Hey, good morning, John and Jafina, right? Let's begin this time with a word of prayer and We'll get into our session Father, we thank you once again for this wonderful opportunity. You've given us. We thank you for your wisdom for your grace Lord for everything that you've done for us Lord and you're doing in each of our lives a Lord we just commit this time into your hands even as we study and learn and Bring this course to a completion Lord. We pray that you will Lord continue to deposit in our hearts and our spirits the things of God And Lord we just ask for a greater greater measure of Anointing a greater measure of your grace Upon each of our lives Lord in Jesus name. We pray Amen. Amen All right, so this class I Just thought we'll just do the the appendix and Chapter 29 just wanted to talk a little bit on how to You know create a survey when it comes to you know before planting a church before launching out. It's very important we talked about you know preparing preparing a survey looking out and You know the practical aspects and also the spiritual aspects So what I what we'll do this session is we just quickly You know, just take look at an overview of how we can build a survey and How the survey will help us going forward when it comes to you know church planting and Building ministries within the church as well and also after that we will I think we will Just open it up if there's any questions if not then we can bring this course to a completion What we would like to do is what I'll do is towards the end Oh We will I will you know put the Final assessments probably by the end of this week or maybe early next week It's going to be simple questions very practical questions. It's going to be again an open book exam. So So you can spend some time studying and reading and just learning so so let's get into this portion of In chapter 29 on your notes if you have your notes with you Just simple sample survey. It's done many years back, but the reason it's put here is To help us understand how to build a survey Sometimes when you think about a survey, it's not just okay. What are the shops around? What are the models around? It's not that it's not about Yes, we look at colleges malls all of that, but when we build a survey, you know, it gives us direction as to How to build your ministry? What are the points where you can you know permeate places where that you can penetrate as a church? So let's look at this. Okay chapter 29 now. This is for Bangalore I don't many of us are not in Bangalore. Maybe you are in different towns and different cities But you can use this as a as a framework to build your Survey, right? Okay. First one background information You know, where which what is the city all about? What is is it is it recognized for so here in the notes? You see Bangalore's home to well recognized educational institutions research institutions And it's the nation's leading IT exporter. So so first thing in your background, you have at least three, you know, so for example, you're in a Tire-two city, right? Maybe another city in a in a different nation So you look at maybe two or three areas where that city is Recognized for what that city is recognized for right so for example if you go up to other states in India If you go up Varanasi Uttar Pradesh, right? You know, okay That's a place where these are the challenges, but what is it well known for it's known for, you know It's it's a religious. It's a pilgrim center for the Hindus and And so you've got a lot of religious things that are happening there You also know that Varanasi is when you talk about Uttar Pradesh. It's a belt that is You know, look seeing very fast growth in terms of commercial Work that's happening.  Three areas that as a church before I plant these are three areas that I can, you know Look towards I can, you know, target these this audience now It's not necessary that you have to have this and only then plant the church. No, so Remember revelation is can come while we are working while we are doing things, right? And and we grow from strength to strength grace upon grace Precept upon precept line upon line. So even as you plant a church You during the course of the planting, you know, you you can build on this survey that you have already made Right. So whichever city you're in look at What that city is known for now some of us may say hey, this city is not known for many things Maybe it's it's a small city That's all right, right you can just look I'm sure that even if it's a small city you have educational institutions You will have, you know, working professionals. So look at how you can Penetrate those sections. So for example, Mumbai, right? If you if you talk about in our nation of Mumbai, or how can we penetrate in that kind of a city? You know, it's one of the most expensive cities in India Or if you look at other countries like, you know, Africa or Australia, New Zealand, all of these countries and just cities in those countries What are areas that I can penetrate through to Plant and build the church. We have some background information Right, then you look at civic administration, but what is happening in the city population very important, right? population meaning what is Sorry pollution control here, but I want to talk about population population is very important to understand Right now that comes under demographics, right? So you've got slums. You've got the high working high-end working the mediocre the The lower middle class and then you've got the lower class, right? So you've got different sections of society. How will you penetrate through them? Now? Remember When you plant a church or when you have a ministry, there'll be times when You know a certain group of people will, you know, get attracted or get connected to the church right so for example, you have a church which is You know, it's more of fellowship and more of, you know A lot of life groups and cell groups a lot of meetings Everyday, there's some meeting or the other fasting and prayer praise and worship Now it's most likely that you know corporate folks may not be able to attend all of that but I'm not saying they won't come to church, but You will have these different sections of society So we must be able to Minister to those sections. Then what is the culture of the city? The social demographics When it, you know, one of the topics that you can study is world religions, right? When you study world religions, you will begin to understand what is happening. What what are the different religions of this world? What is the demographics? What do they believe in? And then how can you as a as a ministry reach out and Minister to these people. So if you see here in your notes, our social geography says 79.4 percent of Bangalore's population as Hindu, 13 percent are Muslims 5.8 percent are Christians and And 1.1 percent Jains, right? So you have all of this different religions. So how can I minister to these people Now remember that even as you're making the survey you may feel Man, how how how can I you know the percentage is so big? I'm just not even started. How can I reach out? now You know this sharing about the blueprint, right? When we have a blueprint It's good. We know what we're working towards, right? So if you're building a house and the architect gives us a blueprint so you know exactly what the house is going to look like because you have the blueprint and When you have a blueprint of the city the church And how you want to build your church? You're working towards it. You know, okay This is what I want to see in my church, right? Then you look at the quality of life social economic issues. I look at Bangalore And and other cities and those who are from other countries you look at, you know, look at read about it Read about what's happening. What is the quality of life? What is the cost of living? You know, is it a cosmopolitan city? What are other expats meaning? Are there people coming from different parts of the city different parts of the of the country coming in, right? I know John is in Mangalore, but one of the things that I realized was That city had people coming in from Korea Because it was an educational happy we're coming in from Korea from Africa There was some some of them who came in from China those I Think the other country was Malaysia, right Dubai From East so you have people coming from all over the world to study in the small city Right. So so we must understand. Okay. This is where people are coming from This is what I must do to reach out to these people right then you have expats here African students people from different parts who come into study to work Then you look at moral values of the of the city Now remember the moral values in different it may be the same country, but different cities have different kinds of moral values right Some some people are favorable in a certain cities. Some are not favorable.  Some may favor Sex before marriage some may not right so in a city Sorry in this country different states different cities may have different moral values, right? So you got to understand about What their value systems are Then you look at the different kinds of Arts of living the the culture the the pub culture and all these things that are happening Especially in urban settings, right you so addictions What are what are the problems that children are going through? Women are going through young men teens youth And so when you put all of this together It will really help you to understand. Okay It also gives you a sense of humility. It gives you a sense of wow There's so much to achieve. There's so much to so many doors that are there. There's so much of opportunity and There's a sense of okay I can't do this on my own But I need God and I need God to help me and to lead us So so it's very good to do this, right? So if you're planning to start a church start a ministry I have this background information ready with you, right? It's not like you're going back to it every week and saying, okay This is what no, maybe every three months every six months. You can go back to it and see, okay These are areas that are yet to be touched Lord Open doors for me. These are areas that are that we have already gone through Lord give us many more opportunities As a church and so what happens is as a as a ministry as a church, you're able to expand so it's not only You know my church my people building up my people remember the stages of church growth We talked about the apostolic church right towards the end. You're a church that goes out Reaches out It's more of giving more of doing rather than just for the sheep inside The church, right? So I don't explain too much about this because it's more towards Bangalore, but I'm sure you got get the idea Make sure that you Prepare well Before you start your ministry. So before we close today I I just wanted to quickly go through I do a quick review of Everything that we have done and then as I mentioned those who are not here We will close this course today. I'll put put up the assignment the final assessment It'll be a hundred mark assessment open book exam. I'll put the due date as well so you can you know write it on on a word doc just to upload it and Make sure you do that before the due date, right? So let's just quickly review right and then we'll close in prayer So we talked about the Holy Spirit as our leader Right. We labor God gives the increase chapter 2 chapter 3. We talked about the definition and Objectives of church planting right the church. Why are we planting the church? It is to Build a community of believers church is not so that everyone call us pastor or just so that we get recognition of fame It is about discipling about building God's kingdom advancing God's kingdom to different territories And it's it's a spiritual battle, right? Chapter 4 we talked about God's heart for the city Jesus wept over Jerusalem and you and I must Develop a heart for the city. We must desire to see the city saved We must desire to see nation to see people saved community saved So without the heart for the city We will not be we're concerned about the city, right? So we must we must have that we must pray and ask God God Reveal reveal things that I must do for the city. Give me a heart for the city that I may intercede For the city right and very importantly we look at natural dynamics right how to You know how to When we are building a church before building a church before starting up we we look at the Dynamics the economy the the education all of those natural things And areas of need how to develop strategies how to plan out all of those are the natural and then you've got the spiritual aspects Chapter 6 You know we talked about How Satan attempts to kill Steve and destroy he wants to destroy the work and so as a Pioneer as a as a ministry leader as a pastor you and I must be able to Be strong Be anointed of God. We must ask God God should be the source of our strength Remember that the battle is a spiritual battle Right chapter 8. We talked about how to get started. You get a core team Have a core team You prepare from a distance meaning you may be elsewhere You may be doing a lot of research online and then there'll come a time you go on site You prepare financially don't make the mistake of just saying I want to start and then say, you know I I need funds for you know buying your music system for chairs Prepare financially make sure you have everything To start off with right now the mistake people make is that they hate God told me this I got told me to start. So I I'm quitting everything I'm doing and I'm going to start Now God may tell us to do things But God is also giving us given us wisdom, right? So we need to plan it out. Okay. God is telling me to do this Okay, so I'm gonna give one year or two years I'm gonna prepare myself financially prepare for the things that are needed for my family for the church Then I'm going to step out planning for personal needs Planning for legal and administrative matters like we talked about this, right? how many churches Don't even have a trust are not even registered with the government and I shared a few examples of how there was persecution to churches and They could not even go to the police station and file a complaint because they were not a registered trust and so It just became You know, it just became so complicated. It's a very simple thing Nowadays you got lawyers. You got they do everything. So remember to get the legal administrative and regulatory matters done Effectively and properly Right, then we looked at chapter nine, which is a survey phase you survey You'll have to step out. You'll have to go you'll have to Probably walk around See what's happening, right? You can of course you can do it online as well But the survey is more of going out looking at places, right? And then the preparation phase Right pre-launch meetings normally you can have at least three to six months of praise and worship prayer is coming together And then after that you, you know, you slowly get people to come and along with the co-team You launch identify a place Get the place confirmed And then you get into the launch phase or you can also do a house church model for maybe a year or so And then move into the launch phase In the launch phase The the first service very important, right? You share the vision Share what God has put in your heart. Don't be afraid to share what what God has put in your heart, right? You may have only five people and imagine you're telling those five people Hey, one day we will be five thousand now. Don't be ashamed of it, right? It is a vision which Doesn't it doesn't cost you anything to have a good vision, right? It's it's it's good to have big visions. It's good to have big dreams So share everything share. What is your plan your vision your focus for the next five years ten years? Uh, put it out Right when you put it out you share the vision, you know, there will be people who will catch that vision, right? Um, and then as you journey along when you start off plan for good follow-up Right again, I shared with you the different follow-up methods we have Right, uh, when we talk about uh, first time visitors we have follow-up one first follow-up one follow-up two And then we connect them to a life group welcome call follow-up one follow-up two and then we connect to a Uh volunteer team or a life group. So I have things set in place So reason why imagine you have your first service you had to maybe two months have gone in You've got some new people and you're wondering. Hey, what do I do with these new people? How do I connect with them? What do I say? So you must be well prepared before that, right? Different strategies for urban evangelism You we need to develop different strategies for different age groups children's church Uh, you got the teens the gen Z Right, we must be able to you know, we can't say hey gen Z is not in the bible. So I can't You know, I can't connect to them. No, you've got to be able to connect to them Whether they gen Z gen y The bible provides for everything right, so you got to be able to Relate to them right and you get people In your team teach them or maybe there we god will send people who will you know personally for me Uh, you know children's church is not my cup of tea not at all, right? I remember going there going to children's church leading worship in children's church and it was really hard for me I just knew it was not something for me But there are some of them who are called to do that and they do it so beautifully Right, they do it so wonderfully. So god will send people Right and same way with teens and youth god will send the right people Right. So young how do I uh reach out to married people young couples senior citizens single women single men uh Different strategies as a pioneer you cannot let your mind be at rest Or at a at a pace where it's you know, just a straight line thinking. Okay. Everything's going well. No It may be going well, but pioneer is a visionary. He keeps he or she keeps looking out for opportunities right, uh, I so this this should be uh intentional It should be done in a way that is Uh, you know that I I should be able to build the ministry I especially, you know, initially we will do that. But what about 10 years down the line sometimes we say, okay Ministry is going on. No, you've got to be able as a pioneer to Be influential to share the vision to to keep spreading that vision, right? Now new ways of ministry must be encouraged as a pioneer All right, so there'll be times people will come up and give ideas in your church Think about it pray about it. If it's something god is leading you towards do it I love what uh happened every time I read that it just gives me goosebumps Joseph was in the prison. He comes out He explains the dream to the uh to the pharaoh What does the pharaoh say? pharaoh says Since you are the you are the one who interpreted it. So you're the best one who can handle this whole situation and became second in command over entire egypt Right, so don't be afraid to hear from people Right, uh, don't be afraid to give people opportunities right, don't be afraid to bring correction all of it is part of Raising up the church and the ministry Right strategies use different Tools that are available instagram facebook performing arts dance Art and craft use all of these right I remember 2010 2009 2010 we had Very strong performing arts team. We would go into colleges And we would you know lead the worship just to three hours to three songs of worship And then the performing arts team would come in and they would do a skit or a dance We're really powerful just portraying the whole message of the gospel Now sometimes we didn't even need to preach because that whole You know skit was so powerful that people were touched. These are young people right youth who are They're 19 20 19 to 20 21. That's it Right, uh, and so use these tools use the leverage tools that god has given us Right, then we looked at very importantly the seven mountain assignment right now The seven mountain is is Our family Religion education media arts and entertainment business and government Now as a church Our vision whatever our vision and mission is we must Be able to or we must be willing to penetrate all spheres of influence It's not like i'm a church that will only minister to family Or i'm not a church that will only reach out to education. No So We need to be able to reach out to all seven spheres of influence now the question may come up How do I reach out to the government? Or how do I reach out to you know, uh, maybe media Through media. Okay churches can do that. How do I reach out to uh economy businesses? How do I reach out and we need to come up with strategies? Like how can we reach out right now? We may not know all of the answers but Remember that god is a god who can give us open doors Who can give us opportunities? Right, so we talked about a two-fold process here In terms of the seven mountain assignment one was The the challenges that we see There will there will be times there will be no doors open There will there be times when there will be too much of persecution Or or there'll be just times when nothing is working out, but it's okay We still have the vision ahead of you Who is the process when you talk about the process it is preparation Modeling it teaching what whatever we are doing You know in terms of reaching out we we prepare we do it with integrity excellence kindness uh treating one another equally And then the third way is through preparation.  You have spiritual preparation and you have natural preparation Spiritual is basically tapping into the things of god the anointing of the holy spirit Natural is developing skills And demonstrating excellence Right a picture this right just an example You've been praying god open doors for me in colleges example As a ministry suddenly god opens a door for you and they say okay now you'll have to speak to 500 students And then if I've not prepared If the natural preparation is not done, what am I going to do? I'm going to be very weary and shaky and It's going to be a challenge So Here comes the important part when you know you're praying for something You got to also prepare Naturally for it Right develop your skills develop your abilities on how to speak now speaking in church Is completely different from speaking in colleges and in corporate section sectors We cannot say open to john 3 16. No We we need to be very wise And we need to know how to speak so you got to prepare You know ask god for ideas ask god for Strategies ask god. How am I going to you know? Put pray or bring out this Example or the story of god from god's word. How am I going to bring it out in a meaningful way? And we got to be Very very alert. We got to be wise and ask god. You know god is the source of all wisdom God is the one who can open Our minds give us thoughts give us ideas Right and so all we need to do is pray ask god then we prepare ourselves Right fourthly we position ourselves That means we position ourselves to be a transformer influencer catalyst a trend set up That means we we position ourselves not only personally but also as a church Okay, we are a church that's going to bless people and going to you know be a Change in the society Right then chapter 14. We talked about stages of growth and we spent a lot of time on this very very very important But yet very powerful Talked about the pioneering stage in stage one He's just building the church four five people And then there'll come a time when you may reach a hundred hundred and fifty people Then comes administrative organizational structure remember we I shared about you know to Do a one conference? We work six months prior Right and there's a whole list of things that we do Before one conference and six months First is First is the e-mailer the e-mailer goes out. This is the event block your calendar After that is two Sundays On the video announcements on Sundays Then after that goes out an e-mail goes out for the registration link Then after after the registration link is a reminder e-mail Then finally in the six month six month is Final reminder or an encouragement to register and so by the time All of this is happening and the background is the administrative work. Okay, so the conference Maybe one week before the conference. We have a number. Okay 150 people have registered So the administrator team does the other work You got you know the speakers who are coming Making sure they have the stay at a place Then you know the food the venue everything is done Getting the organization Into a structure now. Why is this important? What you do in the beginning of your pioneering stage Will last almost a year Of course, you can tweak you can you can make changes But you're setting the Stage in your administrative Time right so There will come a time when as a church you may need to hire people Right because administration involves many things right And so you may have to do that but do it it's needed Then is a pastoral team stage team ministry or senior pastor say that means Uh, it's no more one person handling the church. You have a pastoral team Or if you have different locations Associate pastors are there One of the associate pastors you have team team leaders or team ministry leaders right then You go to the next stage, which is the equipping and the building stage. So The leaders raise up other leaders and we're building up more and more leaders Within the church. So it's no more People just sitting in church receiving and going back now We want to come to this mindset of everyone Must be raised up to become leaders Then is the apostolic stage where You know, the church is just going out going to new places sending it's very little to do within the church But it's more doing to do outside of the church Right now now we must understand which stage we are in And work accordingly right so for example if we are At 50 people Right example right just an example and we have an administrator. We have two three people in administration. It's not required Now imagine you have 500 people and you have one Administrator one one person handling the whole thing. It's going to be very difficult right so you go to and show that at the right time right things have done and and See in ministry, it's okay to make mistakes Right and it just helps us to become better. It helps us to grow Remember God is bigger than our mistakes, right? We will make mistakes Right and then you go back you make changes and it just continue to what god what god is Teaching us to do Then then finally we just become a self-sustaining church Things just keep moving discipleship equipping missions uh Just the wheels keep going in motion But here's the time when we should be Very careful that we don't do things which is redundant meaning shouldn't be like okay. I'm just doing it Because it's being done. No, we need to be make sure that there's fruit out of everything that we do Right then is a multiplication and branching branching out new churches uh In different places you can plant new churches Either within the city outside the city In different parts of the nation again, uh, those churches can either be independent or they can be campus churches or they can also work under the home church like follow the same pattern of the home church, but Uh, but it's important to also look at planting other churches Right, so we look at spiritual battle right the Enemy tries to stop the church So you and I are in for a spiritual warfare right Uh, that means ministry is not a bed of roses Right, it's going to be hard work. It is going to be challenging the enemy will come He it's a battleground. He will come he will try to Bring confusion. He will try to bring fear intimidation But as believers remember we are already victorious It already standing strong Uh, god is with us his promises. He will build our church The gates of hell shall not prevail.  I know you're with me But never lose hope never feel that as a leader you're alone and uh now You know, I I know that in leadership sometimes we don't have people to talk to Uh, you know, we always are on the receiving end. We keep hearing people's problems and praying for them Sometimes, uh, you know, you you're up In the leadership and life can get lonely, right? And it's true You know jesus himself He had those 12 out of those 12 Three of them were his inner circle and only one was there during when he was dying on the cross So yes, it can get lonely. It can get Fury you may get tired emotionally tired physically tired But here's the thing we have god's word with us God's presence with us. We stand back. We don't let the enemy bring us down, right? challenges will come But the ministry will keep going forward. So look at it that way Identify strongholds pull down strongholds not only for other people or people in the church, but also in our own lives Identify things in our life as leaders. We must change. We must grow and uh, and then proclaim the uncompromised gospel, right? And equip people Look at chapter 22.  You know, god has put it the ability to work independently an initiator And you if you feel that you are all of that Could be that you are a pioneer Right now Another aspect another point I'd like to bring out is you may be working in the corporate sector You may be working under a ministry Right, it's all right It's all right, right, but there'll come a time if god Wants you to launch You can launch Right, he will he will he will bring you out. He knows what's best for you Right, and he's able to he's able to but then again We need to be very sensitive to the leading of the holy spirit Um, and so never feel that okay. This is what I am And this is this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life Yeah, remember that god can open doors which We've not even thought of right, so Recognize your call If it's pioneering wonderful if it's working under a pioneer as a ministry leader associate pastor wonderful Take it up. Right. Even that is a leadership, right? Uh, and some of the wrong reasons is strife competition working as if it's a job Um, you know all of these things, right? Uh, just just make sure that you're In ministry for the right reasons Right, and so even as you make the journey, uh, we talked about this last class making the journey chapter 24 Um Right Stay focused Look at the vision avoid distractions be resilient be strong be persistent um Keep learning keep growing keep developing There will be times when you know people from other ministries will try to uh, you know want to affiliate or You know work together. It's good But also be wise to make the just because it's a christian organization sometimes, you know We say okay for everything. No, right? So in ministry, we must learn to say no gracefully We must be able to ensure that what you're doing in the church is beneficial to the people beneficial to the ministry right Be a steward of what god has given you meaning raise up leaders Uh, look at it as it's not my own, but it's what god has given me Right, uh, encourage others Take care of yourself very important, right? Even as you do ministry take care of yourself Right If we are not in good health what ministry can we do we can't do anything right be weak every time Tired in our mind tired in our body No, take care of your health eat healthy exercise Be strong be mentally strong Well physically strong as well you need it right and ministry Especially as a pioneer the you know when you get into the apostolic stage People will start inviting you from everywhere Right and many a times you will have to go Right because that's that's where your church has come up to now Uh during the initial stage the preparation says nobody's going to invite Because they don't even know who you are right. They're just going to plant the church but After a couple of years or maybe five ten years a decade later People will start inviting you and imagine you want to go but you know this week physically You need to be strong and then Raise up the next generation The day you start your ministry Also prepare and plan to leave on the same day Meaning if I'm moving out who's going to take the ministry who's going to succeed This work that has been planted now remember you're leaving a legacy And you plant a church you're you're doing You're going into the the territory of the enemy and when you're going there you are Bringing down the presence and the glory of god there, which is a powerful thing your work Is honorable in the sight of god It is honorable people may not honor it people may look down on it when god sees it It's honorable night and finally There'll come a time as a pioneer and as a planter as a leader you will have to Step down And hand over it's going to be very hard to do that And it's very very hard to step down and hand over but But we have to do it right with god I can only picture moses Handing over the baton to joshua and saying joshua take the people Into the promised land moses must have said oh man. I wish I could take them I did all the hard work Bringing them out of Egypt Had to listen to all their stories everything all the mistakes that they made And I went up to god. I did everything But he had to stand and watch the people get into the promised land It's hard that that's how god works at times It's all always about moving ahead Going ahead thinking and looking at the future for what we can do god's kingdom And even as we look at the future right never despise those small beginnings never Think okay, I'm I always look forward to the things of god That's wonderful. That should be our vision. That should always be in our heart But also remember from where god brought us This was what I was God by your grace by your mercy You've brought me thus far And I said just you're giving everything to god so All right, so I really enjoy teaching this course. Thank you so much each one of you for Being there throughout this course And I just want to pray over each one of us that god will continue to ministers speak to each of our hearts and That the lord will do great works in and through each one of us That we may be able to plant churches plant ministries And extend his kingdom So before we close in prayer once again, I'll I'll put the final assessment out on google classroom with the due date We can just feel free to answer them and post it back Any questions any thoughts before we close in prayer? Any thoughts any questions? Okay Right. Daphina. Thank you. Okay All right, let's close in prayer right? Let's pray Father we want to thank you so much for this entire course Lord We've learned about urban church planting. We've learned about how You desire what you desire for us lord desire for your city for the nation and the nations Lord, we pray that you will Speak to each of our hearts lord Maybe there's some of us here who Have a bigger vision have a bigger purpose, but there is there are many things that are hindering us It could be money. It could be our time. It could be commitments. It could be anything lord But I pray god that you will In your own divine supernatural way Open doors god Lord you will enable each one of us to fulfill Your plans your purposes Lord that you will put in us that spirit of leadership That we will walk the anointing of the holy spirit That we will walk lord not by our own strength But lord you will empower us you will strengthen us Thank you lord for your word that says Greater is he who is in us than he that is in the world And even as we continue to do what you have called us to do even as we make the journey god I pray god that you will Lord just continue to Speak in and through us May your vision your your purposes be revealed in greater clarity To each of our hearts lord And even as we pursue those visions pursue the plans and purposes that you have for us But lord we will trust in you Lord you're not a god who despises us, but lord You're a god who loves us I pray god that even those who may feel that I've wasted time Lord I pray that you will Redeem time lord restore time That's what you do lord I pray god that there will be a new seal and a new fire a new passion in each of our hearts Thank you lord for teaching us. Thank you for Empowering us. Thank you lord. I pray that you will Lord continue to minister to each one of us and the students. I pray a blessing over each student Whatever plans and purposes that you have lord, I pray you'll bring clarity And bring vision and and hope and strength into their hearts and spirit We thank you father. We give you all the praise We give you all the glory and honor in jesus name. We pray Amen Amen All right. Thank you so much everyone. It's such a joy.  I have a great break and I'll see you next semester.


Wait for it to pop up. Okay. I just got it. All right. Testing test. Test, test, test. Testing test. Test, test, test. Sounds good. Can you see in the far end? Yep. We need to test to see if they can have it here. All right. Test, test, test. Test, test, test. Sounds good. All right. Let's go to this one. Let's go to this one. Can you see on this side? I'm just going to wait for it to pop up. pharmacogenetic, pharmacogenetic. Okay.


But the turnovers, especially on a day where you moved to Falwell, especially running the footballs? Yeah, I mean, statistically, you have that many turnovers. It's like a 99% chance of losing. So we shot ourselves in the foot plenty of times. Like I said, a bunch of times before with turnovers, it takes all 11 of us. We all got to be better. And it's not just one guy and one play. So but our defense, our defense is playing incredible. We gave them short fields and holding the field goals, except for one. So hats off to our defense. We have to match them for sure, especially as an offense. I know there's not any one thing with the turnovers that doesn't feel like they tend to snowball pretty quickly. You want to play that? You want to get that? Yeah, and that's definitely a thing you can't have when this feels so weird. I feel like I'm like talking over you guys when in those situations with turnovers. Yeah, you get one.  And unfortunately, we just couldn't. I don't know what happened on the turnovers. I haven't seen the film or anything like that. So I'll have to look at it. But it's 11 guys taking care of the football. It's not just Tannahill or Justice Receiver or Justice Running Back. Like it's got to be all 11 guys the whole time. So all of us are responsible for those five turnovers.  Yeah, I think the whole game when we were moving the ball, we were doing a great job. We shot ourselves in the foot a few times. We ran the ball really well. We ran the ball really well. We were efficiency is four yards or more. And I think we stayed pretty efficient the entire game. It's just unfortunate, man. It's a tough deal, and you wish you had them back. But that's this game. And we got to be better, you know? Oh, wait, guys, get the things out and flush this and get ready for Thursday. Yeah, let's turn around now. Like I'm walking out this door. I'm focused on San Francisco. Appreciate you guys.


Welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Swadhisheesha Dreetu to talk about her recently released report titled Amarna Dyatra, Militarized Pilgrimage. So the report jointly researched and published by Jammu and Kashmir Coalitions of Civil Society and Equations Bangalore. Welcome to NewsClick once again. So can you briefly explain the major highlights of the report? So the report studies different aspects of the Amarna Dyatra. We start the report with early looking at the history of the report, I mean of the Dyatra. How did it come into being the way it is today? And there are two three aspects that we've looked at. One is when did state patronage start in the Dyatra? The second is looking at the duration of the Dyatra because that has been a contentious issue over the years. And the third aspect has been about the number of Yatris who come on the Dyatra because this is at a very high altitude. The cave is located at 13,500 feet. So the number of Yatris also has certain implications. So we've looked at these three aspects and we've seen how is each of these determined, who determines, you know, how long the Dyatra will be or how many people will come and whose opinions are taken into consideration and whose opinions are not taken into consideration. So that is one area of inquiry that we go into. The second area of inquiry is also then to look at the Yatris themselves. Because the Yatris, because it is a high altitude, Yatra and a lot of the Yatris are coming from the plains. So they're not used to the kind of weather that exists, you know, at such high altitudes. Often they're not prepared, either in terms of just the equipment required or even in terms of their own health. And it does result in a lot of deaths of Yatris or extremely serious illnesses that, you know, they go back. So also trying to understand how can the Yatra be a better experience for the Yatris, because right now a lot of deaths actually happen every year during Dyatra. The third aspect that we've looked at is to see this different state actors and what role do they all of them play, starting with the most important being the Shri Amarnaji Shrine Board, which was constituted in 2001. And what has been the changing role of the state in the Yatra before the Shrine Board was formed? What was the state, when the state administration was running the Yatra? And after the Shrine Board, you know, how have changes taken place? Whose interests are served? Whose interests are not served? Those are some areas of inquiry that we do.  That's the next area of inquiry. I've not given the highlights. I'll get to that eventually. You want me to weave it in? Okay. So then we've also looked at who are all the other service providers. So you see that there are tent owners, horse owners, load bearers, then the Palki Walas and these are the from the unorganized sector. And finally you have the Langer Organizations and the helicopter tour companies, all of them. We then explore the environmental aspect of the Yatra itself in terms of what are the implications on the environment.  So we look at what are the kind of conflicts that have happened, the seem most serious ones over the years and finally looking at what are the different emerging Yatras in Kashmir. Because as we went along, we realized that the Yatra itself is a tool for the Indian state to further occupy Kashmir. So we've also explored all these other emerging Yatras. So this is just a summary of what has, you know, happened over here. In terms of the findings, I think a very critical finding has been that the environmental aspects are there. You know, there is a lot of sanitation, there is a lot of sewage, there is a lot of solid waste that's generated. Some studies say that 55,000 per day, 55,000 kgs per day, you know, of solid waste is generated during the Yatra. There are other statistics which say that of the annual solid waste generation, 83 percent, you know, in that region of the Pelgam region, 83 percent is generated during three months from June, July and August. You know, it's just Yatra and preceding the Yatra and the forces also move in large numbers into the Yatra route. So there are these statistics. It's also there for everyone to see, I think, images of the Yatra camps, even in the upper reaches, will very obviously give you a story, you know, of this. But the more important finding of our study was also the collusion of the state and the social religious organizations, you know, or the sangh related, you know, the sangh organizations. Because what we are seeing is more and more a politicization of the Yatra itself. And then a question that comes to mind is that is this what the devotees would want? Is this what the devotees would want that their religion be instrumentalized and used as a weapon for the Indian state, you know, to shoot at the people of Kashmir? So this is something that we are extremely, you know, concerned about. And secondly, for the non-devotees also, I mean, maybe even if the other people who are reading the report, is this the kind of watering down or diluting of the constitution that we as Indians will want?   The earlier custodians of the Yatra, they have been bumped off, and the shrine board has come in. So a lot of, you know, a lot of the constitution has been violated. And even for the secular reader of this, even if they are not devotees, there is something that one has to think of is how are we upholding the constitution if this is what we are doing, you know, to the people of Kashmir through a religious pilgrimage like the Amarnath Yatra. So these are some of the broad big-ticket, you know, takeaways that we've had from this research. So as you have mentioned, these Yatra structures have a uniqueness in its implementation. So how the Sangh forces or these kind of extremist forces are penetrating into the structure, that organizing structure. So can you explain that one? The Shri Amarnaji shrine board's genesis is in the Vaishnav Devi shrine board, you know, which was started, which was set up in 1986 by Jagmohan, the then governor, Jagmohan, who also intended to at the same time have a shrine board for Amarnath as well. But, you know, the emergency was declared in Kashmir and that didn't happen. Even when he was constituting the Vaishnav Devi shrine board, he in fact in his book, you know, which he has written about this says that the state has to be kept out, you know, and the governor has to be brought in as an ex-officer, chairman or chairperson of the board and the state has to be kept out and how it has to be done. You know, so he details this out. So, thus the state being kept out is a strategy. It is, it is not, it just didn't, it didn't just happen, right. And it was envisaged way back in 1986 for both Vaishnav Devi and Amarnath Yatra, where the state administration will have no decision making pass, but can only bring in whatever requirements are there in terms of water, electricity, etc. So, this is the first step where we are seeing that there is a concerted effort to keep any kind of elected representatives outside the structure of the Yatra. That's, that's number one. Number two is that when this board in Amarnath was finally formed, it was formed in response to a catastrophe that happened in 1996, when several hundred Jyatris died because of, of, of avalanche and storms, you know, on the, on the Yatra route. Now, even then the, the recommendation from the Nitesh San Gupta committee was that either a special Yatra cell be formed, you know, under the department, the department of tourism basically be given the responsibility of the Yatra. And there were two, three recommendations of how this could be done, a special Yatra cell within the home ministry supporting, you know, the department of tourism. Two, three, you know, methods had been suggested. But finally, what was set up in 2001 was the shine board. So, that itself is a question, you know, to be asked because if they say that it came out of the Nitesh San Gupta committee report, then that was not what was, you know, suggested. So, there was a wider scheme, you know, operating over here when it came to the Yatra. So, it is not just the song accessing the structure. The question is, why is this structure, the, the structure that is formed? Then the next question is, how does the song access it specially? The first point is that in other board in India, apart from Amarnath and Inveshno Devi, is the governor, the ex-officio chairman. In other places is the district commissioner. It's the DC who is the ex-officio chairman. So, why is it the governor over here? That is the first, you know, question to be asked. And because then the kind of power that is reposed in the governor versus the DC is, you know, so different. So, that is the first, you know. So, you're giving the board absolute powers over and above the powers that are there with the state administration. Now, with a board which is so powerful, you have certain groups who can access and certain groups who can't access. Of the groups who are able to access are the song organizations who have, I mean, it appears based on our, you know, research who have very direct access to the shine board and who are able to put a lot of pressure on the shine board. For example, we have in Jammu the Baba Yathri Niyaz, the Buddha, Baba Amarnath, Buddha Amarnath Yathri Niyaz. Buddha Amarnath is another pilgrimage that is done in Kashmir itself. It's in a border district. Now, this Yathri Niyaz, even when you go to their website, they very categorically say what is their objective. You know, their objective is to further strengthen the Yathra to and also the role that it plays. You know, for example, in the context of Buddha Amarnath, they are saying how in, I think, Pune district where it is situated, how the Hindus were leaving the district and how it was important to bring this Yathra so that it can, you know, again reclaim the land, you know, the area where bringing Hindus in through this, you know, Yathra. Now, they have been very blatant and very open in what their agenda for any Yathra is, whether it's Buddha Amarnath or the Amarnath Yathra. Now, they have a very clear direct access and a very strong example of this is in 2011, when they put a lot of pressure on to the board, you know, to extend the period of the Yathra because for them, the more number of days of the Yathra, the more people from India are, you know, remaining in that region. Finally, the boards have come and they constituted a committee, you know, which was for the express purpose to decide on the number of days of the Yathra in 2012, the committee report came out and they heard the Baba Yathri Nyasa's depositions, the Langer's NGO's depositions, but they did not, I don't know whether they invited or not, but they definitely did not, there was no deposition made by any Kashmiri organization or there was a Jammu Chamber of Commerce represented on the committee that was formed, but the Kashmiri Chamber of Commerce was not represented in this committee. So, right through, you see in the structures of decision making that the Kashmir groups are kept out while the Jammu groups are kept in or that the Sangh or the right wing groups are, you know, having more access to the Shrine Board while, for example, every year the Shrine Board meets the Langer organizations in January and they meet the helicopter companies and they, you know, meet the tour operators, they do all of that, but when are the Kashmiris' voices sought?  For that there is no fixed or planned set of meetings. At best, if it is, it will be with the tour operators of Kashmir, at best, you know, because they need to give the, they have this quota of selling helicopter tickets. So, all tour operators get certain quota. So, for that they might be meeting the tour operators, but they are not meeting the tent association. You know, they are not meeting the horse owners to discuss how will your rate for the, you know, for the different stages of the Yatra be fixed. So, it's very clear that they have the year, the Shrine Board has the year of the right wing organizations, but you don't see them proactively, you know, asking for organizing meetings with the, you know, the Kashmir-based groups. So, this is very obvious. I mean, if one more example is in 2012, I think there was a committee set up to help the special high-powered committee that was formed by a Supreme Court case which was going on in 2012. And a committee had been formed, you know, in Kashmir to look at the smooth running of the Yatra that year and also to help this committee. In that, there were some Kashmiri, I mean, the Chamber of Commerce Kashmiri people were represented. From newspaper reports, we know that they were removed after a point.   So, they're okay with the Muslims giving service, you know, and providing the support, but they don't want them there in the decision making is what it seems to be, you know, emerging right through.


The second cover story we did for ARKVU, which was in 2013, doubled the membership of ARKVU and people were just flooding into the space and that was 2013. So we were really coming from the sense of patient advocacy and now I'm a three time cancer survivor and so I come to this as an activist and an advocate. This is a political initiative that we've been working on since January with two top lobbyists in the Beltway. One's a Republican, one's a Democrat. We've taken it on both sides of the aisle and it's not just about cannabis, it's about this gender inequality of capital resources as well. So that's just one example of many. You have to have those 60 labs at the table to say here's our pain touch points, here's what we see that needs to happen, the cost is too high, the equipment's too high, our time turnaround is too slow. We have to address all these things so that we can have a robust market and a safe supply chain to the consumer. So we have a big black market problem still and it's affecting everyone's opinion about the safety of consumer products. However, as a cancer survivor and as a big community of people that have used cannabis for their wellness during their treatments, we know that lab-tested, compliant retail dispensaries, especially here in California, we know the responsible actors and we know the responsible brands as patients and we continue to be loyal to those brands because we know that they have done their due diligence in their years and millions of dollars of product development. I know someone's opinion may contradict yours. Where's my friend Allen? It's all about your perspective. Who are we and what is the nature of this reality? What's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Allen Sokian. We are on site at the New West Summit, the Cannabis Tech Conference. We are now going to be speaking with Gail Rogers. Hi, Gail. Hi. How are you? Thank you so much for coming on our show.  It's at the end of the day. It is, it is. It's the end of the day. I'm so excited. We've done both on a great job today. Yeah, thank you. I'm so pumped. I'm so pumped for our conversation too. You know, it was named Influence of the Year in 2018 by industry power women. She's also a national international expert in trusted media source since 2009 in the cannabis industry with 20 plus years in music and film as well as activist and in advocacy work. I'm so excited to talk. There's so much stuff here in the bio.  What do you represent and why is it important for other people to care? Wow. Well, the big stuff. The big stuff. And I like the big stuff. So I have been in the cannabis space for 11 years. I was recruited by a tech HR recruiter to Harborside and Steve D'Angelo and then the steep hill laboratories and Arcview and work with other brands like the farm in Boulder. So I've had a I had a real pick of the litter out of the gate. Got lucky. But there wasn't no one doing what I did in 2009, which was marketing through media relations, through book deals and TV and film. Nobody had that experience. I was a, at the time, a twice cancer survivor. I am now a three-time cancer survivor. So Steve and I were a perfect fit for patient advocacy at the time. We really were a great team. And it was messaging out to the national media in a way that we were breaking stigma. I was literally writing glossaries for the Wall Street Journal on the cannabis industry to the health and science reporters, to the Discovery Channel when we were trying to sell weed wars through Chuck Ravenman on that show, who produced that show for the Discovery Channel. That was 2010. It was early. We were making glossaries. I was making glossaries because, you know, I'd watch the evening news. I'm a news junkie. Always have been. Always will be. And people using the word pot and weed and Mary Jane. Nobody was using cannabis. Nobody was using medical compassionate. Nobody was using the terms that we use now. So patient advocacy was another one. Yeah, patient advocacy. It was caregivers. They didn't know what it meant. They weren't taking the time. So we went through health and science reporters first as a strategy. Then when ARCV started to roll, we went through the finance system because we didn't have banking. Cash management was a big problem. And we needed to address these issues head on to really solid journalists who had a peak of an interest. Maybe had written about it long ago or had a little mention in a column. So alongside my wizard assistant, Erica Glenn, we picked through all these big media databases to find the writers, the real journalists that we thought would get it. That was very key. And you had to parse for journalists that you thought would get it. Yes, because it wasn't like just take me through the assignment desk. That wasn't going to work. We had to identify the journalists that was going to get it. So I think that helped us create a larger lens and broad breaststroke because I had a knack and also experience of working with big time media through film studios and music studios and knew that that was not going to work. But I also leveraged that. I also called my buddies in music and film said, I'm doing this now. Who on the staff you think are going to dig this, right? So it was kind of like really drilling down on the right journalists. It was very important to make that difference. And there were storytellers, the communicators.  So we were extremely successful. So I was first in my field to actually do that work. And had Steve do some media training with some professional actors, I will not name. But also, he was also so such a natural. And after a while, I've worked with a lot of thought leaders in a lot of different fields. And after really about the first month or two, I could sense that he was the real deal that just needed to sharpen his toolbox. And we were really a great team in crafting these messages and practicing and body language and tonality. And yes, I asked him to cut the braids off and get a Richard Branson kind of look. And he said, no, don't ask me again. But I had to ask one. So that became my kind of first to market, first CNN piece, first TV show, first New York Times cover story, first Fortune magazine cover story. And then we were soaring. I mean, we had literally hundreds of international and national journalists through Harperside. And then the second cover story we did for ArcView, which was in 2013, doubled the membership of ArcView. And people were just flooding into the space. And that was 2013. So we were really coming from the sense of patient advocacy. And now I'm a three time cancer survivor. And so I come to this as an activist and an advocate. But I'm also I have a very sharp toolkit with me to I have a knack. I'm still a source. I talk to the networks all the time, not for any particular clients, because I'm focusing on Treehouse Global Ventures, which I'll talk about in a second. But because I became a trusted source, what you know, this faith pin thing, I got hit up super. And I had to really work hard with CBS News for a couple of stories that were incorrectly reported. Some of this work in media relations are marketing through media as you police the media. And if they report something really wrong, you you just very politely correct them. I have done corrections in every major daily and every network in the country, just and they appreciate it. It's this story arc you were you you subliminally made it gangsta by just using this language, you know. Oh, you know, you're right. I mean, it was just very subtle stuff like that. Yeah. So, you know, fast forward into this one right before right before we get there, just I'm just following what you're describing. It's this, you know, this like this wave that's coming with this emerging cannabis market. And you're here helping make sure that the stories are actually getting communicated in the way that is educational in the way that's authentic in the way that communicates valuable experiences of health and wellness being augmented by cannabis and finding the right distribution channels, journalists, you know, TV series, all these different kinds of mediums. But I also had, you know, 20 plus experience doing this for sometimes very difficult subject matters and feature films or sometimes music recordings that weren't quite so popular, but had a very meaningful message at the time. So, and also I did a lot of advocacy work and publicity in social justice causes, like music literacy and also missing children. So I did some very hard news cases as well. And I pride myself as a New Orleans girl that I have so much serendipity in my life. I was born in New Orleans and I have a knack of being at the right place at the right time and having the right toolkit. It's just been a blessing. And I think there's a reason for that because I'm from New Orleans. I believe in everything. And so I think that this next generation of my life, this mark I want to make came to fruition when with other women investors at Arcview that became friends and mentors in the financial systems to me, my co-founders of Treehouse, Lindy Snyder and Lori Ferrara, we all just looked at each other about two years ago and said, you know, there's no fun for women and minorities. There's all these big funds that have all these different focuses, but women traditionally get less than 2% of any capital resources and women of color and people of color get less than 0.5% of access to the 1% of wealth. It's really a political cultural black hole. Okay, so as this emerging market takes off and there's people investing and making money that all this wealth that's created by these new advances that happen by far the vast majority that's going to men and also people that are white. Correct. Okay. And then it's been it's so interesting again and again that comes up that internet was one that was supposed to do this blockchain and decentralization technology supposed to do this cannabis and psychedelics again supposed to do this. And now our numbers are slipping. Women and minorities, I mean, we're doing great at 2015, 2015, 2016. And then at the end of 2016, with all these M&As coming from Canada and a lot of merge and a lot of multi-state operators, I'm trying not to talk in acronyms because I've been hearing it all day, is that I believe that, you know, somehow that larger money and finance system came in and quickly and people were very excited. Oh my goodness, there's some of these huge acquisitions. And somehow in 2016, 2017, 2018, women and minorities weren't part of that picture. Although I will say it's now coming back up a little bit. I just met with a couple of women CEOs in New York last week that are, you know, running multi-state operations and they're doing great, but they have to fight for the women in their C-suite and on their board. And and they came from tech or they came from cosmetics or they came from, you know, big retail, big box retail. So they're very experienced people. And I realize that. This is the, is this the main vision and it's the main, it's the mission and the purpose to focus the lens on the lack of capital resources and how the lack of access to any capital resources, any kind of funding whatsoever in that top 1%. The billions and billions of dollars, by the way, that have not hit us yet, that is institutional and VC. They're not here yet. Family offices here, hedge funds here, private equity funds like Treehouse Global Ventures here. But that big, big top line, billions and billions of dollars, I have a friend that works at a huge institution that manages $330 billion of wealth management globally. And that space has not touched the space. And so they are watching and they're looking. So I think even though we have a lot of market disruption right now, there's a lot of money that's not here yet. As the federal regulatory platform gets more clear, which it will, whether it's this administration or the next, it will get clearer. FDA is coming. HIPAA compliance is coming. We know that. So we feel that the market conditions are a little dicey right now. But look at what's happening in like the Midwest. Look what's happening in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. They're soaring these new adopting states, smaller states, regional markets. There's going to be some really great brand management because those people are Midwestern. They're going to roll up their sleeves, go back to traditional marketing and branding and put their firm's stake in the brown for their brand. So I feel like the Southeast and the Midwest has been a little bit ignored with the new adoption. And I think there's a lot of investment opportunity there. So yes, I know the stock market has been very volatile because of over evaluation, over projections, over not meeting performers, not doing the touch points of milestones required as you get your trenches if you've got a $3 to $5 million drop, whatever it is. But I still am optimistic and I still think this is early. And this is what happened in the Silicon Valley, exactly this rock and roll. So Treehouse was formed to make this mark, this message, this purpose. And I feel I have a big part of that for my nieces and nephews and my daughter, frankly. I'm doing it really for them. It's the next generation wealth opportunity. And I came up bootstrapped with everything and made my way and did very, very well. But those, my nieces and nephews and daughter and friends, they graduated in 2008. They couldn't find a job for two years. So they had part-time jobs, four part-time jobs. I mean it was rough on them because they were sold that get that Ivy League education and go to college and it's going to add to your value. And they graduated with all their, this debt and they couldn't find a job for two years. So, and they came up also after the 9-11 environment. So they choose their brands and they choose their loyalty on mission and values. And it's only going to continue in that direction. And it's only going to continue in that direction. So the companies that we're looking at, we will, we'll reach our first cap in probably a month and we'll deploy our first investment by the end of the year. That's pretty fast because we just started in May. So, so because we have so much support because we, we struck a chord here. So I think that, and I'm bringing all those nieces and nephews and my daughter and her friends on the, they're on the watch list. You know, watch this. You're going to learn from it. This is how you build an industry. This is how you build the brick and mortar.  You do traditional marketing, strategy and tactics. I asked a company the other day who was another fund that I am helping advise for a one year to 18 month marketing and sales strategy. And she said, what do I need that for? And I said, well, how are you going to demonstrate? You've asked for several million dollars. Well, the market's changing so fast. How can I write that? I said, I get it, but we want to know how you will implement. How are you getting from A to Z? Your projections are 30% more every quarter. New industry does that in any market environment. And it's certainly not in this political environment. So go back and look at your projections, go back and look at your evaluation and write that marketing and sales strategy in this market temperature, in this disruptive temperature. And tell me how you're going to get there. Because she was evaluated at $15 million and it just didn't make any sense. The stepping stones, the real touch points and the pain points. I want to know what you know about your competitors, about what they did wrong, what they did right, and how are you going to get to these kinds of projections. And so write it so I can see that you have that part together. That's future authoring your business towards success. There's another really key component that we must hit on here in the short bit of time we have. And it's just that this industry, along with all these other ones that we listed earlier, that's an emerging market right now. And you give these big funds of $100 plus billion dollar size funds. The question is about how to democratize and distribute the benefits, the fruits of these emerging markets like cannabis. What would you say? Obviously with what you're doing at Treehouse, you know, bringing in the perspective for people that are not white for women. This is huge. And so is this one of the many diverse ways to do so? And how do we make inclusive stakeholders in the cannabis industry so that other people that are that typically don't see the benefits of massive emerging markets like this actually do finally. Well, that's why we also aren't going to invest not only here but globally in other technologies and things that actually won't probably have anything to do with the cannabis industry. We want to bring in talent and innovation that might aid a few, five years from now, a very robust cannabis industry. And these people don't want to touch the plant. They don't want to have anything to do with it. But they are coming from big tech companies and they are seeing that there is a big black hole. We think we have the technology platforms and the data systems in this industry. We do not in my opinion. You don't definitely not Google or Alibaba scale. Not Nielsen, not SoundScan, not, you know, not measurements of consumer data like we did in film where we knew the 12 to 14 year old, what he ate, what he watched, what he wore, what he listened to. We knew everything about that movie consumer at that age. So I think it's really important to note that the data companies that are kind of three to five years in I think, they're doing a good job but they're far from what Nielsen and SoundScan can tell us about consumer behaviors. So all that technology needs to be innovated for our particular industry and the security of patient data because we only have 11 adult youth states, right? The rest are medically compassionate and it's predicted by lobbyists and others that particularly the Southeast will remain medical compassionate, that they will never go adult youth. And so we need to, you know, maybe we have half and half, half medical compassionate, half adult youth. So we'll see what happens in November. There's a lot more onboarding states in November, a lot of initiatives on the November ballot this year and next. But I think that all of that 30,000 foot view is important to remember as an investor and as somebody that is smart, educated, and cares about an industry that is really about, in my view, health and wellness and a life choice. It's not for everybody. I always tell everyone that. Cannabis is not for everyone. It's not just for the sick. It's not just for the stoner. Nothing's for everyone. Maybe air or water, you know.  Now everybody wants to sit by me at dinner. You know, they didn't even want to talk out loud about it. I'd go back home in Louisiana and I was raised in Florida. My dad was a NASA guy and nobody wanted to talk out loud about it. Now they do. Now they feel comfortable. So that shifted in the last three or four years, which is great. I wonder what specific protocols are going to be most crucial whether it be on the combinatoric potentials of businesses that are made or of the regulations that are pieced together across different countries and what are the best ways to make the benefits democratized and to make it inclusive? That's going to take some federal regulatory work. We are working with some lobbyists in the Beltway on an initiative to start to train the communications officers of the hundred women in Congress and the House and the Senate. That's a start for messaging because they're not even talking about it correctly. Kamala Harris is not even talking about it correctly. None of the candidates are talking about it correctly. You're going to make a glossary. You're going to give them your glossary. I'm going to redo the glossary for the political temperature that we're in and try to teach their communications officers how to teach them how to talk about it. Well, this is a political initiative that we've been working on since January with two top lobbyists in the Beltway. One's a Republican, one's a Democrat. We've taken it on both sides of the aisle and it's not just about cannabis. It's about this gender inequality of capital resources as well. We couldn't just do cannabis. We tried and they said that's not going to work. Here's the other thing. Because of the political environment, one of the very important senators said to one of these lobbyists, this is great. I think this will work. I think you're addressing some gender pay equity issues, wellness and lifestyle, some health regulatory compliance issues. We're talking about having a stake at the table when they start to form these regulations with the CDC and the FDA and the DEA. We want to be at the table. They said, but you know what? Here's the honest to God truth. This is not at the top of everybody's list. We have so many issues to address in this country. You need to make it more important in the health and wellness message in the gender pay equity message. Now that the banking thing has passed the house, someone said on the investment panel. Is that the safe fact? It's the safe fact. So you want to marry the health and wellness with the gender equity stuff and then that will make it more prominent on people's radars. It has to have more robust messaging for both sides of the aisle to care. We have to tell them why they should care and then we have to educate them how to care and then how to talk about it. And then what would you propose within that the gender equity and the cannabis? What would you want to happen on a regulatory level from there? And what would be your ideal scenario? Oh, that's a hard question because it's a very complex question. You know, certainly there has to be some national, federal, lab testing regulatory platform. I know that there's actually some French Canadians that have talked to 60 labs across the country and they want to help form that regulation with all those stakeholders that are on the front lines of testing. So that's just one example of many. You have to have those 60 labs at the table to say, here's our pain touch points. Here's what we see that needs to happen. The cost is too high, the equipment's too high, our time turnaround is too slow. I mean, we have to address all these things so that we can have a robust market and a safe supply chain to the consumer. And with the vaping crisis, and that's got a big question mark because we do know for a fact, as Leafley has reported and others, that a lot of those cartridges were exact copies from China of dual and other devices. And so we know that, for a fact, we know that three of those deaths for a fact were because of counterfeit cartridges. And so it's actually a good thing that's happened because that could have been a huge consumer health crisis had they not started to put on the brakes. And then there was a story about these kids in Minnesota that had like a million dollars worth of fake cartridges underneath their bed. And it was like, what, how did that happen? And they all came from China or Thailand or Indonesia. So, you know, and they're selling them for five bucks when they're 30 dollars in a legal compliant dispensary because the kids were just really into this. So we have a big black market problem still. And it's affecting everyone's opinion about the safety of consumer products. However, as a, you know, cancer survivor and as a big community of people that have used cannabis for their wellness during their treatments, we know that lab-tested compliant retail dispensaries, especially here in California, we know the responsible actors and we know the responsible brands as patients. And we continue to be loyal to those brands because we know that they have done their due diligence in their years and millions of dollars of product development. This specific thing just constantly fascinates me. Indigenous people have been for the longest time just living on the land and in being one with the different fruits of that land. And then there's this whole idea of, well, when you're trying to distribute it to millions of people, it has to go through all of these regulatory frameworks for safety. And then there's that dichotomy between those two things, like if someone's, you know, distributing to them and their, like, three neighbors in the woods, something that they're growing. Well, look what happened to the cannabis. There was a big dichotomy between things like that. There is a big dichotomy. But look, Emerald Triangle, perfect example. 80% of that product that was grown in Mendocino and Humboldt Connys left the state for 30 years. 80%. Look this up. This is a fact. Yeah, those numbers are massive. Massive. Yeah. But do people get sick? Were there deaths? You know, were there... It's so hard to track, of course. And the standard, like you said, of lab testing things that millions of people are consuming is, that's critical. Otherwise, there will be big issues that happen. Yeah, that's something that's... I'm very interested in all the different aspects that you listed of the different... Because I wonder, the good, a decent question would be, would you say that the same thing would be repeated in Latin America and Africa and Europe and Asia? They wouldn't have it to treat safety for their consumers as well. So this has to come from what I think is not just pharmaceutical, because that's so expensive. I actually think that this is going to come from food safety and more like natural food products and nutraceuticals. I think that might be the path. FDA approved for like a nutritional style, like when you intake this cannabis. Like vitamin D or turmeric. You know, a lot of our extractors and the extracting machines came from ag extraction and essential oil extraction. So when you think about the nutraceutical and natural foods industry, remember the FDA organic certification only happened in the 70s. And by the way, Maria Rodale, who's on our board at Treehouse, grandfather, started that process, Rodale Publishing, Men's Health, Prevention Magazine, etc., etc. Her grandfather started that process, as I understand it, and her father finished it, helped the FDA, devised the criteria for organic certification. So I see that coming and she's on our board and she's just wonderful. She's all about hemp and sustainability and lifestyle and she sold the family publishing company, so she's in publishing recovery. So she's learning about the cannabis industry and she's teaching us about all the natural foods and nutraceuticals and lifestyle choices. It's called the Low House Market, Lifestyle and Organic Natural Foods Association. And this is a huge billion-billion-dollar industry in this country now. And the millennials are following that path. Look at what happened to Beyond Meat. Look what happened to Vegan. Look what happened to Gluten Free. These are all wellness lifestyle choices we can get in that line. Nutraceuticals. Interesting. Yeah, okay let's wrap. Last question is what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world? Oh gosh. Right now it's my house. I haven't seen it two weeks. We live on eight acres in the Tahoe National Forest on a ridge. It's a very beautifully managed forest and it's like living in a park. And I sit on that porch and that is my zen. I just sit on my porch swing and just I'm so happy that I live in a small little cultural town with lots of arts benefits and good restaurants and lots of culture. And I just feel extremely fortunate. I love that. You know, thank you so much for joining us on the show. You're welcome. I can't wait to see it. I hope I wasn't a blabbermouth. You're good. You're good to one moment. Let's close the show. Thank you so much for tuning in everyone. We greatly appreciate it. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode. Let us know what you're thinking. Thank you. Check out all the links in the bio below to Ginael's work, also to Treehouse Ventures. Check that out. And also check out the links in the bio to New West Summit as well. Check those out. And also support the artists, the entrepreneurs, the leaders in your communities that you believe and support them. You can support Simulation. Our links are below as well. And go and build the future everyone. Manifest your dreams into the world. Thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you soon. Peace.


What's going on everyone? Sam here with late in sports cards, ripping two 2022 topscrone black baseball hobby for Nestor R. So good luck here Nestor. Yeah that's true David, that's true. My goal is to get to it. I'm pretty sure I will be able to. Like I don't, I don't see why I wouldn't be able to David. I think I'm going to be able to get to it. It'll just be a little bit later. It'll be another hour or so would be my guess. Oh another orange. Nice. Did you see that? No. You're lucky. Thank God. That would have been embarrassing. Say hi Suzuki rookie. Cody Bellinger base and Joey Vado on the refractor 79 out of 199. Yeah no problem David. We've got Miggy. Wow. 8 out of 25. Miguel Cabrera. Boom. There we go. Congrats on that Nestor. That's awesome dude. Heck yeah man. Sweet, sweet Miggy right there. Second box. Yeah great color match on that too. Good call. Neeks. Kyle Tucker. Trey Turner. And Wander to 199. Nice one there on the refractor. Rookie. And refractor Otto is large new bar 87 out of 150 for the Cardinals. Pretty solid break for you there. Nestor. Thanks again for the support my friend. We'll get those right out to you buddy.


Hi, all. My name is Alanta Fabico, and today I'm going to present a joint work with Gala Raffold, that is called an algebraic framework for updatable universal snacks. So since the introduction of interactive proof systems in 1989, a huge line of research has rolled us to what is nowadays most efficient construction of a snack due to rot in 2016. And when I talk about efficiency, I mean, we have a proof system where a prover wants to convince a verifier that some relation holds. And we are going to consider in this case the work the prover has to do in order to convince a verifier the amount of information they have to send back and forward, and the work of the verifier as well. So this almost optimal construction, there is a drawback that is that in order to achieve such samsiness. The program if I both need to share some information that contains some description of the relation, and this information also has a secret. So whenever we talk about the secret we talk about a trusted party. Thinking on the applications that snarks have nowadays this condition is highly undesirable. So the community has been working on solutions as multi party computation which would be the most natural one. This still has its own drawbacks. So in a multi party computation model, many parties collaborate in order to create a secret that none of them knows completely. So they send messages back and forward and at the end of this interaction. They have one is a race that stands for structure reference ring and is this information I mentioned before that both primary have a verifier have access to. But this is a race is specific for one relation. So this quite expensive computation has to be performed for for every time we we need to use it for for a particular relation. In 19 growth at all introduce an alternative to this model that is the updateable model similar to multi party computation. There are many parties that collaborate in order to create this srs. But in this case, they don't do it interactively, but they act one after the other, and compute its part of the srs in a very file manner. So one of these of this computation is an srs that we were going to call universal. Why because it will work for any relation up to some size. And then from that universal srs, we can derivate in an untrusted a step. So this is a relation dependent srs. Right, so we start from these, this universal srs this that contains the secrets, and then construct descriptions of relations from that, since the appearance of these seminal work. The constructions of snarks that use updates one universal srs have been done. And then I think that all of them share some common principle, which consists in breaking the construction of the snark into step. First, we work in the in an information theoretical object for its security, and then by using a cryptographic assumptions, finally compile it into a snark. And then the theoretical object is what we call an holographic proof, and I'm going to talk about that in a second. And the cryptographic compiler is done using a polynomial component. All the cons, the, the constructions that we, we are aware of in, in the update on universal model follow this blueprint. I hope we are not forgetting. So what is an holographic proof. I'm here, I'm going to use the notion introducing Luna, but with different flavors, flavors, and these come, they are calling different ways in previous work. So we have as always, the prover that is going to be played by the parent today, and a very fire, the voter. But also we have a third, a third entity, which is the indexer played by the you want to, and the indexer is going to output polynomials that describe the relation. So we can prove and verify we interact, prove our messages will include polynomials as well, and the very fire, rather than having to read these polynomials, we have access, or access to it. So it can query them at an arbitrary points of their choice and perform degree checks among others. So we want to construct a polynomial holographic proof for brewing general relations. What is the motivation of these of this work this work is, it's meant to break this information theoretical object, a bit more. So first of all, to extract the main ideas of all these very interesting constructions for two things. First of all, we want to compare we want to see what is that they have in common, what is that they, their differences, what are the differences because what they have in common can be a bit more standard, their difference may work different in a different manner for, for a specific relation so maybe we can why not combine them. And of course, at the end, the final goal is to, to improve right to, to get a most efficient more efficient constructions. Let's start from the beginning, and we want to prove general computations that we can model as entry problems. And in this talk, I'm going to consider circuit satisfiability. Why because it has a very, like, and a very nice representation. In the binary metric circuit have three types of gates, we have multiplicative gates, additive gates and gates or inputs gets multiplied by constant. And for the first one, we capture them in a set of quadrat constraints. So if we can label all multiplicative gates from one to M, what we are going to require is that the left input of gate I times the right input equals the output of the gate. So we label with a, the left inputs would be the right inputs and we see the outputs. Then to capture a both additive and multiplicative by by a constant gate. We use linear constraints. So, every input will depend on previous outputs and some coefficients that describe the, the circuit itself. So if you remember what to say about the SRS, the intuition is that quadratic constraints are the same. For every circuit of size and every circuit that has a multiplicative state, we have the same set of quality constraints, but linear constraints include some a constant that describe a circuit. So this is why we need to derivate the universal SRS into a specific one to generate a sanctioned description of the circuit, because these constants are not something general. So algebraically, the pro wants to commit the verifier that there is an assignment that satisfies a specific circuit. So what the pro wants to show is that for some vectors ABC of size M, and given matrices F and G that describe a circuit. So these things happen. The first one is that they have a product between a and B equals C. So these entry wise and product includes all the quadratic constraints, and then that summary, some linear relation holds between matrix F and G, and the vector of of the basically what the pro wants to prove is that a B and C are in the orthogonal space to this matrix W. Generated by the rows of this matrix W. Why because if if you see what this matrix, this equation is saying is a matrix vector probe is that element I of vector a equals a linear combination between vector C. So this is a sequence of row I, of matrix F, and a similar for B and G. So let's see about this, a bit more in detail. How can we prove that a, the vector ABC is in this space. Well, we could take every row of W and perform a linear approach with a vector of the witness and check that all of them are still. required to prove to M relations. And we are pursuing something else so this is a far from from optimal, but thinking in the right manner what we can do instead of checking one vector against every generator of a subspace, we can sample one random matrix in that space by using a random coefficients, and then just check one in a probe. So, our prover wants to convince our verifier the circuit is satisfied. It has to prove the hammer proved. It has to prove also the inner probe equals zero between ABC and some random. So in the work of vectors and matrices which is nice and intuitions came very fast, but then we have to move to the world of polynomials. So for that, we are going to define a set H of size M where M is a is a number of multiplicative gates inside our field, and then define the, the large polynomials. H i is a polynomial of degree M minus one that vanishes at every point in H, but a tie where it takes value one and T x is a polynomial that vanishes at every point in age, and there are words as R J, it's supposed to say, H J. So if we have a natural encoding, we take a vector of size M, and then we write the linear combination between this, this element of this vector, and the Lagrange polynomials. The output is a polynomial why that when we evaluate it in h i give us the element of a Y. And so first of all, we have the intuition of how to prove silky satisfiability in the algebraic war. We have the tool to move to polynomial and now let's wrap up a bit. What do we need. So, we need to sample very primary fire need to sample this vector D, and then compute the same coding as, as polynomial. And then, from the encodings of the vectors of the witness and the encodings of of the vectors and the, the generate D. And then the points have to be proven. First of all, that they have approach between and people see, and there is a pretty standard way to do it. When we work with a branch polynomials, we can write it as a divisibility problem. So for example, here, the poor will send polynomials ABC and H H one. The very fire has to check that basically a times B minus C is divisible by the vanishing polynomial. And then also the poor has to convince a very fire that a inner product between these random vector D, and the vector of the witness is you. And a scheme for this inner product relation in our paper, I'm not going to get into the details, but it has a very similar structure to the to have an approach scheme. So, the poor wants to convince a very fire of this, and we already know how to perform hammer folks and in approach, how the poor can show to the very fire that these two relations are satisfied so the quality relations. And the inner relation, the linear relation is divided into steps. One of them we have a core which is the inner product. So we have to focus on how to sample this vector D and compute the encodings.  So the poor has to sample is vector D because we cannot ask the very fire to do it you will take a linear time. And then it has to prove it to the very fire prove the correctness of the sample. So to sample we need a vector of size to M. And because the, the prover is trying to convince a very fire the prover kind of choose this coefficient it kind of choose the vector in, in the row space of w that is going to check against the witness. So the prover, we don't want it to send to M fill elements. So we're, we saw this problem by including the description of the relation, some vector of polynomials. These vector polynomials you can think it as the monomial basis, or the branch, the Lagrange polynomials for a for a set of size to M. So the prover is going to evaluate this vector of polynomials in one element. So we will get to M on the coefficients. But the point of evaluation will be sent by the very fire. So the fire sense, just one element. We are going to use it to evaluate to end polynomials and generate the randomness that is going to use for the linear combination, and then it performs the sampling itself. Now, next step, how do we get the encoding of vector D, we already know how to find vector D. The encoding of vector D what we want is something like that looks like this, because D has size 3M, we need the Lagrange polynomials that interpolates and set of size 3M as well. And our encoding is of this form. But what is D? What is vector D? What are the elements of vector D? Well, vector D is a linear combination between the rows of W and this alphas. So we batch all these rows in just one vector, and then we will use the Lagrange polynomials to batch the columns. So to batch the elements of vector D. But at the same time, these alpha coefficients are evaluations of polynomials in some point. Why? And if you think this is the natural encoding of a matrix, it's like we compress all the rows with some set of polynomials, all the columns with another set of polynomials. And then in order to recover an element in W, we basically play some novel. So D, at the end, is a partial evaluation of a vector, sorry, of a polynomial that describes matrix W, a polynomial that naturally encodes it. This may seem as already a solution. But here we have a problem and here is where we need to focus. And this is the bottleneck of all constructions. This vector W has two variables with independent degree M. If the modifier cannot evaluate it, it will take quadratic work and we don't want it even to be linear. And we cannot include it in the relation dependent SRS because we will need from the universal SRS to be quadratic to include all the combination of powers between X and Y. The goal is to find a way that the verifier can partially evaluate this polynomial and prove its correctness. Or maybe not partially evaluated, maybe evaluated in two variables sent by the verifier, but then prove the correct evaluation. And here W is dense and it has a quadratic number of, a quadratic in M, a number of non-zero elements. This could get super-trick. But there are some assumptions we can make in the shape of W and previous work made them and they are super-fair assumptions, we are going to talk about that in a while. So to prove circuit satisfiability, we will start from a checkable subspace sampling. It has a structure of an algebraic holographic proof. And then recall we add the inner product relation in order to prove the linear constraints and then we add the Hadamard product relation in order to finally prove circuit satisfiability. So this is how we break the information theoretical object, but for time constraints, I'm going to focus only in the first pre-mitted, the checkable subspace sampling which is our main contribution. So, because it has the structure of an algebraic proof, polynomial algebraic proof, a polynomial holographic proof, sorry. We have the indexer that performs in an offline phase, some computation to output polynomials that describe matrix W. Then in an online phase, proven verifier will interact in two steps. The first one is to sample. So the verifier will send the challenge Y. And the prover will reply with encoding of the vector D. It's a sample according to Y. And then the prover has to convince the verifier that the sampling has been performed correctly. At the end, the verifier accepts or rejects depending on whether DX has been correctly completed. So, again, this is the first step to construct a snark and update on universal snark. And it's implicit in all previous constructions. That's the core of this work. So, in Sonic, it's called, it's implicit in the signature of correct computation. The partial evaluation of this V-variate polynomial S is indeed a sampling in the rows of the matrix that describes the circuit. Then they present two constructions. In the Samsung construction, they assume that W can be written as a sum of permutation matrix, which is a variable assumption. And the complexity depends on how many matrices we needed, how many permutation matrices we need to compute W. And then they present an amortized takeables as phase sampling that is unrestricted, makes no assumptions on the size, on the, on the structure of W, and it's super efficient. In Malin and Lunar, they use a very, a very smart encoding of sparse matrices that is presented in Malin, which is, again, a fair assumption because what they assume is that the amount of non-sewn elements is actually linear in the size of the circuit. And the, the protocols are super efficient, but they have quite a large srs. In our work, we first start from this algebraic intuition and create a CSS that is inspired in the Bender-Modern assembly, which is not very efficient by itself, but it works very well with dense rows. So because this is linear algebra, we want to sample a vector in the row space of a matrix. So we can use one CSS, for example, to, to work with the dense rows and then if the rest of the matrix is sparse, why not to use Malin or Lunar. We also present a construction that is inspired by Malin but is generated from simpler building blocks and comes out to be, to be as efficient as the best construction in Lunar, but with a, with a smaller srs. And then in an extended version of our work, while trying to include Planck in our, in our framework, we, we combine somewhat the ideas of Lunar and Planck and came out with a, with our best construction that considers circuits with limited fan out. Again, after, after assumption in the applications of snacks. Why to use CSS, why to think this information theoretical object, this holographic proof in, in this way, because this composing the construction of a scheme in many steps is always useful. Also, it comes with, with an algebraic intuition that we, I think we all feel comfortable working with, like it simplifies. And then the framework itself cut towards several constructions, I would say, all of them in the, in the extended version of our work. And this CSS is the bottleneck is what all these constructions differ on. The smart design idea came on the table. So, it's all 18 it will allow us to, again, compare, combine, and then improve, we know, we know where to focus. And as I mentioned before, then we can mix these, these works. So that's all from me. Thank you for listening. I hope this was useful. If it was not, please don't hesitate to contact us or if you have any doubts on, on our, of our results.