In this episode, you're going to learn how you can design sustainable solutions with very limited resources that make a deep impact on people's lives. Here are the guests for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Peter. Hi, this is Gonzalo Rodino and this is the service design show episode 112. Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to the service design show. This show is all about empowering you with the most effective skills and strategies so you can design services that win the hearts of people and business. And this is going to be a really special episode because the guests in this episode are Gonzalo, Rodion and Fyrek, Mark. Now, I can imagine that you haven't heard about Gonzalo and Fyrek. That's because they work in a nonprofit organization called IDE Innovation Lab in Cambodia. And when I heard about their story, I got really excited because they are using human centered design around wicked problems that involve better child nutrition, giving access to clean water and helping rural farmers make a better living. And the amazing thing is they do all this while juggling with the needs of funders, dealing with very complex relationships with stakeholders and with very limited resources. And still they are able to come up with solutions that make a deep impact on people's lives. How do they do that? Now, if this sounds like a very distant world from your reality, I would say adopt an open mindset and let this episode surprise you. As you'll discover throughout the episode, our worlds aren't all that different. And in fact, I think there's a lot you can learn from the work Gonzalo and Fyrek are doing. If you're new to the service design show, welcome and consider subscribing to the channel because we bring a new video that helps to level up your service design skills at least once a week. So click that subscribe button and that bell icon so you'll be notified when new videos are out. Now, having said that, it's time to sit back relax and enjoy the conversation with Gonzalo and Fyrek. Welcome to the show, Fyrek and Gonzalo. Hey, Mike, how's it going? It's going really good on this Monday morning for me. We're recording this on a on a Monday. This is going to be sort of a first because I've done duo interviews before, but not in this new format. So we'll have to see how this goes. I'm really excited because the topic of today is it's quite cool. Gonzalo, can you give a short introduction about who you are and then we'll move on into what you actually do because again, that's that's really exciting. Gonzalo, maybe you want to start? Sure. Yes. So I'm Gonzalo Rodino. I am Argentinian, Australian designer and I'm working as a design researcher at the IDE Innovation Lab in currently rainy Cambodia. And I've been here for about two and a half years or so. How about you, Fyrek? Yeah, I'm Peter. I've been working for 10 years and the last six years I focused on social innovations. I was working for IDE and we focused on design, research and strategies. And now I moved to Australia for my master degree. Now, right? Yeah. So we're we're having the Netherlands, Cambodia and Australia in this episode. Pretty awesome. Three times. Yeah, three time zones. We're going to talk about the topic that people might not initially associate with service design or the things we address a lot here on the show. It's going to be around social innovation, but especially in an area which is quite different than the corporate environment. And I think there's so much we can learn from that. You already touched upon an organization called IDE. Could could you give a. A little bit of background story. What is that? Yeah, I can start. So IDE is an international NGO. It's founded in 1982 in the US by Paul Pollack. And then it's entered in Cambodia in 1994. Actually, it's it's projects, generally our sanitation, water, hygiene and agriculture. And Gonzalo and I actually working for a unit of let's let's call it an in-house innovation lab. It's an IDE. So we both working for this unit. OK. So it's a lot about social innovation. Yeah, I'm using the term social innovation. I'm not sure if you're also using that term. But is that is that the main area? It's it's probably the best umbrella to kind of cover all the different topics that we work on. Yeah, social innovation, which includes, you know, research, design from service design to sometimes product design strategy. It's quite broad and even more recently because we are an in-house unit, we consult a lot for external organizations. And so we've been working in, you know, clean energy, most recently in maternal and young child nutrition. So, yeah, really, it's quite it's quite broad. And we apply the methodology, human-centered design methodology across across sectors. Yeah, that's the thing that's going to connect us in this episode. Before we dive into some of your really inspiring projects, I want to get to know you a little bit better. And we're going to do that through our 60 second rapid fire Q&A. So I'm going to ask the question and maybe Gonzalo, if you start in Pierre, you just answered the same question. Then we'll try to do it in 60 seconds. All right, question number one, Gonzalo, what's always in your fridge? Water. How would you, Pierre? Chicken. Chicken and water. OK, which books are you reading right now? Fiction, I'm reading a book called San Shiro by a Japanese author and nonfiction. The obstacle is the way, I think, by Ryan Holiday. Yeah, I'm finishing my seven habits of highly effective people. Classic. Oh, right. Which superpower would you like to have? These days, maybe to fly would be would be nice to get around. I would prefer to convey the thinking of other people. All right, what did you want to become when you were a kid? For me, it was to become a famous musician. And I think I'm still hoping, still working on it. I want I wanted to become a doctor, but then no, I could not make it. All right, then the final question is when did you encounter the term service design? Do you remember your first sort of encounter with the term? Yeah, for me, it was a few years ago I was living in Melbourne. I think I kind of discovered it through. I initially heard about UX design and I thought that sounded really cool. And then when I heard about service design, maybe just through the community in Melbourne, it would sound even cooler because it was focusing on a wider range of things. Yeah, I think that was maybe a few years ago in Melbourne for me. How about you, Pierre? In my case, I think I started knowing this service design when I joined IDE six years ago. And that's when we talk about service designs. And then we also involved some in our projects. Hmm. All right. So that's that's good to get to know you a little bit better. We'll put all the links to the books in the show notes. Now, let's dive into some of the work you do. And the first thing I'm really curious about is the IDE has been around for quite a long time. How would you describe its main purpose? Like what is the goal? It's an NGO. So the funding models are different. But where in the NGO space does it fit? I can I can start. So there's IDE and then there's maybe the Innovation Lab has a unique perspective in some ways for that, because for us, our, you know, our main goal and purpose really is to to bring, you know, bring the user user-centered design into the development sector, kind of create new ways of working and in, you know, as a result come up with more sustainable, more inclusive solutions that are more market driven. But maybe IDE broadly has other purposes, which maybe Pierre can touch on. Yeah. So I think in addition to what Gonzalo said, because at IDE, we believe that entrepreneurs are everywhere, including farmers. So that's why the way that we work with them is not just give things free to them, but we use market-based approach and human-centered designs to create more sustainable solutions. Because the purpose is not just to have like short-term solutions for for the poor, but it's more like to design sustainable solutions for them to create like a real change, real big change for for their life. So just to paint the context a little bit here for the people who are watching and listening, you're doing your work usually in rural areas of Cambodia with around child nutrition, around farmers and around entrepreneurship. So the context feels quite different than maybe the the more clean and structured and more organized environment that most of the people like who are in service design are in. But I still think there's so much we can learn about your approach, because usually resources are limited or many again, many stakeholders involved. Yeah, so let's dive into some of the the challenges that you're encountering with doing these kind of projects when could you tell a little bit about when you start a project around sanitation or hand washing, like what are some of the challenges that you encounter in the most broad sense? Yeah, I can jump in and then if you're free to add anything. So broadly speaking, some of the challenges, you know, as we mentioned, the sector, you know, traditionally has maybe been working in a more traditional manner and it's it's ID. The lab has really been pushing to kind of bring this this new approach. So sometimes at the beginning of a project, at least when the lab was first founded, it was kind of a more of a challenge to bring this approach in. But now that we've been here for a while and organizations are kind of learning about these new methods and new ways where we're getting to try new things. But still there are some, you know, things restrictions or things holding us back from, you know, potentially this more traditional model where donor money comes in from another country to focus on certain things. And you know, when when we go out into the field and speak to the community, speak to, you know, different users, we learn that maybe the challenge is something else. And then that can sometimes get in the way of having a greater innovation or greater impact just because of how, you know, the sectors is structured sometimes. Yeah. And I think in addition to that, it's also, as you know, that we work in the rural context. So no running water, no digital. So then I mean, when we come to the designing solution phase, we cannot really design like amazing things, for example, like mobile app to solve the solutions. But we need to make sure that our solution fits the context and can create more sustainable solutions. And at the same time, sorry, problems that we are solving, generally, we get problems. So it's not just from one angle, like from one from one route that really caused this problem, but like many, many routes that really cause this problem. So we need to tackle, we need to make sure that we tackle this problem holistically rather than just create one solution. Yeah. So in that sense, like having to manage stakeholders and get them comfortable with a different way of working, you're dealing with that, dealing with limited resources. You're dealing with that as well. And also with the, I would say, systemic approach towards finding sustainable solutions, right? That's all I think a lot of us can relate to these challenges. And it's interesting to hear that even in such a different context, even these challenges arise. Maybe it's fun to dive into some of the more practical examples of how you're doing your work and how you're approaching it and how you're trying to overcome some of the challenges. So is there an iconic example, iconic story that comes to your mind from the recent years that you've been doing projects? Sure, yeah. And Pira, would you like to go first? Yeah, yeah, I can start. So when you ask these questions, the project that came in my mind is we call social behavior change projects. My colleague and I, we were two years ago and the purpose, the goal of the project was to reduce child stunting in Cambodia. And for your information, there was like 30% of children got stunted in Cambodia. So this project was tried to reduce this stunting rate. So we decided to use human-centered designs to tackle these problems. And then we went to the field, we interviewed different stakeholders and also the users. And then we came up with some insights that we brought to talk with our clients. But the thing is that from the beginnings, they assumed that we should focus on zero to two years old children. Because it's like from their research or from their, I don't know, like from something that they found out that's the good age for us to focus on. But from our research, it was not. The age of children that we should focus on is from two to five years old because we discover completely different people to take care of children age from zero to two years old very well. But they lack of understandings to take care of the kids from two to five years old. So that's why that's the challenge came. We need to convince our stakeholders, our clients to shift their focus from their assumptions to what we really found from the field. And two questions that come to my mind, like how did you do this research? How did you find this out? And then did you manage to, and if you did, how did you manage to sort of convey your client that they need to focus on a different group if they really wanna tackle this challenge? So let's start with the first question. How did you find this insight? It actually, it's came from different things that we need to manage to get this in depth in size.  They took care of their kids very well, you know, that everything seems to be very good. But then we found out that, well, can we do something else? Then just talking to people like this. So we decided to do homestays. That's the time that we found out that no, they did not really do what they just told us. So for the people who are listening and have no clue what is a homestay? Do you want to share, Gonzalo? Yeah, I mean, it is what it sounds like. It's going and staying in a home in a rural village and just kind of pretty much observing a family in their day-to-day life for a couple of days, maybe one night, and just trying to understand, yeah, without necessarily speaking what the behaviors are to see that the behavior, knowledge gap or the gap between what they're telling you and what they're actually doing. Yeah, one thing that also interests me is, so you did the research, you did the interviews and you got the answers, but still you had a hunch that something wasn't right. Like, what was that? Because you could have also accepted like, okay, this is what the interviews say we need to move on. You know, like, this is when you talk with people, at least from our experience, people tend to say something good about them and sometimes we fall into this trap and we thought, oh, okay, that's right. Let's bring this to the office, analyze it and synthesize it and come with solutions. But from our experience, generally we need to be smarter than that. I mean, we need to find better techniques to gain deeper insights. In addition to what I just shared with you about homestay, we also use another techniques that we're showing the sketches, images, photos, because taking into account that we are talking to the poor who live in the rural area, they are not, I don't want to say all of them, but generally they are not literate, so they need something that can stimulate their brain more when we talk to them so they can relate it. One example that I can tell is when we talk about the perceptions on poor, they could not tell us anything from the beginning, but when we show them the image of the poor, they started telling us, oh, this is what we poor, so this must be from the kids and the other one must be from Adal and the one from the kids must be not so harmful. So that's why it's very, very important to use all these kind of techniques to stimulate them and then they can share more responses. What happened next? So you did more deeper user research, design research. You found an interesting insight that the problem wasn't where you assumed it would have been and now what? Like, did you continue with finding, trying to ideate a solution or did you sort of present it to your client and hand the research over? What was the next step? You want to try it on? Sure, I was waiting for your knowledge. So the research stopped there to present to the client, of course it was a long-term project and so at that point we shared insights which then kind of guided the actual design of the behavior change campaign because it was kind of like over a multi-year process and yeah, they agreed after some discussion and it kind of drove the whole thing into a bit of a different direction. How was their response? As in, were they surprised or did you get any pushback or because if they already knew that the problem was between the ages of zero and two and you present something else, like why did you still do the research? How was that dynamic? You know, in these particular projects it's lucky for us that the clients, they really understand these kinds of things and they believe in design thinking and you mentioned the design approach. So when we explained them, I think from the beginning we convinced them already but the thing is that we need to convince other partners, other relevant stakeholders including governments. So that's the difficult part because you know every stakeholder they have their own agenda and their needs. It's not about right or wrong but because they have their own things to be done, to be accomplished. So that's why my team and I, we work on this project and from time to time we involve them in progress update meetings and at the same time we went to the offices and then we had some discussion about that until at one point they agree, like what can they involve and what can be fixed together So yeah, I mean it's not so easy but this is something that we have to do. And something that... Yeah, go ahead Goncalo. Just something that always tends to help as well is actually taking the client to the rural areas to conduct these interviews because even though potentially we're living in Cambodia all living in Cambodia, you know, Phnom Penh life is very different to rural Cambodian life so it's always useful to bring everyone along and just show them our research and yeah, share that with them. Yeah, that I guess is sort of universal if you manage to get stakeholders involved in the process rather than being an outsider waiting for the outcome then the entire dynamic of the process is different. If you think back and look back on this project what is the thing that you're most proud of? Yeah, I think the insights that we discovered and also the shift that we made rather than just stick to the initial assumptions we really shifted the focus and at the same time I think what we are proud of is we convinced the stakeholders to join in the projects and at the end of the projects when it comes to implementations the partners, each partners can play a role by taking the solution that we created to use by their own, you know so it becomes more like a holistic solutions that each one can take a part of the solutions. Yeah, it was almost like an open source all the materials we designed with the design agency here are available on a website for any NGO organization to download and basically implement themselves so rather than only focusing on one organization that might only be able to fund the campaign for a couple of years now it's a bit more sustainable and it's also helping to align the wash sector rather than sending out so many different messages to families in rural areas this kind of helps to give one more unified message which as we know is a much better way to change behavior. In addition to that, I just want to emphasize that the solution that we came up with it's not so sexy, you know it's like in the corporate world that you create a kind of innovative solution like mobile app or something like this so we created washing sorry, what do we call that? Hand washing buckets that made of used paint buckets and we created a video that has these modern grandmothers as an inspiration for example of this kind of solutions but the thing is that these solutions can make bigger impact in the society, in the communities because they can relate themselves to these solutions. Yeah, so that's a beautiful thing about this like we tend to get distracted by new technology by shining new objects while finding solutions that are sort of regular and fit into the lives of the people already whether it's your customers, your patients, your students maybe even your employees those kind of solutions usually are not disruptive they are just plain ordinary but because they are ordinary they are easily accepted and used in actually used so I think this is also a great example of don't overcomplicate it usually it's the simple things that make the biggest impact, right? And it's really hard to find those simple things. Yeah, that's true. I think people from the corporate world may be frustrated when they come to work in the development sector like us because maybe they expect solutions should be more radical innovations but from our experience we can say that generally the solutions that come out from design thinking in the development sectors that we work is more about radical, sorry, incremental innovations Yeah. It's not amazing things that you can see but it really make impact in the community. Exactly and that's the only thing that counts like how impactful is it? Not how disruptive is it? Or how radical is it? Or how shiny is it? And I think that makes our work also a bit harder because usually the solutions or often the solutions are quite obvious. Like in the end you're thinking like is this it? And you might get remarks from people like yeah but I could have come up with that and the thing is you didn't. So for us often it's really hard to explain that you need to go through this process and then the obvious things come out. And the process is here to extract the obvious things and put them to life. This was really, yeah, go ahead. So much of the opposite has happened as well historically where it's organizations with offices abroad are saying yeah we're gonna design, I can design this, this is the great product, new technology, whatever and then it gets kind of dropped off in these communities and it just flops, it doesn't work out. So it might seem simple but like doing something simple is the hard part, you know? Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you had a second project that you also wanted to share, right? Sure. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I wanted to share. It's a project before my time but I feel like it's one that kind of captures the essence of this kind of how humans head and design really brings value in this sector and also how something we didn't mention earlier that a lot of times when new solutions or new programs are kind of put into place in the rural areas or in this sector, it actually adds to the complexity of the system that we're working within. Yeah, so I'll try to skim through this story but basically we had a agricultural program that had recently put out a drip irrigation system to help with farmers and at the time, farmers were working in a more traditional farming style and weren't really using too many of the systems and initially they were selling products and over time it kind of slowed down and so they came to us to say something's wrong with our drip irrigation system, like we need you guys to redesign this. And so, cool, the team at the time went out into the field and spoke to farmers and actually spoke to more people in the overall system and what they found was that the farmers really loved this, I mean, they liked this drip irrigation. They knew how to use it. They really felt that the organization was supporting them with the training really well and it had nothing to do with the drip irrigation system. And through talking to the rest of the people involved, we uncovered that actually there was two main issues. One being that in some areas other NGOs had been giving away similar drip irrigation systems and so the farmers would say, well, why should I spend money if my name is getting for free and also the neighbor wasn't necessarily using it because as we know when things are given for free they're not always valued. And the other more interesting reason was that the drip irrigation was working so well that the farmers didn't know who to sell the extra produce too. Some of these farmers maybe they only have a bicycle to take the produce to the market, which can be far away and so the produce was going to waste. So yeah, it wasn't the drip irrigation system at all. It was this link in the actual market. Yeah. Veric, anything else to add to this? Sure. Oh yeah, Pierre, sorry. Yeah, I think what Gonzalo said, the project was more, you know, like people thought that this is a problem but when we use design thinking or human-centered designs that we call in our lab we found something else and we fixed it and if I'm not wrong, that's a short enterprise. Now they are progressing very well and they already changed their business model based on our recommendations and they are on their way to become like to be like a shop, like in the capital cities. So everything is progressing positively with that social enterprise. Yeah, and this is also again a really interesting example where you have a thing and when something is not working, your initial reaction is to fix the thing and look at the thing that's broken where there might be something else in the context which is actually causing the problem and understanding that context is the way to solve it. And how did you do research in this case? How did you find the insights? Basically, we started by doing alignment workshops. That's what we call, so we involved the stakeholder especially our clients in the team and to address all the concerns and everything. And a key is that we try to get at least one of them to be a part of the team. So it's not just about like, oh, I involve my clients and then I will give the progress update to them.  And these many consulting companies are afraid of to do so, but from our experience, it works well. So that's the first step. And the second step, like what you know, we go to the field, we interview different people. It's not just our target, but like people that can influence our target, key person like local authorities, also government, NGOs who's working there. So we talk to different stakeholders and then we came back and then we analyzed, synthesized following the design thinking process. So this is how we work. Yeah, and it's really again about understanding the entire ecosystem, the entire context, the entire system. And that's always the, I guess the challenging part, how broad do you need to go versus how narrow you need to go? Like how many people will you interview? How, who is still relevant in this challenge? Now, the example that you're giving here, I can imagine that, let me ask the question here. What happened when you told the client that the problem wasn't with their product, but that actually was something outside of their existing scope. A client might say, well, what can I do about that? Like that's not within my reach. What happened in this case? Yeah. I mean, the interesting thing as well, before I jump into that is that this challenge, this new challenge kind of came up as a result of the drip irrigation system being put in place, right? So they wouldn't have been able to predict this challenge very easily until the product was out there. But I believe they, you know, embrace the idea and it was kind of like over a couple of years, they shifted like Priyanka's mentioned, they shifted their business model. They are now working with contract farmers, which means that, you know, they provide training inputs to the farmers and they purchase all of their produce. So the farmers happy, they have inputs, they know they have a buyer with a fixed price. And the organization itself can also make a commission of selling those vegetables to the market. So it was kind of like a win-win for them in this situation. Yeah, so they shifted from being a product supplier to facilitating, maybe I don't know how to phrase them right now, but maybe becoming a partner in building a more sustainable, healthy life for these farmers, something like that, right? That's quite a radical shift. Yeah, I think now they offer like a holistic solutions to the farmers. It's not just like, oh, I sell the drip irrigation devices to you and then that's it. It's not about that anymore. So they offer trainings and they also buy the producers from the farmers. So everything is complete now. Yeah. Again, this sounds like something that we might fight in a lot of service design projects. The challenging thing is how do you actually get a client to act upon these insights? I don't know how big this client was or how agile or how small. Did you experience, what made it that they were able to actually go through this shift? So I think, yeah, Pirak, you go. Go ahead. No, I mean just because I think because they were social enterprise, which is in itself a different model to the traditional donor NGO model, it was in their best interest to become more self-sustainable and actually earn a higher income or revenue as an organization. So maybe in this particular case, it was a good partnership with the organization. But with a more traditional, larger organization that might be reliant on yearly funding that they kind of have to keep along that track to receive the same funding next year, yeah, might be tricky. So if I cut through the chase, they had a business incentive in actually making this work. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that's maybe different than other stakeholders who have a different business or funding model. And in this case, like seeing this as a business opportunity made them go after it. Yeah, yeah, that's correct.   I don't take your recommendations, but they have to face the consequence, you know? And that's also a good thing.  And with a small business, that happens really fast with a larger business. It takes a while, but eventually, yeah, when you're not relevant anymore to your customers, it's game over. Yeah, and it's a challenge as well. You know, the customers here, if they're going to invest in a drip irrigation and it's potentially a low income family and rural community, like they really need to want to buy this drip irrigation system, you know? It's like, it's a big purchase just for the example. So it's, the stakes are quite high that if you don't adapt, you're just going to lose, yeah, although your customers in quite quickly, I would say, yeah. Do you see, like, what is the consequence of working on challenges that are so impactful on people's lives? Like, it has to do with health, it has to do with income. These are super impactful things. How does that influence your work? Well, if I understand your question, so I think it really motivates me a lot at least. Personally, I feel like I enjoy the work, you know? Like, every day I go to work, I feel like I contribute to this, making people's life become better. And at the same time, even though our solutions are not so amazing, but at the end of the day, it really helps people to live better, you know, like having led streams. I remember like one of the things that I work on is led stream projects. So before 2015, there was only, sorry, there was less than 60% led stream coverage rate in Cambodia. And I work on that projects as well. And now the projects improve, progress, and it's covered, sorry, a lot of people, they have led streams, you know, they improve their life, their health conditions improve. So that's what I like about working in this sector. And sometimes as well, you know, when it's not something so direct like latrine, latrines, you know, sometimes we do research that informs policies that might be rolled out, you know, in like in a few years time. And so we do our best to bring the user's voice or the community's voice into these designs or into our recommendations. And it can be, sometimes it can be out of our hands, how that's rolled out, how that's implemented if it's strictly policy. But, and it can also be, it can take some time to see any kind of impact, you know, over time, you know, even in the two and a half years that I've been here, situation changes.  Yeah, it's different than working on the next mobile app, right? I can imagine the incentive is quite different. If you had to share some of the key insights that you learned through this work and give some pieces of advice for the people who are listening and watching this episode and who are probably working in quite a different context, what would you say? For people that potentially want to come and work in this sector? Well, that would be also interesting. But also just for people who won't be working anywhere remotely, like in this region and are working a large corporate or a government agency in, I don't know, Spain, but also the other side, like you said, maybe people who want to come. So both stories are interesting. I mean, one point that I wanted to quickly talk on is at least from this context, you know, a lot of the design, thinking, human-centered design methodologies or frameworks are developed for that context, for the Western or foreign context. And so, yeah, I think it's kind of key to not be so protective of these frameworks and be able to adapt them to the context. Like, there are necessarily not many frameworks for this sector, and so it's just really more about doing what needs to be done. And really making an effort, I guess this can be applied to corporate as well, making an effort to reflect and check your bias and your position within this context, whether as a foreigner for myself or as a city person going to rural areas, kind of understanding that context and doing what you can to try to minimize the power relations and, yeah, any potential unconscious biases. I think it's really critical. I mean, in any design role, I would say, but you particularly feel it, at least for me, in this context. Yeah, in addition to that, I think be prepared for the solutions that are not considered as amazing solutions because don't expect that in the development sectors because it's not always, you know, like, the solution that we think is the best could be the best that make a real impact if it's not like that. So that's why I think people that come to work in the development sectors should expect that. And how do you deal with that? How have you found a way not to, or to communicate the value? Like, the simplicity of the solutions, it's about making the most impactful solutions, but do you still get requests from clients and comments like these? Is this all you do or are you beyond that stage? Well, you know, sometimes we get the even requests for apps, for example, for farmers. It's actually the opposite where we have to say, you know, that would be an awesome project to work on, but, you know, and we can try, but we know that this, from our experience, this might not work and this is a better route to go down. And I think for ID specifically, oh, sorry. Yeah, question? No, well, the thing that came to my mind is like, you have to be really clear about why you're doing something. If you're, if you want to create impact on people's lives, it's something that's different than creating, doing a project for, from a marketing or branding perspective, where you can say, look at this, we've designed this new shiny thing and being clear with your clients what the real goal is, they want to create impact or do you want to use this? And that's a good exposure, yeah. Yeah, and that can be a challenge as well because obviously organizations want to have this shiny thing to show off sometimes, to donors and to secure more funding, you know, if that's their business model. And so there is a push that sometimes, but again, it comes back to, it's not about them, it's not about us, it's about the people that this product or service will eventually go to. And yeah, it's again, pushing a more sustainable solution, a solution that once the organization's funding potentially drives up, can still go on its own. I think that's critical because yeah, historically so many programs end and that's it. And that again adds complexity to the next round of organizations that want to come in and do the same kind of work, yeah. Yeah, so removing complexity is actually the goal, not adding to it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Anything else you want to add to that, Ferek? I just want to add that in the corporate world, I think when we work, we try to fulfill the needs and maybe solve some pains of the customers or users. But in the development sectors where we work, especially in the rural context, what we end the most is to solve these big problems finally. It's not just like, oh, I will need to fulfill one of the customer. For example, I will design amazing lettering, looks very nice. It's not only about that, but we need to make sure that they will use it. And at the end of the day, it will contribute to reducing the child's stunting and improve their health conditions. Yeah, yeah. And maybe it's easier in these conditions to have your priorities straight. I think that's the thing we can learn. If people want to continue this conversation with you guys, what's the best way to reach out? Yeah, the IDE Innovation Lab has an Instagram page, Facebook page. We can share the links and then, of course, email myself or, Ferek, if you want to share your email, we're very happy to keep discussing for sure.  And I find myself sometimes talking to one person in another country doing similar kind of work and there are so many, you know, you're like two degrees of separation often to a lot of people in this sector. I'm not sure all the relevant links are in the episode show notes. It was really awesome to get an insight in what you're doing in Cambodia as far and as remote as it seems. I think there are many parallels between all the other design projects around the world. So that's quite interesting to see. I think we, and when I say we here in the West can learn a lot from what you're doing here rather than us trying to impose our ways of thinking and methodologies to how you should be using it. So awesome, thanks again for sharing your stories. What's your biggest takeaway from this episode? Leave a comment down below and who knows, your comment might just be the thing that inspires the next person. And if you enjoyed this episode, grab the link and share that with just one other person today. That helps me to invite more inspiring guests like Gonzalo and Pirak here on the show for you. If you wanna see more videos that help you to design services that win the hearts of people and business, click this video over here because we're going to continue over there. See you.


Hello, this is Speed Dating with Learning Technologies presented by the Dutton Institute in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. Welcome to your date with Lightboard. The best way for me to introduce you to the Lightboard is to let you see it in action. So take a look at this short introductory video. Hi, as you can see, I'm standing here behind a Lightboard, which is sometimes called a clear screen. As you can see, I'm able to draw and explain as I go along. So the students are able to see my face, similar to how you would be doing things on a white board in a classroom. The best thing about this is that the technology does all of the work for you. I stand back here, I draw and I write, just like I would normally do on a white board except you're able to see my face and the technology flips all of the text and all of the images around so that it all looks normal for the viewer. So what are some of the reasons for using the Lightboard? Here are the top three. Using the Lightboard, you're able to make a personal connection with your students. While writing on a traditional whiteboard, you're not facing the audience. But with the Lightboard, you can. Students can see your gestures, take cues from your facial expressions. And if you're teaching online, this really may be one of the few times they actually see you in action. Get to know you in a more personal way. Reason number two. This is a great way to explain difficult concepts. While it's obviously a great way to present difficult concepts and long equations in an online class, it can also be useful in resident or hybrid classes. You can have students review instructional videos beforehand and come prepared to ask questions and work problems in class, making their time with you more productive, targeted and practical. Some additional benefits include a student's ability to pause, rewind and review portions that are confusing or watch certain segments multiple times. This is also a great benefit for non-English speakers that might benefit from some extra time to process and take notes on your material. Now for reason number three. You can record in advance. This is great for times when you're traveling or anticipate a snow day and can't afford to lose lecture time or find someone to lecture for you. You can also use this to present supplemental materials or essential topics that you don't have time for in class. Once your videos are created using the light board, you're able to store and share them through Caltora, an enterprise tool available to all Penn State faculty and students. From Caltora, it's easy to stick those videos directly into Canvas for easy access by your students. In fact, with Caltora, you can even make your videos interactive, adding pauses for thoughtful reflection and multiple choice and true false questions. Okay, there's no expertise or skill needed. Just an idea of what you want to cover. We have people to help you with all the rest. Is Kay DeMarco, our videographer at Dutton. She's available to handle the technical aspects so that you can really focus on your teaching. Feel free to reach out to Kay or anyone at Dutton to schedule a time to record your own light board video. Here's some information to learn more. Thank you.


reviewing the US and the Holocaust. And this is a movie on PBS. It was shown on PBS Hawaii a few weeks ago. Now it's all over the place. And you can watch it on YouTube. You can watch it free on YouTube. There are three episodes to it.  So today on Movies You Can Learn From, we're going to review that movie and we're going to try to put it in perspective with George Kasin and me. George, welcome to the show. Before we started, you were talking about your own reaction to this movie. And I like you to give that reaction now. It's a chakaroo. Why? Because everything I learned in high school and in college, this movie filled in gaps that said brought us to the light things I never knew. And what's uncanny is my high school teacher Susan Menzer, she had gone, she was a graduate from Brandeis and George Spiro, another person who should have been aware of this and they only glossed over this in our history courses. This Ken Burns documentary is so comprehensive and so shocking and brings in details that I never knew. And I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about that period in Europe and America. And the other thing is we never learned how America really turned their face away from all these European Jews that are the problems and because of the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which closed immigration. But you know what came to my mind just recently? These European Jews could have quote unquote temporarily been moved here or you know to America or somewhere to save them until the war effort was over and then potentially have them return to their homes. But none of that was done. I mean they just, our country until the Japanese until the Japanese did Pearl Harbor in 1941, we were really and there was so much anti-semitic anti-semitism and anti-immigrant feelings in this country in the in the hinterland, right? People just left to die. The St. Louis that came went to Cuba first, the boat and then came to America. They wouldn't let them in here. They wouldn't let them in Cuba and they went back to Europe and about a third of those, some of them went to Holland and wherever other France, but about a third of them eventually died in the in the gas chambers or other other means because they were in countries that the Nazis had taken over. So bottom line here for me is learn things I never knew. Me too. You know and I kept thinking throughout the movie that you know I've been watching the public public information and documentaries about World War II for my whole life. I remember when I was a kid in the 50s watching Victory at Sea, black and white movies taken by the Navy in the Pacific and some to some extent in the Atlantic and seeing all these movies for all of our lives about what was going on in Europe and Germany, especially some of them were documentary, some of them were art. I guess you could say that entertainment, but it was all about the Nazis and and how bad the Nazis were and this and that and a lot of movies including Spielberg's movie about Schindler's List. Great movies. Our lives have been filled with an examination of what happened in Europe and what happened in the Holocaust, what happened to the Jews. I mean it's extraordinary to find people deny the Holocaust when we have all been surrounded with this with information about the Holocaust for really all of our lives, but there are people out there who really don't know about it for some reason. They never studied at all in school. They never saw any of these documentaries or or movies about what happened in Europe. This movie, this series changes that for you. The series has as footage that you have never ever seen before. I mean I think of how old I am and I have never seen this footage. I wonder what's going on here. Why did I not see this footage before? Why did it take all these years for somebody to show me this footage? It is extraordinary and you wonder where it's been hiding and you wonder where Ken Burns found it. But you know his treatment of the Holocaust is really shocking to the tips of your toes about just exactly how mean Hitler was. There's not enough time in this program actually, George, for us to examine all the incredible things that Hitler was doing. And I have to say it's not just Hitler because people went along with him. The real extraordinary point here is that the country of Germany and other countries that he took during the war went along with him. They let it happen and sometimes actively participated, sometimes passively participated, but in their midst six million people, most of them Jews, were murdered. Why? I mean you know we all know Jewish people. There's no reason at all to have anti-Semitism. It never was and somehow our Western society has incorporated this into our history for no damn reason all these years. And I have to say the church has encouraged it and used it as a piece of propaganda for the last couple thousand years. And here we are with the 20th century with loaded with it and we're in the 21st century and we're still loaded with it. What insanity is going on here? So I guess the question I would put to you is what about the United States? That was the real revelation here in these three series, these three episodes in the series about Ken Burns's movie and he was really totally candid about the United States. Somewhere along the line there's really dark, dark phenomenon of anti-Semitism caught in the United States, in U.S. government, in the hinterland, in the cities, in corporate America and it was really bloody awful what was happening by the time we get to the 30s and the 40s. I believe it also existed, tangibly existed in the 20s. It was part of American racism. Yeah, American exceptionalism includes American exceptional racism, racism against the African Americans, racism against all minority groups and now we see through this film that the level, the intensity, the madness of racism against the Jews in this country, a country where we, you know, it doesn't a day go by everybody says all of great country and we're tolerant and we take care of each other and hey wait a minute you got to see this movie. If you haven't seen this movie your education is completely incomplete. So here we have pretty much three parts about how this evolved in the United States in the early 30s, the late 30s and in the 40s and exactly what was going on, vis-à-vis what was what was going on in Europe. Even the media, you know, millions of people are murdered savagely, incredibly murdered and it's on page six of the newspaper. Page six. Page six. Yeah, I mean, did we not think that was important? Do we not think that was remarkable? And we had people in the State Department that could not give a rip that there were people dying by the millions in Europe. They did nothing, really nothing, to allow them visas, to allow them sanctuary in the United States. All under the beacon of the Statue of Liberty, give me your tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free and the State Department was actively, actively causing them to die. There was no excuse for it and FDR, although he was in many ways the guy who saved the country, fact is that he didn't feel politically, he didn't feel that he was in the right place politically and he could do much about it. And had the war not started 1941-42, first was Pearl Harbor, as you mentioned, but also 42, both Germany and Italy declared war in the US and now things changed. But until that time, and this movie goes into it in great depth, until that time, people were sympathetic to the Germans, they were sympathetic to Hitler, and they were anti-Semitic by the millions in this country. So, and then you mentioned, of course, Rachel Maddow series, which just started last week, called Ultra, where she digs into this same subject matter and it's more, it's more of what Ken Burns was doing. And she gives you well-researched podcasts, three of them so far, but there'll be more, every week there'll be another one, revealing her research about how these groups wanted to overthrow the United States government through the 30s and into the 40s with munitions, with machine guns and the like, that they had stolen from armories, military armories here, how they established groups in a number of cities in New York, in Boston, was one in a Midwest city and in Los Angeles, where people came for miles around to join them and use these stolen weapons, stolen munitions with a plan, a conspiratorial plan, such as, as you said, January 6th, to actually kill members of Congress in the capital, take over the government and install a Nazi leader in government in this country, all through the 30s. And I didn't study this in school, I never heard of it before, never heard of it before. I'm sure we know about Father Coughlin and we know about Charles Lindberg and others who were visibly, and Henry Ford, visibly anti-Semitic and visibly sympathetic to the Nazis, but we didn't know how much money they put into it, how many people came around and followed them and how advanced their plans were to, you know, he overthrew the government. It was close, man, it was close in the 30s and the war and FDR coming into the war essentially saved the country. He wished he could have done it earlier and or in another way, but, you know, the United States government, that is the FBI and the Department of Justice were really not effective to stop these groups. It's a story and a half, George. Really filled in, Father Coughlin, as you mentioned, he had 40 million followers, which is a third of America, and he was really anti-Semitic. But, you know, one of the things that really was not even discussed in this movie, right? Jews are very good at learning. They believe in learning. They believe in improving their minds, and they're good at business, and they're successful. And a lot of this has to do with- I think you're taking this to a profile, but I'll let you continue. It's a resentment, right? I mean, not that everybody, because there are poor people. I mean, I know, you know, I know Jewish people, but the thing is the perception is, right? The perception from these groups are- there's a challenge that they're taking over, you know, America. That was the whole idea behind it, you know? And they made great scapegoats. Resentment. They made great scapegoats in the 20th century, probably the 19th century, before enlightenment in Europe. And they were somehow that had infection, infected the United States, and they became the target of this kind of racist scapegoatism. And somehow it helped politicians, officials, and crazies do their thing, and to have to scapegoat people. It is really extraordinary what happened here. And as I said before, we didn't know about it. That the generation that you and I are part of, the generation that grew up in the 40s and 50s and 60s, had no idea. And PS, they don't have any idea now. And that's why the Rachel Maddow, you know, podcasts are important. And it's why the Ken Burns movie is so important, because people have to know about these things. And unfortunately, they don't.  And people in this country, you know, by the tens of millions, they buy it. They buy it, and they latch on to this kind of violent extremism about how they should overthrow the government.  And at the same time, people don't realize, even the people who would not engage in that don't realize, as you said, how dangerous it is, how what a fantastic undermining is to democracy and to civilization. Look what happened in Europe. It was two thirds of the Jews of Europe. Six million people were killed. And we had it on page six. And so, you know, could this happen? Everybody walked away from that saying, oh, gee, this is bad. It should never happen again, never again. All these years now, it's, you know, 75 years. And it's never happened again. But you know what? It could happen again.  Exactly. And so these movies have something in common. That is the movies that Ken Burns made in the podcast that Rachel Madder was spending her time on. And it is a concern about it happening again. It's a concern about our people out there don't realize what's going on. Well, they don't want to realize what's going on. And they are fertile ground for a guy like Trump to visit anti-Semitism on this country and also overthrow the country. Where will we be then? What will happen to minority groups, Asians, African Americans, you name it, what will happen to them? You know, all the great principles of the Bill of Rights are at risk. And there are people in this country, including people that you and I know who support him. Knowing that is hard for me to talk about this. Knowing what damage he would wreak upon us and they support him. And that's why Rachel Madder and Ken Burns are doing their work so that we become educated about it. And that's the point of this discussion. That's the point of both of these documentaries. I saw your 30 minutes with Manfred Hennigson, who is a scholar, who's a Holocaust scholar, genocide scholar, Professor Emeritus from UH Manoa. And you got into a lot of these big things.  And there was also that Armenian thing, you know, where they killed everybody or sent them to the desert or murdered them like the men were murdered and the women were sent out to the desert to die.  And it wasn't only Hitler. I mean, he had support. He had support not only in Germany, but when he, and a lot of other other countries, Poland and even Ukraine, you know. So I mean, that's a border of millions of people here. Yes, yes. And you still have that here in America, you know, because as you say, people are supporting Trump knowing some of the things he said. So it really worried, you know, Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, when they closed the gates. That was part of the, you know, white supremacy, northern European kind of thing, right? But knowing that all these millions of people were being killed in Europe, right? And still not thinking up, I mean, there was something where they were going to, someone, some senator brought up sending European Jews to Alaska because it was a territory, right? And they could, and that, and a lot of, a lot of people didn't want that, right? But that at least they would have been saved. And then later, the solution could have been, you know, some would have been made American citizens. Some may have wanted to go back to their homes in Europe after the Nazi threat was gone, but nothing was done. I mean, just. Well, you know, this goes to the whole scenario that Hitler organized. The first thing, and this is also, by the way, covered in this very interesting movie called The Garden of the Finzi Contini. 1970s movie was a redo of a 1950s black and white movie about a family by the name of Finzi Contini who lived in a town called Ferrara near Rome and Mussolini's taking over and he's buddies with Hitler. First thing is they can't ride, they can't have a car. So their car licenses are revoked. Second thing is they can't get on public transportation. They can't get on a streetcar anymore. The third thing is they're riding bicycles now, but they have to give up their bicycles. Now they have to walk. They have to walk with Jewish stars. These are, you know, this family was relatively speaking powerful and wealthy and little by little, actually quick by quick, they were reduced to. Exactly. They were reduced to nobody on their way to Auschwitz. Exactly. And this movie covers it. What kind of a surprise is that in a fairly short order, everything was taken away from them and all the people they knew and destroying their society for no reason. And they thought it was okay. They thought that Mussolini was a clown. They thought that Hitler was a joke, but it hastened. It happened quicker and quicker and quicker. That's one thing. And you know, you talk about the United States offering Alaska or some kind of sanctuary around the country, maybe in rural areas. There wasn't all that much of an opportunity because between the time that he and Mussolini reduced the rights of the Jewish minority and other minorities in Europe, and it wasn't just Germany. It was in every country in which they had power. They did the same thing. Kristallnacht in 1938 was not limited to Germany. It was everywhere that Hitler could do it. And he organized it as kind of a pan-European Kristallnacht. So what happens is now you've got to get out of there. And only a few people could figure out a way to get out of there. They couldn't get visas out and they couldn't get visas in. So they were kind of stuck. And now he does this thing with the final solution because I think he's already set it up so they can't leave. Can't leave. So he forces them to the east. He forces them to Poland. He kills them in Poland using very primitive, brutal methods. And this covered in the documentary. It's not like they can say, look, I like to get out of here. I like to go to the United States. There was no place they could go, even if the United States had taken them. There was no place they could go. So the window of departure got smaller and smaller and smaller.  There was no way to get out. And nobody who would take them in, they were locked into this ordinary middle class people, locked into this kind of frack to Auschwitz, which was inescapable for so many, for six million people. What I'm saying is, even if the United States had offered them sanctuary, not clear that there was any moment in the continuum where they could have come in large numbers. But when they could come in small numbers, guys like Breckenridge Long, who was a real name in the State Department, did everything he could to stop their visa application, not let them come into this country. This guy was really totally anti-Semitic. And he was not alone in the State Department. There were others too. And FDR was afraid to face him down. He was afraid to cross the anti-Semites in his own government. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is, this documentary brings all of that into perspective of how our own government turned their face away. And they were anti-Semites, very strong anti-Semites in our government.  But there's nothing funny about this whole thing. It's a very sad, sad situation. And I worry about today, you know, that there's a whole movement of, as Rachel Meadow was talking about the 40s, that kind of thing went on in January 6th. What was that all about? You know, storming the U.S. Capitol, right? I mean, our country is based on a system of law, right? And when you get rid of that, you have chaos. And where is the chaos going to lead to? Violence. Violence. And, you know, my dad went, he was memming in Germany in 1923. He was, they sent him to school there. Why? I don't know. I have some issues with Germany in World War I as well. They sent him there.  And they were living in Memmingen in Germany near his school. And Hitler had come to the square and he was talking, that was the same year they had, he had that beer bust kind of thing, you know, he tried to take over. And my grandmother and father and aunt, they decided this was scary. They weren't Jewish.  So they tried, they got up and they moved to France, right?  And it took him 10 years before I think 33 when he finally got into power. But if we look at our own country, right, of what's going on, but Marjorie Green, whatever her name is, she's nuts, you know.   But what's happened and what's happened now with this Trumpism, and there's a whole, this whole undercurrent of what's going on, this is very, very worrisome. But so that's why this Ken Burns documentary and racial matter, talking about this stuff, as I said, never learned this stuff in high school in college, I went through all these history courses. I was a history minor in college and in graduate school, my first master's, secondary ed, history minor, world history, American history. We never learned any of this. None of this. I don't think I don't think our teachers knew about it either. For some reason, it just didn't get out. I don't know whether that was anti-Semitic or just a failed, a failed historical analysis of what had happened only a few years earlier.  They should have taught her that so she could pass that on to her students. She never learned that.  No, that's okay. So yeah, I think it's, I think this is very relevant now. As Rachel Madder has often said on cable, that there is a relationship between those who conspire to overthrow the government. It wasn't a conspiracy to leave Trump in power so much as it was, it is a conspiracy to overthrow the government. As we have known it, the rule of law, the Constitution, the peaceful transfer of power, all those things, that's the conspiracy. And she often says that with that kind of conspiracy, as it existed in the, I guess the late 20s, the 30s, the late 30s, the 40s, it went with anti-Semitism. It was hand in glove. So you get these guys who want to stand, not satisfied with the government or they're a lot in the government. They want to turn it over. They want to overthrow the government through violence. And in the process, they use anti-Semitism as a way to advance those objects. And she makes the point, she makes the argument very well that there's always been a connection. There's a connection now. I mean, logically there is no way to make that connection, but she makes the connection. Really have to watch the stuff and you have to listen to her podcast. If you want to understand American history and the American condition as we have it now. I mean, I suppose if you looked at this from the 50,000 foot level, George, you would say, this is predictable. Given our history in this country, you know, from 1924 on forward, and maybe more, maybe from the 19th century on forward, you would see it was not only slavery. It was racism and bigotry. It's a main theme in American history. And if you knew that properly, as we should have been thought about it, which we were not thought about it, this would not surprise you what's happening with Trump. I don't care if he has grandchildren who are arguably Jewish. That's not his power base. His power base is dog whistles are calling for violence against minority groups against Asians. You know, the Kung flu, remember that? That's clearly dog whistles calling for violence against Asians. And of course, the African Americans and the Jews. So what you have here is a replay of what was going on in maybe the worst time of our history. And so I think we all have to be conscious of this. We all have to study American history as we have never studied it before. We have to study these events that are now being, you know, explained to us and revealed to us. And we have to look at these documentaries from Ken Burns. Nothing he's done up to this point has been as important as this particular documentary. And for that matter, nothing that Rachel Maddow has done up to this point is as valuable and important and instructive as her ultra podcast. And there will be others.  And in two or three weeks, we'll have elections that will probably reveal just how dark these times are. The polls are as scary as it gets. The people who would vote for Trump are as scary as they get. Jay, if you look at this, if you study, it's mostly people with less education that are that are they did documentaries with people in the Adirondacks, people, you know, really living poor in the mountains in the Adirondacks, you know, and not the Adirondacks down in North Carolina and Kentucky. And they were all for Trump, you know, so it's there's a welling in the in the people who are less educated that are following Trump. And that's where Trump is gaining a lot of his support, not college educated, you know, it's just the very wealthy industrialists, you know, and then those who are with less education. And that's what's driving this support, you know, the Marjorie Green types, you know, that's who's supporting them. So so that's why I've always said like Singapore, we've got to educate our people universal education. So people understand the big pitch. Well, that's what both of these documentaries are about.  It's too late to go back into your years in high school or your early years in social studies in college, American history and college too late for that. But but people do watch movies, they do learn from movies. And that's so regrettably it's so for all those movies with with violence and vengeance and guns galore. But it's also true for what Burns and Rachel Maddow were doing. And so hopefully, some people will catch on to this we'll we'll we'll know about the value here of learning American history. And we'll we'll see that we are at great risk. And there is something they can do in November. We don't have a lot of time left, though, because I think we're we're on a huge decline in terms of our norms and our ethics and our morality in this country. It's really, it's really scary. So, George, in the larger sense, what would you rate these movies? I mean, let's take both of them together. Let's take first, we'll take Ken Burns and the US and the Holocaust series. I've seen I've seen it all. I think you've seen most of it. It's an investment in time. It's you know, each one of these episodes is two hours. Plus, yeah, plus, what would you rate them on a, you know, 10 point scale? 10 plus plus plus plus 10 plus. Excellent. Excellent. Research. Excellent. You know, filming documentary filming. Excellent. Even the people who are communicating, you know, the different scholars, you know, I know Debra and all these others, totally 10, 10, 10 plus plus plus. And you want me to rate racial matter too or you want to wait? Well, let's rate her now. We can talk about her more later. Okay. She's a 10 plus two. These three episodes that I listened to, I never knew any of this.  I mean, everything, all three episodes were totally new to me. And I find that very, if it was new to me, it's probably new to most, I'm sure it was new to you too, right? But did you know some of this? No. And I minored, like you, I minored in American history in college. And I thought I had some pretty good teachers. But I'm afraid they were better in the 19th century than they were in the 20th.  And maybe it's because we were still in trauma because of World War II. You know, we were still trying to digest it, we process it. And it wasn't out there yet. We didn't know really what happened in the 20s, 30s and 40s. We didn't really know the inflection point that Pearl Harbor meant. And, and of course, the American connection with Europe. You know, growing up in Farmingdale with my neighborhood, you know, what happened in my, my parents were living because of the trauma they were just moving on. And a lot of the neighbors, you know, because of World War II, most of our Jewish neighbors, they were also living in a, you know, trying to forget, you know. So maybe that's the reason that a lot of this was not brought up. It was too new. It was too traumatic for the country. But, and, you know, why they didn't talk about all these groups, these neo-Nazi groups in the 30s and 40s is beyond me. Well, I'll tell you a part of it. I think a lot of people, including people in, in the community in which I grew up, didn't want to make that much of it because they were afraid of anti-Semitic reaction. And a lot of them changed their names. They weren't Jewish names anymore. A lot of them wouldn't talk about it because they didn't want to be criticized or subject of, of continuing anti-Semitism. And it was only, you know, later on that, that they became freer. They felt more secure. But I want to add one thought before we close, George, and it's this. You know, these, these wars, these genocidal experiences that we suffered in the 20th century, they were really something. But the history of all of that is told by the survivors. And that's, you know, that's the lesson of all of the 20th century, the history is told by the survivors. Those six million people, they can't tell you what happened. They can't tell you what it was like to, to take that train for three days at a time into a camp that was a lie in the sense that work makes you free. Remember the German slogan over the gate? They can't tell you what it was like watching people. They can't tell you it was like going into the, those quote showers end quote and seeing, you know, people die around them. They can't tell you about the brutality. They're dead. They could never tell you anything. Um, and we don't hear from them. We only hear from the historians who are the only ones who have a voice in all of this. And what I thought, and what I do think is historians like Ken Burns and all the people who helped him work on that movie, they are speaking for the dead. They are trying hard to see it through the eyes of the dead. And maybe for me, that's one of the most refreshing things about this. I get a new point of view. These are not the survivors speaking. These are the people who were murdered speaking. Same thing with Rachel Matta. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's so profound for me. Well, thank you, George. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss it with you. I hope everybody who hears about this Ken Burns series and Rachel Matta's podcast and invests a little time into learning what happened and understands better about our world in the 20th century and right now. Thank you, George. Couldn't be at a better time right before voting yet. Okay, Aloha. Stay peaceful. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.


Hello everyone and welcome aboard. Today we are going to learn about case studies. Case studies is an instrument borrowed from psychology, but now in wide use in management studies, business and finance. And this would be the focus of our conversation today. My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm a former economic advisor to several governments, a former financial advisor to many multinationals, currently on the faculty of CIAPS, Commonwealth Institute for Advanced Professional Studies. I'm a colonist in United Press International and right now in Brussels morning. So I've spent 40 years of my life in business, in finance and in management and throughout this period, case studies have been an indispensable part of my arsenal and my ability to help my clients. I want to convey this information to you so that you too would are able to use this tool for your edification, enlightenment and helping others. So what is a case study? A case study is a story. It contains a narrative, but it also contains conclusions. So it's not just a nice story about something that may have happened, but it also teaches us a lesson. In this sense, a case study harks back to a long tradition. Fables, for example, fork stories, they also end with a conclusion, with a lesson to be learned and implemented to make life better and yourself more efficacious. Case studies therefore contain, as I said, a narrative, a story and a conclusion regarding a specific event, or a transaction, a business deal, or a corporate entity, or an institution, or specific individuals within these structures, in business, in finance and in management. What is a narrative when we apply this word to a case study? A narrative contains the facts, because every good story is based on facts. So it contains the facts, but it also contains the context of the facts. Where do the facts fit in? How did the facts came to be? What gave rise to the specific chain of events? This is all embedded in theories. The narrative in the case study usually refers to management theories, or business theories, or finance theories, or other bodies of knowledge that embed the facts in a rich intellectual tradition, or consensus regarding how things work, and what makes people tick. And the last thing in the narrative, the last component, last ingredient of the narrative, are the assumptions. We all make assumptions, hidden assumptions, explicit assumptions, and you have to write them down, you have to explicate them in the narrative part of the case study. So let's summarize. The narrative is comprised of facts, context, theories, and assumptions. Don't worry, we're going to deal with each one of these at length a bit later. What about the conclusions? Because remember, I started this lecture of this conversation with you by saying that a case study contains a narrative and a conclusion. What about the conclusion part? The conclusion part includes an analysis of the event or the transaction, an analysis of the company, analysis of an institution, or an analysis of the behaviors of specific individuals within these institutions, and corporate entities analysis. So analysis, criticism, if need be, and solutions, or the path forward. The vision thing, a kind of vision. So put the two together, you have narrative and conclusion, facts, context, theories, assumptions, analysis, criticism, solutions, or the path forward. When you have all these elements, you have a case study. Case study, again, of something that has happened, of a corporation or a company or firm, of an institution, and so on and so forth. But whenever you write a case study, you have to really work hard on imagining your audience. Who are you writing the case study for? Sometimes the audience is you. And sometimes, much more often, the audience is other people. Ask yourself, who's going to read my case study? Why would anyone want to read my case study? How can I make my case study applicable, relevant, pertinent, useful to others? And who are these others? What are the needs, autobiographies, preferences, expectations, dreams, goals, vision? Try to visualize your audience. And then ask yourself, what's the best way to communicate with my audience? If your audience is a group of bureaucrats, then maybe a formal approach is appropriate. If your audience is a group of, shall we say, technicians, programmers, scientists, maybe a technical language is called for. If your audience is finance graduates, maybe an emphasis on financial benefits and outcomes is appropriate. Tailor, customize your case study to cater to the profile of your audience. Otherwise, it will not resonate, which will not have an impact. It will be wasted on your audience. Ask yourself, once I succeeded to get through to my audience, what would be the impact of my case study? Are they going to use it? Are they going to implement it? Are they going to study my case study? Are they going to be enlightened by it? Will it transform them in any way? And so on and so forth. And always make sure that if you use technical terms, if you use jargon or lingo, if you use language that is specific to a given discipline, always make sure that you explain these terms in a very concise, but clear language. Not everyone knows the specific language or lingo of all disciplines. So you need to be able to communicate by creating a common dictionary between you and your audience. Remember, the case study is a study aid. It should interest, it should entertain, it should enlighten, and it should transform. It is a management diagnostic tool, but also a prescriptive instrument. In other words, it helps management to put its finger, its collective finger, on a problem or an issue or a topic that requires, requires attention. And then it helps management to come up with solutions and conclusions. Not always, but most case studies do exactly this. And never forget the human angle. The people described in your case study and the people reading your case study. The people who made the decisions and the choices that led to the case study and the people who are now trying to learn lessons from other people's experiences through your case study. They're all human. They're all human. They have motivations. They have psychological defense mechanisms. They're resistant to change and some of them are resistant to learning. They are very defensive of their own actions. They're stakeholders in some of them are management, others are suppliers, some employers, some employees. You need to always take into account the fact that your case study will be consumed by human beings, not by machines. And so you need your presentation in your case study need to emphasize the human angle. Now let's go into the mechanics of creating a case study. You can't create a case study without facts. Fact gathering and fact checking.  You need to have a critical mind. You need to analyze everything presented to you as fact in order to ascertain that it is indeed fact and not counterfactual, not a lie or an invention or a bit of imagination. So fact checking comes after fact gathering. Where could you gather information from? Open sources such as newspapers, media archives, social media, mass media, television and so on. These are known as open sources or public domain sources. Interviews with specific people, managers, suppliers, customers, workers, employees, employers, bosses, regulators. You could interview people, people who have been involved in the narrative of the in the storyline of your case study, collect documents and review them with the help of forensic experts in some cases, and finally gather statistics and numerical information. For example, by reviewing and analyzing financial statements. So this is the fact gathering and fact checking phase. It is followed by the contextual phase. You need to embed all your facts in some framework, in some context, in some bigger picture. Every company, every firm operates within an industry. So you need to describe the industry.  So you need to specify the economy of the country in which they're operating or maybe the global economy in case of a multinational. So industry and economy. Trends, we're all subject to trends. Most trends are inexorable, they're stronger than us. So you need to specify trends in the marketplace relevant to your case study. If you are making a case, if you're writing a case study about a technology company, the industry would be high tech. The economy would be the United States, for example. And the marketplace would be the global technology, global high tech marketplace. You need to specify, you need to explain to the reader of the case study. What is the industry? What is the economy in which the firm operates or in which the event took place or in which the transaction transpired? And what trends affected the resolution of the new Denouement, the end result, which led to the case study? And finally, you need to embed all these in history. You need to compare your case study to similar situations in the past. If you're analyzing an event, find similar events. If you're analyzing a company or a firm, find similar corporate entities in other periods in history, in other places on the globe. If you are analyzing decision-making, management decision-making, try to isolate and identify similar decisions in the past. So context is very crucial. In the absence of context, wrong results, erroneous solutions and conclusions are very likely. Next thing within the case study, you need to identify issues, topics. What is it that you want to discuss and why should it be discussed? What renders the topic you have selected, the issue you have chosen, a problem or something worthy of dissection and analysis? So you need to identify issues, problems, and you need to differentiate between structural systemic issues and functional operational issues. Most functional operational issues are contingent. They are responsive to changes in the marketplace, in the economy, in global trends, but they are self-limiting and they tend to unravel and undo themselves. Structural issues, systemic issues, however, are much more serious. They require a revamping of the entire structure that gave rise to the problem. So you need to differentiate these two. Sometimes you come across a business deal or a company or a management structure or a story and you say to yourself, wow, this looks really bad. The whole system is falling apart and corrupt. And then when you delve deeper, you discover that actually, this has been a single wrong decision or an operational issue or a problem with the chain of supply. So you need to be very, very careful before you characterize issues, topics and problems as structural and systemic. You need to know the field. So if you are writing about finance, you need to be acquainted with theories of finance. If you're writing about manufacturing, you need to know about various theories of manufacturing. Not only theories, not only formal academic theories, but theories on the ground. They are known as heuristics, rules of thumb, cumulative wisdom which is derived from long-term experience by managers and employees. So you need to embed your case study in the collective wisdom of the ages. And this collective wisdom of the ages is sometimes encoded in academic theories and sometimes you would have to interview people, to interview business managers, finance managers, employees, suppliers, customers, to interview people in order to glean from them and to garner from them what they have learned about the topic of your case study. This is an invaluable resource, it's a treasure waiting to be discovered. What is the structure of a typical case study? It has usually seven or eight parts. The first one is the abstract, also known as executive summary or synopsis. In the abstract, which is usually a few paragraphs long, two or three paragraphs long. In the abstract, you introduce the topic of the report, the purpose of your case study. You outline key topics or key issues, your findings. This is known as headline intelligence because in the executive summary, you do not go into details. You give only the headlines, headline intelligence or headline knowledge. You can identify theories that you've used. You can mention interviews that you've made and you summarize the recommendations. The executive summary should never be longer than three paragraphs and it needs to capture 99% of the relevant information in the case study. So this is the most important part of the case study and requires a lot of erudition and ability to concisely and incisively summarize data. The next part of the case study is introduction and goals. What is it that you're trying to accomplish? Why do you think your case study deals with significant issues or topics? And if they are significant, who are they significant to? Is your case study limited to a specific company with a highly idiosyncratic profile? Can your case study be implemented industry-wise? Maybe your case study has global implications. You need to identify all these and justify your opinion. You state your aims and your goals and you describe the main ideas behind your case study. What is the sum total of your impressions and what is your predilection or tendency when it comes to solutions and conclusions? Brief has to be brief. The key problem, the significance of the key problem, your ideas about the key problem, recommendations regarding the key problem. Do not make this an essay. Introduction should be ideally as short as the executive summary. And then you delve into the body of the case study starting with facts and findings. You present the central issues. You provide a minimal analysis at this stage because you are in the fact-gathering, in fact-checking phase. You're not sufficiently informed. So the main issues, a list of the main issues, some preliminary thoughts and analysis, reasoning for your selection criteria. Why did you choose to include specific facts and exclude others? In which way are the facts that you have included supportive of your main thesis, of your main idea, of your main message and in which way the excluded facts do not undermine your thesis? If the excluded facts tend to challenge what your message, your thesis, your main idea, if they tend to undermine it and you have excluded them, that is bad practice. That is a way to avoid true analysis, which should take into account even countervailing information, even information that doesn't fit into the way you see things. You identify your, in this phase, which is the facts and finding phase, chapter, you identify your methodology, justify it, which analytical tools you've selected, you've chosen to use, you explain why and you need to be convincing throughout. Excluding facts, excluding certain analytical methods and instruments could be a way to falsify the data and to reach predetermined conclusions, which is bad practice. So you need to be really careful and you need to convince people that your choices are objective and the only reason you've excluded certain things is because they are not likely to contribute to your pursuit of truth. Make sure that your case study is neatly divided into headings, subheadings, sections, subsections, paragraphs. Make it readable, make it pleasant on the eye. Transition then, having completed the facts and finding section, transition then continue on to the analysis and discussion section. Summarize again the main problems. Identify solutions to these problems, solutions that are already being implemented and solutions that you think could serve as viable alternatives, feasible alternatives to the solutions currently in operation. In other words, offer additional, new solutions.  Don't engage in propaganda or in hard sell. This is not a marketing exercise. You are just there to map the topography or the terrain of the problem and its possible solutions. Refer to theories, to professional practice, to your interviews in order to buttress and support your opinions and your conclusions and your proposed solutions. If you can generalize your findings to other situations, but if you can't, don't. Don't force the case study by grandiosly claiming that it applies where it does not apply. Be modest and be humble. Realize that your case study is an in-depth dive into a highly specific situation or event or institution or or corporate entity. Maybe nothing more than that and maybe it does not apply elsewhere and maybe it does. Be very careful when you make high-falutin grandios claims. It may backfire. The next chapter in your case study is by far the most important. It's conclusions, recommendations and solutions. Here you restate the purpose of the report. You sum up the main points, findings, facts, discussions, recommendations. You analyze everything or wrap up the analysis and then you begin to discuss alternative solutions. You justify your choices, you explain how the solutions will work, why they would solve problems, why the problems require solving other problems to start with. You integrate theory, you integrate practice, you suggest action plans. So at this stage of the case study, you become a lot more detailed. You go into details and you can come up with the equivalent of many tiny business plans and action plans. Who should take action? When? What steps? How to assess actions taken and even a budget if necessary. If appropriate, include rough estimates of costs and income, financial, other inputs, resources and so on. A business plan. This is a business plan phase. While all previous phases are the equivalent of due diligence, this phase is the equivalent of a business plan. Recommendations, implementations, all wrapped into this single chapter. And then the next chapter is the humility chapter. Limitations, unintended consequences, and opportunity costs. You state clearly the limitations of your case study. Where your case study is inapplicable, inappropriate, cannot teach us anything. Where your case study may have failed, what are the inherent limits on your ability to have gathered data and so on and so forth. All the limitations, the unintended consequences of your solutions and action plans and courses of action that you recommend. The opportunity costs. If certain solutions are chosen, what are the costs? If certain opportunities are overlooked, neglected in favor of the solutions that you are recommending, what are the costs?  It's a place where you put yourself in the shoes of your opponents and adversaries and in the shoes of those likely to challenge you, criticize your case study and disagree with you completely. You preempt them, you include their opinions in the case study. The case study terminates with literature, bibliography, every source written or visual that you've used, appendices, footnotes, and indices, which are usually not included in the body of the case study. This is a typical case study. Now, I will be referring you to an article I've written, essay I've written, about the due diligence process. If you apply the tools in this essay to the construction and the offering of a case study, your case study will be further augmented and be much more well-considered in my view. But it's optional. The case study does not need to meet the rigorous criteria of due diligence or a prospectus, a stock exchange prospectus. The case study is isolated, limited by definition to the case. It's a study tool and it's a catalyst. It's supposed to bring on a pseudo chemical reaction of learning transformation and enlightenment in its readers. So the due diligence aspects and the business plan aspects are auxiliary, they're secondary. Have a look at the essay, the link to which your instructor will attach. And otherwise, I wish you good luck with your case studies. It's a fun exercise.  Case study is an exercise, a combined exercise in journalism, the writing of history, and the documentary film. It requires a lot of effort, but also is very rewarding when you unearth something you believe is the truth. And when it leads you to a new revelation of solutions and conclusions and recommendations, and the path forward suddenly is illuminated by your case study. That is the power of a case study and that's why it's used so widely. Good luck.


Now taking the field is Diego Trejo and the Marines of the Recruiting Substation, El Paso East Diego is a winner of this year's Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps Scholarship, which will provide $180,000 for him to attend the University of Mississippi and eventually Commission as an officer in the United States Marine Corps The scholarship is highly competitive and Diego won by demonstrating a strong sense of leadership amongst his peers Diego was born and raised here in El Paso, Texas and graduated from El Dorado High School He's the son of Ms. Diane Rivas Valverde and Mr. Eric Trejo His recruiter is Staff Sergeant Vanessa Martinez To find out more about the NROTC scholarship or the Marine Corps visit marines.com Chihuahua's fans put your hands together and let's congratulate Diego Trejo on his incredible accomplishment and award Diego, we wish you the best of luck