New York State's First Lady, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. Our community values its presidential tradition, and we are grateful to be touched once again by this presidency. And now, Hyde Park and the Hudson Valley is proud to welcome, if you would, Senator... ...doctors have finally put it to life down here as a president. And my great pleasure is to introduce you, James Roosevelt, who makes the grandson of Mrs. Roosevelt, Robin Bowell Kill, a part of the year, son of Representative James Roosevelt, and a close personal friend, he and his wife, President James Roosevelt, come home. We're looking at the same kind of leadership again, Roosevelt, also from New York State, put it very well when he talked about the presidency as a bully pulpit. And this morning, the Boston Globe says that not since FDR, have Americans had a president so able and willing to use that pulpit to persuade people to the right course. And who knows and cares a great deal about a subject that we must all come to grips with this year, the crisis in health care, to Senator Pat Moynihan, one of the most productive people in public life in the 20th century. We wish Governor Cuomo good health. He might have thought to himself on deciding whether to do the responsible thing and take his sickbed today that he's probably heard this speak before and he's probably given it before. I can't tell you how grateful I am to your governor for his support and his wise counsel. We had a delightful time in the White House. Hillary and I and Governor and Mrs. Cuomo not very long ago. It's something I've treasured for a long time. I'm glad to see you and Lieutenant Governor Lundee and Attorney General Abrams and members of the Congress and members of both parties from the New York Assembly and the State Senate. The people here who are here to cause you are Americans, Republicans, Democrats, independents. I'm glad to see you all here in this monument to America's possibility. I wanted to come here for a thousand reasons, some of which are obvious. During the New York primary, which was a successful conclusion but rather rough and its fragile availability, I was absolutely enthralled by a book about President Roosevelt called The First Class Temperament by a man named Jeffrey. The thing that moved me most was the way President Roosevelt came to grips with the fact of his podium and learned to live with it and learned to triumph over it and learned to use it to make himself stronger inside and not to be defeated by it. And ever since I have been transformed from someone who had a mild interest in coming here to someone who had a burning passion to see this place, and I am honored to be here today. I want to say one more word if I might about Senator Moynihan because we've worked together over the years on a lot of things. I helped him to rewrite the welfare laws of our nation in the late 80s and what he said was the most significant social welfare reform in 30 years, if only we could implement it and one of the reasons I ran for president is to try to change the welfare system as we know it. I have watched him over more than two decades personally warn us about the decline of America's families, the development of the new and possibly permanent underclass in America, the importance of restoring the value of work to our social problems. But that came to go wanting about the breakup of what was then the Soviet Union and most people thought that he was speaking a foreign language. And I can tell you that with leadership like this, we can solve the problems this country faces today. I think of that because it's away from here when we landed in the airplane and all along the way, there were people, school children, hundreds of them flying away with their signs and young people at Marist College having a 40-50 anyway. The first fifth, one sign said, I want to give something to my country, another said. One, I might have to give a trip to the doctor and say I want her to pay more taxes, I couldn't believe that. One sign said, shake them up. One sign said, give Bill the chance. One said, turn my country around. Another said, I've got it ready to change. Another said, just do something. Country's all about to. I couldn't believe the number of people who were there. And I say that because as much as anything else, I think our country now is infused with a new sense of possibility. One of the things it really used to depress me as I crossed America last year was the look I saw in so many people's eyes of skepticism that almost a painful unwillingness to believe that we can make things better, that we can change, that we can come to grips with the challenges of our time and overcome them and move forward. And one of the things that I think perhaps the most important thing that was achieved in the last election year was we had a huge increase in turnout, an even bigger increase among younger people. And now every day, the White House switchboard and the mailroom are fuller than they have been in decades and decades because people believe that this country has been kept going through two centuries now because of the peculiar mix of the energy of its people at the grassroots level and the vision of its leaders. But if you have one without the other, the country can't go forward. There have been times in the past when leaders have foreseen the future and know what needed to be done, but there was no connection with the people and so nothing could happen. There have been many times, I'm convinced, when the people have been ahead of their leaders, but if they have no visionary leaders, nobody could put all that energy together with the levers of public authority, nothing happened. We all hope, I think, from whatever perspective we come, that we now have a moment in our history where we have the energy of the people in a direction we can take. I ran for president because I believe this was a critical moment in our country's history. And there have been many over the last two centuries. I think of the founding fathers who actually welded a nation out of 13 independent colonies when many people, maybe if you'd even taken a poll a majority of the people would have said, who wants one army? Who wants one currency? Who wants to really give up all this independence we have in New York or South Carolina? What do we have in common with those people down there? I think of Thomas Jefferson. Some people thought he was crazy when he pointed up $15 million to buy something then called the Louisiana Purchase, which most Americans could not even imagine than hardly anyone had ever seen and if he hadn't done it since I live on the edge of my head, you'd be listening to somebody from somewhere else give this piece of that. I think of Abraham Lincoln. We now take it for granted that the Union would be preserved and that the slaves would be freed and all this would happen. The truth is that a great many people thought there was no way to hold this nation together. And a great deal of what did it was his vision and his sheer will. I think of President Roosevelt in the depths of the Depression having gone through his personal journey to cope with his personal problems summoning interior strength and reserve to live the nation's vision to make people believe again that by taking one step at a time by coming and building a beautiful school like this with the WPA that if you did enough things like this and you just kept trying long enough sooner or later we wouldn't go forward. We would work our way out of it by what he called then bold, persistent experimentation. Today, I think we need that kind of experimentation based on the plain evidence that we are in a rut. What we have been doing is not working to deal with the problems we face. For about two decades through administrations of both presidents we have been steadily, both parties presidents we've been steadily moving into a global economy which is much more competitive where other countries have been growing more rapidly than we and moving toward our standard of living where we have to compete in all forms of economic life in ways that can force us to endure real pain as you folks in this part of the country have seen recently with the difficulties that a magnificent company, IBM has been forced to come to grips with. This is not an isolated event this is part of the passage of time in the economic realities in which we live. That global economy abroad has presented us with a lot of challenges and a lot of opportunities here but our ability to deal with it has been limited by a lot of the educational and training and social problems we have here at home. Our racial and ethnic and income diversity the high rates of violence and the whole pockets of poverty we have in this country and lack of investment. We've seen that a lot of things that are just not quite fitting very well and now we've had two decades in which the wages of most Americans have been stagnant compared to inflation and we look at the rising cost of education, healthcare working hard for that income that is less because of these sweeping trends. For 12 years we have tried a clear approach to our country's problems. When President Reagan was elected in 1980 he ran with a clear sense of what he wished to do. He said the government is the problem here it causes inflation it causes middle class people to have trouble what we need is a very restricted role for a government and we will also lower taxes on everybody but most of all on the wealthiest Americans because if we give them their money back they will invest it in America, create jobs drive up incomes, increase jobs and we will be the most prosperous country in the world. Well, I believe that free enterprise is the engine of growth in America. We are fundamentally a conservative, private, capitalist free enterprise country. Every other nation with which we compete decided to take a slightly different course. I said to themselves in Germany and Japan well we're in a global economy in which the government and the people in the private sector have to work together we've got to work together to train and educate our people as well as possible we've got to work together to have policies that encourage investment over consumption so we can always be competitive we've got to have good trade policy and we've got to do things that make it possible to create high wage, high growth jobs so that all the students who go to school here will have a future and so that America will be strong what we have done is to try for 12 years to cramp the role of government now look what's happened in practice in practice we have lower taxes on the wealthiest Americans taxes on the middle class have actually gone up in the last 12 years we have run a horrendous government deficit the deficit is now four times as big as it was in 1980 we have seen spending go up in areas that the government would have to move to control mostly health care and then interest on the debt because when the deficit gets bigger and bigger you spend more money on the debt so we have reduced investment, increased the debt moved money upward so that there's been much more inequality of income distribution but we have not seen the kind of investment that creates high wage, high growth jobs in the emerging technologies that guarantee a future for all the young people that live here and throughout our land so I ran for president because I really believe we ought to try a different course not to blame past presidents if you look at what's happened in Washington none of it could have happened if there hadn't been bipartisan support for the course and support in Congress as well as in the White House this is not about blaming I want to simply take responsibility as I told Congress the other night if we turn this country around I don't care who gets the credit for it either I just think the time has come to make a change we have tried one thing 12 years it obviously has problems it is time to change change for change, what does it mean? it means to me that we should do the following things first of all the government should pursue a policy of increasing investment in those things which contribute to a growing economy what are those things? we should invest more than we are now and more toward what our competitors do in the infrastructure of the country and transportation and communications and environmental cleanup in those things which increase productivity and put people to work it means we should do whatever it takes to educate people for a lifetime at very high levels because the skill level of the workforce is the single most important determinant of income and the capacity to grow new jobs rapidly as new areas of opportunity open up it means that we should invest in partnerships with the private sector which will determine the future of the country and it means we should not give up on those areas where we have a lead let me just give you two examples one is in computer technology and information technology that's why what's happening some of our big companies try to revitalize this whole sector of our economy I'll give you another example which doesn't affect New York much but it affects our country desperately because aerospace, Boeing just announced 23,000 layoffs when we know that aerospace jobs are growing worldwide high wage jobs and we sat here for 10 years and let Europe put 26 billion dollars into an Airbus program direct government subsidies to throw Boeing workers, McDonald's workers and other aerospace workers in America out of work because we said we don't practice those kind of partnerships so we have got to face the fact that the debt gets bigger and bigger and bigger two bad things happen bad thing number one is that Congress spends more of your tax money every year paying interest on the debt than investing in your future it's now up to 15 cents on the dollar if we do not change present spending patterns when you hear people oppose the program I outlined ask them what the cost of the status quo is four years like we have for the last deficit will be 650 billion dollars a year we'll be spending about 22 cents of every one of your tax dollars just paying interest on the debt we'll be spending by then because of the growth of healthcare costs about 65 cents of your tax dollars on entitlements and being in Congress will be a matter of how you spend 5 or 6 cents on every dollar the rest of it will just be rubber stamped you can just have a computer instead of Congress I know what you're thinking good job forgive me Senator but you get it it's squeezing the life out of the money you're giving up in taxes second reason even more important is the more money the government borrows every year the less money there is for people to borrow in the private sector and the higher the cost the money is just since the election since we made it clear that there was going to be a determined effort to lower the deficit interest rates long term have dropped considerably I'll come back to this in a moment but if you think about it this year if we pass this budget we'll borrow us long term to finance a business to finance a car, to finance a home to finance credit card purchases everybody that has access to variable interest rates will have those interest rates go down and in my judgment virtually everybody who has credit will pay in higher taxes and that's the area is to cut inessential government spending I've been president for weeks I've been president for weeks and I've found things that I wouldn't believe the White House when I became president was running on Jimmy Carter's telephone system and Lyndon Johnson's switchboard and this high high-wage, this high technology era with a procurement system that would have broken Einstein's brain Einstein's brain needs to be changed in the federal government there still are but in four weeks we have cut the White House staff by 25% starting the beginning of the next fiscal year and reorganized the White House so it will work more efficiently not just cut but serve better we have in this budget administrative cuts in every government department totally 14% over the next four years their savings is $9 billion and there have been 150 specific cuts in government programs including programs that help a lot of good people but I don't think we can afford at the present level anymore programs like the two uranium enrichment facilities we have when we now know we only need one and I was in one congressional district what are those two facilities are this morning these are you can say these cuts are not difficult but when you look into the eyes of people who may be personally affected by them they are including reductions in the interest subsidies to the rural electrification authority something that brought electricity to my relevance in my state which is still a very major force things that have some good in them but we simply can't afford them we cut things out that have no good purpose anymore a whole slew of commissions you remember when we had the tall ships coming to New York Harbor from the Bicentennial remember that's a long time ago remember that there's still a Bicentennial commission one example it's the funniest but not the most costly there are a lot of others involves subsidizing activities more than we should the super fund for example has in my judgment too much contribution from the taxpayer too little from those who are responsible for the problem and none of the money is being spent right so far as I want people it's a subsidy to sheep growers in July by a senator one and a half by a New York still race sheep we had sheep on the farm when I was a boy so I'm more sensitive to this in some way but when I got to studying this we started a subsidy to sheep growers in World War I because we needed plenty of wool for uniforms but the program is still on the close exactly as it was exactly not designed to help the small farmers stay in business necessarily but across the board subsidy of that kind so I recommended not to get back all these things have constituencies and prove that we can cut things that when Roosevelt talked about bold and persistent experimentation you know what an experiment is in science it is trying out a new thesis if it works you incorporate it you build on it you go on to the next experiment if it doesn't work you quit government has a one way experiment we're very good at starting things and absolutely terrible at stopping them so what we're going to try to do is start some new things I want a fully fun head start I want to be a new national service teachers we have to stop doing some things we used to do to free up for some money for things we should do and we have to cut more in the past then we're going to spend in the future because we have to use some of that money to reduce the deficit too so I asked you to support that now in four weeks we found 150 specific cuts as I said in the congress the other night in all good conscience to both the republicans and the democrats I've just been there for a week some of them have been there a lot longer than I have and if anybody's got any other ideas I'd like to have them I just got started I want more and more I also think that we have to raise some more money I now believe what I said might be true in the campaign but I didn't think it was that we have to raise it from a broader base than just people that make over $100,000 and I want to deal with that in the election in December the government increased its estimates of our deficit by about $15 billion a year over the next four years now if I had stayed with exactly the same plan that I recommended in the campaign the first thing my critics are now typing for raising taxes would say is always going to increase the deficit always being too optimistic and I decided that when they revised the deficit figures up one more time $50 billion a year that somebody had to take this thing and shake it up and say we are definitely going to have a plan of spending cuts, new investments and relative increases in this debt then and I plead guilty to doing that and I think almost any of you if you had been in my circumstance would have done the same thing if you were thinking about what was in the long term best interest of the country and you can see it by how much interest rates have come down just since the election people who control these things desperately want to believe that our government can exercise some discipline again that we can have some focus that we can show some restraint and activity now the taxes that I propose to raise let me just basically go through them essentially three there are more minor ones but the big ticket items are as follows number one an increase in the income tax on the top 1.2% of income perverse an increase in the corporate income tax on corporations that have income in excess of $10 million a year number two an increase in the income subject to taxation of people who draw social security but also have other income in excess of $32,000 a year if there are couples or individuals in excess of $25,000 a year there otherwise anyone who's not paying tax on social security now will not pay tax under my plan that's 80% of social security recipients the upper 20% will be asked to pay taxes on a higher percentage of their income but we will still leave that income free so that almost all of them will get back into the social security system plus interest without taxing the rest will be subject to the income tax I think that is


Hello, this is Waylon Chow. Welcome to this series on forming contracts. This video is part D on intention to form legal relations. Remember, there are three essential elements to form a contract. We will focus on the second element, which is an intention to create legal relations. Here are our friends, Ahmed and Sonya. They're doing some studying together at a cafe.  I wish I had one like that and Sonya says, yeah I love it. I would never sell it and Ahmed says, okay, how about if I give you $10,000 for it and Sonya says, wow, I'll take that so the next day Sonya asked Ahmed to pay that $10,000 for the laptop Is Ahmed obligated to buy Sonya's laptop for $10,000? One of the essential requirements to form a legally binding contract is an intention to create legal relations So we're asking, did the parties intend to form a legally binding contract? So we're trying to figure out. What did they intend? We can't simply read the minds of the parties to determine their actual intent and We actually don't even try to figure out what the parties were actually thinking So instead we ask the reasonable person Specifically, in the particular situation, would a reasonable person believe that the parties intended to create a legally enforceable agreement? Or another or a different or a variation of that question is Was a binding agreement reasonably expected based on the circumstances? So just telling us to ask the reasonable person is not all that helpful. It doesn't give us any specific guidance on Determining whether or not there was intention The courts have provided some helpful guidance to help us determine whether or not There is intention to form legal relations One thing the courts have said is that a reasonable person ignores unrealistic and exaggerated proposals Courts have also said that political promises are not intended to be legally binding The courts have also provided us with a two-step process to determine intention The first step is to set a presumption The presumption depends on the particular type of context of situation if the situation was in a commercial context the parties are presumed to intend legal relations if The context was a family or social context then the parties are presumed to not intend To form legal relations. So once you set the appropriate presumption There is a second step to determine whether or not that presumption has been rebutted or confirmed Based on the actual facts or evidence of what happened We so we look at the actual things that happened in a particular fact situation And we ask ourselves are there facts that a reasonable person would see as indicating intent or lack of intent Do those do those facts rebut or confirm the presumption that we had set in step one and also Putting an agreement in writing and signing it is usually a clear indication of intention to create legal relations So is poor Ahmed obligated to pay ten thousand dollars to Sonia for her laptop The the issue here is whether or not Ahmed and Sonia had an intention to create a legally binding contract So we need to apply that two-step process to determine intention Firstly, we presume there was no such intention since the agreement was made in a social context While Ahmed and Sonia were meeting as friends studying together at the cafe Secondly so that second step that presumption is not rebutted by anything else that happened in particular The agreement for the sale of the laptop was not put into writing as well The exaggerated price of ten thousand dollars for the laptop confirms a lack of intention to form a binding contract So therefore we can conclude that there was no intention to form legal relations and Ahmed is not obligated to buy Sonia's laptop


Many traders are confused and really wonder why certain supply and demand zones don't work and you know the short answer really is is that Fundamental analysis is really what drives price and if you're on the wrong side of the fundamentals Then there's no technical analysis. That's really going to stand in the way of that You're just going to get crushed time and time again and so Technical traders who typically just trade, you know highs and lows Totally oblivious to the forces and entities that are really driving price And so when price came up to this supply zone, which looked like a really nice supply zone We're making you know new highs for example here We've pulled back a little bit with demand zone and we've come up here traders would say all right Well, I missed out on this demand zone So now is just trying time to you know attempt to get short But they would have been first of all trading in the really the wrong direction overall in terms of Understanding why the Australian dollar was likely to appreciate against the Swiss franc Over the medium to long term one of the things that we knew in the trading 180 group This is our Australia fundamental analysis channel Is that according to the experts and the analysts and just our own fundamental analysis is that the Australian dollar really Was a buy for several reasons the main one really being China reopening and risk They're being a bit more risk on and you can have a read you want to pause the video have a read of the analysis for example and as well as This as well talking about the the Australian dollar China's reopening demand driven improvement, etc. etc, right? so We will be even even buyers of the of the of the Australian dollar since the beginning of the year some of the traders Have actually been buyers of the Australian dollars before them actually last year But I kind of recently got on got involved at the beginning of the year Maybe around about the fifth sixth seventh somewhere around here I was a change my bias to go long anyways so where we're at now is that traders would be looking at short trades and So they've been you know looking to to go in short not really understanding that In fact, the Australian dollar was a buy even more so because on that day the 20 I think was 25th January the 25th The this is an article from 25th January 2023 inflation rise means more rate hikes for the Reserve Bank of Australia and so Forex is really exchange rates are really driven by Free main things, which is more central bank monetary policy, which is dictated to them really by inflation and GDP as well as obviously some sort of risk sentiment so Ultimately Inflation data came out. I think it was the the highest since I think the 90s or something like that And so what you saw is the effect of higher inflation means higher high rate in hikes Which is typically appreciative of a currency and so you get this move You know to to the upside a continued move to the upside Hence the reason why this level of supply Didn't work and the wide demand zones are more likely to work in In this scenario and waiting for pullbacks Then supply zones are to work and if you're trading against the fundamentals and you don't understand why then you're you know Always gonna get crushed and you know wonder why the technical strategy doesn't work and bounce some strategy to strategy when really and truly it's your Guess the lack of understanding of how fundamentals actually work And as I said, there's no technical analysis level that's going to work in the face of fundamental or risk sentiment analysis What you want to do is trade alongside The banks who are the ones that are really buying and understand the fundamentals and they and whereas the social media YouTubers the majority of them anyway I just you know buying and selling up, you know random levels not understanding really, you know The where the smart money is positioning. So if you do want to learn a lot more about fundamental analysis Go to the trading 180.com website and really it's the serious Package for serious traders and Yeah, you also get the fundamental analysis spreadsheet which I Show traders how to use and also you can see my buyers has been on the long side And this basically just keeps traders. Hopefully on the right side more often than not anyways guys Hope you enjoyed the video if you've got any feedback, let me know take care and speak to you soon


Hi, thank you for joining the webinar today. I will talk about the why of product management Basically, it's about how you can leverage product management to grow your product Before we start I like to give a quick intro of myself. I'm Joseph. I work at canva beauty plus and you can make up in product rows I got my master's degree in computer science from Qingland University in Taiwan I've always been a product man. I've always been a product person throughout my career. I would like to split today's presentation into three parts how to use final analysis to product strategy Must knows when conducting a be testing how important it is to understand users and competitors so um If you do not understand your users and in product conversions and you do not have product management to help prioritize the tasks It's very likely that you'll end up building all the features Which complicates your experience? Of course That may also be a bit too risk a bit realistic because if you cannot break even Your product may have lost lots of money and the company will start investing in your portfolio or team So I'm just to conclude why product management You want product management to help you achieve business goals With the most prioritized sections or resources in a given time Product managers are a strategist for your company to succeed or grow So let's dive into the first part How to use final analysis to do product strategy first thing first How do you analyze users in a more scientific way? To succeed in this I highly recommend you do a thorough final analysis Whatever your product is We can generally break it down into you know First first time experience where you know users try to understand what value your product is offering Secondly, how do users engage with your product or features? Whether they can find a features is it easy to understand this features Are they satisfied with the effects the features bring to them? Thirdly, do users convert into subscribers and active users? How much do you earn from subscriptions and advertising? Do they return? Do they return? I'd like to give you an example here by using a subscription funnel Let's assume your product as you know Subscription-based product with free trials Here we define several user states New or return users, trailing users, subscribers, retained subscribers, and turning users So you can define the conversions of each like trial rate, trial to pay rate, subscriber renewal rate You can check each conversion by new or existing users market or a country to identify potential issues and make assumptions To be more confident in the assumptions, you can do users research to prioritize the problems to handle For example, to increase the trial rate, your current issue may be you know Because of a lack of discoverability of your entry point Meaning your VIP entry is not apparent to any users So you can make it more prominent. It may also be because you know Your copies are not attractive enough So you may want to improve them for discounts, free trial, etc To include Sorry to increase the trial to pay rate, you may want to remind users of the privileges they earn during the free trials To increase the subscription, the subscription renewal rate We may want to consider offering more discounts for higher LTV Plans to retain more first-time subscribers So as you know and you can see here You can brainstorm product strategies based on each conversion's number in the funnel Just one thing I'd like to emphasize is you must ensure the data is accurate Otherwise you're basically Strategizing based on something not so solid. So please confirm with your data team. Well I just presented a concept for funnel analysis and an example of like a subscription funnel Now I like to give you a big picture of how to strategize This is the framework I designed myself You need to strategize because you have limited resources So on step one, you need to define a key matrix Somebody may call it no star metric. For example, your product may define The subscription to trial rate as your key metric Step two, you need to find key actions For example, you know for the trial rate the key action is to initiate the free trials Step three, you need to define a key finals and their conversions for example to initiate the free trials There are two conversions entry point a subscription page and a click-through rate of the subscription button Later on firstly, you will need to come you will need to conduct qualitative and quantitative data analysis such as user analysis and data and business analysis Let's talk about user analysis first It involves user research in a form of interviews testing and questionnaires You can also you know analyze your app app store reviews or Utilize the reports from third-party platforms or as a third-party Companies to help you conduct a user analysis Then you know, let's talk about data and business analysis It involves like fun analysis user profile analysis business analysis compare analysis and market analysis I Personally very much love to use statistic, but it really depends on your company's pain point and budget Secondly, you have to identify problems and make assumptions and prioritize the problems you have to tackle Lastly, you will need to devise potential solutions usually we need to Design MVP like minimum viable product to verify assumptions then invest more resources into phase 2 and future phases Given no assumption is validated yet. We'll need to run experiments as for how to run experiments. I would cover it later So I like to combine, you know the company goes With final analysis to help you understand better and more about how to do product strategies Let's assume you are working on a subscription-based product still Here we have two company goes mile and ARR Firstly for a mile we can break it down and to acquire new users and boost Activeness which is rather than to retention Because you know monthly new and existing users compose mile obviously So for new users you can have a list two directions organic and not organic user acquisition channels for Existing users you can improve, you know localization and core product user experience design stuff like that Secondly for ARR the team go is to increase subscribers We can actually just break it down into break it down into your child rate, child to pay rate and subscription retention rate or renewal rate whatever you call it This directions all have their relevant product strategies So let's just use Monetization strategy as an example here as we discussed already before You may actually have three product directions in the strategy doc Substitution growth pay feature implementation and pricing strategy Define the success metrics for them and a product strategy for itch for example For subscription growth you may want to improve your Subscription dialogue discoverability, so more than three users will be likely to convert and see your subscribers You may also want to improve your copies or text For pay features you may consider driving you may consider diving into user analysis more before you invest in lots of resources If you're a photo editing app, you may consider Implementing unique features such as painful removers and wrinkle firm features for subscribers Last panelist, you know for pricing you may consider localizing the pricing and payment methods for optimization Now let's talk about a be testing first thing is Why do you need to run a be testing? So you want to run a be testing because you want to grow your product Direct feature routes are risky especially for revenue changes and Nobody is a hundred percent certain about a success of assumptions So we got our own experiments without a doubt So when running a be testing, I would like to summarize some key points first User segmentation is always important for getting the most valuable information You must remember new and existing users have very different user behavior Also Users on in different markets and I was for Android. They are very different Secondly, you must compare data You must compare data Apple to Apple There is no use in comparing data from different data platforms unless they are having exactly the same data definitions and ways of implementation But usually They wouldn't be so much like comparable because for example data from Google Play console and data from Apple, you know connect They might have different, you know definitions for retention rates in this case I wouldn't be comparing this to numbers and I will make sure that like my audience is understand Which number is from which platform I'm using for sure Last but not least you must ensure that there are no unexpected factors like Experiment experiment overlapping if there is such a case you have to be very aware So last but not least Let's talk about how important it is to understand users and competitors So when you're analyzing users and competitors, what do you learn? So basically you can understand like who the users are and where do they go very often Like users rose their concerns motivation when they are trying to purchase a product Also like the challenges they're facing when using your product or when they're trying to you know purchase on the subscription plan stuff like that Also on the size of the company they are working at is it like big size or a small size or medium sized? You can try to understand your like your user persona Which industry do your users come from like are they more like from fashion industries? Are they more like coming from? Tech industries stuff like that and why do they come to your product? What are the pain points you fix for them? What are some issues? You help them solve or resolve and What are your selling points? What are they staying are retaining and use your product? so usually You want to understand users and competitors by asking, you know several different several different questions in the interview So on this page is basically some idea about like how you can do that So I like to separate them into two directions the business level and in product conversion level For the business level you may ask about you know product strength and the product research stuff like that So for market strengths more like you try to understand the gap The distance between you and your competitors in different markets for example draw box and Google Drive Their product features my same quite similar But the way they are marketed and different markets might create the chances for each other for example Google Drive might be able to steal some users from draw box By using some marketing you know initiatives some marketing strategies and vice versa, but how to identify the opportunity We should do some you know research We should try to understand your users and different markets so Let's try to talk about this too So For the business level you may ask about the market strength and product research As I said for example, you may ask why users are or are not paying for your product and why They do why are they doing so for your competitor XYZ This is like a very important, you know question to ask about because in the past experiences I use this to single questions to identify a lot of issues like users do not understand like the wording on the entry point in iOS or you know enjoy it and Because the product I was in charge of it's offering free trials They thought they don't have to pay because of the wording so we then tap on the subscription dialogue and see a lot of like You know notifications about paying They got mad about it So that's the reason why like the click-through rate of that in English speaking countries is so low and I didn't recognize that like until I really did the user research with the users and just by changing a copy of that to make users aware of you know The the substitution plans the conversions increase a lot a lot more than before So such a thing is like I Would say a little hand fruit, but the first thing is you have to identify them before you actually implement them So you may also conduct, you know something like Business health track research for comprehensive analysis.  We all know that like for use acquisition. We have organic and inorganic weights Especially especially for inorganic use acquisition channel. We want to make sure that like we are adopting performance marketing in a methodology very thoroughly So If you do this business health track at least it can help you filter out the markets. You might not win over right So and also you may want to understand the trigger and barriers of the users when they're trying to use or use your product You may you might get a lot of insights from that report or analysis So Basically, this is some sharing I can give for the basis level analysis Also for product research, I think you can ask about what our users favorite existing features and what innovation are they expecting? so why are you asking the question is because Normally we might be relying on our own brand too much But you have to make sure that like everything you deliver everything you're asking your engineers to build or implement This things should be directly relevant to what users want you have to fix their pin points so people always ask What do we have to build for a product ABC? Usually make sure that you ask with your users you ask your users of what I want in your product. So you know your directions and For the end product conversion level research I think there's several questions you can ask about it. Let's take the subscription growth as an example you may want to understand why users are incentivized by your Subscription screen or like your subscription plans stuff like that So you might hear a lot of thoughts a lot of reasons why they do not want to pay a lot reasons why they want to pay stuff like that For the like the insights about They want to pay you can use this for your targeted dialogue to convert more users For the reasons why users do not want to pay for it Just try to gain some products initiatives and improve your subscription products better and Why are users into certain subscription plans? so you try to understand and users like colleges psychological status and Try to leverage that and to your paywall design and convert more users I think that's something you can gain from this question and what are the potential initiatives As I mentioned if you do understand like how each users engages In the product conversion in the product and the company each conversion of the funnel I think you'll try to verify your assumptions better and try to prioritize better and thus build a much better product and That's two questions are very Critical as well like how do users engage with first-time experiences? What does that mean? What is first-time experiences? I think I explained it in the beginning. So if a new user Can be satisfied with your product? It's more likely than this user will retain and become loyal and even convert into a subscriber so If you understand whether users are satisfied with your first-time experiences, you can basically try to devise several strategies such as you know onboarding experiences locked-out experiences and How to define the default effects of your features in app or on your website stuff like that and How do users engage with your end product features? So when they become loyal or activated or active in your products Usually how do they engage with your features stuff like that? so You can leverage a lot of knowledge or insights from this like for not just in product but also from you know your EDM email direct marketing strategies or push notification strategies or even you can just leverage this insights on to your US acquisition strategies stuff like that so to conclude You want to Analyze your users and competitors because you want to make sure That like your product has a selling point or unique selling point you are really solving your users pinpoints and You are investing in resources in the right direction and You are really improving your product's performances like quantitatively So I believe for any company Users and competitors analysis can always you know be super helpful to product strategies So before the end of this session, let's summarize what you have learned so first Fauna analysis is the key to product strategy to AB testing helps you grow your product for sure three users and Matters analysis matter to your product analysis and also strategy, of course So here is my link then Feel free to search for Joseph Chan And me as a friend if needed So that's all about my presentation today Thank you. I hope you'll learn something from this session


Hello and welcome to the session. Let us understand the following question today. ABC is an equilateral triangle of site 2A, find each of its attitudes. Now, before starting with the solution, let us draw an equilateral triangle ABC of site 2A units where AD is perpendicular to BC. Here is a triangle ABC with each of its sides as 2A and AD is perpendicular to BC. Now, AD is perpendicular to BC, then D is the midpoint of BC. Therefore, CD is equal to half of BC. We can write CD in terms of BC and BC is given to us as 2A. So, CD is equal to half multiplied by 2A. Now, 2 and 2 gets cancelled, so it is equal to A. That is, CD is equal to A. Since triangle ADC is a right triangle right-angled at D. Therefore, by Pythagoras theorem, we can write AC square is equal to AD square plus CD square. AC is given to us as 2A, so we can write 2A. The whole square is equal to AD square plus CD we have found it is A, so plus A square. Now, it is equal to 4A square is equal to AD square plus A square. Therefore, AD square is equal to 4A square minus A square. Therefore, AD square is equal to 3A square AD is equal to under root 3A. Hence, each of altitude is equal to A root 3. Therefore, required answer is A root 3. I hope you understood the question. Bye and have a nice day.


I want to begin by saying that this is a remembrance of my brother who taught me the faith and who was pretty well known to pretty much all of you with his writing and his daring thinking. I want to begin with two remembrance of the first ABS plenary session I gave, which was in December of 1977, 38 years ago, there were about 60 of us in Bolton, Ontario, but among us were the founders of ABS, Doug Martin, my brother, Hossin Dinesh, and it was wonderful. David Smith was then an ABM, and he was here a few days ago. I don't know if he still is, but good to see him. He's still doing karate. I used to do taekwondo, but can't do it anymore. My presentation then was the metaphorical nature of physical reality, and I've pretty well been writing that same concept ever since, and that's sort of what this is going to be about. The epiphany of the prophet is, of course, focused on the point at which they have the first intimations of the revelation, and we really wonder what that's about. First we begin with the idea that it's amazing that God is an incredible subcontractor. He is among those who delegate the authority of himself, the most great delegator. Now that's the totally non-authoritative text of me, but it's a message from me to the Executive Committee that if God can delegate authority, so must you, because they put this whole thing together themselves, and I know they're going to welcome the rest when they get through with it, but this has been a wonderful experience for all of us, and it's come a long ways in 38 years from 60 people in a room in Bolton, Ontario. It really is. We're going to go over three stages of the manifestation. We're going to focus on the part of the second stage, which is when they have this intimation of their revelation, trying to figure out what that's all about, and what they're all about insofar as who are they really? Are they men transformed into something else? Are they just inspired individuals? What is their ontology and what is happening at this moment when they intimate that revelation? And then finally we'll deal with the post-incarnate stage. Now I'm dealing with the two other stages, the pre-incarnate stage and the post-incarnate stage, because they tell us something about what must be happening in that moment of intimation, what I've called epiphany, because it seems like they're suddenly enlightened, and yet really epiphany is not the correct word, and it's not the word the writings use. They use the words of the guardian, which is the intimation, the first intimations of the revelation. So let's begin with the pre-incarnate stage, before they take on a human persona. The prophets, unlike us the guardian says, are pre-existent, pre-existent. That means, of course, that they lived before they associate with the human temple in the world of the Spirit. And as Baha'u'llah himself says in the agdas, oh people of the bayan, we barely set foot within the school of God when ye lay slumbering, and we pursued the tablet while ye were fast asleep. By the one true God we read the tablet ere it was revealed. While ye were unaware, and we had perfect knowledge of the book, when ye were yet unborn. Meaning he knew the revelation before he even came to this earth. I infer. Again, these are all my ideas, and you can read the writings yourself and decide what you think they mean. People of the bayan is always a derogatory term when used by Baha'u'llah. You may not know that, but look at any time you see that phrase. It's derogatory in the sense that it's disdainful of those who are still following the bayan when the Bob said explicitly, when he, him whom God shall manifest, appears. If you're following the bayan, you're not following me, for I tell you to follow him. And so he doesn't use this term until after the Ayame Shirag, the days of stress, and then the most great separation where the people are no longer called Babis, but they're called Baha'is. They choose where to become manifest before they appear, obviously. How else could they choose, unless they did it before they became associated with a temple, a human temple? And where do we get that from? We get it from the advent of divine justice by the guardian who says, in the light of this fundamental principle, it should always be born in mind, can it be sufficiently emphasized that the primary reason why the Bob and Baha'u'llah chose to appear in Persia and to make it the first repository of their revelation was because, well, I won't read the rest because a lot of you are Persians and you won't find it nice, but most of you have fled from Persia for this very reason because it had sunk to such ignominious depths and manifested so great a perversity and that perversity is still persisting, I'm afraid. The pre-incarnate stage also has to do with their choosing the persona with whom they will associate. Now, this is my inference. You may not agree with it. Am I being called? Should I go towards that light in my eyes? Yet, as Abdu'l-Baha'u'llah later explained, the dissolution of the tabernacle, where in the soul of the manifestation of God had chosen temporarily to abide, signalized its release from the restrictions which an earthly life had of necessity imposed upon it. Now, the important part of that for me is had chosen to abide. Now, you may say it just means he chose to manifest himself, but to me it sounds like he chose the persona, that the manifestations have something to do with, okay, where can I best appear that will have the greatest effect by showing the power of God to transform even the lowliest people or the most ignominious people and what would be the best guys I can appear in to bring this off. So if the people of Israel are waiting for a king on the throne of David, I'll appear as the illegitimate son of a carpenter. God will blow their mind. So we go then to the incarnate stage of the manifestation and we go to the powers of the manifestation. They are omniscient at will, which means I guess sometimes they choose to shut out all the clutter of everything they could know. You can interpret it how so ever you wish. Shogi Effendi further points out that he is not like the prophets omniscient at will. They're omniscient. They know everything or can know when they choose to. They have foreknowledge of their own revelation. Of course, we know that because it's already said that they know about the revelation when they're in the school, the prophets before they're even manifest in a human form. But this of course is an anecdote, or referring to an anecdote that you're all familiar with, of Zunuzi who was promised by the Bob that he would behold the face of him whom God will make manifest. And he did, walking in the streets of Kabbalah. He recognized in the countenance of Bahá'u'lláh, him whom God will make manifest. And Bahá'u'lláh of course said to him, you're right, but keep it quiet. Not now is not the time. One of the most devoted disciples of the Bob was celebrated, Sheikh Hassan Zunuzi. The Bob had intimated to him that he would attain the presence of the promised Hossain in the city of Karbala, where Sheikh Hassan used to live. Bahá'u'lláh visited Karbala in 1851, about a year before his imprisonment in the Siyah child. So of course he knows he's going to be a manifestation, they know it very early on. Not going to be that he is a manifestation and he will reveal himself. Thirdly, they choose when to reveal themselves. Now this is important because the Bob, of course, his religion was supposed to last nine years. And it did because nine years after 1844 and 1853, December of 1952 and for the next four months, Bahá'u'lláh received the intimations of his revelation in the Siyah child. And that was nine years after the revelation of the Bob. But in a letter from God to God, and that's how this tablet begins, the second tablet to him whom God will make manifest by the Bob, and the letter begins, this is a letter from God to God. Because in their station of essential unity they are the highest form of God that we in this station of our existence can understand. And they will remain so, but we'll get to that later. So in this letter the Bob says, I know you can do whatever you wish, but on behalf of my loved ones, would you please withhold revealing yourself until nineteen years, nineteen years in 1844, fifty-three, sixty-three, excuse me, when Bahá'u'lláh revealed himself in the Garden of Rizván in Baghdad. Do thou grant a respite of nineteen years as a token of favor so that those who have embraced this cause may be graciously rewarded by thee. And of course what the Bob foreknew was that all of the leaders of the Bobby faith would be slaughtered, that his writings would be only minimally dispersed, and that there would be no chance for the faith to spread and become established as it should. And so that was the job that Bahá'u'lláh took on when he was exiled to Baghdad and rebuilt the Bobby community. First he attempted, could not, because everything he did was perceived as being a power takeover by the Azalees. And so are Suviyaz and he fled to the mountains until even Suviyaz said, please come back. I can't do this. They have an inherent gift of the most great infallibility. Well, omniscience would cover this too. But in other words, they don't acquire infallibility. When Bahá'u'lláh in this relates very specifically to the epiphany in the Siya child, in the sense that he says, I was but a man like others asleep upon my couch when low, all of these things happened to me. Now you interpret that out of context. It sounds like the same thing Mohammed said. I'm but a man like you and yet I am a prophet of God. Well, that's not really what he means. Well, this is not really what Bahá'u'lláh means. He means I was asleep like a man on a couch. But there were no couches in the Siya child. So it obviously is metaphorical. So why do I quote this passage here? This is from Abdu'l-Bahá. And he says, the reason that the manifestations have the most great infallibility is because unlike us, whose spirit surrounds our bodies, and so therefore I know my hand is out here because I have an inherent gift of awareness of myself. He says the reality of the manifestations surrounds reality itself. And so they are inherently aware of reality. Therefore their knowledge is divine knowledge, not acquired. And that's why when Bahá'u'lláh says in the epistle to the Son of the Wolf, over and over again, look where I live. Find out if I studied anywhere and I didn't. Well, he's not professing that I don't know anything. He's saying everything I know is not from human resources. That's what that passage means. They shape language. Who shapes the language? Well, when you read some of the scriptures of Christ, it sounds like I say only what the Father tells me to say. And you get the same sense, I am but a leaf in the wind of God. Really this thing is not from me, but from one greater than I am. And yet they clearly are the designers of their own revelation and the designers of their own language. Here's two passages that point this out. O Son of beauty by my spirit and my favor, by my mercy and my beauty, all that I have revealed unto you, unto thee with the tongue of power, hath been written for thee with the pen of might, hath been in accordance with thy capacity and understanding, not with my state and the melody of my voice. What does he mean by that? Well, he explains it a little more here in this quote from the agdas. These words are to your measure, not to God's. To this testifyeth that which is enshrined within his knowledge, if ye be of them that comprehend, and to this the tongue of the Almighty doth bear witness, if ye be of those who understand, I swear by God, were we to lift the veil, ye would be dumbfounded. In other words, if I spoke as I could, ye wouldn't understand a word I was saying. In the same way that, of course, he had Mirzaka John throw away hundreds of thousands of verses repeatedly because we would not be ready for them in this dispensation. Well, that's a whole talk there. Why did he do that? Well, for one reason we know about it is because we know there's yet more to learn that will be coming in the next dispensation. Effectively, and this is very important here to what I'm about to where I'm trying to take you, that may blow your mind a little bit, but it certainly blows my mind. Effectively the manifestation is God expressed as best it can be expressed in human form. The essence of belief in divine unity, and this if you take nothing else away from this talk, this is the same passage I used on Thursday morning. It's a remarkable passage. The essence of belief in divine unity consisted in regarding Him who is the manifestation of God and Him who is the invisible, the inaccessible, the unknowable essence as one and the same. By this is meant that whatever pertaineth to the former, all his acts and doings, whatever he or dayneth or forbiddeth should be considered in all their aspects and under all circumstances and without any reservation as identical with the will of God himself. Everything they do and say is calculated to teach us something. Nothing they do is accidental. There is a dream that a friend of mine, when I was in Haifa a few weeks ago, told me he had that. He dreamed he was Baha'u'llah and that he was about to take a sip of the water that had been poisoned by Mirza Yahya. And he, of course, foreknew that it was poisoned and yet he knew that he had to drink it. Meditate on that. Not ours the living witnesses of an all-subduing potency of his faith to question for a moment however dark the misery that enshrouds the world, the ability of Baha'u'llah to forge with the hammer of his will and through the fire of tribulation upon the anvil of this travelling age and to the particular shape his mind has envisioned these scattered and mutually destructive fragments into which a perverse world has fallen into one single unit solid and indivisible able to execute his design for the children of men. He designs the conceptual framework of his own revelation and of where we're going for the next thousand years. His design. So he's not merely an emissary. He's not merely a translator of God's words. He is the translator of God's will but he is the creator of his own dispensation and the designer of the edifice that he has bequeathed us. So now we get to the heart of this discussion. What happens and what do we mean by intimation of revelation? Well, of course, intimation means the first sense of it, the first signs of it. The most great spirit, of course, is that spirit that appears to him in the dream vision he has in the Si'achal. It's not an actual maiden that appears before him, of course, because nobody else in the Si'achal saw it. It is a vision that appears to him and it is the vehicle that he says through which God speaks to him. And the Guardian in his writings here in God Passes By says it's comparable to the similar intermediary symbols he uses in the other revelations. Symbolized in the Zoroastrian, the Mosaic, the Christian and Mohammedan dispensations by the sacred fire, the burning bush, the dove, and the angel Gabriel respectively, descended upon and revealed itself personated by a maiden. The words, she isn't the Holy Spirit. It's personified. It's a, if you will, a literary device that Bahá'u'lláh is using. We'll get to deal with it a little more in just a second. Here we have our traditional account of this from the letter to Nasir al-Dinshah. But don't forget, this is not Bahá'u'lláh's frank and forthright account of what really happened. It's how he's presenting it to the king. And so he says, oh king, I was but a man like others asleep upon my couch when lo, the breezes of the all-glorious were wafted over me and taught me the knowledge of all that had been. This thing is not from me, but from one who is almighty and all-knowing. He bad me, lift up my voice between earth and heaven. For this there befell me what have caused the tears of every man of understanding to flow. The learning current amongst men I studied not. Their schools I entered not. In effect, then where did this come from? It's the same kind of device that Muhammad uses when he says, I was in this cave and the angel Gabriel appeared to me. And he runs home to Khadija and she unfolds him in a blanket because he's so shaken by this experience. How do we know about that? Who was with him in the cave? Nobody. So how do we know about that? Well, it was the intention of the manifestation we know about. How do we know what happened to Moses when he saw the burning bush and what was the burning bush symbolizing? But the divine lobe tree, right? The eternal tree. So how do we know about this? We know about it because Moses obviously told people about it. He was the only one there. So we're fortunate, so fortunate that Baha'u'llah bequeathed to Ban Abdu'l-Baha among his other mantles, the interpreter, the authoritative interpreter of his own words. And so the authoritative explication of what he means when he is writing this letter to the king is right here for us. But even the interpretation we must understand in our own terms. We come to the explanation of the words of Baha'u'llah when he says, O king I was but a man like others asleep upon my couch when lo the breezes of the all-glorious were wafted over me and taught me the knowledge of all that hath been. This thing is not from me but from one who is almighty and all-knowing. Now here's Abdu'l-Baha's explanation of what it means and it's going to take a few slides here. This is the state of manifestation. It is not sensible. It's not really happening. In a literal way. It is an intellectual reality. It's something that's happening in the mind of Baha'u'llah. Exempt and freed from time. From the past, present, and future. It is an explanation, a simile, a metaphor and is not to be accepted literally. So you don't have to take my word for it. Here is an authoritative explication of it. It is not a state that can be comprehended by man. So Baha'u'llah uses an analogy to explain what happened to him. In the same way I postulate, I assert, I present for your consideration that Muhammad did with the angel Gabriel. In other words, what I'm saying friends is that these manifestations just figure out a creative way to make an unlearned people believe in what they say. And so whenever Muhammad reveals something he would go into a trance state and presumably the people around him thought okay, the angel Gabriel is speaking to him write down what he says. And those became the surah. However, there are various authoritative hadiths that Muhammad said. The hadiths of the Twin Gifts, I give you my book and I give you my family. And the appointment of Ali at the pool of hum as his successor. Those were authoritative too, because everything they do and say is authoritative. And both Sunni and Shia agree on both of these hadiths. Briefly, this is a continuation of the same explanation of the intimation of the Revelation by Bahá'u'lláh. The epiphany.  No change of variation takes place in their essence. Before declaring their manifestation, they are silent and quiet, like a sleeper. And after their manifestation they speak and are illumined like one who is awake. Like one who is awake. Their manifestations before this point, they know they're going to be unmanifest. I mean, they're going to reveal themselves. They know they're going. So, let's complete this explanation. Verily, from the beginning, that holy reality is conscious of the secret of existence. The beginning. And from the age of childhood, signs of greatness appear and are visible in him. Therefore, how can it be that with all these bounties and perfections, he should have no consciousness? Meaning, as I understand it, consciousness of his own station and mission. The one story we know of Christ is when he was a child of 9 or 12, I think it was 9, and in the temple conversing with the scholars and his parents couldn't find him and they went back to the temple and they said, where have you been? He said, do you not know I must be about my father's business? And we have the story of the Bob, where he was absent from school, the teacher was concerned and said, where have you been? And he says, I've been conversing with my grandfather. And of course, as I said, this meant symbolically he had been conversing with Muhammad. The strategic approach of each manifestation is precisely geared to the context in which he appears. Moses is a shepherd exiled for murdering an Egyptian and has to be convinced, has to convince the Pharaoh and an enslaved populace that he has divine authority and leadership.  Muhammad is an unlearned leader of caravans who must unite diverse warring tribes and create the model for constitutional governance, which he does. The Bob is an unlearned merchant who must convince a populace entrenched in what has become a legalistic and staid religious tradition that he is their promised Mahdi or the Qaim come to instigate the resurrection or the day of days. Bahá'u'lláh is a follower of the Bob who must convince the people of the Bayan that he is him whom God shall make manifest and a prisoner who must convince world rulers that he has been appointed to unite humankind. They all are fully aware of the devices and guises they use in my opinion. And that's what I'm trying to blow your mind with is that they know exactly what they're doing. We have consented to be bound and changed. We know that. That means we didn't have to be bound and changed. We know he could have saved Mirza Midi, but Mirza Midi chose instead to let his life be a sacrifice for those who were not then able to attain the presence of Bahá'u'lláh. The presence of Bahá'u'lláh. Let's deal with that. So we get to the post-incarnate stage and that will finish up. How many minutes do I have? Ten? Ten. We're great. So we're dealing with disease now. What power does the manifestation have after that? Well, we pray to Bahá'u'lláh. We pray through Bahá'u'lláh to God. We know Bahá'u'lláh is watching over us and so on, but let's get very explicit. We go back to the phrase I've already shown you. It's influenced no longer circumscribed by any physical limitations. No radiance no longer be clouded by its human temple. That soul of Bahá'u'lláh could henceforth energize the world to a degree unapproached at any stage in the course of his existence on this planet. So his power is to help us to guide his own dispensation. And this is what I understand to be true as well. Each manifestation overlooks and oversees and assists the progress of the dispensation. The age in which he appears. Here's one you may not know, though you probably do. He continues to be our intermediary. We enter the presence of God, but we really don't, not literally, because there is no presence of God. That implies physical proximity and God is essentially unknowable and has no physical aspects, other than the manifestation of himself in these beings from the world of the Spirit he sends to help us understand. We will have experience of God's spirit through his prophets in the next world, but God is too great for us to know without this intermediary. The prophets know God, though not his essence. That's my insertion there. But how is more than our human minds can grasp? We have, we believe, we attain in the next world to seeing the prophets, but they will continue to be our intermediaries between us and God, even in the next world. So entering the presence of God means entering in a relationship with his manifestation. So we can enter that presence right this minute. And it will continue to be that same relationship as we continue our lives of knowing and worshiping God by successive degrees in our life after this life. Their heavenly station rules supreme over all things. This is a nice passage about their powers after they ascend. Their bodies perceive things when they're associating with their human temple, to the capacity of the material world. So it is that they have, at a certain time, at certain times expressed physical weakness. Well, how long it gets poisoned?  Right? Seems to be human. What's the value of that?  That's a test. All these things refer to the corporeal station of the manifestations, but their heavenly station encompasses all things, is aware of all mysteries, is informed of all signs and rules supreme over all things, and this is equally true both before and after the intimation of their revelation, both before and after. So this is, I've put it in the category of their post-incarnate power, but notice it applies to both before and after. This is why Christ said, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. Is therefore has never been or never shall be to change your alteration in me. Recognition of the manifestation then is tantamount to entering the presence of God. Therefore whosoever and in whatever dispensation hath recognized and attained unto the presence of these glorious, these resplendent and most excellent luminaries hath verily attained unto the presence of God himself and entered the city of eternal and immortal life. So let's finish up with a couple of questions and a couple of answers and then I'll be done. What is meant by receiving intimation of revelation? Were the ten commandments conceived by God or by Moses? Were the parables of Christ his words or was he simply repeating what the Father told him to say? Were the surah of Mohammed the words of Gabriel as dictated by God or the prophet's own devising? Whose words are in the surah Haqqal, the maiden or Bahá'u'lláh? I don't know if you noticed but after about three pages in the surah Haqqal he says here's what the maiden said and the rest of the surah Haqqal is the maiden talking to the temple that will be the means by which Bahá'u'lláh speaks to us. He says temple you're going to have to have this power and your feet are going to be like this and you're going to have to have all of these capacities if you're going to get this job done. So the temple is writing down what the maiden had said to him in the surah Haqqal and that's a good question. What conclusion might we infer about these limitations the manifestations claim to have? I am but a man like you. This thing is not from me and so on. Well we really answered all of these haven't we? So I'll simply go over the answers very quickly as I implied them or stated them directly. While the manifestations are clearly aware of their station and what will be required of them when the process begins it is still rather an incredible thing and I use here the analogy of a start of an Olympic race. An Olympic runner is not surprised that he or she is at the Olympics they've trained for years for this. Their whole lives they've been training as an athlete but still when that starter's gun goes off it must be an experience like nothing they've ever experienced in their lives. So the manifestations know this is going to happen they know what they've been training to do they know why they came to earth but when it starts to happen it's still an incredible experience and we have several accounts of those who witnessed the revelatory process as Bahá'u'lláh was giving transcribing or not transcribing but was dictating the revealed text to his amulets or to the other secretaries he employed. No one was with Moses or Muhammad or the Bob. I've said this before. The Bob's intimation occurred in a dream. We don't talk about it much. He had a dream that the severed head of the Imam Hossain appeared before him and he drank the blood of the gory but that was his intimation. The first thing we know of the Bob is when he's talking to encounters Mullah Hossain for the most part but he did this was his intimation. The parables of Christ while divinely inspired were his creation devised appropriately for the specific audience to whom he was speaking and the age in which he appeared even as were the surah of Muhammad. The surah of Muhammad were authoritative but so were the words in the authoritative hadith because all the prophets say and do is identical with the will of God. These are not quotes from the writing streams these are my own conclusions which you can agree with or not derived from the inferences of the passages. Two more. While Baha'u'llah was doubtlessly inspired as he received the first intimation of a revelation direct from God, the composition of the surah hakel or the tablet of the holy mariner though citing various speakers was entirely his own devising. He's a very creative writer. In fact, you could say he's a perfect or writing perfectly for what we can understand. He could do much better, he said. Out of respect the Baha'is rather than addressing Baha'u'llah directly. Now this is an introduction to the loy maksu and it is stating that you're again you have this I don't know what word to use. It's not dissembling. It's not a lie. It's not an act. But it is a creative way of helping us accept this. Out of respect the Baha'is rather than addressing Baha'u'llah directly would write his amuletsist Mirzaka John surname the servant of God and servant in attendance. The reply would be in the form of a letter from Mirzaka John quoting words of Baha'u'llah but would in fact be dictated in its entirety by Baha'u'llah. Thus all the parts of the tablet of the loy maksu even those which ostensibly are the words of Mirzaka John himself are sacred scripture revealed by Baha'u'llah. I think you're getting my point. I hope you are. Finally, we necessarily conclude that the manifestation sometimes employ what me might call or what I might call. You might not be so frivolous as I am or daring or tasteless. I don't know what you want to call it to assign something to this. But as a teacher of literature what I call a divine allegory or a benign fiction for the benefit of the limitations possessed by those who live in the age in which the manifestations appear. Such is the case when Muhammad reveals the surahs and the Quran as if they were conveyed to him through the voice of Gabriel or when Baha'u'llah reveals the surah Haqal as if it were being narrated by the veiled maiden, the personification of the Holy Spirit speaking to the temple Baha'u'llah. In the same manner an omniscient narrator portrays Baha'u'llah as a mariner in the tablet of the holy mariner and the persona in most of the hidden words is that of the creator speaking to us. But it's really Baha'u'llah creating this. In conclusion, the manifestations are creative and employ whatever rhetorical devices and human guises best enable them to accomplish their appointed mission. Thank you.


Thank you, mayor, so I'm gonna start out and this will be a tag team if you've got any Financial questions as we review the current status of our TIF districts So just a little bit of background What is a TIF district? A TIF district is a mechanism for funding development and infrastructure related to Development it allows all taxing jurors jurisdictions benefiting from the development to share in its cost We interchangeably use the word TIF to TID so a TIF is a Financing option that allows a municipality a town village or city to fund infrastructure and other improvements through property tax revenue on newly developed property and the TID is the actual district that identifies the area where The TIF incentive or TIF development is to be so it's the municipality identifies an area known as the district as a Appropriate for the certain type of development a Little bit about the TIF law background so Wisconsin adopted TIF legislation in 1975 to eliminate blighted areas and urban neighborhoods Before the TIF law was enacted if a municipality wanted to expand its local tax base The municipality alone would have to pay the cost But the overlapping Overlying taxing jurisdictions as in the other like school district and county would also benefit from the growth the legislation saw this situation as on Legislator saw this Situation as unfair and viewed TIF as a way to remedy the problem and encourage cooperation between local governments and in our case It makes up Sheboygan County Sheboygan area school district and the Lakeshore Technical College So what kind of tip types of tips tids are there so you can either have a blight elimination TIF or TID which requires a hearing to blight properties a Rehabilitation district. This is a district very similar to blight, but it doesn't you're not blighting people's properties This can be open for up to 27 years an industrial TIF funds industrial and business parks and can be open for 20 years a Mixed-use TIF is used when there is a mixed development. So if you have residential and commercial together It would be a mixed-use TIF and they're open for 20 years and then you can use it for environmental clean-up For areas if you had a factory that had significant environmental Degregation you can use it for environmental costs related to the cleanup and those districts can be open for 20 years as well So how does TIF work upon creation the value of the TID is frozen for property tax distribution Abortion purposes so in this in the city The county school district and technical college continue to receive tax revenue off the base So whatever the value was at the time that the district was certified to be created the the taxing jurisdictions continue to receive that Revenue and then any new revenue that's generated as it relates to the development is then kept by the Municipality and must be spent on projects specific to the district in accordance with the project plan Once the TIF closes all taxing entities start to realize the benefits of the new value so this graph just shows you what that means so When you can see the line on the bottom TID created and TID terminated and how little kind of segregation happens under each one of those taxing Jurisdictions How are TIF projects funded since incremental values are delayed means palities must decide on how to fund the improvements that lead To the creation of the increments so you can do one of three things you can bond for upfront funding for projects using municipal bonds You can do what's called city led pays you go Harnessing new development and using that income to pay for future projects and then you can do developer led pays You go asking the developer to finance their own improvements and agreeing to pay them back All or on a percentage of the tax increment received over a certain amount of time So most of the time what you're seeing when we have development agreements with developers is the developer led pays You go where the developer funds the development and then we pay them back a portion of their taxes over time We have done in some situations bonding where we went out and borrowed money and gave up front Incentives and we've also do upfront borrowing for public infrastructure improvements So TID amendments a TID may be amended for four reasons number one to modify the project plan To add or subtract property to extend the maximum lifespan and to donate tax increments to another TID TID amendment boundaries may be changed four times There's no limit on the project plan amendments one expenditure period amendment if not cash flowing and then TID any of the TID amendments and or project plan Changes must be approved by the joint review board So what is the joint review board there to establish and mean you're to establish and maintain a joint review board That's made up of one representative of the school district one representative of the technical college One representative from the county one represented chosen from the city and then a public member So this is a listing of the current TIDs in the city of Sheboygan We'll go into more detail on their current Financials but TID six we like to call as a south pier and the waterfront basically up to the marina Tid 10 is Water Street, and that's primarily where the Kingsbury development project is under construction today TID 11 was the area around Washington Square including Washington Square that district has been closed as of April 15th of this year TID 12 is an a street office building primarily the Nemshoff the former Nemshoff building in downtown Sheboygan that now houses Rody Dales Tid 13 is the landmark condos. It was developed for the landmark square condos, and it includes the founders club Tid 14 was originally developed for the construction of festival foods and Was expanded for Meyer foods and the redevelopment that happened around the former Memorial Mall Tid 15 pick-and-save. That's the area where Kmart was demolished and the new pick-and-save at that time was reconstructed Tid 16 is downtown a street so it primarily is an area from the bridge up to Niagara Avenue by the Children's Museum Tid 17 encompasses Indiana Avenue basically from the lake to 14th Street The River Bend neighborhood is Tid 19 and that's the area Where both doctors was redeveloped into Lakeshore Technical College, and then Tid 20 is the one we Created in March, and that's for the redevelopment of the former Vanderva property so We're just going to run through some of the Financials of the districts and then be happy to answer any questions you guys might have but Tid 6 was started in 1992 It's expenditure period is now closed it closed as of 12 31 2017 and the end date of that district is January 20th 2023 It was amended and had a number of changes. So this one exceeded the amount of years Primarily based on moving into the recession So there it's been open for 33 years, and it's to close in 2022. It was created as a blight elimination district If you look at the current status of the district the revenues based on 2019 Shows a positive cash balance between revenues and expenses of about 250,000 and then there's about 750,000 in the fund balance Tid 10 the water street This is the area basically from Pennsylvania Avenue out to the Walgreens along the Sheboygan River Was created in 1997 It closes in 2024. It was created as a blight district with a maximum life of 27 years the revenues right now are Positive at about 280,000. There is a deficit in the fund balance As of the end of the year, but we're projecting that the new Kingsbury development will help fill that goal with fill that deficit with the plan to Ultimately close it in the positive Tid 12 the a street office building. So this is the Niagara north a street You can see the map on there. It basically goes from 7th Street to the middle of North 8th and north 9th from Wisconsin to Ontario was created in 2000 it closes in 2027 this district has substantial Or has fund balance and has no additional Expenses so right now it's it's a donor district and it's sharing excess revenue with Tid 17 Which is the Indiana Avenue Tid? This is a rehabilitation district open for 27 years Although it shows a negative fund negative balance as of the end of 2019 It does have 340,000 and fund balance Landmark Square condos, so this is Tid 13 that includes the Founders Club in Landmark Square was created in 2005 closes in 2032 for 27 years Sorry, I don't know something underneath here, but oops. Sorry anyway It's a donor district to Tid 17 It's got $632 as the end of 19 with a fund balance of around 221,000 and it'll see some new increment with the Founders Club development being fully assessed now So then there's no expenses in that district Taylor Heights Festival Foods and now Meyer Was created in 2011 Open for 20 years as a mixed-use diff strict closes in 2031 Has a positive cash balance as of the end of 2019 and a fund balance of around 462,000 Does not include the new increment that'll be generated from Meyer and the Panera redevelopment as part of that project Tid 15 pick and save Was opened in started in 2011 Closes in 2031 open for 20 years as a mixed-use district Has a positive cash balance as of the end of 2019 And then the fund balance is right around 350,000 Tid 16 downtown Sheboygan and a street so this was created in 2015 really the reason this was created was to facilitate the development of some market rate apartment housing It runs through 2035 as a mixed-use diff strict It has a negative cash balance right now of 219,650 dollars as well as about a million dollar fund balance negative That's to be given Typically the TIF districts this early on that you would exceed those expenditures And then over time the payback of the taxes would pay off the debt And we've done a number of capital improvement projects and different things throughout this time So some and there's also some additional increment that'll be gathered from high-point apartments and the visitor center That's part of that is taxable. So there's there's there'll be some additional increment But it's this is a downtown district that has a lot of needs and TIF is one way to fund some of those needs Tid 17 Indiana this was created in 2018 It closes in 2042 as a rehabilitation district with a maximum life of 27 years It's right now receiving. It's a recipient Tid receiving funding from Tid 12 and Tid 13 it has a positive cash balance as of the end of 2019 and a fund balance Positive as well, but I will note that We did take a note out for almost four million dollars to repair the infrastructure around the Badger state loss and and those Debt payments have not been paid back or started payment yet. They will start in 2021. So Even though it shows it pretty positive now, it's going to have some Significant costs going forward although there is new increment projected from the Badger state loss project and the south pier condos that are under construction Tid 18 the south point enterprise campus. This is the new business park on the south side was created in 2018 It closes in 2038. It's a 20-year district. It's an industrial district It has a negative cash balance of about 4.9 million at the end of 19 It's got a little bit of fun balance in 2019 but there is some outstanding notes nans that were approved by the council For roughly 11 million dollars that need to be paid back There's also some increment not projected not included in here That will be coming from the FedEx project to the tune of about 7.7 million and then the north half of the Warner sub division That hopefully is going to be breaking ground this year Those properties are within this district as well. So it's it'll see some increment from that Just a little bit on that. So the we're doing an aggressive marketing campaign to a lot of Economic development areas and there's there was interest in the property and then COVID hit So I'm not sure what that's going to do for us going forward But the goal is to try to get a few more developments to least get this district cash flowing Tit 19 the River Bend neighborhood was opened in 2019. It closes in 2038. It's open for 20 years It's a mixed-use district. It has a positive cash balance. It has a fun Deficit as a fun balance deficit as of the end of 2019. Although it doesn't include any of the Redevelopment that's happened in that area as it relates to the waters edge condos the bull doctors and the Richardson lumber redevelopment projects And the last one is the former van der Waart tid 20 was created as of January 1st, 2020 It's open for 27 years as a rehabilitation district through 2047 has no expenditures or Revenues as it just was started, but will be done to facilitate redevelopment of that property So how many tids can the city have like that's a question we hear a lot is you seem like you have a lot of tids One thing I would say the Department of Revenue just keeps adding the numbers Progressively that's why you're seeing 20 some of them are obviously closed But it requires us to not exceed 12% of our total equalized value of taxable property So when we created tid 20 the city's total equalized value of existing tids was around 190 million And the max we could go to is 350 million so you can see we have a little bit of flexibility in there yet for Tiff district creation Advantages of tids so it can increase the property values spur private investment and development create a stronger broader tax base Incremental revenue is reinvested within the district Stimulates investment outside of the district and then benefits underlying taxing bodies at the end of the tid life As you saw with the tid 11 will there where there'll be some payments back to the jurisdictions The disadvantages is that the increment does not materialize as planned the city might Must find other sources to fund those improvements under lab underlying taxing just districts have no benefit until the tit is terminated Tids may be used in areas where development would have occurred anyway And then increases the administrative burden on managing local government entity So that's it in a nutshell if you've got any questions, I know I went through it fairly quickly But if you've got any questions, you know overall I think the Tids are doing very well You know and hopefully it will you know see continued investment in those particular areas Thank you very much for that report chat. Are there any questions for Chad or Marty? I have one I have one mayor Jim Warren. Please go ahead Jim Thank you Chad Do you see any other areas in the city? That look like they possibly could be tid territory within the next five years The one that comes to mind right now is if we ever do any redevelopment of the armory property, so I would say That's a potential If Penn tear develops that's already in tid 17 so I Besides Penn tear, I can't say that there's any other ones that come to mind Thank you Any other questions? Well, thank you very much, Chad