as the countries must focus on increasing the potential and harnessing our still untapped potential in response to changing geopolitical environment but not just for the geopolitical but in general to deal with the structural hurdles which are hampering our faster convergence. To conclude, income convergence in the Western Balkan region has been one of the, I guess, been of the fast track even before the recent crisis that we faced. The recent crisis just even more emphasized further old structural hurdles that still remain unaddressed as we could see and brought to the fore new ones on reinforce some of them such as fragmentation, climatries, digitalization and so on. To avoid the risk of further slow convergence or even divergence dealing with structural issues is a priority. Past experience shows that faster EU accession process can play a catalytic role in this regard. Structural transformation of our economies requires stable and sustainable sources of finance which definitely is a challenge given the elevated debt levels in the region. No access to different concessional EU tools you were mentioning on the previous panel next generation font and so on whose purpose is among other things to deal with the structural transformation and domestic savings that are below not just investment needs but also below some historical investment rates for fast convergence past episodes. That's pointing to a need of alternative external finance tightening of financial conditions. We are witnessing the most synchronized and most aggressive tightening in the last five decades as central banks must remain focused on price as well as financial stability as a precondition of sustainable medium term growth. Thus in this context support of IFIs and European institution in lifting the growth potential and putting the convergence again on a fast track is of a key importance. Thank you. Thank you very much Anita. Very interesting. And let me now go to the boards. Eight minutes. Thank you Frank. I have only five slides so I'll I hope to stick to eight minutes and much of what I'm supposed to say has already been said so I'll try to be relatively brief maybe not very optimistic though. So what I intend to say is that and this has been said that the convergence story was very successful one. As we know the convergence was rapid. It started with a switch to the new market economy reallocation of the resources which in itself created the opportunity to increase the productivity immensely in the beginning then the countries got integrated into the world trade. And as you can see that has contributed certainly a lot to the convergence as the market shares have increased over time for example since 2000 you can see here. However after the GFC you see the slow down in that factor two thirds have actually happened in the eight years prior to the GFC and only one third of this increase in the world market share has happened after the GFC in the next 16 years. So it is slowing down. And you can see it's also in terms of the potential GDP growth which was high prior to the GFC based on lots of capital influence in the central Europe which were coming onto a relatively well-educated labor force. But then the GFC came there was a stop in the capital inflows and then gradually potential rate of growth of GDP as we changed the business model basically after the GFC has been increasing up until recently when it started to decrease. So it seems that these kind of first factors of the converges have been exhausted to a large extent and what we see now is actually converges of the potential rate of growth towards the eurozone which is not what we want to see. Because once it converges there will be no more converges. So we have to be careful and think of what can we do next. If you look at the gains from external trade and FDI influence, FDIs of course played a major role particularly after the EU enlargement 2004 to 2009. But then after that they kind of settled at the levels which do not create anymore the major contribution to the convergence. If you think about the geopolitics and that there has been basically the conference was open with the notion that oh maybe these geopolitics friends create opportunities for countries in central Europe, for the EU or candidate countries. I'm worried about that. I think actually that they will help no one and probably least maybe ourselves here in the room, the central European and candidate, the EU and candidate countries. Why? Because what we see and this is what we started to discuss at lunch when I had to leave for more important discussion but it was like you have basically trade frictions that have been recently introduced by the IRA in the US, basically subsidies war and domestic content basically trade barriers that have been created and you see now that the China responding and Europe responding. We're getting into a situation where as an economist we should see that as a suboptimal world. We do know that in a trade theory the best possible is to have a free trade then if somebody introduces some kind of barriers, imperfections then actually introducing another imperfection could be well for improving but then if everybody starts to add imperfections in the end we all lose and the productivity growth goes down. Countries try to subsidize and create companies on their own soil. They try to take them away from foreign countries into their own boundaries but that in the end usually ends up with consumers paying too much for the products and the taxpayers paying too much as well productivity going down and then if it's a subsidies war that does not play usually well for the poorer countries and in this room most of the countries are poorer not Frank's but other central European countries because they cannot compete in subsidies. So everybody be very careful how much these geopolitical change creates opportunities for us versus how much it might harm us. Particularly if you think of like now if you can if you think of the geopolitics in a sense that you'll have the same kind of situation with China that you have with Russia. Well yeah then you can see maybe the opportunity for central Europe to replace in some areas China but if it's like semiconductors high end electronic goods very difficult to see that because it's gonna be lured by the subsidies not in the central in Europe but elsewhere in the Western Europe at the cost of losing the priority long term time but not necessarily helping us to be more successful. So let's see how it will play out but I'm more skeptical about how much we can do. For example here you can see like if you look at the export market shares you see the candidate and the other countries slowing down but then candidate and potential candidate countries speeding up in the next couple of years but it's what Boiata has shown. This is Turkey, Turkey is the candidate. So the increase in the, this is like Turkey getting into the space that has been created with the sanctions to Russia but this only can work for us if you have, I think this is the scenario that I can think of you have but then it would be so bad for the whole world that it would not help us either if you have something like that with China. One thing that was less mentioned today was the importance of the EU funds and certainly EU funds also had a positive contribution to the convergence. Still the central in Europe use much more funds on average than all member states than the average of the EU and with the RF in a way this period of the usage of the EU funds has been prolonged. For example in Croatia's case and we were the last country that joined the European Union the typical pattern of the usage of the EU funds is the first seven year perspective it goes up then it picks and then comes down but with the next generation actually that has been prolonged so that's good and if it's smartly used that has been said that could contribute to the increase of the potential rate of growth of GDP and particularly if it's used in advancing the digitalization of the economies. I would say as I will say in the end but the relative importance going forward will come down also, it will come down. If you look at the TFP growth again you see a decline and relatively rapid decline in the TFP growth over time which also does not bode well for the future converges and the demographic trends also are not looking very well but that has been already said so I'm not gonna repeat that. So basically these drivers of growth in the past are kind of expiring and we have to find new ones so which are the new ones, structural reforms and that has also been said but one thing if you look at for example is that these governance things the political stability, rule of law and government efficiencies that's where there's still a lot to be done. Deborah has said that one of the barriers to investment in the region is uncertainty and uncertainty is connected with that with the rule of law with the governance political stability that should be improved is different across different countries. I mean for example we have Poland and Croatia which have been growing very fast recently but you see that rule of law or political stability in the other country are not still up to the EU standard so much can be done there and also the education, the labor force and I agree with whoever said I think it was also better that it's not only the formal education it's not the secondary or high level education but it's actually keeping the education through the lifetimes of the workers which is where the central East Europe is lagging substantially behind the old Europe and we have to do much more in terms of particularly because the world and the technologies are changing so much this becomes more and more important and that's where we're not doing very well and of course the R&D technology digitalization this is where we have a chance now to use the particular IRA funds to improve and to basically create a basis for productivity growth which will be of a different kind than it used to be in the past when the low hanging fruits were harvested now it's a higher hanging fruit, structural reforms which depend so much on the politics in each and every country so in the end what I would like to say is convergence is still there it will stay there for some time but it's more challenging it's slower and the persistence and the speed of the convergence will probably more country specific as we go forward in terms of how much each and every country does on picking this higher hanging fruit available still, thank you. Thank you, thank you very much Boris then we go to the last speaker of this panel at least in this round, Jen Seiko and if you keep to the eight minutes in translating them to ten then we still have an hour like all the others have done and we still have five slides as well for a lively questions in answer please, the first years Thank you very much I will try to be in time so basically many topics were already covered I will go throughout my presentation but however will be similar to the same conclusion especially for our region so countries of the CZ has been going 30 years transformation process so basically globalization and de-integration has been going parallel and to end so many countries have been accelerating the convergence and de-integration during this transition so this changing geopolitical landscape can have a negative effect on economic convergence can complicate the process of green transition can lead to the difficulties in the energy dependence and then can affect the capital flows across the borders then the refugee situation now after the war in Ukraine complicates more the situation with the demographic movements and other negative effects I will go through globalization and the trade densification for the CZ and then talking about the fragmentation geopolitical landscape there are some positive implications and then at the end I will close with the country case and the central bank role in this story so basically the globalization and the trade intensification we can see here the global trade flows to GDP since the 80s to 2020 and this is also shown the FDIs per capita the world compared to the CZ so with increased globalization of trade capital and labor markets have led to a range of positive spillovers higher FDIs have increased productivity employment and wages in the developing countries global production have trade and trade have kept consumer prices low across developed countries CZ region is a major success story as we mentioned in the 1992 average FDIs flows in CZ countries were about $10 per capita while nowadays the average FDIs flows stands at the level of $370 per capita so higher FDIs will lose increased trade and transfer of know-how and have facilitated growth and economic convergence for the CZ country regions so the combined result is higher productivity lower price and higher output for these countries so a fragment a fragmenting geopolitical landscape definitely there are some negative effects the geopolitical landscape is changing rapidly after the following wars of after the war aggression of Russia and Ukraine this would lead to a fragmentation of the world ordering to politically affiliated blocks we all could see how the world is changing the Russia is after the war is shifting its orientation versus China and Asia while European countries are having another attitude if this fragmentation is permanent an overall negative impact on new economic activity is to be expected over the long term European Union is reaching capital but has a demographic deficit a shrinking population and is poor in natural resources energy imports remains at 55% of total EU consumption needs over the past two decades so this situation makes the energy independence over either difficult or quite closely for the EU countries so negative demographic trends growing energy and security costs and de-globalization will lead to fiscal and financial strains the long-term cost of economic fragmentation will negatively affect the known EU CZ countries as well due to the close geographical proximity to EU to intense trade and financial flows and potential and social ties so let's go through the positive implications some potential upsides for the countries in Central Eastern and South Eastern European region are present over the short to medium term CZ region is well placed to experience increased FDIs due to increased EU investors interests due to a natural option to relocate production close by due to a familiar environment for the EU investors and due to an increasing level of sophistication in addition to improvements in the rule of law and business environment the changing of geopolitical environment has meant a stronger political commitment by the EU towards a full integration of CZ region the result is a renewed push we all have seen on the EU enlargement process and new integration for the candidate and potential candidate countries we can go through the process of integration of EU integration the candidates tied to status was granted to Moldova for example Ukraine and Georgia in June 2022 Bosnia and Herzegovina were granted candidate status in December 2022 EU visa liberalization process for Kosovo was already approved recently and Albania and North Macedonia has formally opened negotiation chapters with while Montenegro and Serbia are already in the negotiation process so the EU integration process leads to positive spillovers in the growing financial support reduction in reduction in the perceived risk across the private sector and an acceleration of structural reforms so finally in the final slide I will take Albania as a case but I believe is very similar with all the behaviors and the reforms of the countries in the region so the EU integration process for Albania is the ultimate long-term strategy goal it is also a driver for structural reforms for aligning policies and regulations with those of you for upgrading domestic institutions and improving business and investment climate and in this context as a central bank Bank of Albania has also a crucial role in the process so we should not forget first we should remain committed to our mandate priority mandate of the price stability also in this changing environment and challenging environment price stability is our priority objective priority objective as a central bank but however this is a precondition for the financial stability because price stability and financial stability are very much connected to each other in our economies second we should align our policies regulations and practices with those of the European Central Bank and European systems of central banks third we should accelerate our efforts towards developing our financial and payment systems seeking to carefully integrate those with the EU ones in the process of digitalization and modernization of payment systems as a central bank we do have objective in addition to price stability and financial stability also modernization of payment systems and the process of integration of payment system in terms of modernization of payments it's a very challenging one that we as a central banks are working for on the other side European Central Bank should seek to assist us wherever possible if it's possible any time we are always having a look our eyes are on the European Central Bank so thank you very much


look I shaved my beard see Rebecca kissed me today so that's nice all right here's what we did today I love these pieces so check it out we shot some videos and this is the art that we used beautiful so this is a cat from from an old how-to-draw book I had from when I was a young boy and I found it and I drew it and then I added all these colors Rebecca added that yellow outline which I love so we did six of these six of them beautiful see that's protecting from dust and then over here hey everyone and this is the other one so we did three big three small and just got beautiful shots of the resin going on these pieces anyways I love them let me know what you think and then the other thing that we did is we got some beautiful wood shots let me show you this okay this is the wood side of the film sets and see we did these so these are tracudry boards pretty eh that's what we did okay just showing you art every day and asking you again on January 1st paint every day for 100 days with me starting January 1st ending April 11th 2024 as you make art it provides opportunities for feeling positive emotions okay and then when you have positive emotions you make beautiful art so okay January 1st art every day for 100 days okay let's do it


At Audiology Associates of Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing. With 40 years of being in the hearing care industry, you'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 North Lake Drive in Prestonsburg. Lieutenant Governor Jacqueline Coleman joined local leaders in McGuffin County today to announce more than $420,000 in funding for safer roads and infrastructure in McGuffin County. The funding will be used to resurface portions of Bull Creek Road, Hammond's Fork Road, and Meredith Branch Road and purchase a skid steer loader for the county's solid waste department. In eastern Kentucky, many of our roads haven't been resurfaced in years and decades. These roads here, they were paid in the 80s, so these folks have been living on these roads and they have continued to deteriorate in disrepair. And as I said earlier, this makes their life a little easier. When you live on one of these county rural roads and it's blacktop, it's broken up, it's potholes, it's just a rough ride. It's not safe for students on buses. It's just, this right here is just a blessing to us to be able to get these types of funds. Over the past three years, McGuffin County has received $1.4 million from the Commonwealth assisting the county to resurface over 20 roadways. The big projects get a lot of attention and rightfully so because it's a big deal to know that we're going to forlain the Mountain Parkway, that we're going to build the Brent Spence Companion Bridge, that we're going to open up the I-69 corridor in the west. All of those are great.  They're not passing through.  This is where you live. And so we want to make sure that we're keeping our rural roads up to date, but also as safe as we can. Safety is another huge issue for our families, I know. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.


Thanks for joining us, Think Tech Hawaii rule of law in the new abnormal and today risks and challenges to equality rights under the law. We have with us Professor Emerita Bernadette Randall from the University of Dayton School of Law and leading scholar on race racism in the law has fantastic compilation at her website racism.org and David Larson professor at Mitchell Hammond School of Law in the Twin Cities in Saint Paul and the media past chair of the American Bar Association section of dispute resolution. And so we have to learn in faculty here able to talk to us about what's changing and what's at risk in driving toward more equality under the law. Professor Randall, you want to start us off? Well, I think one of I think Derek Bell, if you're where he's dean of Oregon Law School and one of the leading scholars on racism. In fact, I talked from his book and and he used to say that racism and equal inequality is a permanent feature of American society and that what we can do under the law is an occasionally make things a little better by things that we do. But the whole nature of how our society functions the two party system, the back and forth, the money in it, the ability to jury manager around race, the bill, I was just reading an amazing law review article that I posted on my website. And I, to me, it talked about one of the things a small thing that could be changed is getting rid of prison gerrymandering. What is prison gerrymandering? Prison gerrymandering is when the, based on the census rule, this is not the law, this is a, this is a regulatory rule. When the census count prisoners, they count them for the community the prison is in without regard to what community they came from. So what that does is because census is the basis for giving communities money and power, prisons give rural, small rural counties more money, more power than their census would be entitled to. And the, and they take that away from the communities that people come from because when people get paroled or serve their sentence, they don't stay in the rural community, they go back to the community or some similar community. So one of the things that could be done is to change that to say, look, unless a prisoner, for the purpose of the census, you will use the place where the person was arrested or better still ask the person who is a prisoner, what community they want to be counted for, and then count them for that community.  And so all of those people who are being counted for rural communities would start being counted for communities where black and brown people live, and that would provide more money, more power. So that to me is a change in the wall that would provide more equity than current exists. Hey, David, what are some areas of concern for you that the law is moving in? One thing I'm concerned about is that, and we talked about this in some previous sessions about the politicization of the judiciary. And, you know, I think benches have always been human, and they have their own inclinations and prejudices and leanings, and they probably look for results that conform with those inclinations, but at least they would do it in a principle kind of way. They couldn't find at least a principle the rest upon. Then they'd say, okay, I've got to give it up. I can't push this any further, even though I want this result, I've got to let it go. I don't think we're there anymore. I think we're at a place now where, if this is the result I want, I don't care whether it's principled or not, or whether or not I can justify it in terms of precedent. I just want the result, and I am in a position where I can dictate that, so I'm going to do that. And that to me is extremely disturbing. You know, we've seen it in a lot of different areas, but I teach labor and employment law, and so I get into questions about final-binding mandatory arbitration and employment agreements, and if you look at the history of those agreements, the Supreme Court has swung in the direction that pretty much in every circumstance those agreements are going to be enforceable. Agreements where people say I will only take my grievances to arbitration, I waive my rights to go to court for any statutory claim, all my discrimination claims doesn't matter, I'm just going to go to arbitration. Courts have now consistently said that those are enforceable agreements, and that's because of the preemptive power of this federal statute, the Federal Arbitration Act. Well, that's pretty contrary to what the same justices do frequently when they turn to this doctrine of federalism, and they say that, well, the federal government can't regulate gods, and they can't regulate abortion, and they can't do these things, and that should be for the states. The states should be able to regulate those things. So you've got this situation now when we're talking about arbitration and it affects millions of people, have these clauses in their contracts, where we're going to say that states who have been trying now for several decades to protect their citizens from what they believe are adhesive, overreaching arbitration agreements by putting limitations on those, the court has consistently struck them down, saying that, well, the Federal Arbitration Act is a national statute and that should control and we should be uniform. But in other areas, when the federal government has tried to regulate, they've stepped forward pretty consistently and said that these are things that states should determine, and we are invoking these principles of federalism and respect for states' rights. So right now, I think we've got a court that's very result-oriented that they're going to declare decisions that reach the result they desire in ways that are not particularly defensible and not principled. David, I guess my only thing is I have never felt the Supreme Court was principled. Well, yeah, I think it's a question. And the whole concept of star decisis was only used when it supported an outcome they wanted. And when it didn't, they ignored it. I agree. That's why I was saying that I think benches and judges have always had those inclinations. But at least, and I may be wrong, but my sense was at least at some point, there was a respect that I've got to make the sound principled if nothing else. I've got to get something to rest it on other than the result. And I think right now, I'm feeling that we've sort of abandoned that. And now it's just you should embrace this because this is a result that all of us should want. This is a good result. So it doesn't matter how we got here. It's just this is the right result. And that's what our obligation and responsibility is to do. To do the, to just achieve what we think is the right result. And you should think that too. But don't, I guess I, I, I agree that that I, I guess I'm wondering, let me say it over. I'm wondering if the problem is for many areas that are not related to race, that it appears principled. And so for it to not for, for, for them to, because I, my view in reading race cases for the last 40 years is they did what they wanted. And they ignored, you know, principles to get the result that they wanted. And the result that they often wanted was to be colorblind. And so they would, that print, they would promote that principle even when the principle didn't, was not logical, was not something that would be defensible. And so I guess I wonder, I guess I wonder if the problem is this, the courts have been able to get away with appearing principle because they use these principles that people agreed with, the already sizes, all of these things. But because many people weren't reading race-based cases, they weren't seeing that the court wasn't using the same logic or our, our principle thing when, when they wanted to deal with race and racism and especially in terms of discrimination against Black and brown and Native people and Asian people. So I don't know. I, I, I agree that this court has a particular outcome at once, but then so did Brown versus the court of education. And so did Dred Scott.  Well, the, you know, I'm never going to pretend that judges and courts don't try and conform the result to their personal inclinations. That's always happened. I just have the sense that, and maybe we are uncomfortable with the principles that they were relying upon, but it seems now that they're not even attempting to cover that now it's just like we know it's best and we think you're probably going to agree with us. So we're going to decide this, this way. Maybe in the long term, in the, in a, I don't know, I don't want to say longer, make that might be better for us to mobilize because one of the things that one of the things that I feel like it's like, okay, in down south, when you confront racism, the racism can be very overt and in your face, but you know what happens and no one disagrees with it's happening.  And then when you complain about it, it would be, well, what do you, I'm nice. I'm, I'm not calling your names. I'm not a racist. Maybe the court deciding because if they're making decisions over the last 50 years, which they have been doing, they've been eating away at abortion, they've been eating away at the whole arbitration thing, they've been doing that. And by folding it in some kind of false logic, people, the public has sit back and say, oh, well, you know, I may not agree with them, but at least I can see their logic. Maybe this could be a good thing that people will be so upset over the lack of logic, the lack of hiding what they're doing, that there may be, I don't know, there may be a uprising.  At one point, we'll call versus swan, we go back into the middle of the 20th century, and the court said that I don't think public law should go to arbitration. There are interests here that need to have the light of day shown upon them. We need to know what's happening. This has to go to court. Those are fundamental rights. And no, you can't compel people to waive their rights go to court. I think at that point, they sounded kind of principled. But then they started to favor the result, the pro business result of enforcing arbitration agreements and taking them out of court, and putting, you know, behind closed doors. So we don't know what's going to happen. We're not sure what damages are coming out. And so, this trend has begun began 1980, the 1980s, really, during the Reagan administration, it really took hold, where they started to really embrace the result and not do it in a principled way. I'm just thinking about this one particular area where you look at these decisions and you compare the language to what they did really relatively recently. And it's just contradictory. So this whole notion of states rights as being thrown out the door, and it's all about the preemptive effect of this big national statute. So I guess my concern is that to the degree that that's been going on for some decades now, and maybe always historically, it just seems to be getting worse. And, you know, getting worse in the sense that and maybe professors Randall's right, that's a good thing. It's like, just be open about it, that I'm not going to try to reconcile this on any principle. I just want the result. I'm now being honest for the first time ever. Maybe that's a good thing. But to the degree that certain people have a lot of power and power that affects the lives of millions of people, the fact that they're honest about their abuse of power doesn't make me feel better. It doesn't. I can understand why you wouldn't feel better. I don't feel better about it either, but I feel more empowered. I feel more empowered when people are straight up and honest about what they're doing. And because I feel like I can deal with that. I can deal with the people and I can organize people against it because they're not quoting the language in some hidden language that makes it look like that they're doing the right thing. But no, I can understand. I can understand, you know, it would be disconcerting to me if I had had, if for the last 50 years the Supreme Court has supported racial integration and then suddenly, and then they stop supporting it. But that's not what has been happening. And so my shock and awe over the Supreme Court happened a long time ago, but I understand. Except for the affirmative action, of course. And voting rights, both of which they have eroded at the expense of clearly people of color and minority group. They, they, the Supreme Court has eroded affirmative action and voting rights. And, but that is consistent with how they erode racial inequality.  If we all just get out and vote. And so they're, the Democrats have an interest in promoting and looking at voting rights. But it's voting rights, not the only thing that that's been eroded under Civil Rights Act of 1964. There is no language in that act that specifically define what discrimination, what racial discrimination is by court opinion. It was decided that discrimination had to be purposeful. So that's the first limitation put on by the Supreme Court of the United States. We have to have intentional conduct. Okay. First limitation. So then the regulatory agents, agency put forth regulations that would allow people to sue for disparate impact. And saying, saying, if you can prove a disparate impact, that's the same as proving purposeful. Okay. And so that kind of opened the door back up for it. And then the Supreme Court said, maybe little less than 30 years ago, you can, you can't sue for disparate impact. Disparate impact is a regulatory thing. And so the only people who can sue is the agency. If you feel like you have been discriminated based on disparate impact, all you can do is complain to the agency slamming the door on most forms of racial discrimination. And this is the thing that bothers me. I mean, lots of things bother me, but here's the thing that could have been fixed by legislation. No Congress taking it upon themselves to try to fix that, the Supreme Court decision. And I guess I want to ask you, is that the same true with the arbitration? Could some of these problems be fixed by legislation? Sure. Sure, they could. You know, there could be a clause. There's an act that's been introduced a number of times to put limitations on the ability to impose mandatory binding arbitration agreements. And the limitations have been in the employment area, in the civil rights area, and in the consumer area. And that's been kicking around now for about 15 years. And it gets introduced every year. And it just can't get through Congress. But that's an example where you could say, stop doing this. It's not going to be, these waivers are not going to be enforceable. We can allow business to business transactions enter into these kinds of agreements if they're comfortable doing it. But we don't want these power and balance situations to be subject to these adhesion contracts. So yeah, we could, but we haven't. Has any president put it on their agenda as a primary item to deal with? No, not that I'm aware of. I don't know any president that's come forward and say, this is a top of my agenda. I don't know that anyone has. And this is the complaint I have about our system. All three are functioning to make sure that things don't operate for the average person, for you and your area, for me and my area. Because the Supreme Court, almost everything the Supreme Court does can be fixed by legislation. And yet- I will add that this past year, we did get an amendment to the FAA that says for sexual harassment cases, we're not going to enforce these. So we had that little incremental step. Right. That's right. That's what it was. But I mean, that's an example of what could and should be done in a broader sense. And for that, for me, that's an example of Congress doesn't want to fix it. Because if they can recognize the need to fix it for a small area, they could be inching away at this one small area at a time. You can't arbitrate sexual harassment or just do that. But we have a very dysfunctional- legally, the system is dysfunctional because of the Supreme Court, because of the Court of Appeals, which I think we have to- we don't pay enough attention to the Court of Appeals. Because there's only so many cases that the Supreme Court can take up. And at the end of the day, most decisions are going to be governed by what circuit courts decide on the- on their appeal, because they're going to take many more. So we don't have that. We don't have a judiciary. We don't have a legislature. I'm not saying that right. And we don't have a president. If the president isn't, but you know, one time someone said to me- I was talking to someone about priority of eliminating racism, and they was like, oh yeah, it's a priority for me. I really think that we need to work on eliminating racism in legal education and stuff. I say, yeah, you do. I don't discount that. It's number 10 on your list, and you know you're only going to get the three things. So far as I'm concerned, it's not much of a priority. A president who doesn't come out and say that this is a priority is saying this is not a priority for them to put their weight behind, and then a legislature, you know, Congress that doesn't come behind it, and then of course the courts. I don't know. I don't know what- Yeah, well I think, yeah, I think that's right. Getting back to law school. My law school in this past year decided to declare we're an anti-racist law school with the understanding that that doesn't mean much of anything, unless we can actually start to spell out some concrete steps as what we're going to do to implement that declaration. So we actually are spending a lot of time thinking about what are some concrete demonstrable things we can do to demonstrate that we actually are an anti-racist law school. So I think, yeah, you do need that second step. It isn't enough to just say we're anti-racist end of the story. Or we want fair arbitration things. You've got to take those steps to do that. So great insight. Unfortunately we're out of time for today, but for the law school or for any other law schools, one of our panelists, Dean Danielle Conway of Dickinson Law at Penn State, they have one of the most sophisticated anti-racism programs for law schools in the country. Welcome getting in contact with her, getting the information on their program. But you're right, the role and responsibility that the framers intended to assign and impart to all three branches of government was a balancing of these competing interests and values that we know will always be part of our life. And that balancing responsibility has been ignored and eroded and fallen away. So thanks for great insights and perspectives. Folks, we join us in a couple of weeks. We'll be back with more current issues and topics. And so glad, Professor Randall, that you have so far survived things well in Orlando, Florida, and hope that the rest of the state will recover as soon as may be possible. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Take care.


Good morning all. Can I thank Minister Dickon Dua Dua for hosting me here at BlackRock and to my thanks to the Brigadier General also for and his officers for hosting me here. This is a wonderful facility. I have some comments to make but if you don't mind I'd like to first make some comments about some sad news that we received over night. Can I confirm that overnight search teams have reached the site of a light aircraft that crashed in Alba province in the Philippines? Sadly, there are no survivors. So on behalf of the Australian government I wish to extend my deepest sympathy to the families of the two men Simon Chipperfield and Kati Santanam both from Adelaide, my hometown as well as the Filipino nationals involved. I think we all understand that the families of those who we have lost will be grieving and I express not only our sympathy, our condolences but to say to them our hearts go out to them in this time of great grief. I also wish to acknowledge and express condolences to the families of two soldiers who were killed during the search and rescue. But now to Fiji. It is wonderful to be back here again in Fiji and this was the first country in the Pacific that I went to after becoming Foreign Minister. I hope I've learned a few things in the last nine months. We'll see how we go. And it's a real privilege to be here representing Australia and representing the Prime Minister for the Pacific Island Forum being held here and I acknowledge not only His Excellency the Minister but the new government of Fiji and congratulate them on their election. Australia regards its relationship with Fiji as of paramount importance here in the Pacific. We understand how important Fiji is to the region and the way in which it can play in many sectors a leadership role and one of the areas in which it can play a leadership role is in its capability and capacity in peacekeeping and in humanitarian work and what you see here in this facility is that on display and that on display in partnership in part with Australia. This facility as you know was a joint collaboration between Australia and Fiji in particular. It's a world-class facility and it has as its purpose the promotion of peace internationally and to be able to support response operations in times of need particularly when that national natural disaster strike and I would say it was also a very important economic project during COVID-19 supporting the economy in the Nandi area creating over a thousand jobs and injecting a million into the economy each month many local jobs which obviously was important at that time. The fact the work that can be supported out of here is demonstrated by the deployment that you saw and those personnel are deploying to Auckland to New Zealand that's right and we'll be supporting our Kiwi friends our New Zealand friends at this very difficult time for them. I had the opportunity and I said this to the Minister and to the Brigadier General to engage with Fijian peacekeepers and there's a very proud tradition of peacekeeping in this country including from the Minister and the Prime Minister I think from memory. But I had the opportunity to engage with Fijian peacekeepers in Solomon Islands recently and they were fantastic their engagement, their capability, the trust that they clearly had in the local population was really impressive. I'd also like to speak a little about the announcement that was made overnight by Australia for the partnerships for a healthy region. One of the things we understood during the pandemic is the way in which health outcomes in other countries matter to all of us and they matter to those communities, they matter to national economies and they matter to regional stability. Now we take it as a key objective of our government to do what we can to strengthen the stability, the security of our region and in doing so we're not only doing something that is good for those countries, we're doing something that's good for Australia because we do better in a world where we are more secure, we do better in a region that is more stable and more secure and part of that is health. We saw during COVID-19 a lot of health resources diverted to meeting challenges that the pandemic presented that often came at the expense of underlying health systems so I have announced overnight a $620 million program over five years, the partnerships for a healthy region which will support a range of initiatives things like making sure kids catch up on their immunisation routine, make sure that their routine immunisations are up to date that matters a lot for health outcomes, access to maternity care and a focus on significant diseases including HIV, AIDS, TB and malaria and we're inviting proposals from third parties for funding under that program. I'm happy to take questions and after that I'm heading back to the Pacific Island Forum for a range of bilaterals before the leaders dinner tonight. Have a take questions. Hello, how are you? I'm good. I know. I remember you from last time. Was I not happy? I don't know what you're talking about. I might have been not well, I remember that. We're happy to see you back here. Oh, it's great to be back here and it's great to not be unwell. A conversation with President Lamar with regards to the rule of law and concerns that the entire region had in regards to their relationship with China that was happening around about the time you were from the pandemic? Well, you would understand I don't go into blow-by-blow details or private discussions that I have as foreign minister with counterparts and with leaders in this case, but I would make three comments. The first in relation to the rule of law, Australia's position on the separation of powers is clear and it is well known. Secondly, in relation to security, it is a very clear view, not only of Australia but of Pacific Island leaders that we believe that security should be provided for within the Pacific family and our logic for that is we are benefited by looking after each other. Prime Minister Rumbucca actually put it well to me and also in a speech he did where he talked about the region as being and the regional forum as being a regional house. We're all part of the same regional family house. Well, we think the family is best when it makes sure its house is secure. What was the third part of your question? The broader issue of that was obviously something I talked about publicly and I want to publicly again acknowledge Fiji's role in this as well as the leadership shown by the other Micronesians is we really are very pleased that Kiribati is returning to the PIF. We think we're stronger together. Australia under successive governments has made its position clear that we recognise Indonesian sovereignty in relation to Papua and that's a position that reflects a bipartisan position and a position that reflects our undertakings and commitments under the Lombok Treaty and we remain committed to that. Minister, we forgot to do some agreement that the specialist retreat is going to talk about implementation. There's a lot of questions around money who will pay for all the goodies in this agreement. Is there a position to support requests for funding? We will work through that with our partners. We already contribute a substantial amount to the regional architecture and that's right that we do so. We would want to work through that with our partners going forward but we think it is a good thing that the forum is now has its full complement and we look forward to the discussions including with President Marmowe in the coming day and a bit. Minister, can you talk about the Pacific Engagement Visa? The Pacific Engagement Visa is a visa that we announced as policy prior to the election and it is a change. It is modelled on visa arrangements that New Zealand has with some members of the Pacific. We propose to do it by ballot and we propose 3,000 visas but I would make this point, we would, we want to just as we do with the Pacific Australia Labor Mobility Scheme make sure we work with countries of the region around the design. I've heard that there are some who are very keen on it and there are some who worry about it taking people out of their countries who they want to keep here, to keep in the region because they're going to be important contributors to the country. So can I just be very clear, we want this to work for everybody and we will work with other countries, with those who wish to send people on the design, on the arrangement of this and on our other Labor Mobility Schemes to ensure that it works for everybody. It works for the person, it works for the country sending them and it works for Australia. We want this to be a net benefit to the region and that's how we'll seek to apply it. Minister, how much of the business visa is in response to climate refugees and the drive to... No, look, that's not the driver. The driver is this. We are a substantial economy in the region. We know that part of what many Pacific Island countries want from us is access to our economy and that's why we have the Labor Schemes and they provide, remittances are a significant part of some countries' revenues. So the logic of this is to try and do what we think we should do which is to bring us closer together, ensure that people have access to opportunities in Australia but retain their connection with their country of birth. So it's about being closer. The infrastructure needs of the region are substantial which is why we have our financing facility. We have an infrastructure financing facility for the Pacific which does provide a streamlined way of trying to ensure high quality infrastructure projects can be approved. Obviously there's always more projects than we can fund but we have structured that in a way that tries to streamline that process so we can assess it. These are grants which we would see primarily going to partners for delivery so less infrastructure than how we might deliver programs. Last question. You get a lot. Has anybody else got a question? Do you have any other journalists? Do you have a question? Yes. So I can tell you what we have. Money will go to Communicable Disease Prevention and Control that will include immunization policy, planning, infection prevention and disease surveillance and modelling. So that means making sure people are vaccinated if there's an outbreak working out where we need vaccinations rolled out really quickly. So this is non-COVID. Non-communicable diseases, sexual and reproductive health and rights, health systems which is about making sure our health information systems and workforce development can be strengthened and then a range of other minor projects. But the vast majority of it is in Communicable Disease Prevention and Control. Okay. Thank you very much everybody. Thank you Minister.


Good morning, and a warm welcome to our UX fatality, our distinguished speakers, guests, and everyone in the ballroom here today. My name is Shamma Sundar, I'm the co-founder of UX India, India's biggest conference on user experience design. So when we say UX and user experience, there will obviously be some people in the audience who would wonder what exactly is this, this term is and all that stuff. So can you just help me raise hands and then help me understand how many people in the audience are UX aware in general? Is everybody UX aware, or are there any people who still need some explanation about what exactly this domain is? I still see some hands that haven't been raised. So I'm just going to take liberty from my side and then with the permission of UX experts in the audience over here, I'll try to take an attempt at what exactly UX design is in a few sentences just to help our other folks who are not UX aware as such. So UX user experience design is a process of creating products that offer a great experience and that are simple, easy, and pleasurable to use, as simple as that. So this conference, I think, as this conference unfolds, you will clearly understand what exactly we are talking about. And as I mentioned, UX India has been around for 15 years now. So basically, we started by spreading awareness about this domain almost close to 15 years back. And since then, we have been building design expertise amongst our audience, amongst design fraternity, and also building on top of that by building design quotient of our design community over here. So from spreading knowledge to raising awareness and then to creating lasting impact, UX India 2016 brings the focus on the next crucial phase in our collective UX journey, which is creating impact by design. And that's the theme of this conference today. And we'll hear more about this over the course of the next three days and then get every possible understanding about how we go about creating impact by design and then also hopefully get to see good examples of how to create and talk about impact that we create knowingly or unknowingly. But then this conference is about being able to create and design things and design them confidently for impact. So that's the focus of this conference. And herewith, I would like to introduce Mr. Kaladar Bapu, the co-founder and architect of UX India. Mr. Bapu has very several firsts through his credit. So he pioneered user experience in the late 1990s when design was known to very few people. So he founded one of the biggest UX conferences in India. And he set up India's first state of the art usability lab at Cardis in Hyderabad over here in this very high-tech city area. His relentless commitment to spreading design awareness and creating sustained business and social impact has led to establishing this very platform. UX India connects the industry, the academia, and the governance through a host of programs for a sustained dialogue and implementation of design for a better future. It's my pleasure to welcome Mr. Kaladar Bapu onto the stage to take you through the first leg of the journey of our conference today. Please welcome Mr. Kaladar Bapu onto the stage. So Shyam has already explained a bit about how this has been, the journey has been started. So before I go into that, I would like to share a story. Oh. So is there anybody from MIT here, MIT Media Lab, or MIT Pune? Any student from MIT? MIT? Good. So I was at Awasa yesterday for a dinner. Dutch delegates have come yesterday. So that evening, I was discussing with them. So one of my old friends, he said, hello, sir. The cataract, the device going to test that it actually costs $250. You know that, right? $250 means it's 65 rupees times. So there is an institute called Alibi Prasad. Has anybody know about it? Alibi Prasad, I Institute. How many of you know about it? Good. So this gentleman, he did do, I think he was actually managing director positions and also at the higher positions, CEO positions, and then finally decided to go back to social service. And then now he's actually working with Alibi Prasad. So he said some of his designers, they came up with a similar lens for just 20 rupees. You know how much 20 rupees means? Maybe for you guys, it's $0.30. Think about $250 device versus $0.30. So to making this more affordable, and also it's actually for poor people in India, the kind of impact it creates and it is created by design. So this story why I'm sharing is all this conference is sold out, basically. They approached us. I didn't know that. Ramalakshmi, who takes care of operations, she said, no, we don't have space. Then after I heard the story, I said, we have to present this today. So we tried to squeeze the time today to bring that innovation. They actually got an award in UK. I think they got a second prize for social innovation. So we're going to see that. So starting with that, I'm actually very happy to share this story because we are going to share many more stories like this because the theme of the conference itself impact by design. So it is intentionally, carefully designed to create impact. So how did we arrive to this theme? I think this works, no? Does it work? So as I told you, this is India's biggest international conference. Is there any doubt in this? Why? Because I want to share, actually, maybe on some of the slides. When I was thinking about bringing this conference to Hyderabad, many of my friends said, discouraged. So I'm going to explain what happened and those stories before I go there. So we started this journey 16 years back. In India, I think you know anything about software, what do you get? India, any offshore, anything. Software, India is a synonym for software. So that means if you look at any parent, ask what your son to be or a daughter to be. I want my son to be a software engineer or maybe a doctor. Nobody ever says that, OK, I want my son to be UX designer or an architect. So most of us sitting here because of some reason we have moved to this field, do you agree that? Or anybody who says that I understood this concept, that's the reason I have taken this course or I've taken this UX design. Has anybody says that? Please raise your hand. You have taken this course intentionally. OK, so what's your background? What is that? Mass communications? Yeah, yeah. So we have mass communications, architecture, engineering, then moved to UX. I'm talking about your parents who decided that my son is going to be UX designer. Nobody, right? Yes. So in 16 years back, a gentleman called Jan Ban, he was the founder of Ban ERP company. He was the first guy to bring offshore model to India. He started Wannenberg IT Park over here. And I think if you're familiar with Hyderabad, now it's called VIT Park. He had a vision to understand that UX, or usability at that time, adds a lot of value to the product. So in fact, we were actually at IIT. So he came for a campus interview. So nobody knew, actually, what these guys are coming. They were talking about usability. We tried to Google it. Google was, I think, a couple of years old. So we didn't find that meaning, also. And we didn't know how to prepare for the interview. So finally, they actually tested aptitude, like design aptitude. That was a good thing, design aptitude. And I got selected, I don't know, somehow, maybe because Hyderabad or whatever. I don't know why I got selected. And then they actually gave me training. It's a kind of a military training. Two of their Dutch, my colleagues, were here. And then they were like almost eight to 10 hours of training. And then they've sent me to Netherlands to give me this human-computer interaction and all usability, those principles and fundamentals. So in fact, what happened? Today, Mr. Anban is going to be here to share his story. 16 years back, how was his vision? Now we are still thinking about what is design thinking. So sometimes it is a surprise when I talk about UX, UX. After an hour, they say, yes, this is really good concept. By the way, what you've been talking about UX, what it means UX means. After an hour discussion, they ask you this question, what do you mean by UX? So even now, people who are talking about what is UX and design thinking, that guy, that gentleman, visualize that. Product value can be brought out using these concepts. So we're going to have a discussion with him. If you have any questions, maybe let me know. I'm going to ask these questions to him so that we can understand what was his vision that time. OK, so we just started the team in India in Hyderabad. So then I felt that we need to have something that we're missing out. Because when you go for a campus interview for a next team mate to recruit, we are giving six months of training. It's not easy to do that. So what we've done is, OK, let's do one thing. OK, let's go for an ID, IDC. IDC, you know that, IDC. And even they don't have Anuradha or anybody at that time. So it was the same. You have to train them. Then I thought, why don't we decide, why don't we come up with a not-for-profit organization to create awareness about design? Because at that time, IDC, we had product design and visual communication. So when we asked them, hey, how about moving to UX? They said, no, what is UX means? Because they are all gray colors. I'm a visual designer. I don't want to come into. I'm a product designer. I don't want to come into. And I thought, why don't we create some awareness about design, basically UX design, usability. So we started a group called usabilitymatters.org. So that's how we started talking about usability in 2000. And luckily, we had an interesting collaboration with the ISB, Indian School of Business. They said, we are going to give you the space. If you want, you can organize an event. In 2005, we came up with the first event. It was so funny, because nobody wants to join. It was a free event. Nobody wants to come. So we used to beg people that, OK, there is a beautiful, interesting lunch. We have also non-visitarian, these many varieties so that people used to say, what time? 12.30. OK, so 12 o'clock, they used to come after lunch. They used to leave. That was a situation in 2005. So we didn't leave that. We're still working like, OK, let's see what happens. 2006, 2007, we start doing different programs. And slowly, some traction happened. Like, some visual designers wanted to join this. And then they said, it looks interesting. But do you think I'll get money if I join this? Or some people thought, is it a promotion if I'm a visual designer? If I go to, if I learn this, will I get promotion? This kind of questions. So it was so tough. And think about bringing international speakers to the conference. It was difficult, because people were not interested here. So 2012, in fact, 2010, I thought of going back to my education. So it was my long dream to study at Pratt Institute. I've been to New York, and then I started design management course out there. Then I started actually actively participating in UXPA conferences. Then I started making good friends. My major intention is to bring international talent to this country. Today, we have around 12 speakers from internationally. Thank you so much, sir, for all of you who are accepting our invitation and coming here and sharing your knowledge. 12 international speakers are going to share their experiments, international design trends. So it's a great opportunity for all of us. So last year, we celebrated 10 years of UX, UX in India. So this is the 11th year. So we came up with the concept like Shyam was talking about, awareness. First phase was we want to create awareness. In fact, we used to run bad design contests. I don't know how many of you are aware of that. Boycott bad design. You never aware of it? Yeah. Bad design contests. And we used to give them best bad design prizes. Because once you understand what is bad, it's easy to understand good. So this kind of, we used to start, we used to do cartoon contests about design. So then we started education, went to education mode. We did a lot of workshops, conferences. Now we wanted to see, we have actually seen a lot of traction. Everybody talks about design now. People have started joining the courses. Now we wanted to see what has happened after the couple of almost 16 years.  We wanted to know the stories of impact. So that's the reason the concept started with impact by design. So I just wanted to, this is just like a kind of interesting thing. We used to call this end user. Do you remember end user perspective? What does that mean, end user means? It comes at the end. And we never used to like him, right? So from that phase to today, we are talking about user centered. We are actually bringing him, hugging him, and you are talking about design thinking and user centered design. OK, let me talk about programs we've been doing. So we found that there is a lot of gap between industry and academia. So industry says that design schools are not really giving the people who are like day one onwards like they should be productive. That's what their expectation. And industry says that you're not giving an internship for our students. No, you're not giving projects. How can they be productive? How can they understand what industry is working towards? So we have a gentleman, Mr. Moraly is going to, Mr. Moraly is going to moderate this panel discussion. We have design schools represented and also industry represented. This is the third. I think this is the third, sir, fourth panel discussion. Third time we are doing that. And startup UX panel, clinic. This has become very successful. So what we found is when I say we means UX India or usability matters, this is, as I told you, right? It's a not-for-profit organization and it is driven by volunteers. So when you see a startup, UX service is very expensive these days. If I ask you to help, how much you charge? $100 per hour? It's very expensive here also. So what does it mean? Like you are a startup and you want your design to be right, but you don't have a design support. You can't afford to have a designer. So as a team, we invited mentors. So even now, if you would like to be part of this mentor network, mentors club, please give us, give your names so that now we'll be explaining to you what are the benefits. So what we are doing is we are actually inviting startups to submit their designs. We select 10 of them and then give them an hour time. They actually pitch us their design. And then our mentors, experts, evaluate the design and help them and guide them in the right direction from a user-centered perspective. So we have received around 52 designs, 52 startup submissions. It was very tough for us to shortlist them and then finally made the 10 startups. So we are doing a parallel session in a different boardroom for the UX clinic. So women in design. So I'm going to share the demographics of how many of us, like male versus female here, like women versus men. So this is very interesting. You always have more than 50%. And you always wanted to share the success stories of women entrepreneurs and successful people who have used design or innovation to make their product or created social impact. So we're going to have a separate track on women in design. Also, we had a panel discussion. We have a panel discussion. We're going to have four panels to share their stories. And UX ladder, this year we actually introduced. So what we found is, for example, how many years old? Two years, I think, you experience? You have one year. Somia? You just started, yeah. So a lot of people, they wanted to move to UX, but they don't know whom to ask. And if you see this conference, we created three tracks. One is leadership track, advanced track, and essentials. And fourth is women in design.  You want to know more about strategy. So the three tracks available for you to explain. That means you can ask questions. You can openly ask questions. For example, if you are from Fidelity, you guys are from Fidelity. So what do you see if I apply for you? What do you see? You can't ask this question, right? When you apply, you can ask this question to him. So what do you generally look at when I apply for a job? So you can answer that. So this is the UX ladder is that. Any question you feel that it is, you don't get answer, because it's very new here, right? And whatever that answers you find in net, it's very much like a west side. Like maybe all the US related answers are European. But we don't get any answers from India. So this is a great opportunity for all of us to ask questions, utilize that track. UX talent fair, this is another interesting program. So what we found is now the founders or the CEOs are now aware of design thinking is very essential for the product success. But they don't know how to recruit a good UX person. So this is where our mentors are going to help them. Because if you do a bad recruit, he's going to create a bad team. So this is where UX India mentors can help the companies to recruit a good talent. So as I was discussing about mentors club, mentors club is, if you are five years experience above, you can join this club. And for example, there are a lot of opportunities. NASCOM is actually our good partner.  If you are a qualified mentor, they're going to send you there. So you'll be representing UX India. You'll also be evaluating ideas, like UX clinic ideas you're evaluating. So so many things you can actually do if you want to become a mentor. So if you're interested, you can actually give your name at the registration desk. And then we'll actually add you in the club. So this is very interesting to see how many UX focused organizations available now in India. I'm going to share the number. How many of companies are sending up to this conference? Most of the companies who have got usability or UX labs or usability labs and also UX resources, they were attending this conference. So today we have 461 attendants. So I was talking about Hyderabad issue, right? So Anna was asking, is it okay to keep the conference in Hyderabad? So some of my friends said it is tough. Hardly you get 200 people. So Mr. Ramesh Lugnathan. So I asked him, I came here to understand whether Hyderabad is the right place to host this. I expressed my doubt. He was really angry. He was the first and he said, why do you think so? It's all matured audience and it will be successful. I never even expected that 200 would be a figure we can achieve. Today we have sold out and then 461 and there are still, people are actually walk-in registrations are happening. And if you see that 48% are male and the rest, you know that, the nomination. And out of this, 59% are professionals. That means people who are working for bigger emensis. And 31% are startup founders. That's a great change. That's amazing. Generally if you see this 59% you'll see most of them are UX designers. But this 31% they're all business technology, different background management and they are actually like startup founders. It's a great change. And 10% are students. 10% we actually, we are limiting this number is very consciously because we don't want to make this conference to like a student conference. So we always keep only 10% for students. And 184 companies are participating in this conference. So any other questions you have on this I can explain to you or I can give you numbers. No, this is just to show that most designers use Apple computers, right? So you use Mac or Windows? Okay. So this is an interesting thing. So far we've been, I think with the programs I've explained to you, they were like industry and academia. So the first time in the history of, as far as I know, but if you know anybody, any other government is talking about UX. Any other state government is talking about UX, please let me know. The first time the Telangana government, the IT minister is talking about UX. We are honored to have him here. He said, why don't you guys come back here and organize this event? And he wanted to involve government to be part of this platform. So as we are building this platform, what's going on there? As we are building this platform, we'd like to have you on board and help this community. It's not just only the industry or academia. We should also help work with government. Are you guys interested? Only few? Only few wanted to create impact by joining government. You don't have to be a government employee to create impact. You can be part of this platform. We all can actually help government to achieve this. So, is it working? Okay, so if you guys are interested, definitely we all should actually join hands and make it successful because the first time a government is asking us to involve. So the next talk is going to be our IT secretary, Mr. Jayesh, he's going to talk about his vision and his IT minister's vision. So I think this is a great opportunity for all of us because we are moving to the next phase. The 16 years, for example, we did do a lot of education to a C-level people. Think about government as an enterprise. So we have to do the similar thing, like we have to educate, we have to make them understand the value of design. Not just only telling what I'm talking about, they're already aware of it. I'm talking about other governments. We have to bring this awareness at that level and then we'll be more useful to the community, not just only for a software industry. Okay, so before we move on to the key notes and all, any questions? No, I'm talking about this year. It's hiking up, yes, yeah. The many, I think if you see, there is a little bit of, like in Bangalore, you see the crowd would be more, definitely, yeah. So you see the number of organizations, companies coming in are very high, yeah.


Now we have Winston Oew from Scripps College. Okay, can you hear me? Yes! Okay, so my name is Winston Oew from Scripps College. Somebody told me that these talks didn't have to do with math, so I'm just gonna talk about some hobbies of mine, actually. Okay, go. Okay, so I have three funny little kids, ages 10, seven, and three, which means that most of the hobbies that I used to have are gone. However, there are two things that I do in my spare time. First, over the last several years, I've recorded almost all of my lectures and put them online. Pre-calculus, calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, introduction to analysis, principles of analysis, complex analysis, Fourier analysis, functional analysis. People from all over the world watch the videos and make comments, ask questions, request lecture notes, et cetera. It's a real surprise how much of a pleasure it is to be of use to humanity. I recommend it. Okay, so when I have a little time, usually between two and three a.m., I practice Zhan Zhuang, a kind of meditation that involves standing still for a long period of time. The longest I've done it is a couple of hours. Once I did it for eight hours in one day. So I'm just gonna stand here and show you. Okay, so on the left side of each slide are what I'm supposed to be doing, instructions on what you're supposed to be doing, on the right, a new PCMI friend. I'm talking about you, Courtney Gibbons, has provided thought balloons showing what's going on in my head, what she thinks goes on in my head. Okay, so I'm just gonna do it.