Hello and welcome to the session. My name is Mansi and I am going to help you with the following question. The question says, find an anti-derivative or integral of the following by the method of inspection. We have sin 2x minus 4 into e raised to part 3x. So let us start with the solution to this question. Now what we do here is, we find the anti-derivative of sin 2x, then we find the anti-derivative of 4 into e raised to part 3x, then we subtract them. First of all we see that, we consider d by dx of cos 2x that will be equal to minus 2 sin 2x because derivative of cos 2x is minus sin 2x multiplied the derivative of 2x that is 2. So we can say that cos 2x or we can say sin 2x will be equal to the d by dx of minus 1 by 2 cos 2x. Now we consider d by dx of 4 into e raised to part 3x is 4 into 3 into e raised to part 3x because 4 being a constant remains as it is derivative with respect to x of e raised to part 3x is e raised to part 3x multiplied by the derivative of 3x that is 3. So we can say that 4 into e raised to part 3x is equal to 1 by 3 into d by dx of 4 into e raised to part 3x or we can write it as d by dx of 4 by 3 into e raised to part 3x. Hence an antiderivative of sin 2x minus 4 into e raised to part 3x is minus 1 by 2 cos 2x minus 4 by 3 into e raised to part 3x. So this is our answer to the question. I hope that you understood the question and enjoyed the session. Have a good day.


Welcome to this first session of the day that is dedicated to the COVID-19 pandemic and the first lessons we can draw from the pandemic. With COVID-19, as has already been said by Thierry de Montbryal, the health and the well-being of millions of people were abruptly put in danger and half of the world's population forced into confinement. Our economies and the very structure of our societies have been shaken, as Dr Tedros just said, and put the multilateral system at a test. And the crisis has yet not finished unwinding its negative aspects. Here in Europe, where only 7% of the people have been infected with the coronavirus so far, a few days ago, the Institute of Health Metrics at the University of Washington predicted that daily deaths from COVID-19 will continue to rise in the coming weeks, reaching a peak, not reaching a peak before maybe mid-January, with hospitals continuing being stretched to breaking point until the end of February, maybe. Now, for today's discussion, to me, the key observation is that against a certain lack of interest in health issues that has been prevailing in recent years, the world is now realizing how much, among all global issues, it is health in the short term that has the greatest potential of disruption in our globalized world. And I find it encouraging to see on this occasion a sort of near consensus, forging on the importance of science as a basis of health policies and on the priority given to the safety of people over other considerations, including economic considerations, even at high cost. Public health is a political choice that most countries have made in this crisis against competing priorities and interests. Now, to say that the virus affects us all doesn't mean, however, that it affects us all equally. What we have seen in the last few months is countries competing for resources, whether it was for masks, for example, as we saw, unfortunately, in the first wave of the pandemic here in Europe, diagnostic tests, or now vaccines. It is not difficult to it is not difficult to guess in such a competition who will emerge as a winner in the absence of global regulation, in the absence of global governance, and of common resources for common goods. And since Jerry de Montmoyal and Dr. Tedros started discussing this topic, let me say that to me, public health is a public good, because public health is a collective property that depends on the structural, the social, the political forces that produce health of the population. Now, as again already said in the introduction, this unprecedented crisis we're facing requires unprecedented global solidarity. Let me remind everyone that is in his wake-up call last July, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the global community to, and I quote, move from international chaos to the construction of an international global community capable of meeting and solving tomorrow's challenges. And obviously, when it comes to health and to pandemics, a pandemic response that would be rooted in global cooperation would make everyone much safer. The pandemic demands an emergency response, but it must also encourage us beyond the emergency to lay the foundations for a world that is more united and more resilient in the face of challenges, which will have to go beyond the current geopolitical constructions to involve more of the major emerging players, China obviously, but also India, Russia, Latin America and Africa. The crisis Europe and the world are facing is not only about health, it's about politics too. And this is why today for the first time WPC is dedicating a site conference to health. Our session today will run in two parts. First, Professor Antoine Flauot will present us an overview of the pandemic from an epidemiological and global public health perspective. And that will be followed by specific questions and answers that you may direct to him and to his presentation. We will then proceed to a panel discussion with eminent participants from the pharmaceutical industry, the social protection sector, public health and the UN global angle where questions and answers with the panelists, between the panelists and between the attendees and the panelists will follow all four speakers' presentations. The objective of this session as I see it is to discuss the first lessons from the COVID-19 crisis at the intersect of public health at national level, global health at global level, health systems, social protection, innovation to generate health commodities, medicines and vaccines, economy, politics, the global order and global governance.


CHAPTER XXXIII A fortnight later the boys were picking apples one golden October afternoon, and the girls were hurrying to finish their work, that they might go and help the harvesters. It was six weeks now since the new school began, and they had learned to like it very much, though they found that it was not all play by any means. But lessons, exercise, and various sorts of housework made an agreeable change, and they felt that they were learning things which would be useful for them all their lives. They had been making underclothes for themselves, and each had several neatly finished garments cut, fitted, and sewed by herself, and trimmed with the pretty tatting Jill made in such quantities while she lay on her sofa. Now they were completing new dressing sacks, and had enjoyed this job very much, as each chose her own material, and suited her own taste in the making. Jill's was white, with tiny scarlet leaves all over it, trimmed with red braid and buttons, so like checker-berries, she was tempted to eat them. Molly's was gay with bouquets of every sort of flower, scalloped all round, and adorned with six buttons each of a different color, which she thought the last touch of elegance. Mary's, though the simplest, was the daintiest of the three, being pale blue, trimmed with delicate edging, and beautifully made. Mrs. Minneau had been reading from Miss Strickland's Queens of England while the girls worked, and an illustrated Shakespeare lay open on the table, as well as several fine photographs of historical places for them to look at as they went along. The hour was over now, the teacher gone, and the pupils setting the last stitches as they talked over the lesson which had interested them exceedingly. I really believe I have got Henry's six wives into my head right at last. Two Anne's, three Catherine's, and one Jane. Now I've seen where they lived and heard their stories. I quite feel as if I knew them, said Mary, shaking the threads off her work before she folded it up to carry home. Being Henry VIII to six spouses was wedded, one died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded. Was all I knew about them before? Poor things! What a bad time they did have, added Jill, patting down the red braid which would pucker a bit at the corners. Catherine Parr had the best of it, because she outlived the old tyrant, and so kept her head on, said Molly, winding the thread round her last button, as if bound to fasten it on so firmly that nothing could decapitate that. I used to think I'd like to be a queen or a great lady, and wear velvet and jewels, and live in a palace. But now I don't care much for that sort of splendor. I like to make things pretty at home, and know that they all depend on me, and love me very much. Queens are not happy, and I am, said Mary, pausing to look at Anne, Hathaway's cottage, as she put up the picture, and to wonder if it was very pleasant to have a famous man for one's husband. I guess your missionarying has done you good, mine has, and I'm getting to have things my own way more and more every day. Miss Bat is so amiable I hardly know her, and Father tells her to ask Miss Molly when she goes to him for orders. Isn't that fun, laughed Molly, in high glee at the agreeable change? I like it ever so much. But I don't want to stay so all my days. I mean to travel, and just as soon as I can, I shall take Boo and go all round the world, and see everything, she added, waving her gay sack, as if it were the flag she was about to nail to the masthead of her ship. Well, I should like to be famous in some way, and have people admire me very much. I'd like to act, or dance, or sing, or be what I heard the ladies at Pebboli Beach call a queen of society. But I don't expect to be anything, and I'm not going to worry. I shall not be a Lucinda. So I ought to be contented and happy all my life," said Jill, who was very ambitious in spite of the newly acquired meekness, which was all the more becoming because her natural liveliness often broke out like sunshine through a veil of light crowds. If the three girls could have looked forward ten years they would have been surprised to see how different a fate was theirs from the one each had chosen, and how happy each was in the place she was called to fill. Mary was not making the old farmhouse pretty, but living in Italy with a young sculptor for her husband, and beauty such as she never dreamed of all about her. Molly was not travelling round the world, but contentedly keeping house for her father, and still watching over Boo, who was becoming her pride and joy as well as care. Neither was Jill a famous woman, but a very happy and useful one, with the two mothers leaning on her as they grew old, the young men better for her influence over them, many friends to love and honour her, and a charming home, where she was queen by right of her cheery spirit, grateful heart, and unfailing devotion to those who had made her what she was. If any curious reader, not content with this peep into futurity, asks, did Molly and Jill ever marry? We must reply for the sake of peace. Molly remained as Mary spent her all her days, one of the independent brave and busy creatures of whom there is such a need in the world to help take care of other people's wives and children, and do the many useful jobs that the married folk have no time for. Jill certainly did wear a white veil on the day she was twenty-five, and called her husband Jack. Further than that we cannot go, except to say that this leap did not end in a catastrophe like the first one they took together. That day however they never dreamed of what was in store for them, but chattered away as they cleared up the room and then ran off ready for play, feeling that they had earned it by work well done. They found the lads just finishing, with boo to help by picking up the windfalls for the cider heap. After he had amused himself by putting about a bushel down the various holes, Ode Bun had left behind him. Jack was risking his neck climbing in the most dangerous places, while Frank, with the long-handled apple-picker, nipped off the finest fruit with care, both enjoying the pleasant task and feeling proud of the handsome red and yellow piles all about the little orchard. Mary and Molly caught up baskets and fell to work with all their might, leaving Jill to sit upon a stool and sort the early apples ready to use at once, looking up now and then to nod and smile at her mother, who watched her from the window, rejoicing to see her last so well and happy.  Jack whistled like a blackbird as he swung and bumped about. Frank orated and joked. Mary and Molly ran races to see who would fill an empty fastest, and Jill sunk to boo, who were posed in a barrel exhausted with his labours. These are the last of the pleasant days, and we ought to make the most of them. Let's have one more picnic before the frost spoils the leaves, said Mary, resting a minute at the gate to look down the street, which was a glorified sort of avenue, with brilliant maples lining the way and carpeting the ground with crimson and gold. Oh, yes, go down the river once more and have supper on the island. I couldn't go to some of your picnics, and I do long for a last good time before winter shuts me up again, eager to harvest all the sunshine she could, for she was not quite her old self again. I'm your man. If the other fellows agree, we can't barrel these up for a while, so to-morrow will be a holiday for us. Better make sure of the day while you can, this weather can't last long. And Frank shook his head like one on intimate terms with Ode Probe. Don't worry about those high ones, Jack. Give a shake and come down and plan about the party, called Molly, throwing up a big bald one with what seemed a remarkably good aim. For a shower of apples followed, and a boy came tumbling earthward to catch on the lowest bow and swing down like a caterpillar, exclaiming as he landed. I'm glad that job is done. I've rasped every knuckle I've got and worn out the knees of my pants. Nice little crop, though, isn't it? It will be nicer if this young man does not bite every apple he touches. Hi there, stop it, boo, commanded Frank, as he caught his young assistant putting his small teeth into the best ones to see if they were sweet or sour. Molly set the barrel up on end, and that took the boy out of the reach of mischief. So he retired from view and peeped through a crack as he ate his fifth pair-main regardless of consequences. Gus will be at home tomorrow. He always comes up early on Saturday, you know. We can't get on without him, said Frank, who missed his mate very much, for Gus had entered college, and so far did not like it as much as he had expected. Or Ralph, he is very busy every spare minute on the little boy's bust, which is getting on nicely, he says. But he will be able to come home in time for supper, I think, added Mary, remembering the absent as usual. I'll ask the girls on my way home, and I'll meet at two o'clock for a good row while it's warm. What shall I bring? asked Molly, wondering if Miss Bats' amyability would extend to making goodies in the midst of her usual Saturday's baking.  I'll seat to the pie and cake, and the other girls can have anything else they like, answered Mary, glad and proud that she could provide the party with her own inviting handiwork. I'll take my zither so we can have music as we sail, and Griff will bring his violin, and Ralph can imitate a banjo so that you'd be sure he had one. I do hope it will be fine. It is so splendid to go round like other folks and enjoy myself, cried Jill, with a little bounce of satisfaction at the prospect of a row and a ramble. Come along, then, and make sure of the girls, said Mary, catching up her roll of work for the harvesting was done. Molly put her sack on as the easiest way of carrying it, and extricating boo they went off, accompanied by the boys, to make sure of the fellows also, leaving Jill to sit among the apples, singing and sorting like a thrifty little housewife. Next day eleven young people met at the appointed place, basket in hand. Ralph could not come till later, for he was working now as he had never worked before. They were a merry flock, for the mellow autumn day was even brighter and clearer than yesterday, and the river looked its loveliest, winding away under the somber hem blocks, or through the fairyland the gay woods made on either side. Two large boats and two small ones held them all, and away they went, first up through the three bridges and round the bend, then, turning, they floated down to the green island, where a grove of oaks wrestled their seer-leaves, and the squirrels were still gathering acorns. Here they often met to keep their summer revels, and here they now spread their feast on the flat rock which needed no cloth beside its own gray lichens. The girls trimmed each dish with bright leaves, and made the supper look like a banquet for the elves, while the boys built a fire in the nook where ashes and blackened stones told of many a rustic meal. The big tin coffee-pot was not so romantic, but more successful than a kettle slung on three sticks, gypsy fashion, so they did not risk a downfall, but set the water boiling, and soon filled the air with the agreeable perfume associated in their minds with picnics, as most of them never tasted the fascinating stuff at any other time, being the worst children can drink. Frank was cook, Gus helped cut bread and cake, Jack and Griff brought wood, while Bob Walker took Joe's place and made himself generally useful, as the other gentleman never did, and so was quite out of favor lately. All was ready at last, and they were just deciding to sit down without Ralph when a shout told them he was coming, and down the river skimmed a wary at such a rate the boys wondered whom he had been racing with.  Nothing bad or he wouldn't smile so. He is glad of a good row and a little fun after working so hard all the week, and Mary shook a red napkin as in welcoming signal. Something certainly had happened, and a very happy something it must be, they all thought, as Ralph came on with flashing oars and leaping out as the boat touched the shore, ran up the slope waving his hat and calling in a glad voice sure of sympathy in his delight. Good news, good news, hurrah for Rome next month! The young folks forgot their supper for a moment to congratulate him on his happy prospect, and hear all about it, while the leaves rustled as if echoing the kind words, and the squirrels set up aloft wondering what all the pleasant clamor was about. Yes, I'm really going in November. German asked me to go with him to-day, and if there is any little hitch in my getting-off he'll lend a hand, and I'll black his boots, wet his clay, and run his errands the rest of my life to pay for this, cried Ralph, in a burst of gratitude. For independent as he was, the kindness of this successful friend to a deserving comrade touched and won his heart. I call that a handsome thing to do, said Frank warmly, for noble actions always pleased him. I heard my mother say that making good or useful men was the best sort of sculpture, so I think David German may be proud of this piece of work, whether the big statue succeeds or not. I'm very glad, old fellow, when I run over for my trip four years from now I'll look you up and see how you are getting on, said Gus, with the hearty shake of the hand, and the younger lads grin cheerfully, even while they wondered where the fun was in shaping clay and chipping marble. Shall you stay four years? asked Mary's soft voice, while a wistful look came into our happy eyes. Ten if I can, answered Ralph decidedly, feeling as if a long lifetime would be all too short for the immortal work he meant to do. I've got so much to learn that I shall do whatever David thinks best for me at first, and when I can go alone I shall just shut myself up and forget that there is any world outside my den. Do write and tell us how you get on now and then. I like to hear about other people's good times, while I'm waiting for my own, said Molly, too much interested to observe that Griff was sticking burrs up and down her braids. Of course I shall write to some of you, but you mustn't expect any great things for years yet. People don't grow famous in a hurry, and it takes a deal of hard work even to earn your bread and butter, as you'll find if you ever try it, answered Ralph, sobering down a little as he remembered the long and steady effort it had taken to get even so far.  For Mary seemed to have forgotten that she had been chosen to play matron as she was the oldest. The boys seconded the motion, and for a few minutes supper was the all-absorbing topic, as the cups went round and the goodies vanished rapidly, accompanied by the usual mishaps which make picnic meals such fun. Ralph's health was drunk with all sorts of good wishes, and such splendid prophecies were made that he would have far surpassed Michael Angelo if they could have come true. Griff gave him an order on the spot for a full-length statue of himself, and stood up to show the imposing attitude in which he wished to be taken. But unfortunately slipped and fell forward with one hand in the custard pie, the other clutching wildly at the coffee pot, which inhospitably burnt his fingers. I think I grasped the idea, and will be sure to remember not to make your hair blow one way and the tails of your coat another, as a certain sculptor made those of a famous man laughed Ralph, as the fallen hero scrambled up amidst general merriment. Will the little bust be done before you go as gill anxiously, feeling a personal interest in the success of that order? Yes, I have been hard at it every spare minute I could get, and have a fortnight more. It suits Mrs. Lennox, and she will pay well for it, so I shall have something to start with, though I haven't been able to save much. I'm to thank you for that, and I shall send you the first pretty thing I get hold of, answered Ralph, looking gratefully at the bright face which grew still brighter, as Jill exclaimed. I do feel so proud to know a real artist and have my bust done by him. I only wish I could pay for it as Mrs. Lennox does. But I haven't any money, and you don't need the sort of things I can make, she added, shaking her head as she thought over knit slippers, wall pockets, and crochet in all its forms as offerings to her departing friend. You can write often and tell me all about everybody, for I shall want to know, and people will soon forget me when I'm gone, said Ralph, looking at Mary who was making a garland of yellow leaves for Juliet's black hair. Jill promised and kept her word. But the longest letters went from the farmhouse on the hill, though no one knew the fact till long afterward. Mary said nothing now, but she smiled, with a pretty color in her cheeks, and was very much absorbed in her work, while the talk went on. I wish I was twenty and going to seek my fortune as you are, said Jack, and the other boys agreed with him, for something in Ralph's new plans and purposes roused the manly spirit in all of them, reminding them that playtime would soon be over, and the great world before them were to choose. It is easy enough to say what you'd like, but the trouble is you have to take what you can get, and make the best of it, said Gus, whose own views were rather vague as yet. No, you don't always. You can make things go as you want them, if you only try hard enough, and walk right over whatever stands in the way. I don't mean to give up my plans for any man, but if I live I'll carry them out, you see if I don't, and Frank gave the rock where he lay a blow with his fist that sent the acorns flying all about. One of them hit Jack, and he said sorrowfully, as he held it in his hand so carefully it was evident he had some association with it. Ed used to say that, and he had some splendid plans, but they didn't come to anything. Perhaps they did, who can tell? Do your best while you live, and I don't believe anything good is lost, whether we have it a long or a short time, said Ralph, who knew what a help and comfort high hopes were, and how they led to better things if worthily cherished. A great many acorns are wasted, I suppose, but some of them sprout and grow, and make splendid trees, added Mary, feeling more than she knew how to express, as she looked up at the oak's overhead. Only seven of the party were sitting on the knoll now, for the rest had gone to wash the dishes and pack the baskets down by the boats. Jack and Jill, with the three elder boys, were in a little group, and as Mary spoke, Gus said to Frank, did you plant yours? Yes, on the lawn, and I mean it shall come up if I can make it, answered Frank gravely. I put mine where I can see it from the window, and not forget to water and take care of it, added Jack, still turning the pretty brown acorn to and fro as if he loved it. What do they mean, whispered Mary to Jill, who was leaning against her knee to rest. The boys were walking in the cemetery last Sunday as they often do, and when they came to Ed's grave the place was all covered with little acorns from the tree that grows on the bank. The H took up some as they stood talking, and Jack said he should plant his, for he loved Ed very much, you know. The others said they would, too, and I hope the trees will grow, that we don't need anything to remember him by, answered Jill in a low tone, thinking of the pressed flowers the girls kept for his sake. The boys hurt her, but no one spoke for a moment as they sat looking across the river toward the hills where the pines whispered their lullabies and pointed heavenward, steadfast and green, all the year round. None of them could express the thought that was in their minds as Jill told the little story, but the act and the feeling that prompted it were perhaps as beautiful an assurance as could have been given that the dear dead boy's example had not been wasted. For the planting of the acorns was a symbol of the desire budding in these young hearts to be what he might have been and to make their lives nobler for the knowledge and the love of him. It seems as if a great deal has happened this year, said Mary in a pensive tone, for this quiet talk just suited her mood. So I say, for there has been a declaration of independence and a revolution in our house, and I am Commander-in-Chief now, and don't I like it, cried Molly, complacently surveying the neat new uniform she wore of her own choosing. I feel as if I never learned so much in my life, as I have since last December, and yet I never did so little at it, Jill, wondering why the months of weariness and pain did not seem more dreadful to her. While pitching on my head seems to have given me a good shaking up somehow, and I mean to do great things next year in better ways than breaking my bones coasting, said Jack, with a manly air. I feel like a Siamese twin without his mate now you are gone, but I am under orders for a while and mean to do my best. Guess it won't be lost time, and Frank nodded at Gus who nodded back with a slightly superior expression all freshmen wear. Hope you won't find it so. My work is all cut out for me, and I intend to go in and win, though it is more of a grind than you fellows know. I'm sure I have everything to be grateful for. It won't be plain sailing, I don't expect it, but if I live I'll do something to be proud of, said Ralph, squaring his shoulders as if to meet and conquer all obstacles as he looked into the glowing west, which was not fairer than his ambitious dreams. Here we will say goodbye to these girls and boys of ours as they sit together in the sunshine, talking over a year that was to be forever memorable to them. Not because of any very remarkable events, but because they were just beginning to look about them as they stepped out of childhood into youth, and some of the experiences of the past months had set them to thinking, taught them to see the use and beauty of the small duties, joys and sorrows, which make up our lives, and inspired them to resolve that the coming year should be braver and brighter than the last.  Let those who do launch them see to it that they have good health to man the oars, good education for ballast, and good principles as pilots to guide them as they voyage down an ever-widening river to the sea. End of Chapter 24 End of Jack and Jill


Hey friends, welcome again. So I am hopeful that all of you are liking these videos and we have covered a significant portion so far. We have seen what quadratic equations are and you know, what are the methods of solving quadratic equations. And in the last session, we discussed about the nature of roots of quadratic equation. So this particular session is based on the previous one only and we are trying to solve a few questions based on the concepts which we learned in the last few sessions. Now the question here is, determine the nature of the roots of the following quadratic equations, right? So we learned three cases in the last, you know, session and now we are going to apply them. And just to have a quick recap, what did we discuss last time? We discussed that there are three cases, this one, when discriminant that is b square minus 4ac of any quadratic equation is greater than 0, then we have two distinct, two distinct real roots, real roots, that was the nature of the roots and then case two was when d is equal to 0, then we said two equal real roots, two equal real roots, that means roots are real but they are same, they are equal and third was if d is less than 0, then we have two non-real or complex roots, right? This is what we learned so far. So now we are going to apply this concept. So please keep this in mind and let's see how we can find out the nature of roots for this particular given equation, right? So you know now in the first case, a is 2, so a is 2, b is 1 and c is minus 1, isn't it? So this is the value of a, b and c in the case, in the first case, so hence let's calculate b square minus 4ac, that is discriminant d is equal to b square minus 4ac which is nothing but 1 square, so b is 1 and minus 4 times 2 times minus 1 which is clearly 1 plus 8 which is 9 which is clearly greater than 0, so hence we get case 1, case 1 that is in this case d is greater than 0, so we will be having two distinct, distinct means two different. So in this case it will be two distinct real roots, okay? Now one thing you can notice here, what is to be noticed if you see if any of a and c is negative, guys, if any of a and c is negative then the roots will definitely be real, you understand? So if any of a and c, only one but if a and c are of or if a and c are of opposite signs, opposite signs, if a and c are of opposite signs then clearly b square minus 4ac will be always greater than 0, isn't it? Why? Because if a and c are opposite sign then a and c is negative and if a and c is negative then minus 4ac is positive, so hence it will always be greater than 0, right? So this is a good trick to remember, if a either of a and c or basically if a and c are of opposite signs then the roots are real, correct? Now let's go to the second question, the second question says, the second question is 2x square 2x square plus 5x plus 5 is equal to 0, this is the equation. Now clearly if you see a and c are of same signs so we'll have to check the discriminant, a is 2, b is 5 and c is also 5, so let's find out discriminant value, so discriminant value d is b square minus 4ac which is equal to 5 square minus 4 times 2 times 5 is equal to 25 minus 40, right? Which is minus 15, correct? Which is less than 0, so hence if it is less than 0 you know what is it? Case 3, case 3 is 2 non real roots are there, non real roots, 2 non real roots, okay? Sorry you can say the roots, real roots do not exist, real roots do not, do not exist. This is how, it's very simple, you have to just remember this formula, this is a crucial formula, so hence, so d is equal to b square minus 4ac, if you remember this, find this, greater than 0, 2 distinct real roots equal to 0, equal roots and less than 0, non real roots, okay? This is how you have to solve these kind of problems.


Well, thank you guys so much. This is going to be a really fun, exciting panel. It's about civic and political participation. So as you might have guessed, we're going to try to actually get you guys really participating in this panel. It's great that Wendy sort of kicked us off, because a big theme of this panel is that millennials are engaging beyond elections. So what we've tried to do is have different viewpoints to talk about the different pathways and opportunities for civic, social, and political engagement beyond elections. I'm going to do a quick intro of the really, really wonderful panelists and their expertise. They're going to go around, do very brief introductions, and they're going to answer this important question that I hope you all will also think about today, which is what motivates and inspires you to do this work? First, we have Sabir Rahman, who is a four freedom center fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. And in 2015, will be joining the faculty at Brooklyn Law School. We have Tiana Epps Johnson, who is at the New Organizing Institute as their election administration director. We have Russell Cramnell, who is the managing director of Opportunity Nation. And we have Plair Nalal, who currently works as an immigration attorney at Advancing Justice, Asian American Justice Center. Will you welcome me in joining them today? I hope so. We're doing what motivates us. Yeah, so they're just going to briefly introduce themselves and just say, what motivates or inspires them to do this work? So everyone, I'm Sabir, looking forward to our discussion. Just really quickly, I think for me, it's both the idea of necessity that we have to do this work in order to get to the stuff that we've been talking about this whole conference and possibility. I think we're at a really interesting time to reinvent our democracy. Hi, all. My name is Tiana. I think what motivates and inspires me, there's a lot of things. But both true in my personal and professional life, I find a lot of meaning in helping people learn so that they are more confident in navigating the world. And I get to do that both by helping the folks that run elections build skills. And the end result is creating more useful information for the folks that are trying to navigate the civic and political process. Hi, great to be here. I think when I think about the opportunity divided our country, it's especially hitting young people hard. And so I think any way that we can get them engaged to help close that's important. I think people often assume we've got really robust democratic institutions, right? And they'll just be fine. They'll keep operating. We know that's actually not true. They are robust and they function because people work really hard to make that happen. That's been true in the past and that's true today. And we really need everyone, everybody's hands, young adults, especially continuing to fuel that fire. We didn't get an expansion of civil rights. We didn't hold our government accountable for past abuses. That didn't happen because people stepped up. Sometimes at great risk to make important things happen. And so I'm going to see that continue to happen as democracy pushes forward. Hi everyone, I'm Brandon Malau. What inspires me is freedom for all communities that have been terrorized right now by the administration. Freedom from raids, freedom to have worker protections and the freedom to live with our families in this country because so many of us at risk of detention and deportations as we speak. So that inspires me to do what I do. Wonderful, well, I think you've all raised this really important question that I think a lot of us have been struggling with, which is how do we channel and tap into this energy we see with millennials? And then we see sort of the existing institutions. And we're seeing a massive lack of decline and trust in these institutions. But we're also seeing, sort of feels like the best of, it's like the tale of two cities, right? You see millennials engaging in commerce and in their social lives and there's a lot of energy. And yet, as you've said, we're not seeing the big robust reforms of previous generations. And I fear that if we can't sort of tap into that individual energy of millennials, that there are gonna be long-term consequences for our democracy. Any of you can jump in right now. Absolutely, well, I'll comment on that. And then I think political agency and economic agency are often linked, right? And so if you live in a neighborhood that's unsafe and where you feel disconnected or you're working two low-paying jobs just to feed your family, that limits your business, right? That's the less time you have to volunteer or organize in a campaign or push back on some encroachment you think is unfair. And so I think to the extent we can spend an economic opportunity for more people, that's gonna benefit this political engagement conversation. There's a lot of data that's just come out showing the middle class in this country basically makes the same amount of money that it did about 15 years ago. And that's, of course, in the handouts for the event today. Or, of course, we're doing even worse. Unemployed at very high levels. And so I think that's a piece we've also had to tackle. We've got a bit strong pathways for everybody and institutions have to respond to that. I think a lot of people are still locked in their minds that you go to high school, you get a four-year college degree and there'll be a really good job waiting for you. That's a fine path for some sliver of the public but we need lots of other pathways too. You know what else we're pushing for those? They're studying their own businesses. They're earning and learning at the same time. They're being really creative. I think our institutions have to respond to that because with that growing economic capability, then you're able to have better political agency as well. I think that's one piece of the puzzle. A lot of my focus is on sort of process and infrastructure. So a big portion of my work is working directly with the folks that run elections at the local level to help them develop data and technology skills to better administer elections in sort of the digital age. And I think that one thing that is really key to my work that I think helps translate to increased trust in institutions is really focusing on building relationships with the folks in these local offices that have thankless jobs and building empathy between sort of their work and the needs that they're not meeting for the folks in their community. And I think that working with also an office full of millennials or young people, oftentimes there's a lot of frustration that happens and there's a lot of tension between that work. But really humanizing these institutions because they're made up of people is tremendously impactful and sort of building that trust. So most of my job involves making sure people don't get detained and deported. The numbers right now are pretty stark in telling. The president, Obama has deported over two million people more than any other president in the history of this country.  And right now he's building baby jails in different parts of the country where they're housing two-year-olds just because they came to this country. So all of my job involves organizing communities that are very decentralized that don't speak English that well, that don't have access to institutions at all to begin with. And how do we then, and most of us are young and people of color, so how do we organize people who are completely left out and who this country has failed completely? It's obligations to provide human rights laws. How do we help those people? And so a lot of my job has been sort of organizing outside of mainstream traditional institutions to build power in immigrant communities and to drive and push change through different channels. And to build communities that are resilient and over time can sort of win. And we had a huge win two years ago when Obama gave a deferral of reputation to about 500,000 young people. We didn't just wake up one day. Instead of do that though, he was pushed to do that because young people are occupying these offices across the country and emptying them out and he didn't know what to do about that.  And that's how he won re-election really. But all of my job involves thinking of working outside the margins and working with people who don't have access to institutions. Just building on that into your question, Holly. I think a lot of us do with broadening what we mean when we're talking about democracy because I think there's a dangerous tendency to reduce it down to civic virtue and pulling the ballot box and sort of doing your duty as a citizen. I think that's completely backwards way to think about it, right? It's really, democracy is the most, it's not at all a bloodless neutral concept, right? It's the most radical, most kind of power related idea out there. It's all about resting control of the levers of power back from people who have monopolized it, right? Whether that's political control in terms of who makes decisions in government or economic control in terms of who shapes all of the macro forces that we've been talking about the last two days about the changing nature of the economy. So this is kind of what I mean when I think about democracy as a necessity. It's not an add-on that would be great if we did. It's the only way we can get to the stuff that we've been talking about the last two days. So how do we do it? So what do you think?  We've got some great ideas already from the other panelists. So I mentioned before kind of the idea of innovation. To my mind, I think it's both in terms of innovations around democracy, how we do it, but also innovation through democracy. So innovations around democracy, I think that's about kind of going beyond elections and going down sort of the modal form of public participation through protest or kind of traditional forms of lobbying or advocacy. I mean, we're in this really exciting time where there are a lot of other tools, whether it's technological, institutional, or just kind of power politics, like sit-ins and kind of what Perna was talking about. So, you know, social movements, a wider range of institutional forms outside of elections and the federal government, is that's one area. And then the other idea of sort of democracy as innovation, I'm kind of drawn to examples where policymakers and stakeholders are able to co-produce the policies that we live by. And so there aren't a ton of examples. It's not the way that we do things conventionally, but whether it's something like participatory budgeting or any of the other kinds of new ways that we can set up to allow kind of a wider range of people to actually have political power instead of just making suggestions or kind of knocking on the door. Yeah, I would just add we, there's a new report folks have found on our site that looks at the link between civic engagement and economic opportunity and shows very clearly that if you build skills and networks in social capital, that pays off for you with positive economic dividends, which is a little bit intuitive, but we have some fresh research that backs it up and tracks with some of the simple idea. Spencer was just saying our friends at city just support us in that work and I know help make today happen too. But I think one of the limitations even with the report is that we only measure kind of traditional types of engagement, right? The current population survey and other data sources that we were able to look at, you know, ask you, did you volunteer in the last year? Are you a member of a group? These are important. Those are apps we should never stop collecting that data, but we should collect more data because we know that more and more people, especially young people, are engaging lots of other ways. And when they're asked if they volunteer, they might say no, when in fact they're doing a whole bunch of stuff that was sort of count as volunteering, but they didn't go down to like a service group or the Lions Club and do that. They had their neighbor with the project or they did some online activism that then pivoted to a meetup or they did something in person and both of those linked up or a hundred other things, right? That aren't sort of captured in these questions. And so institutions in the way we gather data sometimes aren't deaf enough and quick enough to catch up to the way this stuff is moving so quickly. So all the ways of engagement that are being mentioned here I think aren't often measured and sort of counted. And so younger adults often seem more disconnected and less motivated than they in fact are by some of our institutional leaders. Yeah. And jumping off of that, I mean I work with the most motivated young people that I've ever met in my life who work two, three jobs a day and then work at night to like, stop their families from being deported and stop everyone else's families from being deported. I mean this is volunteer work and it's something that they do around the clock. And to the point where I mean seven years ago I started an organization called Dream Activist which was basically to organize undocumented young people across the country. And we used online tools to do so to take action to target Congress persons, to target ICE agents, to target DHS as a whole organization to change immigration policy in this country. And through that also we met other undocumented people and sort of built an organic movement from the ground up where we have so many different groups of undocumented young people and now also their parents who are joining in and forming community and trying to stop ICE buzzes from going to Mexico and trying to stop deportations of people. Some young people have taken on more, they're doing sit-ins in offices and they're doing sit-ins at ICE and locking themselves to gates and this is all civic engagement and this is what democracy should look like. Right, this is very interesting. So one thing that I'm hearing is there is a lot of civic engagement and there is a lot of energy but somehow it's disconnected from the perception of millennials but also disconnected from these traditional institutions and traditional indicators when you see things like declining levels of social capital around millennials. One statistic that I found very interesting is that millennials are not brand loyalists. This is true in commerce and it's also true in politics. And there's a lot of political scientists who tell you party identification is a really big criteria for how people vote but we're not actually seeing that with millennials and one thing that they really value is solutions-based governance. So I'm hearing a lot of energy, a lot of excitement from you guys. How do we sort of translate that? How can we sort of bridge that divide to maybe paint a new picture for what millennial civic engagement looks like? So this came up a little bit in one of our breakout groups yesterday. So I think a lot of that is actually, there's a lot of potential there, the sort of liberation from conventional brands or the kind of two-party system but I think the danger is that, so I like the kind of solutions-oriented ethos as well. I'm also kind of among that older edge of the millennial generation but I think the danger is that we, solutions-oriented pragmatism shouldn't be taken to mean neutral or non-normative, because we still have values that we're arguing for very passionately. We still believe inequality and justice and dignity for all and those aren't neutral kind of concepts. They're non-partisan in the sense that they're not democratic or Republican necessarily but they are very political and so I think what we're looking for is ways to channel that moral energy but not necessarily through the party system or legislative politics or those kinds of brands and that's where there's a lot of new potential around new social movements, new forms of institutional innovation. That's very interesting. I also see it as an organizing challenge because it means that there has traditional institutions are not gonna have the power to organize the folks that we're talking about and there are so many reasons that like that statistic doesn't surprise me. We just released a data set last week looking at the composition of elected officials down to the county level. Spoiler alert, white dudes. 90% of elected officials from the top to the bottom are white, 68% are men. So what that translates to is that we're releasing an index coming out next week, folks that women of color like myself, proportionate to the population, white men have eight times the power that they should have and so it's really difficult to think and sort of be traditional pathways, like where's my place in that? And so that's where sort of innovation comes to figure out the pathway there. I agree and I think also you could have a disproportionate impact at the local level, right? Turn out levels to be much lower. I mean, young adults could swing those elections as they all came out, right? I mean, so could in the other age group. People hang back more because our media gives a disproportionate amount of coverage to our binary presidential choice over four years, right? And that's incredibly important and the president makes a lot of decisions that impact all of us. But we saw this sort of in Ferguson, right? In fact, these things will flare up and it's like, wait, how did this happen? How did the leadership structure locally not reflect the community and how are these abuse of practices? And then you go back and look at turnout levels and again, it's not all about voting. It's about a whole range of engagement across many, many months of accountability. You can't show up once and vote and be done, as we've been saying, but I think that's a place where people could make a bigger impact both to influence the people currently holding office and to change the composition of those people, as was just said, so that they do reflect the community a little bit more. So I would say to dig in there, too, locally. I think that's also pretty exciting that young people tend to be more independent than anything else. I mean, it means, for me, at least in my work, it means that politicians are not going to take Latinos and Asians as granted to be vote for Democrats because they're the ones that are running the worst policies imaginable right now, at least in office. So it's actually a pretty exciting time. And as far as opportunities to play one party against another by pretty much saying you're independent, so hey, you need to do what you want you to do. So that's been, you know, it's actually helped to grow our power in that manner. So I see it as a very positive thing, actually. That's very hopeful. That's quite a lot of uplifting because, you know, I think you're right. You know, one thing that makes me concerned is that the world in which we live in does not yet reflect these realities. And so we have this two-party system. And so I like this idea of sort of seeing the system for what it is and then trying to understand how do we work with it to achieve our own goals? Do the other panelists have any thoughts on that? Yeah, so I guess two quick things. One, just to add to that last round around the lack of diversity in kind of the composition of who makes decisions, there's also really big class problem in terms of the types of life experiences that people have by the time they either become elected or appointed officials of various kinds. But to your question, I do think it's hopeful. And one way to think about it is so a lot of the institutions we now take as given around how our democracy works, we're themselves the product of previous attempts to reinvent the process under extreme duress. So whether it's direct election of senators or party primaries, I mean a lot of those came out of the response to the first Gilded Age, 100 years ago when people were concerned about machine politics as kind of choking off the ideal of democracy, right? And so now a lot of those institutions maybe don't seem quite as vibrant or as valuable to us at this point. But I think it's worth remembering that these things aren't given. They don't come bequeathed from, they certainly don't come from the constitution and then they don't come from sort of any kind of, from on high, they come from history. They're the product of people like us in previous generations trying to battle out the kinds of problems that we're facing now. I just think that there is a ton of opportunity there to the extent for folks that do have access to institutions to work with and work within government, and I'm not just talking about sort of running for elected office, although that's like one pathway certainly, but the folks that I work with are public servants that are working at the local level and significantly impacting or have the potential to significantly impact and engage their communities. And these are the types of opportunities that I hope increasingly young people are engaged in as well. Yeah, I just, amen to all that. I think this is exactly right. And I think there's a huge, huge power in telling your story and marrying it with data. I think some people are more responsive to the head and some more to the heart. I think you really need both. I always tell people, you know, come in with hard and fast numbers and your sort of personal experience because the comment about the fact that our leadership does not reflect people's experiences certainly not racially, but also the income divide is actually pretty, pretty huge. It's extremely rare for a low income person to have the capital and the extra time and obviously the money given through their network to run for office. And that's just, it's almost a laughable concept. And so I think telling those stories to people about, you know, what is it like to live in some of the neighborhoods in this country where zip code ends up being a huge, huge determinant of outcomes.  But in fact, we know there's a massive divide in our country even among young adults, right? There's about a third of young adults that could make some pretty big problems, some pretty big mistakes and probably be okay, right? Because they have networks around them. They have really good parents.  And then there's a third of young adults that can do everything right and it would be really, really tough to move up because they live in a neighborhood where there are no supports. There are no caring adults in their life and there's no cushion when they make a mistake. One mistake could really sort of be it for them or could set them way back on their pathway. And then there's probably a third of them that obviously have a more of a mixed experience. That's not the country we wanna live in, of course. And nobody wants that. And so I would say bring that story to people even to very unusual allies that you do not think would support you. Bring that story to them and let them react authentically in the moment because I think that's a very compelling narrative that we all wanna turn around.  Fantastic, I wanna do one quick last question and then open it up for questions. So if there was just one thing that you think you'd wanna sort of convey to millennials writ large. Let's say we can't win the media war, right? And there are some constituencies where it's easier to show the impact of policy. And I think that the turn, the re-interest in cities and local level is very exciting because people can be more connected to that. What's one way that you guys think we could sort of show millennials that there is this opportunity here? And you can think about it if you wanna take the questions first before you come back to this. I mean, the one thing that I would say that drives a lot of my work is that people who are most directly impacted should be the ones that lead their own struggle and so many times, our institutions, especially in DC, don't facilitate that. And we have so many immigrant rights organizations in DC that are not ran by non-immigrants. It's like, we're born here, what do you know about this? But, I mean, this is a problem throughout different communities and different places. Like workers should lead their own struggle, obviously. It barely, hardly ever happens though. So I think one of the takeaways that I would say is to try to facilitate people leading themselves and leading their own communities. I think that self-guidance, fantastic. Yeah, I think that that's exactly right. I think that showing millennials is not really a thing that is necessarily possible, but understanding sort of the relationship between your agency and your power and sort of the pathway to impact and hold accountable institutions is like one piece, but then actually getting involved in diving in and doing that and seeing your own power is sort of the only, one of the only ways to do that. I would just say this may sound, she's maintaining optimism. I mean, millennials having come of age in a really difficult economic climate, I think still polling shows they're still very optimistic. I think there's still some possibility. Like, great, the Obama campaign did a bunch of innovative things for the first time. Social media and the way they engage people, let's know a floor, let's know that we're a gold standard. Like, we can now be better than that and young adults will be showing away. So I think that sense of possibility and these new types of engagement and showing the country that optimism, even in the face of real economic obstacles, I think is incredibly powerful. We're gonna open it up for Q&A. Please be brief. As you know, this has been such an exciting panel and we wanna get the panelists to really have a discussion. Okay, that person there, please say your name and your brief question. Thank you. Hi, my name is George Chung. I'm from the Joyce Foundation. I'm really intrigued about your thoughts about the two-party political system. One could definitely play the two parties against each other or one could really shift towards some systemic reforms towards a real multi-party system through proportional representation. So I'd love to get your thoughts in terms of should young people and millennials lead the charge in terms of shifting to a multi-party system. Great, thank you. Fantastic question. Great question, too. Sure. Yeah, so I mean, that's a great question. So in theory, if you can get a bill through the state legislature, you can have states allocate their house seats proportionally. There's no reason why we have to have single-member districts. And we'll change a lot of the dynamics. I'm not sure how likely that is. I tend to see the party system as being fundamentally lagging and responsive to other sources of political initiative. So if it's a choice of strategy, I think I would lean more towards the social movement kind of emphasis that changing the baseline against which parties have to respond. But if we're kind of dreaming structural changes, then yeah, I mean, kind of a PR system would be great. I agree, too. And there are some states that have nonpartisan panels that draw their congressional boundaries. Every state should do that, right? That's another thing. You don't have to overthrow the two-party system. You can change the gerrymandering that we have. That wouldn't fix everything at all because we still stood ourselves, liberal, simple living cities, and so there will always be diluted. So there's some structural things there based on where people choose to live. But if we un-gerrymandered all the congressional lines, that would make a lot more competitive districts and that would allow you to play the parties off of each other more because you'd have, even if we stuck with the two-party system, you'd have two more reasonable people running against each other, presumably. Once the lag caught up. Yeah. I mean, I come from a parliamentary democracy, so I mean, I know the potential in a democracy where you have 10 different parties running for election and you can actually just have a no-conference motion and like get rid of them next week. It's fantastic. I mean, it's the best thing ever. And it's kind of shocking to me how the US is supposed to be some sort of a democracy but you like have two parties and do the same thing. It's kind of ludicrous. So, I mean, yes.  I'm not sure if we'll ever get there though. We'll take another question. That gentleman over there. Hi, first off, thank you all for coming. I'm Nehemiah Royal. I work with the Rosalyn Institute Campus Network. My question is how do we frame the conversation around values-oriented governance to kind of constructively communicate across difference? To communicate across difference. To constructively communicate across difference. So, I'll throw out maybe a quick thought on that. I mean, I think a lot of what, so if you think a lot about what we talked about yesterday and this morning, right, about the changing nature of the economy. To my mind, that's a source of the problem that's really about economic power and domination, right? And I think that's a, it's not universal, but it's a very, it's a much broader, more capacious language, right? We're all trying to have agency over our own lives as individuals, as communities, and we're constrained in that by concentrated private power by the forces of the market. And these are kinds of economic power that are sort of taking decisions out from our own control, right? And I think there's room there to be able to engage a lot of different types of communities and experiences around a kind of a common cause, in terms of remaking the economy, remaking our political system. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of potential to think sort of past the framework of difference and more about intersections. And I think that a real way to sort of recognize those intersections has to do with telling the stories sort of what you had talked about before telling your own personal stories and sort of seeing, building relationships with other folks sort of more based on these commonalities and building empathy with them. We'll take another question. That gentleman in the blue, Mr. Mark Schmidt. Thanks Mark Schmidt with New America. I'm just wondering, suppose there was somebody on the panel who said, hey, you know what, you know, millennials, we're libertarians, we're techno libertarians, we don't need government, we work things out for themselves, for ourselves, what would be your response to imaginary panelists number six? Spicy. Before we disagree with me, I don't think the Pollux supports that. I mean, are there libertarians in the Millennial cohort? Sure, just like they're in every age cohort. And maybe those voices are particularly loud and interesting, but I think most of the polling shows millennials are pretty comfortable with government having a role, and in some cases it's a substantial role. Now, I think they want business to have some freedom, especially in the entrepreneurship space, they don't want to see lots of regulations, so there's always caveats, but I think in general, millennials answer questions about their comfort with the size of the government being that they're pretty okay with it. So I think that's right, but to take the kind of our hypothetical libertarian on, I mean, I would say two things, so first of all, I think there's a difference between being a hardcore libertarian of the sort where the market solves everything and we work anti-state versus being someone kind of leading libertarian in the sense that the idea of individual creativity and innovation, entrepreneurship, those are things that appeal to them. And that ladder, I think, is actually totally right because there are a lot of ways in which we've talked about that are kind of traditional, like the traditional liberal imagination of government solving problems, just it actually doesn't work the way we want it to work. I think as progressives, you have to take that on and be like, yeah, that's actually a real problem, but the answer isn't to throw the baby out with the bathwater, the answer is to like tap our entrepreneurial creative intuitions and use that to reinvent our institutions of government because the extra piece is that all of the problems we talked about today and yesterday are problems that we can't solve individually. You can't be, you can't, as an individual entrepreneur, solve the work-life balance problem or solve the debt problem or solve the lifetime kind of wealth accumulation problem or any of the things we talked about. Those are collective problems that require collective action, but we shouldn't constrain ourselves to sticking with the institutions and the toolkits that we have that we've inherited because they actually don't work very well. Yeah. You know, and just to sort of take that question on in a serious way, I do think it is something that we are gonna have to sort of have a good answer for because I think some of the folks that I, some of my best friends, it's not that they don't want a lot of the benefits that we all see, it's that they want sort of alternative structures to provide them those benefits and I think there really is going to be attention in this idea of solution-based governance and what do we do for the public sector and the public servants who have been there and I think it is gonna force us to sort of come into reality with some of these tensions and I think we're gonna see it in the run-up to 2016. I think we have time for a few more questions. These have all been really fantastic. Let's take this woman here and then the woman behind her. Either order, that's fine. Good morning, Mary Bruce with AmeriCorps Alums. Wondering, technology is a solution versus or in complement with actually sitting down and talking to people face to face and we talked a bit about the Obama campaign and the power of that technology played in his election but it was also house parties and people actually sitting and talking about real issues. So as you're thinking about millennials who are more mobile than previous generations and leveraging technology and place-based solutions versus or in complement with technology solutions. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think that there are, I think some of those older and older institutions think oh, if we just have the right tech solution like we'll engage the young people and just sort of check that box and think that they're sort of done then. But I think you clearly need both. I mean, high tech and high touch, both are important. We've got the Obama campaign succeeded. We've got a lot of tech stuff. They also had an army, like the biggest organizing army ever, right? They had more people on the ground doing door knocking. The number of contacts they were reporting to their field operations was off the charts and so I think they're complementary. I totally agree that technology is among the things in your toolbox to be able to more effectively engage. It's one of the many tactics that you should be using. Could you say that one more time, really loudly? Among one of the tools in your toolbox. Wonderful, we're gonna take our final question. Is there anyone else? Because we could combine two. Okay, we're good. Just trying to engage folks. That's great. Thank you. My name's Angelica. So this is for all the panelists. When we talk about political participation, we do, I feel like, tend to look at civic innovation and the role of technology, but at the end of the day, a fundamental right we have is to vote and what are your thoughts on increasing voter participation particularly amongst millennials? Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'll take that first. Our political system is so complicated. It's criminal. One of the things that I've specifically worked on is that recognizing that technology is among one of the tools to better engage young people. Local election offices of the just over 3,000 counties, about 1,000 counties, don't have an elections website at all, which was shocking to me. And so one of the things that I have worked on to help make sure that folks have the information that they need for the fundamental baseline things and know how to even get to the box and vote has been working to develop this website template for local election offices based in a bunch of best practices about how people consume election information and helping to coach those folks in those offices to know how to actually populate and maintain and write in plain language and all of the things that are helpful to communicating that information as just one of the mechanisms of helping demystify the process and actually meet people where they're looking for this. Yeah, I would like to just note most of the people I work with don't have the right to vote. I mean, there's like talking about 20 million people who actually can't vote. And it's not just because they're immigrants but also because there's founded disenfranchisement, there's also ways of preventing people from voting nowadays through voter ID laws. And so a lot of this involves fighting back and actually trying to gain either the right to work or to put it in a different manner or to cost it differently, making sure that everyone can vote regardless of the immigration status regardless of the fact that they might have a criminal record or any of those things. So it's to actually extend the vote and redo it in ways that also promote most of the participation beyond just voting. Yeah, just to build on that, I think both of those are really spot on. I mean, we have all the tools at our disposal to kind of up the participation rate in terms of whether it's websites out online, direct mail, but I mean, I think the problem of voter turnout, it's much more political than that. I mean, we're living through the worst retrenchment of the right to vote since Jim Crow, arguably even worse depending on how you count between felon disenfranchisement, immigrants and like the new voter ID laws. And it's happening like literally in real time in the last two weeks, it's gotten even worse with the series of court decisions. So I mean, it's happening right now. We're living through it and it's a total outrage, but like that's to my mind, that's the real, like let's make it, it's not just a civic virtue thing, right, that we have to turn up and vote. Like no, there's actual power being exercised here in a really immoral way and that should be the story. Yeah, I just want to completely agree with that. And this isn't, I don't think this is, my organization is completely bipartisan. We work with everybody, we work with all sectors. And I don't think this should be controversial to say that the voter ID stuff that's going on is just clearly wrong. I would come into everybody in the room, Judge Richard Posner, who's a conservative on the federal bench, just wrote this opinion if you haven't seen it recently in one of the, maybe the one that was constant, but in one of the contested laws, his decision basically eviscerated every argument that you could make for supporting these voter ID laws, step by step, it's beautiful written. I would suggest that you read it and share it. So it's really powerful and coming from someone who sits on the right side of the ideological spectrum from him and basically knocks it down. This is about our sort of values as a country. And the second thing I would add, since we're sitting right now in the district and I'm a resident of the city and many of you probably are, we could deliver for president, but that's it. And so I think there's also fundamental injustice happening that there are 650,000 people who pay taxes and fight in wars that don't get to vote in the city as well. So I would just mention those two, those should not be controversial statements. Proud to work with liberals and conservatives at our organization. I think that those two things are true. Fantastic. Well, I just want to say, I think about this stuff a lot and this panel totally blew me away. And I want to thank all of you, both for all the work you're doing and also for all the great ideas and energy you put forth today. So big round of applause and wonderful questions. Thank you guys. I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did.


So you want to test your menu in-game right away, not a problem. Real quick, I learned how to do this from Vertus Learning Hub, so definitely check them out when you get the chance. Go up to this icon and open the level blueprint. Right-click, create widget, set class to the UI blueprint that you created. Drag the left side out to event begin play, and drag the right side out to add viewport. Save, you're done.  Now, usually in your menu, you want to see the mouse. And in order to have control over mouse visibility in the blueprints, right-click, get player controller, drag the right out to set show mouse cursor, and connect viewport to the mouse cursor. From now on, if you want the mouse to be on, check it to true. Otherwise, check it to false. Compile, save, all that helps, and as always, I'll be of a fantastic day, and I'll see you around.


If there's any. Oh, it's quite a number. Okay. Hi. What's that? So, that's right. So, about the Philippines. So, now we'll be just based in the Philippines, obviously. So, it's a little bit about our country. So, the people there are pretty social. We're pretty social since childhood. So, basically, from family gatherings to the school, we tend to hang around the same people, basically. And if you're interested in the same thing, usually you can find a friend in the Philippines. Because we're in the Philippines, it's an island nation. So, it's one difficulty to attend a meet-up from, let's say, south in Mindanao to Manila. So, in that sense, it kind of limits the audience that you can participate in your meet-up. Furthermore, there are different dialects in each region, which can also make it difficult. And it's not the whole country that speaks English. There are certain, like, who are really fluent in it. So, although that's the case, English is still an official language. Starting from grade school, everyone is taught the basics of grammar and how to speak in English. And that progresses into high school and eventually college. So, yeah. So, one question that came up at one of our meet-ups, you know, lean coffee meet-up, was why do we attend meet-ups? So, for me, Filipinos tend to go to the meet-ups for social aspect. And maybe the second part is to learn something new. So, but I observed that basically after each lecture, when someone's done talking in the Philippines, it's hard to get questions from the audience. It's like they're shy or something. Or my theory is that they think it's like a school where they just go to a lecture and then talk to the teacher, talks, and then, okay, you're done except that there's no homework. So, in our meet-ups, we usually have beginner-level topics. The reason for this is there are a lot of students who are still studying Laravel. So, we like to cater to the majority of the audience. So, we make most of the topics about beginners or beginners can understand. Then, we usually inject something like advanced lesson or something or something advanced topic that other professionals might be interested to go to the talk. And, yeah, so that's what makes the meet-up more interesting. In the Philippines, there's a funny story, though. You commonly get questions like, is there a certificate at the end of the meet-up? Or even if they ask even if it's free? I think it's because there's a big culture there where you're supposed to attend seminars and all. But, yeah, it's just a funny story. So, aside from Laravel Philippines, I attend other meet-ups. So, that's how I kind of try to improve the Laravel Philippines meet-ups. So, these are the other meet-ups that I go to. Usually, if there's something interesting, I just go to it. For example, data science is a big thing in the Philippines right now because there's the R-users group where I try to study scripting in R. Manila JavaScript is pretty popular as well. As you can see, there are other meet-up groups, not only technical. So, yeah, those are, like, very diverse in terms of meet-ups. Okay. So, I go to these meet-ups as well to reach out to the crowd. Basically, try to gauge what new topics are there that maybe I could add it to one of the topics in Laravel Philippines. So, let's go to Laravel usage in the Philippines. I don't have the exact numbers, but based on the meet-up group, I can tell by the industry that a lot of startups are using Laravel, especially if the technical co-founder is a HP guy. They usually recommend Laravel just to begin the project. A lot of the other startups that I know of, they use their own framework, they create their own, or they use coding nitrogen. There's one startup that used symphony before, but then they eventually moved on to RubioMails. So, yeah, it's a pretty diverse group. Actually, I tried to make the Laravel Philippines group more diverse by introducing different topics. Like, last time we had GUCLI instead of the usual Laravel back-end stuff about PHP. So, this is our Facebook group. So, in the picture, that was one of our beat-ups where we discussed TDD using pure PHP. So, we've been handling meet-ups since 2013. We host many meet-ups, many companies approach us, and they basically want to promote their devs as well as their company.  So, basically, it's a pretty regular kind of group. So, we have different kinds of topics. We have lightning talks as well. We sometimes talk about people's projects. One time, I just played a video from LaraCast, and the newbies enjoyed that one. So, we learned a lot from these meet-ups. So, this is our group on meetup.com. That was an old banner I created a long time ago. So, that was the TDD workshop that we had. So, it was about a calculator test. So, you just create a calculator, and we created unit tests for each of the functions. So, our Laravel group here has about 1,700 plus members right now. So, this is one of the first meet-ups that I had. It was very small in, held in Microsoft Philippines about 2014. So, it was the fun meet-up where we basically had, you know, just getting to know each other and talking about each other's projects. So, I introduced something new in the Laravel Philippines meet-up. It's called Lean Coffee Style. So, it's similar to the UX group, and I'm sure you've encountered it as well. So, basically, you have this Kanban board where you write things to discuss and things to be discussed, and people can prioritize which topics they want to talk about. So, the main takeaway that I get from these kinds of meet-ups is a lot of newbies learn more about the business side rather than the technical side. And if they have, like, questions about technical, they quickly get the answer much faster than if they were to post it online. So, basically, we've been doing this for a while. We had at least two coffee meet-ups. And this is one of the meet-ups where we had some topics there. So, some topics can range, like, as you can see, one of the notes says, pet projects, other languages, like node or Python. There's even, you know, some meta kind of question, why attend meet-ups. So, yeah. And there are some advanced ones, like APIs and microservices. So, in the Larva community, I tried to get the members to contribute to open source. One of the tips that I learned from getting people to contribute is to create a contributing file, basically. So, you're supposed to basically set the parameters for how they will contribute, like, do they file an issue queue, and then when they file a pull request to reference the issue queue. Things like that. That really helps the newbies understand. And for the people who are maintaining the project, know what exactly, you know, at least there's a process and it becomes clear what they want to do. And, yeah, it's easier for the newbies to contribute. So, yeah, that's basically that. One of our members, Jeff DeSena, they created this project called Larvaecom, which is basically Larvaecomers. So, he made it so that it's test-driven development kind of driven contribution model. So, he won't accept any pull request unless there's a test to it. And it helps the newbies understand or be forced to learn about test-driven design and development. So, yeah. So, another thing, another tip that I learned is to create a community guidelines. So, in one of our repos, I placed this. So, basically, how will you communicate to other members, like with respect and what are the responsibilities of someone sharing something to the group. So, you know, basically it tells you to post it to something like GIST or other text sharing kind of code. Okay. So, shared value, these things help make the community more cohesive, coherent in their values so that you don't have a lot of problems later on. Like, for one time, there was a guy in Facebook group where it was kind of rude to the newbies and, yeah, basically had to kick him out for a bit. And, yeah, it was the fun part of being community. So, why I think the community will continue to grow, I think it's because of the Larvaeco ecosystem. There's a laracast.com. You can learn Larvaecom from that. There's FORGE, which allows you to learn how to deploy their Larvae apps by just paying $10 or something. And there's a forums, larvae.io. So, that's a good reason why Larvaeco continues to grow is that there's all these things that help Larvae developers become better. So, some lessons learned from running a meetup. So, I learned that there's lots of room for improvement. So, basically, it's a lot of hard work and discipline. Like, you really need to practice a lot in speaking and sending requests to the venue partners and how to negotiate for that. So, it's a lot, my learning is that it's a lot like learning, like running a startup. So, in a startup, you have to run everything by yourself, then eventually people join you. And you make sure that they're of the same value. They have the shared values that you have of culture. And this helps eliminate problems about commitments and basically hiring the wrong people who eventually leave you. Another thing I learned is that you have to build an online portal. This on the way, it's kind of hard because I'm also handling a day job. So, you have to find a way for people to contribute where they can blog, they can share their issues and find jobs. So, that helps build the ecosystem. Okay. So, that's another good thing because it will, like, because the Philippines is an island nation, there's a lot of people all around who can't go to the place where there's a meetup. And the plan is from this, maybe we could go global. I learned about this last night. Basically, thanks to Thomas. So, there's this website called PHP.usergroup. So, you could look up usergroups there. There's also friends of PHP.org. And there's a lot of awesome this out there that you could look up the different kind of meetups that are there that I could add my group to. So, I just like to share some tips in growing an FB group before I end. So, we have an FB group in Facebook, basically. And I learned that you could post questions to engage your conversations with your members. So, you could maybe post about, ask you about their favorite editor. This, the next topic, tabs or spaces is a big kind of hot topic that I like to ask sometimes. So, some people, they use it like a Stack Overflow. So, this is one of the posts. So, he's sharing about some tip about clean code. So, they're using this thing called, basically, carbon that, now that SH, which is a way to beautify your code snippets when you're sharing them online. So, it transforms it to an image, basically. So, yeah, that's one of the things. So, yeah, thanks. I'm Joe Palala. I head the Larval Philippines. And I also contribute to I volunteer Philippines. Do tweet me up if you want to talk to me. Thank you.