All right, so so before we begin now, I would like to give a context in terms of what are we talking about and when I say Taming a dragon, you know, am I talking about some martial arts kids when I'm going to fight a dragon and do something any guess Why do you guys have in mind when you thought it's going to be taming a dragon?  I didn't say that not me. Okay, anyone else? Anything else anything else that comes to your mind starting all the differences Sorting out the cultural differences. All right, cool. So I'm like this. I was this pretty excited kid man Recently when I did my assignment, but this was my first assignment with a team from China I was like super excited going there to begin with primarily because I don't know the language and that's the first time I'm actually coaching a team where I didn't speak their language and Language being one of the most important entities and whatever whatever communication It was really really difficult But once I did there, you know, like once it finished my assignment I was like super excited about the entire journey and I really wanted to present something To the audience or to the community and say, hey, this is what I learned from this experience. That's very much about it So now coming to what I'm going to talk here to begin with of course, I'm going to say a few fundamentals which I believe are I'm going to reiterate some fundamentals which I think is very very important for any transformation or anything related to self or people any sort of thing and Sorry about that. I'm also going to give you some prescriptions Which you may like or may not like but you guys just decide for yourself if you'd like to use it So all the prescriptions I'm going to give are like two basic tools that I've learned from various Practices like say I'm I'm practicing psychotherapist so that way I get to learn different models of psychology different school of thoughts and a lot of things so that gives me a lot of experience in terms of How to deal with people life coaching so like like Linda was explaining this morning a lot of things about people So what you may not get from the session You may not get very standard data saying of course, I'm going to tell you what happened as a result But but I'm really not very focused on those aspects, but what I want to really do today is The difference like basically how is it going to be different from any agile journey session as I just want to give you an intro About what are things that you have to remember? Especially when there is a cultural context, you know every time you're going to start dealing with somebody from a different culture There are certain basic things that you might have to remember so that you know All right, so anyway, so I'll just get started But So now let's talk about Culture sensitivity What we are talking about because these are these are very very close to us You know, let's say today See I come from a I come from a South Indian family So even though I'm you know, India is very diverse and every time I go to a different place I learn something no something new you know something exciting and it's very very important how I perceive it When it's even more important when especially it's going to be cross-cultured We don't Speak What is expected in our cultural context so here is a slide I have with just says Guys can't see anyway. It just says greedy soul and that's about me So I call myself greedy is because I have a metaphor of Ravana as well So Ravana is my metaphor not in the wrong sense. I think most of you know Ravana, right? I think all of you know Ravana. I'm not saying I'm like super intelligent Nor I'm saying I'm a bad guy like Ravana as it is portrayed in the mythology, but I like doing multiple things You know, I like to experiment with multiple roles.  I have a book club and stuff like that and I'm also an agile coach. So that's how it works So and any questions so I work for agile if you use if you want to reach me in Twitter My idea would be kkb k a y k a y b doubly as in it comes from the bumblebee idea All right, so let's move on to the slides now So like I said one of the biggest barriers I had when I spoke about cultural sensitivity when I spoke about coaching one of the barriers I had when I just looked into myself and saw Okay, what is that? What is that? I'm going to offer to this particular team. What is the challenge here? One thing I realized was language And why language especially in the context of coaching? Whenever I was just thinking about it I knew that all the while I've been coaching for like what five five to six years now Like in the past five to six years my primary means of gathering information was language The words they use, you know the word I mean, of course There's a lot of human cues as well But one of the primary elements that I've always perceived where like words like say for example to make it as cliche as it sounds When somebody tells me that you know, I have assigned this work to a team member I quickly go and grab that opportunity and tell them we don't assign work in agile You know people pick up tasks from agile so assign being a primary word But when I'm working with a team where I don't understand the language I realize how important it was to my coaching practice So it naturally happened that I have to find out new ways of engaging my team You know identify new ways to interact with them. So what do you think is the best way? So it let's say if I can't speak How what is the best way? Someone knows sign language here somebody You know sign language a little bit. So let's say what is this? this Okay, they're saying come all right, okay fine What does it mean? Something you know, it's something you might understand that I'm talking something about I like you all right I love you or whatever. So there is there is there is a connection So I'm not even speaking but still we are able to connect because we all are connected even without us knowing it Half the time when I course the teams I always tell them, you know If you feel something just talk about it. It need not be right, you know, I remember one of the speaker I really appreciate her for her courage for what she said. I really don't believe in I'm not an agile fanatic to begin with I just believe that there is a possibility, you know It's it's like it's like the same possibility that we have with the universe like say there are more planets You know, maybe the planets we have identified or not planets really stuff like that So I just believe in the possibilities always speak your feelings out So what I decided to do was to engage this element of human connection, you know to start being close to them Even without speaking the language. So what are the things I have to do? So obviously when I'm going to talk about human connection It's going to be a two-way process, right?  I'm going to change you now. It doesn't work that way. You guys are doing Yeah, so I'll tell you something very interesting So somebody have anyone here have done or attended a therapy session a Therapy session with any therapist or a counselor nobody all same people. I'm so insane. Sorry So I've done a lot of therapy sessions with my therapist and for practice as well as for my own self-journey So one of the things they do primarily is every time I talk about an issue, you know, obviously, I'm in the thick of it So I naturally don't get into Solutionary mode very easily. So what the therapist do usually is the first thing they do is they just touch on Touch me either on my shoulder or on my thighs, you know somewhere.   You know a simple acknowledgement would give a lot of hope to the party that you're speaking to That's exactly what you have to do when you're talking about being empathetic So in other words the first thing that I believe that one has to take care is Be empathetic to your past now. Let's let's again redefine or you know Confine the scope of discussion that we have today So obviously I told you that we are talking about Various cultures, but in this case since the title is taming the drug and I'm going to talk about The aspects of Chinese culture only so this this this particular thing which I have absorbed which I've also taken a reference from papers There are like three major aspects that it's very very important in any Chinese Adoption I believe the first one is hierarchy and harmony. So there is some kind of harmony which coexist with hierarchy You know, that is something most Asian cultures could identify with you know, we all are harm We are we are in harmony, but we also know that there are like this underlying boundaries You know when a manager says this when a team member says is when a coach says this things are very different So obviously if I could give you a little trick We also play around with those ideas like say for instance earlier when he used to coach for an assignment used to work in Three teams like as it was it was a man It was a three-member coaching team where I'm me being the junior and I had an engineering manager And I had a very very senior director in my team So we all convey the same message, but we don't convey. I mean, let's say if I have to say something I will say things to peer groups Let's say if it has to be very strong and let's say it has to be like, you know Do it then the director will say that when it's going to be something about engineering practices Then these guys will say that but primarily thinking about it We all going to speak the same language, but subconsciously it so happens that we all work with boundaries We all believe that if this person is going to say this, it's very credible Obviously if you're going to be a consultant, you need more gray hair, you know more salt and pepper you look You're more respected because they believe that you can give them more knowledge than what it is anyway So that's that's a very hierarchical thing and talking about the next one the next one is Gwanshee So Gwanshee networks when what do you mean by Gwanshee is relationships So like many Asian cultures people also work with relationships like say it is not just about me It is always about my team. I don't want to hurt or harm another person You know, this is something I'm sure most of you would have experienced in your organizations And the last one is me on she so me on she means face value here. So what do you mean by face value here is? There's a very nice metaphor in Tamil, but I'm sure most of you doesn't understand Tamil years I'm going to say it in English.  You know, let's say, I don't want you don't want to shame them at any level You don't want to shame them by anything. So that's what they mean by face value So these are three primary elements that we have with any Chinese culture. So now this being the criteria. So Okay Okay, what should I do? So sorry about that guys So so talking about the culture it says there are like three different aspects and now now coming to what I have to do So like I said, I was really really focused on changing myself than really changing the team I think I'm going to let go of the presentation. I'm going to walk around and I'm comfortable back there So so what happened with my teams was I just realized there's something that I have to really do To make this transformation happen the first and the foremost thing I decided to do was be very honest about what I feel And to be very genuine about what my emotions are and not to be faking it If I don't like it, I don't like it But it doesn't mean that I'm going to put them down and say hey guys This is what you guys are doing and I don't like it But to say tell it in a different way so that they also understand what I'm speaking about because I believe or I very strongly believe that nothing No message goes strong without being genuine and the moment if you're giving a very genuine message it comes from your heart You're just there So to give you a metaphor to give you an example one of the things that happened with I think these days many people asked me like most of my colleagues most of my peers who used to work with me They started asking me. Hey, I want to be an agile coach. What do I do? So what all things I have to learn, you know, should I go learn this should I do this material and all that So the only question I asked them is fine.  And everybody wants you to be an agile coach unless and until you're passionate about what you're doing I don't think people will appreciate what you're saying. So that's something I realized and I thought I'm going to be very passionate about it And if I'm not passionate, let me make peace with that. So that was the first one. So All right, so this is what I decided I just saved up keep calm and same in how so Nihao means hello It means hello in Chinese. So I just decided that I was just identified. What is the chain that I need to do? I saw that's the first step. So what did I do? The first thing I did was be an explorer be a child and then connect So what do I mean by that? I just thought you know, let's say let me just go explore this opportunity Yes, I don't know Chinese as I have not worked with a team like this So what you know, let me just go explore it. In fact after making this presentation I just realized that instead of using a dumpling picture here. I thought I should have used the picture of Queen the movie Queen I think most of you would have understood what I'm exactly talking about, you know It's it's that's exactly what I mean. Just go with it You know, just go for it. So that was the first thing and second thing is like I said be genuine and be honest And be nice and be extra nice. There's no harm in being extra nice. So another incident again Which actually again, I'm talking because it tells you how much we value these human connections So there was this play of time in China where I was I used to visit this juice shop every day So this guy used to give me juice and we don't speak our language, right? So I should have made this that's how we used to communicate. So you should give me something And what would be if me I used to drink so one day when I just walk into the store This guy was very happy that I was like visiting a store for like a third time He says they need an egg tart as a compliment and I didn't even know that he's gonna do that to me And he doesn't have to do it. But being extra nice doesn't cost you anything You know like say for example when I do my assignments. It's it's not that I'm kind of saying because Because I realize that most people don't do it explicitly when I talk to my teams I give them gifts It's it's not like I'm gonna get anything out of it But just some small get just give them gifts You know just to give them sweets when they do the retrospective tell them what they want You know, it just makes them feel good And another important thing I just decided to listen actively It's very different from listening.   Right, I think this is one of the things which most Indian teens have to look into it because Culturally, I'm not sure if I'm being very fast right now, but culturally we are we are so tuned to speak very fastly So especially when you talk to someone from a different culture, it's very important to speak very slowly Again another example is I have a friend who works for Enable India and he's from Australia So every time he talks to his colleagues, he tells them something and his constant compliant is my colleagues Tell me that they understand what I'm speaking but finally they don't do their job So when he goes and ask them they said sir, we don't understand you So, you know, it's it's like very important for us to be very vocal about it if you don't understand Always communication is a two-way channel and the last but not the least which is your respect You know start respecting your culture, you know start respecting the fact that don't go in question They're saying hey, how can you do that? You know, so this happens with I'm not a vegan nor I'm against meat eating population But there's a very common bias which I've always been even when I came from came from China The first person they asked me was did you eat snake and it's it's not just that it wasn't a very condescending way You know, it was like, oh, do you guys eat snake? It's like that, you know It's very very important to appreciate the fact that people have different preferences and they eat different things And they live a different lifestyle So the moment I just imbibe all these qualities and I thought this is what it's gonna make my way I decided to do this. Oh, by the way, some of the pics you want to see here are my Pictures that I clicked from the experiences so you guys can just go figure So now coming to the tools part So now I'm done with the very generic part what I wanted to talk about, you know I'd say in terms of the experiences now coming to the prescriptive element, which I'm not very fond of But still I'm going to give you some tools that I use during this transformation. Oh Sorry, you know why it's life-working as a bad woman It was in China again in culturally when you say for a fold sounds like that So they don't have fourth floor. They don't have 14th floor. They have but usually these are for maintenance if they don't have Let's say if you have a 14th floor building the 14th floor is usually for general maintenance They have an air conditioning went or something like that. So I decided to skip slide 14 So now coming to the tools here the very first tool that I'm going to introduce it So this is something I spoke I spoke about this particular thing in the last conference as well Which which happened in Bangalore, but I thought it's very contextual here, which are called contracts So when I begin the talk, I just told you guys what I'm going to give you today And what I'm not going to give you today, which means I'm just kind of contracting with you guys in terms of What I'm going to offer, you know, will that be valuable to you? So you guys are very clear if you want to attend the station or you want to walk out of the Basically, I want to give you guys an option It's it's it's not like you guys have to stay here because it's it's so so this is one of the things which I often see even in Indian Teams when we start coaching for them usually your meetings like retro specters Usually retrospectors I would say because that's where the entire team have to be part of most team members are there because they say the managers Want them to be What I do with my teams is even that happened in the Chinese teams as well I give them an option if you don't like to attend the meeting, please go trust me I will not penalize you if you're worried about your managers trust me I will not even tell them that you didn't attend this meeting It's not very important for me But what is very important is you attending attending this meeting with complete willingness I want you to make a choice here and often when you attend the training program I have these participants when I ask them what is your goal from the session most team members say I have this I have that and there are always one or two team members who tell me I'm here because the manager asked me to so the next question I asked them is okay Now that you guys are here you have decided to walk in. It's your choice now. Tell me. What is your goal? Because it's very important for you guys to attend whatever time you spend you should have something solid because if you guys don't understand What is expected? It's I cannot deliver what it is. So it's very very important to contract So again contracts are a free level. We call it that administrative professional and psychological the administrative contract is very simple Which all of us understand when your time location Logistics or graph and the second one is professional contract. This again means I'm sure most of you are a nominator for the conference Or did you guys voluntarily go and say hey, I want to attend the agile conference How many people volunteer for the conference? Wow, that's nice. Cool. So anyway So when you say a professional contract often it happens that if you're a manager if you're an agile coach your organization Expects you to do certain things because your role demands that so that is your professional contract So many times that goes with saying but the last one is your psychological contract This is where I want to emphasize on because most often we don't ask this question like say it is understood that if you're a Scrum master you have to just go face the product owner and say hey I want to do this But what you have to do here is ask a scrum master if he or she is willing to do it and see How it changes the entire scenario just ask them and if they are not willing to do it Just give them a chance just give them an opportunity to explore what they actually need See by which I know I don't mean that you're going to make a plan for failure These are not plans for failures, but make safe and secure Experiments things that you can actually live with if it's a small meeting if it doesn't have a bigger goal try it out I mean primarily if this is for coaches, but this is something you can always use with any of your team members So you understand this to don't demand a person to do something just because the role says so Give them a chance, you know ask them if they really want to do it if they cannot help them First time I do it second time to do it third time. Trust me. They will do it by themselves. Oh, there she is I think she was the one who was talking about you're talking about the other I really appreciate that because you know I believe that is very important You know give them a chance give them an opportunity to say what they like many times All they want to do is this talk All right, okay, and I think this is a very common thing again one example from the therapy sessions is most often men and women come for counseling Right, they have problems with your matter-of-the-life or like boyfriend girlfriend and often many things So one problem or constant problem in the cost of risk of stereotyping us. They say the guy is not listening He's not listening to me. He doesn't listen to what I'm speaking about You know when when you ask the guys like it's very irritating for me because I'm coming from work in all the But ideally what women want or rather any human being want is to just talk they're not looking for solutions They're not looking for you to come and solve it for them But just went it up and the same logic applies here All right, so what is the next one? So this is again another NLP based technique, which I call it as to chair technique So someone has done it with your teams before Anyone you know what it is So to chair is it's like as good as if you have to remember something. It's like as simple as doing a role play So often especially deal with it when you have a conflicting situations when you are in a conflict Just put them together Let's say for example There is a conflict between a strong master and a team member and ask them what it is and you know often Role-plays are played by the one one person like not be two people Right so ask them what it is and many times as human beings You know like as Linda said in the morning. We don't know what we are So but this particular process really helps you understand where you are headed like say for example If I have a conflict with my boss, you know, I'm not able to speak it out. I'm like, okay He did this he did this to me. He did this to me and I'm like kind of Keeping this against me. It's very important for you guys to bring it out or is it's going to impact your work So what I do is I just ask my team member to play the role of an employee saying, okay This is my point, you know, this is where I come from now what I asked the person is now Okay, now assume that you are the manager sit on the other chair and explain possibly why the manager would be doing those things You know what I mean? Basically, I'm trying to get into the shoes of other person or in other words. I'm trying to be empathetic and not being sympathetic It actually works wonders try to do teams and tell me if it works for you But I've often done it with many teams where I have seen strong resistance from people who doesn't want to adopt something There's always a reason there's always a reason why they don't want to do things listen to them It's very very important. So that's about to shape it and what about the next tool and the next tool is yes You have a question You want the slide it doesn't help Yes Yes, let's say for example, you're coaching a person. Let's say there's a conflict It's okay to involve both the parties also because but what what happens in the thick of the moment is we have a lot of these Personal notions to it, you know, somehow we really don't resolve it quickly But one of the ways to easily resolve it is to put the person in one chair and ask them to change rows How we have to do it kinesthetically is change the person from one chair to another and trust me it works And your team members will have resistance when you're doing this because when when you start ask them to speak for them So they sit in the same chair and they will not move But ask them to move from one chair to another because one chair to another because that's how it works Kinesthetics is also very important. You get what I mean everyone. All right, okay? So any other questions or I'll move on to the next part. So the next part is it's about using culture specific metaphors You know metaphors have always been my way of explaining things because it's very very easy for me to connect that way So when I went to China again, some of the metaphors that I started using to explain agile I thought I'll just share it with you. So obviously chopsticks. I was very very fascinated with chopstick But from Dave and I haven't like trying to eat and trying to eat. I'm like very proud I can eat now so, you know eating with chopsticks, you know It's it's the best metaphor for pairing for me You know, it's not like one chopstick is going to be higher than the other It's not like one stop six is going to wait and watch until the other one has the food You guys have to work together you guys have to work together and take the food and then eat it and listen until you do that It's not very It's not gonna help you guys the way it has to ideally again. It's not a norm It's not like you have to force people to say hey you better sit and give me a value But let them be but tell them what it is another metaphor that I got from China again is Interestingly when I was looking at their addresses all their addresses were written this way Let's say if this place I remember Bangalore address. Let's say I tell my address. It's like it goes like my 11 in Rannagar So it's like 123 18th main in Rannagar Bangalore But how they write their addresses Bangalore in Rannagar 18th main 123. What is the difference? It's like the other way around so when I just looked at the address obviously I don't understand anything about China So I just asked them is it like you guys read your is your scripts read from right to left because that's that's how I perceive That because it's written as the last thing I see is a number But they told me no, it's not like that. We always write it the other way around It's the important thing so which in my mind is more like the way how do you write user stories? You start with something big and then you and then you confine your scope come slowly define it And finally you have where I am if I'm gonna just say Bangalore you guys will not know where I lead But if I'm gonna tell you 120 and also what is very important is without saying it's Bangalore in Rannagar 18th main 123 doesn't make any sense the same way how it works with user stories, right? So this was a very effective metaphor for me to try adopting some metaphors like this from your own work experiences It could be specific to Indian teams last one So any questions here? Okay, so what is the next one model behaviors, so when I say model behaviors So it was very interesting So why I have put this picture is the picture has a story behind it So this was this happened at the forbidden city at Beijing So there's this child who was this particular child that you see in the picture He was asked to wear these clothes for a picture and he was he refused to do it because he find it too cumbersome And he didn't like it and what his father did was he immediately picked a similar outfit and he just wore it And you can see his father's hand there and you can see he's wearing the same clothes So he started wearing it and the child was so excited and he also wear the same clothes So that's what I mean by modeling behavior So even as a coach when you start working with the teams, don't just go tell them that do this do that But start modeling them. Let's say one of the important things I do is again on a human aspect is dealing with conflicts We often tell our teams be open be honest about what you're thinking be transparent But it's very important for you to model it whenever you have a problem Ask yourself if you're being very honest and vocal about it. The team members will start moving there. So what is the next one? Yeah, you see Bruce Lee there So it's like said goes ask feedback every single time and this is very very important because unless and until you define I mean, I would think it's a very trivial thing But after coaching many teams for like many at least for five six years now, I realize that this is something we don't do Efficiently and that's one of the reasons I wanted to have this tool It's it's not even a tool in fact all of us know that but the problem is we don't take this very seriously It's very important to set goals ask feedback every single time Whatever you do ask them whether it works for them or not not just in papers, but ask them go talk to them No, no, no, I thought it was like This guy is very goal oriented and I really like this picture. So that's very yeah, that's Bruce Lee So this is that when you are stars, Hong Kong So it's from there It's the last one incremental group discussions So this is a very interesting Phenomenon that I noticed when I just attended the team I do a lot of one-on-ones with my team because it really really works for me So I start talking to the team. So when they started work talking to each person Everybody gave me feedback and they told me what is working not just not working this out bashing agile I just listen patiently to all of them I had my own list of things that I have to talk in a group discussion. So I just pull it all I just call all the managers. I call the director. I call everyone now I ask the team members guys just go tell what is your problem trust me There's not even a single person who told me there was a problem. I was shocked. You know, I was like, okay What is happening here? So then I realized that the part about hierarchy and harmony plays a very important role here And also about relationships. It's I'm not saying that the manager is a bad person I think somebody told me yesterday how often managers are looked at as some kind of entity But that's not the case. It's always co-creator relationships. Just give them a chance You know, just speak your heart out. You will not know what is going to happen later, right? So what it did was I just started talking to my teams and I just told them I started doing incremental group discussions Instead of doing everybody together first I did with one two people then I slowly increased it to three four five six and I started noticing behaviors I started saying, okay, what is happening every time I add a new person into the team So in a way, it also helped me identify problems. You know, there's always the power dynamics which plays in the teams So it really helps you figure out where it comes from All right. So finally, this is for prosperity against another two guys are sat through and endured my conversation or endured my discussion here So this is for you. It's called box. It's it's called another word, which is a sign of prosperity in any Chinese culture So that's pretty much. So If you just look at it, I haven't speak about what exactly I did I'm not even going to talk about what I actually did an assignment because that is not what it is because we all have been doing it If I have to quickly run you through the kind of things that we did after this once I had set the context with the team Obviously, I did a lot of things with the team because the major problem that I've noticed in the team was on pacing on user story slicing and obviously on testing So I have to work on these three parameters on different kinds of trainings and you know awareness exercises Which obviously most of us would know so I'm not gonna run through it as well as the results are concerned I was pretty happy with the results because Like I said, they these guys they listen actively and in first once friend They could actually show me zero defects friend. I was very very impressed with what they did I was mightily happy because you know, all we did was like just two months It was just a very small assignment, but I could actually show the cells in too much I'm not just saying it has to be like that, but it kind of tells me so much about How much they listen to you how actively how seriously they take whatever you're saying I was very very happy with exercise By which what I mean to say is what I want to convey, you know If I have to summarize and say what is the message here the messages It's not necessary that you have to change everything about the culture There are always elements that you can pick and choose so here in this case The only aspects that I have to work on was the hierarchy part and slightly on the relationship part because they should be open about their conflicts and Talk to each other. It's okay. If you're gonna say bad things, but say it in a nice way be extra nice That's pretty much So those are the things I wanted to change But otherwise there were a lot of values that I was gaining based on the other aspects as well because the networks They had that was valuable. So you don't have to change everything. So be Wise here, you know, just pick things that really make sense and then modify only those things just before I close Again, this is from Linda's talk these guys in this particular team like Linda said they have food together And this was one of my first initial observations I told the managers and I appreciated them for doing that because it's very important that you have to recognize good things They have food together and they talk about work All the team it was a very small team. So there was an auntie who's to come and cook food for this color auntie I really liked it. You know, it's not even like some lady or something. There's a color as auntie So they used to come and cook food for the entire team. I think it's the moment It's one of the best things that you can expect from an entire team. So that's from me any questions. I'm done Thank you Very good question. So this point is connected with the first point where I said be genuine It's not just about being nice and extra nice but being genuine about what it is So don't give them gifts every day. They know you're faking it So just go and give it to them and they have done something when you know that they have achieved something It's almost like an incentive, right? But not in a bad way, but it has to come from within just do something Especially personalized gifts. I think it makes a lot of sense. I don't have the picture with me right now But this is something I do with my teams every time I finish my assignment. I always give a personalized gift to them It's not like something I buy from a store I like say one of the favorite codes that I have is like Mary Poppendake once said lean be with you So I think that's very very powerful for me. It's a very powerful affirmation So most often I have actually created a poster for my teams with a mush which says lean be with you I just keep these as a memoir to them. They can just have it with them So try creating something like that and it has to be genuine You will not put your heart and soul into it. You will not make an effort to do something If it is just going to be for the heck of it. Did I answer your question? But all right, fine. Any other questions? Anything else? All right, so thank you so much guys. I'm sorry about the presentation again


Good evening, it's 2020 and we're back with our byline show. We're going to make a little change here. We're going to be on a little bit less frequently, but we're still going to have really interesting and engaging people from our community. And we're starting tonight with our newly elected school committee member, Ben. And as those of you who have been following the show for a while know, we're trying to keep track of what's going on as our new town government is sort of getting its legs under it. And so, Ben, you're going to be joining that government. Yes. What motivated you to run for a public office? Well, being a parent definitely motivated me a little bit, but just wanting to get involved and make a difference in the lives of kids. My father worked with kids and that was his mantra, was that if you want to change the future, you have to be present in the lives of kids today. It's a great philosophy and a great focus. So let's go back a little bit and talk about how you got to Amherst and hear a little bit about your professional life and so take the ball. All right, so I moved up here approximately 13 years ago for family reasons, we'll say. And so my son was born in 2009 and that pretty much kept me here for the next, we'll say 18 years at least, but yeah. So family brought you here and professionally, you've done some pretty interesting things along the way. Tell us a little about that because then I want to connect it to what you're doing today and where you are in politics. Right, so I was in the United States Army Corps of Engineers and after I left there I worked for about a decade in residential construction and from there I moved on to... I went back to school for journalism and communications and I worked in the news for a little bit in Channel 3 and Hartford WFSB and then I also reported traffic for a while, which was fun, I guess we could say. Did you get to go up and in helicopter? No, we had a Cezna airplane that we used. Oh, I love it, but you did get up into the air? Once. What? Once and got air sick, which was... That took care of that. Yeah, all set for that. Tried it, done it, no more. None of that. And then after moving up here I ended up working in maintenance for about six or seven years at the Center for Extended Care and then from there I entered the school system and was initially a custodian and I recently got promoted and now I'm the assistant director of facilities. Right. Honest work, do what you want, you know, up, down, but here, there, lots of training and education and you started your work in Amherst as a custodian at the schools and then what happened? Well then the assistant facilities director position opened up and the job posting was almost identical to my resume. I mean, probably have a little more experience, but yeah, so I ended up applying and it was a long, tedious process. Okay, so you're now the assistant director of facilities. Director of facilities, okay. And so that puts you right in the middle of the school system. Absolutely. And which school were you working in when you were a custodian? Initially. You were there and everywhere? Kind of, yeah. Initially I did a split between Wildwood and Fort River Elementary and then as of last fall I was anchored at Wildwood. At Wildwood, okay. But now you're working across the system. Right. And so you got quite a set of insights around the condition of these various buildings and stuff like that. And so with that knowledge and what Dad put into your head about caring about kids, then the public service came into the picture and what motivated you at that point to actually run as opposed to, because you're serving the children in your job every day, making sure they have a safe environment in which to learn and grow. But then you decided to take the plunge into politics. So that's a kind of big leap. Right, right. Most people might either think about it or say, no way, Jose, never. But you made the jump. Right. Both of my parents kind of had a lot of experience in the public eye. My father worked for the state of Connecticut and actually the juvenile judicial system. And my mother worked for the city of Hartford. And so I'm not entirely sure that I knew that there was another option then to get directly involved. So it kind of felt like I was ready to do it, ready to take on the responsibilities. And you saw the opportunity and the need forming new school committee. And so remind us, how many members on the school committee, the regional school committee? So the five members of the Amherst School Committee are automatically on board with the regional. And then each town from the region sends another member. Very good. And so you actually are serving on two boards at the same time. And from Amherst, how many people were on the ballot and how did that all line up? There was a total of seven for five seats. Okay. And are you the only new person coming into the board? Yep. Okay. So you're entering an organization that's been functioning and these guys have been on there for a while. But you are going to bring your own voice and your own perspective. And is it fair to assume because of the work you do in the schools, you're going to do some significant focus on the capital side of what's going on in the school committee. Absolutely. And in the school system. Excuse me. Right. Clearly focusing on the environment, the quality of the environment that our kids are learning in. Okay. It's very important to me. So we went through this process in town of a study because we have two elementary schools that were trying to figure out where they were going. We had maybe a false start and then we regrouped, put another study committee together. They came out with a report. What's your take on that from the perspective of somebody who's seen the building from the studs. Right. From the studs out and from the wall board in. Right. So I actually participated in the Fort River Feasibility Study as well. Okay. So a decent perspective on that. In your role. Right. Well, right. Okay. As an employee of the district at the time. Right. Okay. I would say I definitely got a lot of insight as to what our needs are and we have a great deal of need as far as improvement and at least two of the school buildings in our district. And you're talking about elementary schools. Right, right. Yeah. Wildwood and Fort. Because our junior high and our middle school and our high school, a lot of work's been done over time and they're in decent shape, would you say? I would say we still have to deal with the roof at the middle school. Okay. That's a high. That's a structural issue if you don't fix the roof. Right. The next thing is the walls and the floors go. Absolutely. And then air quality and these sorts of things are affected by the moist environment. Okay. But the real big focus in the community and in the system around capital has been looking at these two schools. Right. And recently the state gave the town the green light. Yep. Said you did a good job in the study. You got a plan. We see that there's a consensus in the community to figure out what we're going to do about our elementary schools. But the decisions haven't been made yet. Right. There's a direction that's sort of been laid out. Yep. You want to give us your perspective on that. Right. So the two most... And now you're speaking as a school committee member, right? Right, right. Okay. So the two most viable options that we have right now are I would say an aggressive renovation. We're not talking about just paint and these sorts of things. Those improvements are going to be ongoing until we actually get to our end goal. Because they've got to be done. Right. Otherwise the buildings are going to not be functional. Right. They need to be inhabitable. So we've got to make some investment in them no matter what the final decisions are down the road. Definitely. Okay. But then there's this continuum from doing as little as you can get away with to doing more. Yep. And so how do we balance that? Right. And that's going to be the big challenge over the next couple of years is figuring out a complete consensus on that. There are a lot of folks from the previous project that had failed that are definitely in support of a brand new school which is... That would be the furthest... Okay, so when we did the feasibility study there were options A through E. So that would be option A. Okay. Right. And E would be just bringing the buildings up to current building codes which would leave a lot of other issues falling by the wayside. So the most cost-effective is somewhere between a completely new school and an aggressive renovation project. So if you got to an aggressive renovation project you would have a school that was safe and functional but it would be a 50, 60-year-old set of buildings. Sort of. Somewhere in that range? Right. You essentially from the outside looking in would see kind of a new building. It would be kind of akin to the project done in 2002 at Crocker Farm. Yeah. Okay. New building on an old, not foundation building. So the question is how much do we invest in these properties and will they get us far enough to feel comfortable that these schools are going to work into the future. And there is a core of people in town who say that's a good way to go and then there's a core of people who say good money after bad because you're going to spend a substantial portion of what you would otherwise be spending for the new school and you're going to end up with a product that is still not going to be up to current standards educationally even though it might be structurally. Is that a fair way to summarize that? Absolutely. Because if we were to go with the lowest of options for lack of a better word, option E which is just bringing the building up to current codes and standards. The issues that we have with the quad system in the two elementary schools where we have sound traveling from classroom to classroom, that would still exist. A lot of the issues that we have would still be there. We would just be meeting current building codes. Right. So that's the fundamental debate. And then if the decision is new school then the question is one school, two schools. And the question is where if it's one school and all that. Any thoughts about that or it's too early in your work to be able to start thinking that out loud? The one aspect that I could definitely speak to is what we call the one school option would actually leave us with two elementary schools. So Cracker Farm would still exist as an elementary school. And then the big question would be whether it's the Wildwood site or the Fort River site that we build on. Would be the better of the two for a single new school to accommodate all of the children and those two. So that's a decision point as well. Right. So when we were invited into the MSBA process we submitted two statements of interest. One for each of the schools. And the one that was accepted was the Fort River one. So there's a little, I guess less ambiguity there. So the real question is... That's a little bit clearer now that we're heading in that direction if we go with the one new school scenario. If that's the one where we go. Okay. So I guess the real question would be what would we do with the remaining building? Does it continue to function as a school? That's one of the questions we would need to answer. Yeah. Or be turned over to another public use. Right. Or be sold off for private use. That's another option. Okay. So you can't be a Johnny One note here. Right. So you're going to bring a lot of expertise and experience and vision around the physical facilities, the capital agenda. Absolutely. But you're going to be responsible as a member of the school committee to hear and think about and vote on lots of other stuff. So can you give me some insight and share with the folks who are watching us about two or three things that you think are most critical on your mind that you think need attention and that you're going to be trying to pay more specific attention to and develop some expertise and create a meaningful voice on most things? I would definitely say equity is another big issue for me. The superintendent's equity task force, that's a subcommittee I'm interested in being involved with. I can't stress the importance enough across the board of having equity as far as access to education and parity amongst our educators as well. I feel like that affects equity and how that trickles down. So you're using the word equity and you've used it probably six times. Give us your definition or idea of when you think about equity, what are you thinking about? I'm thinking in terms of mostly access to education. So we can't equalize everyone across the board. Everyone has different, is coming into the fold with different needs and from different backgrounds and these sorts of things. So basically meeting everyone's needs or attempting to meet everyone's needs, to me it's definitely a goal. But meeting everyone's needs across the board is best we can in serving every community with kind of the same focus. Within the school system. Because we do have several different communities. So when I think about this a little bit I think about social equity. I think about educational equity. And I think about the fact that you've got a budget and one way to define equity is everybody gets ex-shekels and what if somebody needs a little more. Right. And there definitely are I guess folks within our communities that do need a little bit more. Folks that are serviced under our special education programs would probably need a little bit more economically. And because of the presence of the university this community has a really high level of folks coming in. Some of them for a very short time. Some of them might be in the middle of their education. Some might be just starting out. But their parents have come to the university to study or they may be new faculty or researchers who come to. So we have a kind of, it's a special community in that way. And in a sense that creates some challenges for the school system. Because they may be coming from places with very different cultural expectations. They may be coming with different language. And so it presents a special set of challenges for the school system. So it isn't just about race or poverty or class. It's about a very mixed community with a lot of different kinds of needs to make sure that each of the children there get the education that they need. Right, which is the, that's the important part. We all have access to the same, I guess the same resources within the educational environment. And again, it's not about dividing the pie equally simply because there are ten children here and ten children there. It's about what do these ten children need and what do these ten children need. They're all our children, they're in our community. So we need to make sure that they get the education that they need. Absolutely. Other threads or agenda, I know you're very new to it, but you did just come off of a campaign and people probably asked you some interesting questions along the way that only you can tell me and us what came up that like, oh wow, I never thought about that. Geez, I've been worrying about this and it's real. One of the biggest things that, I think pretty much everyone that I spoke to had some sort of a take or questions regarding finances. Like, how was our money spent? Where do we, where does every last dime go? And in my new position, that's been something that I've been having to research a lot of. So definitely budget and finances pretty big. But also one thing that came up that I didn't, which is odd, so I'm a basketball coach, I'm a youth basketball coach, right? Advocationally. As an avocation, a volunteer thing. Good, okay. So one thing that came up that I should have been on my radar, I imagine, earlier was issues within the athletics department, fields, which goes back to the structural part. Yeah, back to capital and infrastructure. So that's one of those things that I didn't anticipate thoroughly. I imagine, yeah, I definitely thought about the athletics program, but, you know, I didn't realize the amount of need that we have there as well. In the community at large, or at the schools in particular, or both? Kind of both, but more so at the schools. More at the schools. We just had a football team that was... Did fine. Right, did fantastic. Yeah, that was great. Our fields don't necessarily match the quality of the team. Exactly. So these sorts of issues, they're definitely on my radar now. Right. So you're on both the regional school committee and the elementary school committee. How are you thinking about that? Just two sets of meetings and go in and barrel through? Or do you have some kind of specific thoughts and focus about what you think you want to do on the elementary level and contribute versus the regional? You know, I think at the elementary level I probably have a much more clear picture of kind of where I want to be involved, how I fit into that and still learning a bit about the regional side of things, yeah. Because that's going to be interesting. You're working with people from other communities and so... Learning personalities. Although you'll be learning some new personalities at the elementary school committee as well, right? Have you worked with most of them before? Right, I've definitely socially interacted with most of them, but I've also on the feasibility study, the current chair, Eric Nakajima, I've worked with him on that and we've definitely interacted a lot as well. But in the meantime, I've been sitting down individually with each of the members to try to familiarize myself with something I probably have to do at the regional level as well. So I had the privilege when our new town counselors were first elected to participate in one of their very first, before they were even sworn in, gatherings to get to know each other and begin to learn and understand about the role of being a counselor because they certainly understood the charter because they had to do that work before they could be a successful candidate and get elected. But one of the things that jumped out at me which was really interesting because I have a lot of interest in background in the arts was I think five of the counselors had some form of background in the arts. And I was like, wow, and one was a dancer and they were musicians and theater. And so I was really surprised at how many of them had an arts background. So I'm curious whether you've had a chance to think about where things like art fit in or the arts fit into our educational system. You referenced sports. And so it would be interesting to hear a little bit about how you think about other things that go on outside of the classroom in terms of the importance and relative standing within the school system whether it's the arts or the sports or anything else social or political engagement because there's a lot of those clubs and things at the school. Yeah, definitely. I have a background is so what year is this? DJ for 30 years embarrassingly enough as long as that isn't very musically involved. You started at two apparently. Thank you so much. Or I don't see a single gray hair. Thank you.  So clearly the arts are definitely important to me. I also have a niece who's a visual artist. So just the impact that the broader our education is individually the more complete and whole we are as human beings so these are definitely important aspects but also for political involvement for younger folks. I'm also on the Human Rights Commission and we currently need a high school student to jump in. But continuing these sorts of involvement. So you see the education that's going on in the classroom as obviously extremely important but not the exclusion of these other kinds of activities which help create a well rounded individual and a student who can interact with the world more than just as an employee more in their combination of civic and cultural and other ways to engage with the community. Absolutely. One of the best teachers I had in high school initially forced me she was also a town counselor I should have in the town I grew up in.  And that was something that I continued on later so I imagine there might have been a seed so that sounds like a seed to me and it's now flowering. Right. So in the minute or two we have left do you have any other key points that you'd like to raise that we haven't discussed that just give you an opportunity since you're on camera and nothing major I can think of no. So I want to wish you lots of luck. Thank you. Thanks for jumping in. Thank you for having me here. Thanks to the school committee and it's really important work. So thank you all for joining us and we look forward to seeing you very soon with some more guests. Thank you.


You're at your house. It's a Saturday afternoon or Saturday evening.  You go to the front door and there's two law enforcement officers in uniform. They seem real nice. They're smiling and they say very casual to you. Do you mind if we come in? Do this. Don't do this.


I'd like to start by asking you about the benefits of net zero and particularly why did Anglian Water set a net zero goal? What are the benefits and why is that goal important to you? Well, it's important to us because I suppose we're in the front line of the impact of changing the climate. We're in one of the driest parts of the country in Anglian Water's region. We're also at significant risk of flood and we're trying to serve an increasing population just in the next five years alone. I think the population of the area we serve goes up by about six percent and those pressures combined with the fact that we're also one of the most energy intensive industry meant that it really wasn't an option for us to ignore ignore this and it wasn't really an option not to take a leadership position on it as well and as a company we've got a purpose, a very clear purpose, which is to ensure and bring environmental and social prosperity to the region we serve through our commitment to love every drop and you can see as a result of that we really did have to be in the vanguard of setting a really ambitious net zero target. So in the process of being in that vanguard and you've got that target what are some of the actions that you're taking the positive actions you're taking to make that goal a reality? Well this is something we've been doing for for many years and in the last five years alone we've saved something like 400 000 tons of carbon and we've made a commitment along with other companies in the water industry to achieving net zero by 2030 and it's demonstrated to us not only the importance of having our own plan next 2030 but also the opportunities that come from working with others and you know the much higher level of innovation you get when you when you genuinely collaborate on what ultimately is a common challenge. So we've adopted that as a sector it's something we're all working on but then each company has its own route map to net zero by 2030 and in hours we're really focusing on sort of three level hierarchy you know how can we ultimately reduce the emissions as the very first thing we can do and how can we decarbonise the supply of power and there's lots of opportunities there as well for renewables and then ultimately if we do have to offset residual emissions how do we do that in a way that delivers maximum local benefit as opposed to something we can have real confidence in. Excellent then if we take it from the other side we think about some of the challenges you've encountered in that impressive pathway of action what have some been some of the most significant hurdles you've encountered? Well one of the very big challenges for us is on regarding process emissions and this is particularly process emissions from our water recycling operations and this is because I think the science around process emissions probably wasn't as well understood the baselines weren't as clear and so we're having to do a lot of work as a company and back across the whole sector on understanding how to really track what the current level of process emissions are in order to you know then look at what changes we need to make in order to reduce process emissions on that journey to net zero so that's a particular a particular challenge but there are other challenges you know particularly I think about renewables lots of issues associated with planning permissions particularly for onshore wind which was in the very early days something we saw a lot of opportunity for and you know really these are things that we've really got to unlock to get the pace necessary to hit net zero by 2030 so if you were to kind of cast your mind back to kicking off on this journey what do you know now that you wish you'd known then? That's a great question I think it would have been much better for us to have had a more insight into how other sectors and other parts of the supply chain are actually decarbonizing and some of their some of the strategies that they've been employing I think that would have helped us because in some places we kind of feel we started this you know from a from our own perspective but I think there was there was probably more going on than we realized so I think that would have been helpful I think perhaps a better understanding of the trajectory around grid decarbonization would also have been helpful that's been a changing situation but probably a fuller picture of that at the outset would have helped and also improved understanding of that sort of tipping point between you know where where carbon saves you money and where it actually starts to cost you more that probably would have been probably would have been helpful as well. If you were at an event at a discussion with a spoke to a CEO of a business who was just they just set their net zero target or they're just about to and they're just like we really want to go for this but if there's so much where do we start what what do we do first and what what learning point what insight would you want to set to share with the company sort of at the beginning of the journey in that way? Well I think there's something there's something very helpful about being in a group of organizations traveling on the path together I mean I have to think about some of the early work that we were doing in CLG it was always very helpful to be talking to other organizations who've kind of got the importance of this but also were open to sharing ideas because you know we don't sit here as a company with the font of all knowledge in this area and sometimes other organizations in different sectors give insight which makes you think very differently so that that is always helpful so communities of interest on the journey. What's been the secret for Anglian Water is to you know unlocking that success in terms of being able to tap into the the inventive energy in your supply chain? Well I think it starts with having a deeper relationship with you know your partners really I mean I think it's a purely a transactional thing and you see them once in a blue moon it's quite difficult to get any sort of change going on in your supply chain so I think you have to think about a longer term deeper relationship I think once you've got that then you need to think about it from the perspective of what makes the partners in the supply and you and the supplier successful and you know where we've got examples where we've been out you know our supply chain have then been able to go out and sell products and services to other organizations off the back of their own carbon credentials which have been on that journey to help us so it's about thinking about it as opportunity as opposed to a burden as well. I'm just kind of the last few few questions and very much thinking about them current moment we're in so we're coming up to COP26 I mentioned earlier big event in Glasgow this November what outcomes or what signals are you hoping that might materialize from that event? Well I suppose at the first level I mean it's making sure everybody's signed up to a budget in the same way this country has you know that's blindingly obvious again but that's important so we need to make sure and use that event to continue that and continue pushing that and driving that momentum. I think the other thing is that I've always thought that it's really important that we don't just have conversations in silos so I would like to think that particularly adaptation and the need to build resilience is also being talked about and certainly that at COP26 as one of things we're going to be contributing is quite a lot of the experience around how do you build resilience how do you think about what's already entrained and what's already going to be happening because that's really important so we mustn't think about these things in just silos which the nature of these things sometimes that's what can happen. I think the other one for me would be thinking about the financing of it and how do we continue to think about the frameworks which might help to unlock investment in projects that deliver towards net zero and we've certainly seen as a company huge opportunities coming out of our drive to reduce capital carbon for example I think we've got to about a a billion pounds worth of bonds that we've issued green bonds all linked into essentially our credentials of delivering low carbon infrastructure which has opened up you know better value finance basically so there is certainly I mean people talk about this wall of green finance absolutely is and it's growing and it's global and countries and organizations that see it will be that you know and can can lean into that will be the first to get opportunities from it


I submitted a tech ticket to get my machine ID updated, but nothing seems to be happening with it. Any suggestions? Does anyone have any feedback on about how long it takes to get a tech ticket looked at? When do tickets get responded to? What is the usual turnaround on tech support tickets? Does anybody know how long does a tech ticket take to be picked up? Well, I'm glad you asked. There are many variables affecting the amount of time tech support tickets take to be resolved. What day of week did you submit the ticket? What time of day did you submit the ticket? Also, was it during trading hours? At any time, there are a different number of tickets already waiting before yours and new tickets queuing up. At any time, the support staff could be away or busy. Different issues take different amounts of time to resolve. Some tickets require the user to provide more information, which takes more time in the queue. Staff levels may change. Member numbers will change, affecting the length of the queue. There could be more issues after a change to Ninja Trader, although Box, Discord, Windows, etc. So please be patient. This will not be ignored. They will be addressed as soon as practicable for Vinny and the tech support staff. Before you submit a ticket, you must make sure to watch and follow the instructions on the Repair and Performance Tutorial videos, as a lot of issues stem from those modifications not being completed. Be sure to include all relevant information, screenshots, videos or links when you first open a ticket, to make sure your issues get resolved as quickly and smoothly as possible. For more information on submitting a ticket, watch this video.


So, thanks very much, and it's a huge pleasure to be here at NHGRI when so much has happened and is happening in the area of genomics. I'm actually a product of the eighth grade museum experience that you heard about from Kirk Johnson. We all know animals differ in all sorts of very interesting traits, and I'm very fortunate to get to work on old problems related to what are the actual molecular changes that produce those interesting differences that you see between animals. So that's a very hard problem, although there's lots of organisms that have been sequenced. We still can't look at a sequence and tell you what the animal looks like. And that problem is related to a whole series of other issues, including how many genetic changes actually underlie the interesting differences. If you see some interesting trait, is it lots and lots of little tiny changes that have produced it or a smaller number of changes in major genes? What are the most important genes? What types of mutations occur in those genes? And if you give evolution some problem to solve, are there lots of different ways of doing it, or does evolution tend to use particular mechanisms over and over again? So about 15 years ago, we got interested in trying to study those old problems by trying to bring a genetic approach to the study of evolutionary change in vertebrates. We went looking for some organism that undergone very dramatic and very recent and repeated evolutionary experiments in nature. We chose the small fish, the three-spine stickleback, which lives in the ocean, but they're like salmon, they migrate into freshwater streams and lakes and coastal areas to breed every spring. That migratory life cycle set off a huge evolutionary radiation when the glaciers melted, created all sorts of new environments in North America, Europe and Asia. They got colonized by marine sticklebacks and have since had 10,000 years or approximately 10,000 generations to adapt to the new food sources and water conditions and predators and salinities and watercolors, etc., and all these new environments around the world. So if you go around freshwater lakes and streams, tens of thousands of new environments created since glacial melting, you see really dramatic differences between these newly established populations, huge changes in jaws and teeth and spines and bony armor and pelvic apparatus and color and physiology and behavior, all of which have evolved in just the last 10,000 years. So although many of these forms look as different as you would see in different generative animals, it's only 10,000 years of evolution and the isolating mechanisms between the forms tend to be behavioral and mechanical incompatibilities between populations. Those can be overcome using artificial fertilization in the laboratory. So if you squeeze out eggs and sperm from very different looking sticklebacks and do fertilization in Petri dishes, you can actually raise fertile F1 hybrids. That makes it possible to then raise large families and to treat evolutionary change in natural populations as a genetics problem. Can we actually map the key chromosome regions that control the differences and eventually get down to the genes and the mutations that are responsible for these major changes? I have to say, when we first got interested in this, sticklebacks had great biology that had been studied for decades, thousands of papers, several full length books written about the traits and ecological significance of different traits. But they weren't an organism that had attracted interest from molecular geneticists, so there was essentially no sequences, markers, maps, transgenics, none of the things that you need for a real model organism. We spent a lot of time with support from NHGRI over the last 10 years building four or three sticklebacks exactly the same sorts of tools that we'd found useful in mouse genetics for trying to track traits all the way from morphology down to chromosome genes and mutations. And so what I'll do today is illustrate how we're trying to use many of those tools to study some of the cool, interesting differences that have evolved repeatedly in these natural populations. So let's start with limb formation, a great example, limb modifications. Of course, one of the major changes that you see in organisms adapted to different lifestyles. One of the biggest changes in limb patterning in different vertebrates is the complete loss or reduction of limbs that's evolved in many animals, including loss of both forelimbs and hind limbs that's evolved in snakes, loss of only the hind limbs, which has evolved in marine mammals, including both whales and manatees. And that selective loss of the hind limb has also evolved in both fossil and many living stickleback populations. Here's a reconstruction of the skeletal structures of a marine stickleback heavily armored. I've colored the pelvic hind fin of the fish here in red. Sticklebacks are like most fish and land animals. You have two sets of paired appendages, pectoral fins or arm homologues, pelvic fins or leg homologues. And the pelvic fin of the stickleback consists of this bony spine that articulates with an underlying pelvis. The fish can raise that bony spine as a defense against soft-mouth predatory fish that try to eat sticklebacks in the ocean. So although ocean sticklebacks always have a robust pelvic apparatus, many of the ocean fish have colonized environments where there are no other predatory fish.  Insects actually prey on sticklebacks by grabbing onto the dorsal and pelvic spines and reeling them in and eating them from the sides. And in that sort of environment, there's actually a selective advantage to losing the pelvis, which has occurred in a couple of dozen populations around the world. So that actually gives us the chance to try to look at what's the genetic architecture of this sort of dramatic limb modification that's evolved repeatedly in natural population. So to study that, we cross marine fish with a robust pelvic apparatus to a lake fish that's completely lost to pelvis, raise a couple of thousand offspring, isolate DNA from the F2 animals, type them with a genome-wide set of linkage markers and compare it to pelvic size. And when we do that, what we find is pelvic reduction isn't the simple Mendelian trait, but it's not a miserably complicated infinitesimally tons of regions trait either. There's a single chromosome region that controls about two thirds of the variation in pelvic size in the cross, as well as a series of unlinked modifier genes. Well, one of the nice things about a map is it allows you to quickly evaluate any candidates that are known. There's a lot known about limb development. And when we map the stickleback homologs of a whole series of limb genes, we found that this particular gene called PITX1 maps directly to the major chromosome region that controls the size of the pelvis and the cross. That's actually a very interesting candidate gene because it's a homeodomain transcription factor that plays an important role in regulating the expression of lots of other genes. It has this name PITX1 based on a group that isolated it studying pituitary development. But the same year it was isolated by another group who named it the back foot gene. It was named the back foot gene because it has this very striking expression pattern where it's found in hind limbs, but not the fore limbs of a whole series of animals all the way from fish to birds to mice and humans. The gene's been knocked out by two different groups. The knockout mice have small hind limbs. They actually die at birth with pituitary defects and jaw abnormalities, cleft palate. So in many ways, that doesn't look like a very promising basis for evolving new traits in natural populations, which brings us to the view of the neo-Darwinian synthesis about the likelihood that major genes are going to underlie adaptive traits in nature. The quotable Ernst Mayer here talking about the fact that most mutations found in laboratory organisms that have dramatic effects on phenotypes are actually deleterious and reduced fitness. He said that to believe these sorts of drastic mutations would produce viable adaptive phenotypes is equivalent to believing in miracles. And you can see the problem. I mean, this is a good example of a mouse that has obvious viability problems, although also a component of the phenotype is something that we see in nature. So what's actually happened in the stickleback? Well, when we sequence PITX1 in marine and freshwater fish, what we find is that the coding region of the gene is identical in both types. However, when we look at expression patterns, there's an interesting difference. Larva from marine populations show PITX1 expression in the lips and inside the head in the pituitary. And then this little spot of expression along the side, that corresponds to the site where that pelvic hind fin would normally develop. Freshwater fish still show expression in the head and inside in the pituitary. They've completely lost this little site of expression along the side of the body. That isn't just because they've lost the pelvis. You can cross the marine and the lake fish. The F1 hybrid actually forms a pelvis. But in the pelvis, the only allele that's expressed comes from the marine fish, not the freshwater fish. So that suggests there's been a cis-acting change in the regulatory apparatus of the PITX1 gene. The freshwater sticklebacks have preserved the coding region. They've conserved expression for jaws and pituitary, but they've lost the ability to turn this gene on in one particular spot in the body. We think that could happen by the loss of a modular regulatory element that drives expression at that location. We've been looking to see whether that sort of model can be worked out in detail. Is it true? High resolution mapping in lab crosses and natural populations has shown that the genotype in a 20 kb region upstream of the PITX1 gene can predict in a natural population the presence or absence of a pelvis. We built a whole series of transgenic constructs using marine sequences from that region, hooking them up to GFP reporters. And Frank Chan injected them into fertilized stickleback eggs, looking for little magic pieces of DNA that would drive expression specifically at that site in the body. And they're there. I hope you can see this. It's a fairly specific expression pattern, but there's a small fragment of DNA in that key candidate region that drives GFP reporter expression specifically at the site where the pelvis will normally form in the fish. This is really the right gene, and that's really the right sequence. You also ought to be able to do a more ambitious experiment, and that's to try to reverse the evolutionary change. So for this, we hooked the marine control region not up to a GFP reporter, but to a PITX1 cDNA. And we inject that into the eggs of an evolved, pelvic-less population that hasn't made an external pelvic spine for thousands of years. And we were thrilled to see that the introduction of the marine information will actually put the pelvis back on the stickleback. Here's the original vestigial pelvic apparatus that's seen in the evolved freshwater population. And here's one of these transgenic fish where the introduction of the marine information stimulates the formation of a nice serrated spine that articulates with a restored pelvic apparatus on the ventral side of the fish. OK, so that then, with our hands on the right gene and piece of DNA, we could finally look at what's actually happened in different populations around the world. One of the nice things about the stickleback is the phenotype evolves over and over again. Series of complementation and mapping and in situ experiments implicate the same major chromosome region again and again when pelvic reduction evolves at different locations. And when Frank Chan looked at DNA sequences from a whole series of different pelvic-reduced populations around the world, what he found was a whole series of deletions of a few hundred to a few thousand base pairs that completely eliminate this pelvic enhancer region. OK, so I went through that in some detail to give you some idea of the actual genetic and molecular basis of a major skeletal alteration that's evolved in these natural populations. For pelvic reduction, if you actually look at the results from the crosses, you see that relatively few chromosome regions can have big effects. The chromosome region with the biggest effect corresponds to the location of a key developmental control gene that's required for the formation of multiple different tissues. Despite its essential role, regulatory mutations in that gene provide a way of producing a very large phenotypic alteration at a specific site in the body. And that's such a good mechanism for evolving this phenotype that when pelvic reduction evolves over and over again in different populations around the world, exactly the same mechanism as being used over and over again with a repeated series of deletions that eliminate that regulatory element. Well, we've been interested in using similar methods to study a whole range of traits. One of the reasons we thought it was justified to build a genetic toolkit for these fish was because of a large range of different phenotypes that have evolved in different populations. I'll give you another quick example from armor plate patterning. So marine fish covered from head to tail with armor plates. Freshwater fish are lightly armored and fast. They have greater body flexibility, usually only retained plates at the anterior end. And that dramatic difference in anterior posterior patterning of skeletal armor was used to give different species names to marine and freshwater sticklebacks back in the 1800s. Same sort of experiment. Here's a cross between fish that have a 30-fold difference in the number of armor plates along the side of the body. And there's a single chromosome region that controls three quarters of the variation, an armor plate number, as well as several unlinked modifier genes. We've also looked at some non-skeletal traits, like pigmentation, sticklebacks, colonized, water that's either t-stained or clear or different colors in different locations. So you can get dark sticklebacks and light sticklebacks. If you cross the darks and the light ones, there's a single chromosome region that controls 50% of the variation and pigment score in particular body regions, as well as unlinked modifiers. So what we're seeing then for a range of evolutionary traits that have been selected in these populations is not a Mendelian architecture. All of these traits you could call complex in the sense that they're controlled by multiple chromosome regions. However, for armor and for pelvis and for pigment, the genes of biggest effect control half or more of the variation in the trait. And that's a very nice result from geneticists standpoint because you can explain a lot of the phenotype by studying these major gene regions. So we've spent a lot of time carrying out positional cloning projects to isolate the genes for these other major chromosome regions controlling armor and pigmentation. The armor trait is controlled by a secreted signaling molecule called ectodisplasen, actually named after a series of clinical phenotypes identified in humans. This same developmental signaling pathway is required for the formation of hair and teeth and sweat plans. And mutations either in the signal to receptor, the intracellular adapter molecule will give that phenotype in sticklebacks. The signal has been altered to produce this major armor phenotype. The pigmentation changes are actually due to a very well-known signaling molecule, one of the most famous ones of all of the million mouse development called kit ligand or stem cell factor. This is a secreted signal that's expressed in the skin and the bone marrow and a variety of migratory paths and the general ridge of mammals. The signal binds to a receptor that's expressed on pigment cells and blood cells and germ cells. And the signaling is required to direct the migration of those cells to stimulate their proliferation and their maintenance once they take up residence in different places in the body. So mice with null mutations and kit ligand are white. They're also dead. They die of absence of blood cells. There's no germ cells that make it to the germline. Another example of sort of a hopeless monster from the standpoint of completely losing function. And yet that's exactly the gene that has been selected in sticklebacks to produce pigmentation alterations in particular body sites. So I think you can see the similarity then in the themes that have come from the studies of pelvis and plates and pigment. In each case we get big phenotypic differences from a small number of loci. The genes that have the biggest effects turn out to be these absolutely essential key developmental control genes. And although those are required for the formation of lots of different tissues, in each case we have evidence that there's been regulatory mutations in the stickleback populations that has made it possible to produce a big, advantageous phenotype confined to a particular body region in the natural population. And then finally, and I think very interestingly, we also, for every one of these traits, have found that when the same thing evolves in different places around the world, exactly the same gene is used, just like you heard from Sarah Tishkoff for the lactase tolerance gene. So I think that raised an interesting question about if it's used over and over again in different populations, how far the reuse of those evolutionary mechanisms might actually extend. And so we've also been interested in trying to generalize from results that we find in sticklebacks to characterize variation in other organisms, including humans. So humans show all sorts of interesting traits, as you've heard about, including changes in pigmentation. When we found the kit-legged gene as the basis of skin color changes in sticklebacks, we also found that the kit-legged gene shows one of the strongest signatures of selection in different human populations around the world. So sticklebacks migrated out of the ocean into different water environments. Modern humans migrated out of Africa into different environments. That migration is associated with very strong signatures of selection in the non-coding regulatory regions of the kit-legged gene, which we show were associated with levels of skin pigmentation in the study a few years ago. Let me show you what the selection signal looks like. So here are these big peaks of molecular signatures of selection centered not on the coding region of the kit-legged gene, but the megabase of non-coding DNA that flanks the gene, very high peaks seen in both Europeans and Asians. So we've been very interested in trying to now track those changes down to the alterations in DNA sequence, identifying candidate regions based on molecular signatures in humans, and then carrying out studies very similar to what I told you about in sticklebacks. So here's surveys now of genomic fragments from the stem cell factor gene hooked up to laxie reporters instead of GFP reporters and injected into mouse eggs instead of stickleback eggs. But again, we're looking for the magic piece of DNA that confer expression patterns at locations related to the evolution of a phenotype. So let me show you what this looks like. Here's a series of different constructs in the non-coding regions of the kit-legged and stem cell factor gene. If you put those into transgenic mice, the left construct doesn't do anything. The right construct doesn't do anything. The one in the middle drives expression in both skin and kidney. This is the fragment that contains some evolutionarily conserved regions. And if you break it into two pieces, the left-hand piece drives expression specifically in the kidney. The right-hand piece drives expression specifically in the skin and the hair follicles. So even in this small region, two different regulatory elements for expression in two different places in the body. This one, obviously, a great expression pattern for skin pigmentation. The endogenous kit-legged gene is known to be expressed in the keratinocytes of the epidermis and the hair follicle here staining endogenous kit-legged antibody. And that's the expression pattern that we're recovering in these laxity constructs with a small region of non-coding DNA upstream, several hundred kilobases from the kit-legged transcript. Well, what's happened to that hair skin enhancer in different populations, there's a single base pair change that separates the sequence seen in Africans and in Europeans. That single base pair change when cloned upstream of a luciferase reporter doesn't eliminate the activity of the enhancer. It produces a small quantitative change in the level of expression that we see. Is that quantitative change actually a big enough alteration to produce a significant phenotype? Well, to test that, again, we're trying to look at whole animal phenotypes. And this is challenging because you're trying to see what does one base pair do. The way that we're testing that is, again, to hook those base pair changes not up to GFP reporters but to the gene itself, either the ancestral or the derived hair enhancer that differ in one snip. We make transgenic animals using a special line of transgenics that has been modified to have an insertion site at a defined locus on chromosome 11 if we inject our two versions of this construct together with an integrase, then these things will get integrated at the same locus, same copy number, same orientation. So now you're scoring the two alternative base pairs when it's the only base pair difference in the mouse. And when we do that, here's the ancestral human snip. Here's the derived human snip. And I hope you can see this is a darker mouse than this one. That small base pair change is actually enough to produce a significant difference, both in hair color and in the non-pigmented skin areas of the mouse as well. So pelvises and pigments are obviously very different, but I hope you can also see the similarities between these two traits. In both cases, we've got an absolutely essential developmental control gene that's surrounded by huge regions of non-coding DNA. Those non-coding regions are chock-full. We think of regulatory elements for driving expression at very particular locations in the body. And in both cases, alterations have occurred within specific enhancers. The deletion of the hind limb enhancer in the PX1 gene, a single base pair mutation in the hair enhancer of the kit ligand gene, that produce these dramatic phenotypic differences that have been selected in natural populations. So key genes, but you can get viable, advantageous phenotypes by making regulatory alterations. Many of the people in the room actually are carrying a mutation, a regulatory mutation, and one of the most important signaling molecules for mammalian development. OK, last point I'd just like to end on is I know these are case histories. We'd like to know general patterns. And this is one of the areas where the repeated nature of stickleback evolution has been particularly useful. So because the same things have happened over and over again, you can try to use genomics to recover all of the loci that are contributing to repeated evolution. So we published a reference genome of the three-spine stickleback and re-sequencing of 21 different stickleback populations around the world with the Broad Institute last year. And the strategy that we used for looking for adaptive loci was to have repeated examples of the marine ancestral form and the freshwater form. We line all those up with the reference genome, and then we window the genome, looking for those places where all of the marine fish look one way and all of the freshwater fish look the other way. So that's a site where the same things happening over and over again. We were very interested to see when we just did that lineup and windowing of the genome-wide sequencing data, you can make an index of how different are all the marine fish from the freshwater fish. You get this big peak here on chromosome 4. That sits right on top of the ectodysplasen gene, which we had spent six years positionally cloning using high-resolution genetic mapping and transgenics to rescue the plates, et cetera. You can recover exactly the same locus just by doing the whole genome sequence comparisons of a whole bunch of marine and freshwater fish. You also see a whole series of other peaks, both on this chromosome and on other chromosomes around the genome. In aggregate, this is identified 84 regions. The median size of those regions is actually defined pretty precisely because the break points in the 21 different populations help narrow a minimal interval that's being repeatedly selected. So it's a relatively small fraction of the overall genome, but a very interesting fraction to us. And so I'll end then by trying to use now not just a few examples, but this larger set to come back to an old question like whether evolution is controlled primarily by coding or by regulatory changes. This has been a major debate in the evolutionary literature. The actual answer from a whole series of these regions in sticklebacks suggests both mechanisms contribute. We do recover, in this overall set of loci, a series that affect the coding regions of proteins and produce consistent amino acid differences between marine and freshwater fish. However, a large fraction of the regions map entirely outside of coding regions in the non-coding intervals between genes. So those are regulatory alterations. And then there's a fraction of regions that have both coding and non-coding intervals, but the only changes that we see between the marine and the freshwater fish are in the non-coding regions. And so again, those are likely to be regulatory changes. Very last point is I think it's very interesting to compare these results to the results that are coming from the kinds of studies that you heard about from Saratischkoff looking for signatures of selection in different human populations around the world. We now have a ton of data from HAPMAP and other re-sequencing studies that make it possible to look for molecular signatures predicted to come along with a genomic region that has recently been selected. Part of Sabeti recently intersected a whole series of these different signals to define 178 loci that show strong evidence for positive selection during recent human evolution. And I went through this list and put them into the same category that I showed you for the sticklebacks. And again, there's a mixture of both coding and non-coding regions, but I think what's really striking about the two different pie charts is how similar the two distributions actually are. So these are incredibly different scenarios. Last 10,000 years, sticklebacks colonizing freshwater. Humans 100,000 years ago migrating out of Africa to different populations around the world. And nonetheless, in both of those scenarios, what you see is the overwhelming number of adaptive loci appear to be this sort of regulatory alteration in genes. So I'll end there and just conclude by saying, I hope I've shown you that evolutionary differences is at least a studyable, mapable problem. Major differences in natural populations can come from relatively few changes. We see similar mechanisms being used over and over again, and it looks like regulatory changes may provide the predominant basis for adaptive evolution in both fish and humans. Thanks very much. I'd like to end by saying thanks to a lot of people who participated in the studies and also major thanks to NHGRI who made an investment in doing this sort of comparative genetics and comparative genomics work to try to study basic problems like the molecular basis of producing new traits in natural populations. Thank you. So you've done a lot of great work looking at the sequences that changes between all these different populations. I'm very curious if the networks between these different populations change as well. So if a mutation in a certain gene actually creates new connections or loses other connections in the different networks of these populations. I don't think we have good data to answer that. I can tell you that if you change a gene like PITX-1, which itself regulates a whole series of other genes, then you have in essence changed a whole genetic program that normally, if it turns on in this part of the body, will make a hind leg. So yes, we do expect to see by the alterations here a whole series of downstream events that actually are the black box that connects the genotype to the phenotype. But we have not done all by all proteome interactions in the sort of network analysis that you're also seeing starting to come out in some other systems. One more question there. So one theory for the loss of a structure is that it has an adaptive value, a positive adaptive value. I wasn't quite sure why the loss of these pectoral fins and the stickleback had a positive adaptive value. Yeah, so the pelvic reduction alleles have been positively selected. So if you look at the signatures of diversity surrounding the mutations, that's an advantageous allele that's been swept in the population. The ecological studies that have been done on the trait suggest that the loss of a pelvis occurs in environments with low calcium and lots of insect predators when there are no predatory fish. Okay, so you need three interacting environmental variables, absence of a predator that's retarded by the spine, presence of a predator that uses the spine, and very low calcium levels, which also may create a metabolic cost for building the big bony structure. Thank you, David. Just before the break, we will have the first of several videos that we're gonna share with you, interviews and the like. So please enjoy the video.


Good evening. I am Dr. Atman Ndegde. I am currently working as a consultant orthopedic surgeon in KMC Hospital in Mangalore. So all of us are aware that every year countless lives are affected by these road traffic accidents and the aim of this road safety week is to raise awareness about the preventable nature of these incidents. All of us have to understand the impact of reckless driving, distracted driving and the need for better road infrastructure. And we as a community can collectively work towards this through community engagements, campaigns and educational activities. So let us all pledge our commitment towards this road safety so that road traffic is safe for everyone including ourselves. Thank you.