There we are. Now I see them as well. Great. Perfect. Hello everyone and welcome to our joint conference. I'm happy to see so many of you here. And it's really good that with the situation this year we were able still to bring everybody together. And what I would like to tell you in the next about half an hour is an overview of the document foundation itself. How it's set up, how it's working, what the ideas behind it are, what the bodies are, a bit of insight into our daily work. And for questions, feel free to use the chat or refer to the bit of time also afterwards. Then let's start. See if this is working here. Is it not? So fantastic. There we are. Okay. So just a couple of words for myself. I'm in the, that whole field for like, I think 16 years in the meantime, I always say I was not great when I started. So I started with back then open office org around the end of my school term, then was active in the project. I was from the very beginning with the document foundation. I was one of the founding members was in the first board. And now there's some executive director. And should I have a bit of a spare time I'm also active in infrastructure and marketing but really just a little bit we have great people doing the job here. So I've been around for quite a while, sort of product growing and changing and would like to give you some overview on what the last years have brought us. On the starting slide you saw the big liberal office law and on the bottom you saw the document foundation and I'd like to explain a bit the meaning of these terms, they sound rather clear but maybe there is some interesting detail that you didn't know. So first of all, liberal office has some sort of double meaning. Of course, and I don't have to explain it in this round. It's a software that you can use it's the leading free office productivity suite that is installed by millions of users worldwide. The concrete numbers is really challenging to get as we don't sell a license but I know that Mike and it hello are doing a wonderful job to find the numbers out. I think with millions of users worldwide that is definitely not inaccurate. So it's widely used it's one of the most prominent open source projects in the meantime, but the office also describes the community behind that that that's all of you that's everybody I think to the project in the rise area speed development beat localization beat QA beat infrastructure beat running the conference. And that committee consists both of volunteers and ecosystem members. So we have people bringing in their skills with rise background some of them do it on a professional level as their or as a profession as their day job. They do it in their spare time. And those contributors as we also really greatly see here the conference they come from around the globe. I think today in parallel we have a Spanish summit with people from from all Spanish speaking countries we have a strong Asian community so it's really all around the globe. Then on the bottom of labor office on the title screen and the logo. It literally is the foundation is TDAF the document foundation that is first and foremost a legal entity. It is a so called Stiftung that basically means a foundation. It's based in Berlin in Germany. And what I'm quoting here is what you see in the statutes. It's the objective it's the mission of TDA what what is TDAF all about. And it says the objective of the foundation is the promotion development of office software available for you spend one. That means several things first of all, promotion is in a sense that we can foster projects in that area we can hand over resources and funding to. Contribute to LibreOffice and we can also directly improve the software. Then what is covered is not LibreOffice itself. LibreOffice is not mentioned in the statutes. We covered a field of office software that of course entails the office productivity software that could entail a make client that could entail a graphic software. But for example a software to create music sheets to put the notes of a music on a paper that likely would not be covered. So the frame is rather open but on the specific field of office software and the use by anyone is also important for example looking at the number of localizations that we have. It's our aim to slim down the digital gap to remove the digital gap by providing as many localizations as possible so as many people as possible in the LibreOffice. And TDF is not called the LibreOffice Foundation that is on purpose, because first of all historically in the beginning it was just not clear what we said LibreOffice would it be open office or would it be a different name. So we left it open. And second, as you see above, the objective of the foundation is a bit wide ranging. That means we could also do other things. So it's not the LibreOffice Foundation. For example with the document liberation project these days we also do have another project hosted that is not so much end user facing, but there are other projects beyond LibreOffice. I think we also host the ODF all the data and other bits and pieces. So the name was on purpose. What's the philosophy behind that. So, if you look at the history at the ideas at the statutes, the idea behind TDF is to support the development to foster both the software and the community. To me it doesn't exist without the other. We are not just about the software, we are not just about the community, they are all together. And how do we do that? We do it for example with events like these bringing people together, sharing the knowledge, enabling them to exchange each other to talk about things. We try to share knowledge via blog postings, via events, via documentation, via mentoring people. It's very important to be seen at these days where our infra team has done a really fantastic job to keep the conference alive and make it possible that many things also in years where we don't have travel restrictions have been in a virtual space. So we need lots of infrastructure. So TDF is also providing a lot of infrastructure for the community to work on. The idea behind TDF was that we had already been working together in various fields, and we have some shared values, some shared ideals, but that was never formalized. With all the history that we've seen and rules that were not relevant anymore and so on, we were working on statutes that vouch for those values and ideals that we especially were looking for openness for transparency, and many other bits and pieces. Especially these days you've seen we have discussions about the ecosystem so to clarify from the beginning we said that TDF should be independent from one single sponsor that of course does not mean that we're completely disconnected rather than opposite. It means that there should be no direct dependency on one single and only sponsor. Also here this is something we've seen before and that main sponsor then decided things that were not working for us. So one of TDF's goals is to avoid being dependent on one single sponsor. And that happens, thanks to the support of many. A set ecosystem is an important part. And we want to have that for contributors for commercial stakeholders, some ideas and there is much more in discussion at the moment. And we also have a collaboration program that is relevant also for tenders we see more and more tenders with certified liberal office developers are required. We do join development efforts there are tenders going on. So also here TDF invests quite some resources into making that happen. Also from the beginning, very important was to lower the entry barriers to make it much easier to contribute to various fields. You see HACS, you see HACFS that cover obviously the area of development. We do mentoring workshops, we have more meetings, we have more documentation, we have fantastic videos that are shared. So this is all part of the mission to lower the entry barriers. And of course, TDF isn't isolated, it works with other entities with standards bodies with other free and open source organizations we try to change thoughts to work on common projects. When it isolated we are part of the open source ecosystem and try to reach out to other peers to work together with them. So talking about communities and I think everybody has their very own definition of that, but this is one that I like quite a lot. So what is, what is a community. To me it means we enjoy working together on something of course not every day is perfect and wonderful and pure joy, but in the end, you like always in life you need to like what you do. If you're not happy with what you do, then it's like you're not going to work out. So this is an important bit. An integral part of a community to me is working with shared interests. We have common goals, we have common ideals that we share. And of course, especially in a project like ours, especially in the holidays, it was very important to have some interest and excitement to be open for a bit of an adventure was all new. The developments taking place things changing. Of course, this is a key part also today. Of course we make mistakes we make them regularly and that's good nobody is perfect we need to make mistakes we need to learn from these. And then we need to share the knowledge to avoid anybody else making them again. That's a normal process that happens to the F as well. And it's a big part of community work also finding things out, not every little mistake is already a giant failure and as such, you can only improve. And it's important both for us who are already in the project as well as for people would like to get in we need to find out what their best is what what is their skill. My favorite sample is we had a doctor many years ago, and he was contributing in the field of design he was a designer so that was not related at all to his to his main day job. But he was working as a designer and supporting us in that area while in this day job, he was working in a medical area. So find out where people can contribute what they're good at, where are their skills and try to involve them as much as possible. Then we can only motivate others if we are motivated. And this is a key part of to motivate others motivate others and get them in coordination is key as well especially these days we see we're all disconnected we're all not in one room we need to coordinate it's sometimes a lot but in the end it works out quite well. And important what comes out of that joint efforts is something that everybody benefits from. It's not just us taking what we did, but we share everybody, everybody benefits from that. And of course, like, like in any human interaction tensions, they are normal they happen, but usually they're quite well so that is maybe an important message also to share. Let's talk a bit about the foundation itself what is TDF what is the foundation. We went for a foundation because we, especially in light of the history that we had seen we wanted to have something that is enduring that is stable provides stability we came from times that were really complicated and very unclear. We wanted something that is stable. One for us was that the main objective of TDF cannot be changed so that the part that you read before the, the office software. That is important for us we know where we're contributing to what we're contributing to and other entities you could change that in theory for several entities you could say, Oh, right. I now move from open standards and free software to proprietary software and close standards would be possible and we wanted something that is a bit more guaranteed. In fact, we wanted to provide safety for the committee for the end users and the ecosystems. So all participants in the project. TDF itself acts as some sort of trustee, for example for the trade marks and for the domains. We do handle nations we manage budgets, but PDF is not a part of the commercial ecosystem itself. That means you cannot buy anything. You cannot get a license you cannot get consultancy we don't do migrations for you. That's what we have to commercial ecosystem for so TDF acts as some sort of gateway, but it's not directly a participant of the commercial ecosystem. With all that set up, we wanted to guarantee rights for all the participants so from the creators to the consumers we wanted to guarantee rights to all of them. So this TDF setup, TF like any other entity has a board of directors the legal representative and that board of directors already is a pretty good representation of the community because we have people from various countries with rise backgrounds. We have people working in that field professionally we have people doing it as a pure hobby, people in the IT sector people doing something completely different so it's a fairly good representation. It doesn't prove, but the representation per se is not so bad. And in the board of directors, the board can be elected for a term of two years and can be reelected and it's nine people in total. The active and passive electoral right is with the so called board of trustees the members of TDF that is currently 221 individuals who are distributed around the world and work on the foundation scores. And behind that is when you have been active in the community for like three months and you plan six months, it's not a legal contract you enter but it's like you aim to contribute at least six more months then you are a member for one year, and you can qualify, you can renew a membership after it's expired. And that is overseen by the membership committee consisting of nine people with a similar setup also a term of two years. And also for that one, the passive and active electoral right is with the board of trustees. The idea behind that is that anyone who contributes for whatever reason if it's a pure volunteer or if you are paid, it doesn't matter. You can get into the steering of TDF you can help shape TDF. And we ensure that only people who actively contribute again for whatever reason are in the controlling position. The membership is always individually. That means, even if you leave the company for whom you've been working on your office you will keep that if you contribute. And we have another part of TDF that is not a formal body that is the so called advisory board. The membership there is based for its intended for organizations and companies. It may be important to mention in the board of trustees donations to not qualify you cannot buy yourself. So, any other work that you do can help but not money, and just a quick overview and I'm not reading that out in detail. Just a very brief overview of the options and it's not a conclusive list on how you can get engaged in TDF and what could qualify for membership that is infrastructure marketing localization quality assurance development templates and extensions and so on and so on so really wide range there is basically no limit. But again, donations do not qualify so you cannot buy yourself in you must personally do something to bring the objective of the foundation forward. So how did TDF happen how did that take place that is 10 years ago so we have something to celebrate as you all know the labor office project was founded in the September of 2010 and TDF itself is a bit younger it was set up in February 2012. The reason is that we took quite some time to work on the bylaws the statutes the ideas we started collecting how a government should look like. Then when it became clear where TDF would be set up we were working for for many many months to carve out statutes to carefully work on that to. We had various iterations amongst the founders group how it should look like we were in the process of approval because foundations have to be approved. And that took many many months to make it finally happen so we spent quite some some care into all the regulations, and we were evaluating a couple of countries. Okay, I remember France, Italy, Germany, and in the end, we had a couple of reasons why we went for Germany, first of all that mentioned stability and guarantees was one of the central aspects also coming from the history that we had seen. And plus, it means people to do the job so we had quite a few people looking in various options like I think it was looking for the Italian option that's what I remember. And then some people were looking into the German option. I think with Sophie we're working on an option in France. And so we were looking for countries where we had people outside. And after a careful consideration and going through various options in the end settled them for Germany. We had just one problem, because we knew, okay, we want to go to Germany we had an idea how the study should look like we had an idea of the governance but we needed funding and didn't have it. So, we had some sponsors supporting us we had another association helping us, but in the end we needed money, and we needed trademarks. And we needed names and all that. So, apart from all the volunteer time that were spent into that and quite some great development efforts taking place there was things we just had to buy. We didn't have the money. So what we did is what you these days would likely call crowdfunding, we started a public fundraiser, and the idea was, let's see for a month if you can get the money if not we need to reevaluate the plan. And it was 50,000 year capital, and that took us exactly eight days to get from donors, and it was really small donations from around the globe, and that is reflected by today. Because the average donation I think is around 13 or 14 euro. So it's many many small people in terms of the financial input, not about the volunteer time not about the development contributions but in terms of donations, many many other donations that come in. And that's what we've seen in the beginning. And after the month that we had foreseen, we ended up at 15,000 year capital and another 40,000 euro on top, which put us in a pretty comfortable situation to start running the infrastructure setting up required some pieces that was really an incredible experience to see so strong support because apart from the money that we have. It's an expression of support that was really great to see so many also individual people supporting the idea that we cannot. Some special things that TTF that up to today I think are really important and that I'm really happy we have that we put into the statutes. It's first of all a one third rule to prevent conflict of interest, and that means in any given body of TTF. Only one third of the members can be with the same affiliation. That means you cannot have a board with the same company, or with the same organization, just to provide the conflict of interest. We strongly accept before vouch for openness and transparency. That means per default, all of our board meetings are public can find a link here per default or decisions of the bodies are public can find a link here, even our accounting is public of course anonymized so you don't see who donated which somebody see where the money comes from, how are they spend we take the official ledgers translate them. It's really in English and it's public. And also the words making this this per default public, and whoever had a look at the board discuss this, the last weeks you see there's quite some messages going on. Of course there's a requirement for transparency, you need to talk things to also sometimes in private that is reflected in the statutes, because there is the option, as long as there is a confidentiality requirement. It can be kept confidential. Classics are you have a marketing campaign plan, you have a legal topic pending you have discussions about staff members. That is something that at least in first place you like it on to one public. You will do in private and at least those bits and pieces that then don't have a confidentiality requirement anymore, have to be made public and transparent as per the statutes. One thing where we turned our legal obligation into a benefit actually is the end report because one of the requirements for foundations and that I think is not so much different from many corporate setups where you also have strong reporting duties is that we need to provide an end report about all the activities that we have done. And that is jointly written with the community. We have to file it in German, but the way we work on it is we grafted an image. The board approves it in English and then in parallel we translate it into German and in parallel we have this nice, you see the nice something in here. So here's the layout and design version of that that is available for download that we hand out also on printed paper. And we do that since 2016 or so in that form. So here you have two links but on the document foundation website, you find some links to the ledgers you find some links to the previous annual reports. So it's quite a, quite a good thing to make transparent what is happening to show what people are doing to outline how TDF is fulfilling its mission and I think it's a very important, very, very good thing to have. And one of the pictures I want to show you is, I really like it. It's from Brno in 2016. It's rise community members waving their hands we are gathering at an in person conference in Brno in September, meeting, talking things through and this is not the full audience there, not the full list of attendees, but it shows people working together having fun jointly working on a common goal. And the message is we are a worldwide community we're a, we're a fun community. You should really consider working here, you should really consider contributing here. It's fun. And especially these days when we, when we saw that an in person meeting is not possible. I'm really happy to, to discover how we managed to still to still meet and do something together. And that is, that is really good. And just before closing it then I'm happy to answer a couple of questions, see a couple of people raising their hand. I just want to add some some personal words now that we are really in the 10th anniversary of Libra office. And you see discussion on TDF and so on. So, I think that after working together for 10 years. You can clearly see that inside discussion. But on one hand, it does not come entirely unexpected that if you work together such a long time. People have heavily invested time or money for both and in any case they invested much passion into what they do. And actually during the year that is as challenging as this one is for all of us in so many aspects that we be spot after that long time many things that we need to work on together. And especially this conference has shown me one thing very clearly and that is indeed that despite all the social distancing that at the moment be a force to keep. We see and feel this community spirit and I'm really, I have the feeling of being with all of you despite all the technical issues that we've seen and despite all the bits and pieces that were happening. And we see people from all around the globe meeting here during the virtual conference sharing what they do show their projects present the achievements. I think, as weird as it sounds in some comporting way we somehow or feel more closer maybe in these days than we did during previous conferences when we're taking things for granted so just as a closing statement after 10 years of LibreOffice and nearly nine years of TDF. I'm looking forward to make TDF a success for all of you. Also during the next decade, this is something we only can achieve together. And we can only do that in the spirit that it was set up and this is by the community and this is for the community, including everybody who works here on a common goal. It doesn't matter where they live what the language is what their time is on what their profession is if they are volunteers if the ecosystem members. I think we all need to work together on one joint and common goal. And we had our first 10 years and I'm very much looking forward to the next 10 years. Florian, one thing I would mention as well is I think most people in the in the room here know but working foundation itself is actually quite small there were only 11 of us working for it. And I noticed this recently when we posted about the TDF team on Reddit and other places a lot of people were surprised they thought TDF was like 100 people a big software house. So I think that that's something else that's often worth mentioning as well and that's because we're at the core where we're not a software house ourselves and we're a small close knit team. Indeed in the TDF itself has only a few people employed it's a team of 11 people in total. That's the core team hosted at TDF. But we have many, many more volunteers we have many more contributions from others but indeed TDF is not not a big company a set in the beginning we are not selling something we are not providing services ourselves we are really a small team working on the core aspects and one of the main tasks is really to enable the community to do things that is, I'd say the main task to deal with some of course administrative and maybe more boring things, but especially enabling the community providing platforms offering this this meeting venue that we see here. And this is the key thing it's not on us to fix bucks to develop the code that that's not the TDF core team doing we really try to provide a framework and they made the people to do something. This is what at least I see is our mission. Also you mentioned a few people putting their hands up but that was, that was because when, when you posted the picture at the end of your talk Florian of the Bruno event. I wrote in the chat put your hands up if you can see yourself in the picture. So you didn't mean they wanted to jump in and talk but just show that they were there. And it reminds me just one last story if people have two more minutes reminds me of many, many years ago. I think it was in all the eight or 2009 where we had John McCree still with us who was all of you know, passed away nearly five years ago. And at the closing ceremony he wanted to highlight how diverse and wide range in the community is. And he asked everybody to sit and then he was calling. So let's please all the developers stand up and then let's please all the market here stand up all the localize as we went through all the bits and pieces was a couple of groups he was mentioning and in the end. There was nobody sitting on their chair anymore because everybody was part of at least one group and I still remember that pretty well. That was a nice experience for the program session. Thanks. If, if there are any more questions or discussion points. We can talk about them in the chat otherwise I think we have a half hour break now. Let me check the show. Yeah, so 12 UTC to continue. Exactly. 12 UTC. We have there are talks about online and mobile from the Libre off the side and micro OS on the open suicide as well. And of course, the, the con underscore chat room is always available for the coffee to catch up with some people as well chat about other topics. So, yeah, thanks for having. Thanks a lot. Thanks for moderating. See you everybody.


Russia is losing around 350 to $375 million per day due to its war in Ukraine, Azerbaijani Colonel Elkan Nureyev has said in an interview with Canal 13. Nureyev, who chairs the Central Control and Inspection Commission of Officers Union of Ukraine, said that Russia spends its entire annual military budget on military operations in Ukraine. These losses include destroyed weapons and military equipment as well as food spent on a daily basis, he said. Stressing that Russia has suffered heavy losses since unleashing full-fledged invasion on Ukraine, the expert reminded that Russia recently lost two airplanes, Su-35, Su-27, within only one day in the Bryansk region. According to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as of May 23, Russia has lost 3,789 tanks, 7,419 armoured combat vehicles, 3,318 artillery systems, 565 rocket systems, 327 air defence equipment, 309 aircraft, 295 units of helicopters, 2,864 UAVs, 1,015 cruise missiles, 18 ships or boats, 6,139 automotive equipment and tank trucks, and 433 special equipment since the start of the war last February. Apart from weapons and military equipment, Russia has also suffered heavy losses in terms of military personnel, with the number of killed Russian troops reaching 204,360 as of May 23, the General Staff has reported. It should be noted that Russia spent around 86.4 billion US dollars on its military expenses in 2022.


One where you constantly feel drained, unhappy, and unfulfilled? If so, you're not alone. Many people find themselves stuck in toxic relationships, unable to break free, no matter how hard they try. But why is this? Why is it so difficult to leave a toxic relationship even when we know it's not good for us? In this video, we'll explore the psychological and emotional reasons why people stay in toxic relationships and why leaving isn't always as simple as it seems. But it's not just about understanding why we stay, it's also about learning how to break free and move on to a healthier, happier life. We'll discuss strategies for leaving a toxic relationship and how to heal and grow from the experience. So let's explore. Emotional attachment. Do you easily get attached to other people? Even when the relationship is toxic, it's actually quite common to develop a strong emotional attachment to your partner. According to a well-known psychotherapist and author, Susan Anderson, this attachment can be influenced by your childhood experiences with attachment figures. Like your parents. She suggests that when you develop an attachment to someone, you create an idea of the person and what the relationship should look like. And it can be challenging to change that idea even when the relationship isn't working for you anymore and can make it tough for you to leave it. You might be afraid about being alone or losing what you treasure in a relationship, like happy memories or shared experiences. You may also be anxious that your partner will feel devastated if you end things, especially if you've done things together for years. But attachment is like an addiction. Your toxic partner is the toxic drug that is not good for you and you need to break that addiction if you want to live a healthy life. Just ask yourself, if you leave this toxic relationship, will you really lose everything? Or are you willing to lose yourself just to protect the attachment that you have? Low self-esteem. Are you confident? When you're in a relationship with a toxic partner, having a low self-esteem can be tough.  The toxic people can use different methods to control their partner, which can leave you feeling like you're not enough or undeserving. It's not easy to overcome these beliefs, but Dr. Glass recommends identifying the warning signs of a toxic relationship and getting help from a professional to rebuild your self-esteem by setting boundaries or even ending the relationship. You can take the first step towards valuing yourself in a healthier way. Fear of change. Does the idea of change upset you? It can be really overwhelming if you're trying to break away from a toxic relationship. As Dr. Susan Heitler, a clinical psychologist and author, explains, it's not just about leaving the relationship, it's also about letting go of the life you've built with your partner, which can be a lot to handle. This might mean moving to a new city, getting a new job, and changing your social circles. If you've been in a relationship for a long time, change can feel scary. You might feel like you're starting with a blank slate or feel anxious about the future which can stop you from taking necessary action. However, a change is an opportunity for you to start something new. Always keep in mind that you deserve better and sometimes that means taking baby steps towards a better future. Manipulation. According to domestic violence expert Lundy Bancroft, abusers use manipulation methods like emotional abuse, isolation, and physical violence to get what they want from their partner. Victims may feel helpless, which makes it difficult for them to leave the relationship. You may think that your partner has power over you and you can't do anything about it, but that's not true. What are some things that make you feel powerful? Figure them out and do them.  It's important to give yourself the time and space to figure out what you want and need in a relationship. And if you're struggling to find a way out of a toxic relationship, know that there is support available, whether it's talking to a trusted friend or family member, reaching out to a therapist, or finding a support group. There are people who care about you and want to help. Remember, you deserve to be in a relationship that makes you feel respected, valued, and loved. Do you resonate with any of these reasons? Let us know in the comments. Remember to like and share this video with those who might benefit from it. Thanks for watching. Until next time. And remember, you matter.


How's it going everybody? Dato De here with some cool news for Dragon Ball fighters, as today we got to see more images for Broly and Bardock, as well as their intros, which is really cool. So let's start off by taking a look at both characters' intros, and then we'll roll into the photos. I do want to remind you that there is no sound for these, as these were just a teaser for the trailers that are soon to come later on down the road. But as you can see from this pre-recorded footage, Broly is already looking like a monster! Look at how huge this guy is! And really, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know he's probably saying something about Kakarot there at the end. But now let's move on to Bardock's intro, as he is the character I'm most looking forward to playing in this pack. And as you're seeing right now, the intro is very short and simple, but I like it a lot. It shows a lot of Bardock's character as he holds his bandana and tightens it around his head and powers up. And I don't really know what else to say, this is definitely the coolest Bardock's ever looked in a video game. But you know the intros are one thing, of course they're going to look good in Dragon Ball fighters, but let's take a look at some of these images that were released alongside them. Okay, so let's start with Broly. In this picture you can clearly see he's holding that gigantic meteor attack that he often does, leading me to believe this is probably his cinematic for his level 3 super. And if so, it already looks pretty amazing. Probably my favorite part about Broly is the fact that whenever he uses his green energy waves it just like pulses on the screen. And I think you're seeing a lot of that here as the green lighting looks really cool. And I'm pretty sure the second picture for Broly is just out of his intro, so really not too much to talk about here, but again, really nice to see how good it looks even when it's just a still frame and not an animation. And this third photo is probably my favorite, as it shows Broly just landing a huge hit on Goku. And this picture really gives you a scale of how massive Broly is going to be in the game, which I know is something a lot of Broly fans really wanted to see. They wanted to see Broly be the biggest character in Dragon Ball fighters so far, and I think that's exactly what you're going to get.  But you know, we'll talk about that another day, because for now we got to move on to my main man Bardock, and I got to tell you these pictures are changing what I think about Super Saiyan Bardock. But before we get to that picture, let's start by looking at the first picture, which again is from Bardock's intro, not too much to talk about, but it does look really cool. The second picture for Bardock is actually something we've seen before in the scan for the magazine, but of course this is much higher quality, so I thought it was worth showing off in the video anyway. And then we have the second part of that very same attack, which we also saw in the magazine, but again, really high quality compared to the last time, so definitely worth showing off. And then finally, the final picture for today is something that really makes me like Super Saiyan Bardock a lot more, and that's this picture right here, which in my eyes is the coolest Super Saiyan Bardock has ever looked. The shading looks really good here, you can see the scar and the lighting on the bandana, and he's clearly doing what I hope is his riot javelin in the cinematic, but I don't know, I don't know much lore about Super Saiyan Bardock, so I could be totally wrong there. And with that, that's all the pictures and information we got of today, but I do think that their full trailers might be released later on down the line today, and if that does happen, I'll probably take a look at it, but who knows? Down in the comments below I would love to hear which picture was your favorite, and actually, who's intro out of the two was your favorite? Of course, you'll probably lean to your favorite character, but that's fine, and I'll be down in the comments as always. If you liked this video and channel, please make sure to hit the like button and subscribe. I'm Dr. Doia, and I'll see you in the next one.


Hi everyone and welcome to this session for World Rain First Day on innovating tech for conservation posted by XPRIZE. My name is Kat and I'm the Program Activation Specialist for Climate and Conservation at XPRIZE. So I support communications for XPRIZE Rainforest. It's a five year competition to innovate the autonomous technologies needed for biodiversity assessment and ecosystem conservation. We'll learn a little more about the solutions being developed for that prize in this session, along with many more working and prototyping conservation tech solutions from our four incredible panelists who have firsthand experience in this field. So let's jump right in and meet those panelists. Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us on World Rain Forest Day. My name is Shaw Selby. I am a conservation technologist. I came from the world of engineering so I spent the first decade of my career working on satellites and then learned about the challenges we were facing broadly in conservation across the world, and started doing research in the area of this intersection between technology and conservation. That was around 15 years ago now when I first started doing that. I've since started a couple of non-profits. The first being Conservify and kind of the focus around Conservify was, even though it's a non-profit, can we design it as a kind of a tech development lab, something similar that you would see in places like the Silicon Valley, full of all this prototyping equipment, with one caveat being that every single thing we work on is and will be completely open source. So once we learn how to design and code these things, we put that information out for anyone to replicate. And the second thing is we only work on wildlife conservation environmental protection sort of projects. And the second nonprofit I started is called FieldKit. If you're interested, you can go to fieldkit.org and learn more about it, but that's really kind of looking at how do we change the fundamental issues that we see in environmental monitoring. And it's like the high cost of sensors, these complex and really hard to use systems, how a lot of the stuff out there is incompatible and proprietary. And so our thoughts were like, how do we redesign this from the ground up using a lot of the principles from UI and UX, user experience sort of stuff that you see with smartphones and bring that into understanding how our environment is changing, how the air quality, weather systems, things like that. And so that's kind of what we're focused on there. I'm also an explorer with the National Geographic Society and I was a fellow there for for three years leading up to the pandemic, helping them think through what does conservation technology mean and the work that that Nat Geo does as well. And this background behind me that you see here is actually one of our field sites in Cameroon, where we're working with the Congo Basin Institute to deploy a radio network throughout the rainforest that's going to allow you to bring back data from any sort of sensor or other tool that you're doing there so we've already put up some of it. And we're returning later on this year to finish it up. So that's going to be completely open. Anyone can use it, you know, local scientists, scientists from all over the world can come in and try and understand what's happening in the Congo Basin, and bring that data back live for anyone to see on the internet. So that's, that's my intro I'm going to, I think I pass it on to to Kev next to talk a little bit about his background. My name is Kevin Marriott. I'm the tech lead for X Prize Rainforest. I'm responsible for the technical operations of the competition as well as its execution. The X Prize Rainforest is a $10 million five year competition to enhance our understanding of the rainforest ecosystem. Prior to joining X Prize, I was, I worked with in wildlife conservation all throughout Africa, mainly dealing in technical capability development, so radio systems, technical surveillance systems, radio trackers, camera systems, that kind of thing. And, you know, I really kind of got my experience and forged everything I kind of put into wildlife conservation through serving in the military for 14 years and eight years of that was with special operations doing the same kind of work really with radio systems in a tactical environment and technical surveillance systems. So, you know, I kind of come from a military background, and then I transitioned quickly after leaving the military to work within wildlife conservation and you know I started studying and you know just recently finished my master's degree in wildlife biology and conservation so I kind of blend the two kind of backgrounds really with conservation and technical as well so kind of working as a technical conservationist technologist, you know all in one really. So yeah that's me and I'll pass over to Sarah. Yeah, so I'm a researcher at the intersection of computer vision, AI and biodiversity monitoring and environmental monitoring. I just finished my PhD from Caltech in computer vision about three weeks ago, and I'll be, I'll be starting up an academic lab at the intersection of computing in the environment. Probably fall 2023. And a lot of the work that I've done has been really focused around, you know, not only how do you train accurate machine learning models that are able to monitor biodiversity you know recognize species recognize individual animals, recognize environmental covariates for different types of data, things like images or audio or sonar or even, you know, GPS tracks. But also, you know, beyond just training these models how do we think about deploying what makes a machine learning model robust and usable and actually useful for conservation technology. When can things be used off the shelf. How do you figure out you know, good systems for quality control over time, because we know machine learning models tend to to struggle with things that they haven't seen before so how do you handle anomalies how do you handle rare species or endangered species and how do you make models adapt really efficiently to to new parts of the world and new species that maybe they haven't seen. Yeah, and, you know, I've been trying to actually work on not just you know training the models actually deploying them and working directly with a lot of stakeholders so I work with wildlife insights on their AI team I have for about three years trying to figure out how we scale up species identification and camera trap images. I was one of the initial builders of the Microsoft mega detector, which is now actually been incorporated within wildlife insights but you know last year we processed 100 million camera trap images from through that model from 60 different NGOs worldwide. And lately I've been doing a lot of work field work actually I got back from Kenya last week with the Mara Elephant Project and Impala Research Center looking at how do we actually bring these tools and build these systems that combine the best of AI with the best of human expertise to get really usable monitoring for biodiversity. Yeah, Eric I think that's that's you. Yeah. So, well, first of all Sarah congratulations on your PhD. Thank you. Yeah, it's one form of torture with it. Nice to have behind you. Hi everybody, I'm Eric Dinterstein. I've been a gosh a wildlife biologist and conservation biologist since about 1975 when I went over to the kingdom of Nepal and plucked out of undergrad to with the assignment of sentencing the tiger population and low in Nepal and a newly created tiger reserve which I didn't have a clue how to do and we didn't have any technologies at the time. From there, I developed a strong interest in the tropics and in graduate school ended up doing my PhD in Costa Rica and Panama, studying tropical fruit bats and working on mapping rainforests and Barocara Island the first time it was done. And then post that I joined the Smithsonian for five years and went back to Nepal to lead a research project on studying tigers and rhinos in the field using technology. And then after that spent 25 years as the chief scientist of World Wildlife Fund which took me to lots of rainforest spectacular ones from New Guinea and New Caledonia to Peru and Panama and Hawaii and everywhere. It was a great appreciation for rainforest conservation. I left WWF about eight years ago to create a new program called biodiversity and wildlife solutions at resolve a minnow of an NGO compared to some of the others that swim in the ocean, but very focused on bringing new technologies to bear. And much of what Shah said and Kevin and Sarah to find ways to make the most advanced technology really affordable and to really scale it. And so, I'll be talking about that as well and in the next hour of the innovations that we've created that from my early days of trying to detect tiger footprints in the sand with rulers and and sketch paper to state of the art AI cameras with embedded AI in the cameras that can detect tigers and send images back in 30 seconds to the end user. I was asked to start this out and I'll go back to my early days in tropical biology, which probably a number of people, you know, listening to this call are familiar with the organization for tropical studies which is probably trained more tropical biologists than any other program in based in Costa Rica now in many countries. And one of the things that they like to do to get people to become more aware of what's in the rainforest and how does it work is you go out with your field notebook and a pair of binoculars and hopefully a keen mind. You had to have too many beers the night before and your goal was to write down 20 questions, and often those questions should begin with why or they could be as how many or whatever but it's like, those questions should reflect how you try to get to a deeper understanding of the rainforest and uncover its mysteries of how it all fits together. And that was the way that biology worked for so long tropical biology is you just went out with a notebook and you tried to come up with an original idea. I remember listening to a lecture during my OTS course Dan Janssen probably the most preeminent tropical biologists in the world, and I was listening I was sitting next to my friend, and my friend whispered to me said Eric, you know, our goal is to try to come up with like one original idea in our lifetime, and like this guy comes up with one like every week. And that's what you need is that great keen mind that signed that innovation and then from that innovation, then the technology comes in and like okay how do we do this. How do we do it better. How do we do it faster. How do we do it over a wider area. What's exciting about what we're going to talk about today is we now have all these tools at our disposal that we didn't have 50 years ago of how we can monitor and understand rainforest in a much deeper way. In real time, in many places where those biologists with their field notebooks if you multiply them 500,000 times. That's what we're trying to achieve with the technology. But we're, we're entering this new frontier of understanding tropical forest, our big challenges can we conserve it before it's too late, because this is a very time sensitive problem that we're addressing. I'll stop there and hand it over to the next person. Thanks Eric I think that's a that's a really great look at how things are and you know I think this this whole intersection of technology and conservation a lot of us call it conservation technologies is just in such a such a unique space right now. It's just because the ability for us to think of an idea, come up with a solution around it, get circuit boards made or you know write some software around it, and get that stuff out in the field and testing it's just the speed at which we could do that is unlike any, any time in history right and that's, that's kind of the real exciting thing about where we sit right now. I think, traditionally what I've seen in terms of how people bring technology into the field, a lot of times. It's through a couple different ways right maybe that technology is something that's used in other areas so in the military or an agriculture and with just a few small tweaks we can use that we can bring that over to help in field science and conservation work. What I find is really exciting now is our ability to start from scratch and design these technologies to be used with like the conservationist as that core user how do we create something that is easy for them to understand that makes sense culturally and they kind of region that it's being used, it's like you're not putting a band-aid on something you're actually bringing something to the field that was designed explicitly for that and, you know that the cool thing about that approach is it also falls back on to kind of the more traditional ecology and field science sort of studies as well where a lot of those tools were created. In a university or by some small firm and they're not really optimized for that sort of thing but once like things become cheap and easy, then folks look at like, you know, one example would be an acoustic monitoring right, you know there's these big expensive acoustic monitors that a lot of folks have to listen to soundscapes in the environment. And then, you know, you have a small tool like audio moth that comes out and that really changes the way that people think about how they're doing that research because, you know, when you for the price of one of these things you can buy 150 of something else, then that changed the types of questions you can ask which is exactly what you're just talking about here.  But, you know, it's almost as if there's a real need for military-style surveillance systems, but, you know, the budget isn't there. And that's always the struggle within conservation, I feel, is that, you know, we're trying to deliver a similar kind of surveillance systems, especially within the law enforcement side, but with a conservation budget. Yeah, I think actually one of the really interesting things from just from the perspective of like, what are we actually trying to ask and how do we answer these questions is, you know, I think there's a lot of potential given the amount of data that we're able to collect. So, you know, Shah talked about, okay, you can place 100 audio moths, but I think that one of the things that's then pretty challenging when it comes to this is people who get excited about the technology go put out 100 audio moths, get terabytes and terabytes of data back, and then don't know what to do with it. You know, and the actual human power that's needed to go through and process and extract the scientific insight from that data is huge. We are seeing really great advances on the AI side when it comes to helping to go through and process a lot of that data but unfortunately, at this point it's still to really be able to use machine learning effectively. To be able to, you know, get stuff that works well for your data usually it means you still need to have a data scientist or an expert in house. There are very few examples and mega detector is one of them where, for most users that model does tend to work pretty well for their camera trap data. But it comes at a cost right in order to build a model that would generalize that would work off the shelf. We had to step back from you know our original goal which was identifying species and go back to just detecting animals humans and vehicles. It means you still need humans in the loop. Now I've talked to a lot of different stakeholders using that model it means that they're able to reduce their processing time from, you know, five years to a few months they're now you know able to filter through that data but it's still this interaction. It's still an interaction between machine learning results and humans and there still is this verification and correction stuff. And actually this is something you know Eric you mentioned that you have your cameras that are detecting tigers on the edge and I think that's amazing and also it's something that you know detecting tigers is a very specific and well constrained problem. And one that actually I think state of the art machine learning is kind of ready to tackle with the right training data so you know I could see intuitively how that would be a pretty robust and pretty reliable model but particularly when you're talking about tiger populations, where there's you know it's a very at risk species and also one that's very politically charged mistakes can be significant and so I'm curious Eric like for when you have these edge based cameras where you're processing detecting tigers in real time and sending those results. How do you think about quality control and risk. When it comes to the data that's coming in. Well, let me just respond quickly to some of Kev's great points to, you know, I, and, and early on is your point, Sarah about the terabytes of data being generated is the way I look we cut through that is, and avoid what we used to call in field fishing expeditions is you start with a really powerful question like what's most important, like what's most useful. So in this case like how many tigers out there I can't tell you how many heads of wildlife departments in Asia have asked that question and that's what all the newspaper reporters want to know and that's what the donors want to know because has our intervention made a difference so it's often that the hardest number to come up with is how many are there but that's what everybody wants to know. It relates to what Kevin said his military background, because so much of what we're doing. I mean the military has all of this right. Basically and Kevin would probably test that it's just that there's lots of zeros attached to if you were, if you even had access to get it. We've got a lot for it and so that's and shots made that point is we've got to figure out how to move this vital technology into the hands of, you know, citizen scientists, academic scientists that this can be useful so we can save rainforest and wildlife before it's too late. I think where a lot of this comes down to is a very basic question is, does the data that we collect, does it need to be transmitted in real time, or it can just be collected, you know, occasionally or annually or whatever it is. Unfortunately for biodiversity, it's not like, like CO2, like a single to a single sensor on a volcano in Hawaii. Because CO2 mixes so well tells us what we need to know about CO2 levels in in the atmosphere every year. That's not going to even as rich as the biodiversity of Hawaii is that's not going to work for us for biodiversity is far too complex. So that's our problem. So this, but then we if we disaggregate what do we need to know in real time and what do we need to know once a month once a year. As to Sarah's point about moving to identifying species getting that information like tigers, it really is time sensitive we need to know where they are. So this could be killing livestock and involved in human wildlife conflict. We want to know if a corridor we've created for tigers is actually be using being used by sub adult male tigers that in their biology they have to disperse to another area. So this is the status of the population like in 2010 when we created the global tiger initiative the goal was T times two to double the tiger population in 12 years. 2010 was the year of the tiger 2022 is this year is the next the year the tiger, and I'm happy to say in about five of the 13 range states, we have doubled the number of tigers, and we've documented that by using camera trap technology. But as Sarah said, all of that data was collected it had to be someone had to go get the cameras, pull out the SD cards, the old fashioned way, and then go through them frame by frame and look, do we have a tiger and then gosh is Tiger a the same as Tiger B. Now, that's all changed because we have this, which is our new camera that trail guard AI, and in here is a computer chip from Intel, the Movidius Maria to chip that runs AI on the edge. And we can just change the models whether we want to detect tigers or other species which by changing the SD card. So this will be new to you as we figured out how to move your great mega detector program to the edge. So we can now do animals vehicles people or just animals by essentially changing the probability threshold which you can talk about to a much lower level so you're basically getting all four legged creatures that walk in front of the camera at the time, trigger and then through a communication system we can talk about later, send that to headquarters to the tiger authority in under 30 seconds, where you have cellular connectivity and where you don't we have a different system so this is the revolution we're stepping into. And everybody has a big role to play and like Sarah saying that we couldn't have done this without working with a company severe that is one of the leaders in creating AI algorithms from synthetic data. But yeah, so it's, it's a really exciting time to be a biologist and a technology person. Yeah, I think you know that's a great example is your, your, your camera trap, just because it shows the potential that we have in designing these solutions specifically for the task hand you know, because you know the way they did it before was they bought a bunch of camera traps and all that data sat on SD cards and then all those SD cards had to be manually collected right. We worked on a project in the Republic of Congo around gorilla monitoring and basically the team out there spent 100% of their time changing batteries and SD cards and camera traps that's all they did, you know, so when it came to the data data came back and just sat on hard drive somewhere you know it's really amazing to be able to create these tools very specifically to try and answer these sorts of questions and I think that's something that we could do now quite easily. We started talking about challenges so I'm really interested to hear what what other challenges, maybe the rest of you see in this space around technology one thing that that I've seen over the years is there's tends to be like this you know excitement curve that comes up around a technology and a lot of people want to implement that technology. And, and that's just, you know, you can't, you can't fault the conservationist because they need better tools to do their job right and so they get very excited about these technologies but sometimes, you know in this space we didn't put enough thought into it before we take a piece of tech out into the field. If that's actually answering the question that we want to answer, or if the data that's coming out of that text going to actually help to solve the problem that we're working to solve there. I've worked in this space for a long time that drones are a perfect example of that right drones were thought to be the silver bullet for everything. And there's plenty of field programs that went out bought a drone used it and found nothing of consequence to come out of the use of that drone. And if like, people would have stepped back and thought about this tool. What's the monitoring program look like how do we understand what the limitations are to that technology and make sure that we're, you know, not over promising and all this sort of stuff is really important to think about, about before you even take that first piece of tech out into the wild. Yeah, I think that this is huge, especially considering that we all know that, you know, conservation is not an area with unlimited resources, far from it, right. So if someone's going out and hyping a new technology, and people buy in and there's this excitement curve and then they invest a lot of resources that really are hard one and those resources are coming out of then other programs. And then the technology is a failure. It's not just like a hype bubble bursting it's actually, you know, actively and negatively impacting conservation efforts. And so I think that that's our responsibility as as technologists and as conservationists to stop over promising right and be very, very careful about the tests that we undertake. And I think that can be hard, you know, especially given like the I think one of the things I've kind of come across as I've worked with different conservation organizations is like with with the ways that funding happens in conservation, being able to talk about like wow we're using this amazing technology can bring in funding for organizations, you know, it can be it can be used to fundraise against. But then I think, you know that has consequences as well right. There's something I've been thinking about a lot and especially you know when I start coming in, building out the sustainability plans and the relationships I have with stakeholders you know when we're working on bringing technology to the field to do beta testing and being very very clear about, you know, where the responsibility to maintain the system lies and who's going to be paying for it and how we're going to pay for it and you know, if it doesn't work, because it's research and it might not work, you know, what does that mean. I think all of those things are really important and definitely can be very challenging to navigate. And when that comes down to, you know, developing technology as a nonprofit. Yeah, there's no, you know, you've got to try and you've got to try and make people realize the impact that it's going to have by showcasing the technology maybe in its in its stages, when it's not quite ready to be deployed but you have to show that it's going to work and you know people get excited by that. And yeah it's just kind of managing the expectations that this technology and the algorithms and things take a long time to develop just trying to manage those expectations is the biologists and protected area managers that really have an urgent operational requirement for it and they want it now and yeah it's difficult. And I think when that comes down to just purely the, you know, our mechanism of fundraising for people to, you know, fund the development of these things as a nonprofit. And I'll pick up on that is about 10 years ago I was, I'll keep the names out of this but I was involved in a major project, funded by a big technology company to a conservation NGO. And relating to what sauce said, you could pretty much define the project as the answer is a drone what's the question. And it was trying to shoehorn a technology that might not have been appropriate for the use case or for what the needs were, but that was what was decided upon by people who weren't the technologists or the biologists of like, it was decided at a PR level. And it broke my heart to see $5 million wasted in that way, and not going to doing things that could have funded really important things. And to what I think all the three other panelists are saying is I was at a conference about eight years ago at Google, and a number of the major conservation groups were there and technologists, and they invited people from Google X to to attend some projects and this one guy who probably didn't have a conservation bone in his body, you know, or, but it was a great engineer and just listened to everything and came up with the most astute insight of the whole three days, which he said that to me, everything you're trying to do it all boils down to to battery life and connectivity. And I took that to heart when I heard that because, yes, that's the problem that we have we have camera traps that people used to put out there that would, if they did transmit data they would send everything and exhaust their batteries in two months, or they would take the image out in the first place, because they hadn't solved the connectivity problem. And this is where I think bringing in some of the advances from and combining technologies can make a major difference. Let me give you one concrete example that plant you have behind Sarah I'm waiting for you to pick it up and throw it at me when I'm about to say this but what one of the, the most important reasons and advances of adding AI embedded into camera to our system is saving on battery life. It's not the brilliance just of, you know, being able to detect a tiger from a leopard from a sloth bear in India, but that by filtering out all of the noise.  And a big part of mega detector was filtering all that noise out, but what if you could do that on the edge, so that you're saving all that battery life such that this single 3.7 volt battery I have in my hand here, just transmitted 2758 transmissions over the cell network on a single charge with probably another 2000 false positives. I mean you multiply that out. And if you set the cameras up right. That could be if you're doing this for anti poaching. This could be like five years of use in the field without changing batteries so back to Shows point of people going out to change batteries. Hopefully, you know that's a thing of the past and then to Sarah's point the more accurate the algorithms, the higher we can raise the probability threshold, the more stuff we can flush out right at the edge and never transmit. And then on the connectivity side by engaging with, you know, companies that are already doing this but using our advantages conservationists we can get great discounts on the critical piece of all this which is airtime costs. So, all the, all the technology we have if you couldn't transmit the data in near real time at a low cost, then it's back to the drawing board because you know you can't get the data out so fortunately, their companies like in Mars that that make this incredible. This is a satellite modem. I call it for those old enough to remember this is the host is Twinkie size we have one that's more like a Belgian waffle that's a little bit bigger, but you put this out there. So as long as you and kev has used our system is as long as you have this to the right angle to the satellite this 36,000 kilometers above the equator, and the right azimuth. Like for me I have to point mine to the Galapagos here in Washington DC, you'll have 100% satellite connectivity and you can send data very quickly to the satellite to your system to your headquarters to your research lab, you know, in under a couple of years. So, that all makes that that gets back to this question of, we've got to solve the battery life and the connectivity issue and a lot of different technologies, impinge on making those solutions possible. I really learned that point, actually, I was just going to say like around with AI saving battery life but I think this has been something. It comes back to that question I had about risk earlier this isn't something I've been thinking about a lot which is basically learning models we know that there's model drift we know that over time, you know, model accuracy on one data set, it might start to degrade. And one of the things that I've been thinking about is how do we make decisions about when and what data to send, so that we can both try to capture, you know, as many of the animals as we can, we're minimizing the number of false positives but we also have some protocols in place that are sending data periodically as just quality control, just as a way to try to understand and have this verification over time as the real world changes that our model is not, you know, deviating from reality and starting to detect fewer and fewer animals, for example. I think that that's actually a really important research question we have to solve like, how do we do real time consistent verification of AI on the edge. I just, you know, I wanted to add on that battery life and connectivity thing that the great benefit is that you know the this problem is one that the entire technological industry is trying to solve right. So, so us as conservationists are benefiting off of the development that's going into that that sort of work but it is that is the thing that that's the limiting factor on on a lot of these sorts of deployments particularly since, you know, some of us work in some very remote parts of this, the world I mean the the project that I talked about here you know we have to hike with everything on our back for, for 30 kilometers into the middle of the rainforest and there's nothing around. And we're already in a pretty remote part of the country and so this is what a lot of these products, you know the solutions end up looking like how do we create something that's going to be reliable. It doesn't last for a long time, you know a big part of it is, you know if the if it fails. How can we make sure it fails in a way that's that's more graceful so you know, don't destroy all the data on the device don't fail in a catastrophic way that's going to mess up the ecosystem even further, you know like there's a lot there's a lot that goes into the design of these services. I'm particularly excited about with field kit is like we work a lot with indigenous scientists and folks in those communities so you know conservation decades ago was really a lot of scientists from Western universities flying into high biodiversity areas collecting a lot of data and then and going back to, you know the places where they came from, and the interaction with folks on the ground just wasn't quite there in the way that I think it is, it's getting there now and and so, you know a lot of the stuff we when we're thinking about what a low, you know, how can we build a low cost sensor that can help X, Y and Z, like we're working with those communities and deploying them I'm actually going in a week and a half to the Amazon and Peru to work with a lot of our partners down there that are out there, collecting water quality data and water level data and trying to understand how they're, you know their little corner of the Amazon is changing, changing over time and I think that has potential both on the, on the hardware side, even though, you know now's very hard time to build hardware because of the supply chains, but also on the data side like how do we make sure that the data comes out as accessible to these communities, easy to understand and explore and you know there's a lot of really cool opportunities there. I could just maybe just jump ahead here just to say, working, we published a paper, two papers in the last few years and science advances, one called the global deal for nature and the other global safety net that maps out where 50% of the earth needs to be conserved to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilize the climate. And one of the most important findings of the paper was that of the 50% that we need to protect to achieve those those goals and avoid these existential threats to humanity that indigenous areas areas that are occupied or maintained or indigenous groups have title to, we're about 35% of the global safety net. In other words, the single most important thing we could do to protect life on earth is to empower and finance indigenous peoples to be able to better protect their lands. We've just been involved in our first project to protect an indigenous reserve in Brazil using our technology, and really even beyond just helping to monitor like how many jaguars are there out there or tapers. It's everything in the Amazon moves by boat so the boats are the roads of that system. And there are a lot of intruders in indigenous reserves that shouldn't be there and they're doing things that they shouldn't be doing whether it's gold mining illegally or hunting, or cutting trees or whatever the activity, and the indigenous peoples they have no early warning system of how to do that so now we have, we have river guard that can detect boats coming up rivers which you could add an acoustic element to as well to pick up the sound of the motors, so that they can have an early warning of intruders in their reserves and give them the heads up. So that's also vitally important for protecting nature in the wild and supporting indigenous people at the same time. Other indigenous First Nations groups have approached us as well in Canada, asking for similar technology so they can monitor incursions into their homelands. I mean I just like to say as well you know the challenges of working in the rainforest environment, how that plays on the integrity of the equipment and the solution to withstand being used within a rainforest. And in an area it's probably the most challenging, demanding environment, you know, on land anyway, you know, especially for communications and getting that communications link. You can choose a more difficult environment really than a rainforest. So, you know, it's one of the things that during the rainforest XPRIZE competition is one of the biggest challenges really is getting that connectivity out. And also making sure that the systems are going to last and work and I know Eric you've done a fair amount of work in making sure that your systems will withstand being used in those environments. So we get to kind of if you can elaborate a little bit on those as well that'd be great. Sure, maybe I'll let somebody else people talk to since I just jumped the line here. Yeah, yeah, I'll I mean it is it's a very challenging environment to work in some of these places just get almost unbelievable amounts of rainfall, you know it's a rainforest and so what the some of the stuff that we've really struggled with is just kind of the topography of those lands a lot of them are very hilly and so yeah communications gets quite difficult. Also, you know we like to do things solar power just because that extends the life on them and solar panels are dirt cheap. However, that doesn't work super well when you're underneath the canopy. So there's a lot of consideration that has to go into into those sort of things as well. So particularly if you're looking at things like, you know, like water quality and stuff in those regions, then you have to deal with biofouling and you know it's just the list of things that you have to you have to worry about grows grows more and more. We've had a lot of stuff eaten by insects and and so it's quite a complicated thing it's a tough problem to solve for. But once you once you get something that's working quite good it's it's it's pretty rewarding slide easier than putting it you know out in my backyard in Los Angeles or something like that right. Yeah I mean even even you know here really can help sometimes you know flat is also a problem you know if it's too flat, you've got no elevation. So there's no where you know for kind of getting a line of site radio connectivity and things like that. I mean that's a great point I mean this this region of Cameroon in this picture behind me, part of the reason why we picked it for this sort of technology that we're implementing is because they have these giant insulbergs that jet out of the rain force that make these beautiful radio tower you know effective radio towers if you put things at the top of that thing then the view you have around it is quite phenomenal right so that's you I think that's a really great point as much as you can use that environment to your advantage like that is the way that you can make these things successful. Yeah I mean rainforest, pretty much the only way you're getting communications is up yeah, you know you're trying to try to punch through all of that, you know, foliage and trees and everything, especially when it's when it's misty and you know then you just dealing with even more humidity it's almost impossible so you know with working radio communications in the rainforest, you're pretty much limited to just work trying to punch straight out straight up through the canopy, and then using all kinds of different techniques to try and use signals especially with HF and using it to basically refract off the atmosphere and back down, you know almost like like an umbrella type coverage, but we're you know we're firing out straight out through the canopy trying to work line of sight on the forest floor is almost unworkable. Which is why I think going to I think where this has to go are sat modems like this this is about $350. It all depends on how valuable is that data to get out you could have multiple sensors talk to the gateway that we built which is this little guy right here that can transmit over sell long range radio or satellite. It's the same as the transmitter and as the receiver you just change the software and job we should talk about this later on, but this is now being manufactured and to me as long as we can get cheap airtime rates and cheap sat modems. You can be anywhere in a rainforest I mean so kev like where we were working with you and in the DRC where you've got the worst situation where you don't have insulbergs but you just have hilly rainforest, how to get stuff out. I think this is really about the only way I've come up with, you know that can reliably transmit data when you need it. So one of the other things so obviously you know I think the data transmission is a universal challenge. One of the things that I think is super interesting. Also about the express is you know we've talked a lot about static sensors static cameras but I think there's a lot of power and the potential of these multimodal data collection systems you know how do we think about you know going beyond just a network of static sensors but like actually active data collection in the environment through autonomous systems I think is really exciting. And some of these other newer types of technology like EDNA like meta bar coding ways that we're trying to to collect variable types of data I don't think that images alone are going to give us the whole bad diversity picture audio alone will give us the whole bad diversity picture and so I'm really excited to see what comes out of the express in terms of these like complicated systems of static and mobile sensors collecting all these different modalities of data. I think that something that if I was to give my vision of where this is going to go in the next couple of years is building on what Sarah said is the most important innovation that I see on the horizon is when we get spectrometers in space. So Greg Asner who I consider the world's leading environmental scientists is head of a NASA mission carbon mapper that's going to send up two spectrometers that basically every 18 days are going to give us a new vegetation map of the earth that can distinguish oil palm plantations from intact rainforest things that are really hard to do from satellite right now. And basically I almost see this as global ecology before spectronomics and global ecology afterwards because the data that we're going to have to ask these questions are going to be phenomenal will have a map of the world's canopy every 18 days. Our challenge everybody on this panel is like how do we figure out if that diversity is still there under the canopy that the spectrometers can't see but if we can put the two of those together. That's the vision for how we monitor life on earth going forward. Yeah, yeah I mean that Greg Asner's work is going to be a game changer once it's once it's put into orbit it's going to be make a huge difference. One of the other things is your kind of collaboration on on producing these solutions you know we all work for nonprofits. And that makes it a little bit easier for your collaborating between ourselves and you know just trying to help everybody out and I think that there's been a great shift. You know over the last kind of five years I've noticed where people are tending to work together a lot more and not be as protective over the solutions and help each other out because we're all trying to achieve the same thing which is you know conserve what's left on you know in these protected areas. So yeah I think it's you know collaborations also pretty strong within the conservation technology industry I suppose. Yeah I mean that you know I'll echo some of the stuff that was already spoken about I think that you know this Rainforest X prize is going to be really a game changer and pushing some of these technologies forward. And then you know like the stuff we're doing the field kid or trail guard or you know a lot of the thought around making these sort of systems smaller cheaper more accessible then you can get that ground true thing that can go with like the space based stuff and we can get a really you know interesting understanding of how these places are changing over time. You know conservation in general like we're not doing so good globally. We have small successes here and there but I think you know with climate change we see the the general trends and the faster we can get these better tools out to people I think the the better we can understand how those changes are happening and potentially try and step in and make some mitigations or or you know help to reduce some of the pressures on some of these ecosystem and and I. You know I think that's the key thing right is like how do we make sure that the work that we're doing contributes to this larger goal and this this final outcome of making sure that the rainforest are there for our children our children's children and everything you know into the future so. Well we're all out of time but I would like to thank our panelists so much for joining and teaching us so much about these new tech solutions that are coming up to help conserve biodiversity and rainforest ecosystems I feel like I learned a lot and hope you did too. If you would like to learn more about XPRIZE and the XPRIZE rainforest, please follow us on social media at XPRIZE and you can find us at XPRIZE.org. Thank you so much for joining and happy World Rainforest Day.