Welcome. I should really tell you, I should know what your name is. Agile India. Design day. Apparently I'm a designer. However, I'm not this person here. So the first thing I'd like to say is if you signed up for this workshop more than two days ago, you're expecting to see Alberta and you were not expecting to see me, so apologies. If you did sign up, if you didn't sign up, then forget everything that I just said. But my first question is, well, first of all, please don't be afraid of the picture. Does anyone recognize this sports team? Did you just read it here? There's a video. Okay, okay. Yes. And I put this picture up because I'm from New Zealand. Even though my parents are Chinese, I was born in the mountain of love in New Zealand, so I put this up. But actually, I put it up because when we talk about teams, then very, very often we talk about sports metaphors. We talk about, yeah, high-performing teams. And if there's one team in the world which is a high-performing team, and thank you very much for saying this, then this team, the New Zealand All Black Rugby team, it's a sport where you kick around a ball and you chase after it. And in fact, the word scrum comes from it. So if you're familiar with it, yes, you're nodding. Thank you, sir. I'm a Canadian engagement gang. Then this team is one of the... You could say that this team is the most successful sports team in the history of the world for the last 150 years. They've been the top one or two or three in the world. So why not learn from a team like this if we're talking about design as a team sport and so forth? High-performing sports teams, yes. They're in the model. But actually, I don't think they are.  When I go to work, I don't go to a sports stadium. I go to work in one of these things here in the office. When I go to work, I don't train for 95% of my time. What today is an exception. We're in training today or we're at learning conferences. But I don't train for 95% of the time. And 5% is when I go onto the pitch on the rugby field. That's what I do. We don't play for half the time. And then the next half of the time, we swap sides in the market position so that we go against ourselves in the other way.  If they're not performing, they're on the bench or they're out or otherwise. You usually have more power and you have more money. And we don't have the defensive coach and we don't have the coach that looks after how to run with the ball or how to pass the ball and so forth. For us, I would say that for sure, you know, high performing to sports teams is kind of useful in terms of analogy. But actually in our day-to-day, what does it really mean? So in our day, we usually work in an office like this. If you did not recognize the All Blacks and the sports team, I hope you recognize this. Because when I go to work, it's either in an office or as part of a remote team. We play with more than one side at one time. Usually we hope that the people that we're playing with, they're on our side, but in a large organization, sometimes you have to find out whether they are on your side or not. We're always in transition. There's not one time. There is no perfect moment. And so one of the things about teams or design teams or teams per se is that they're always in transition. So there's no perfect match. There's no perfect time. There's not one moment. This is our everyday lives. Okay. And also we actually have to take care of the players in some ways. Is this making sense so far? I'm hoping that even if you're not nodding, you're nodding inside. Yes? Okay. Right. So you came to this talk or this workshop. This is why there's paper and pens here because design teams are a design exercise. Are you designers? That's not a trick question. Do you come from a design background? Yes? Okay. And the rest of you are no developers, product donors. Okay, some nods. What else do you do? We don't have to use a microphone here.  Okay. Management. Okay. So we came here to learn about, we'll find out in a second. That's the first exercise. Okay. Right. I also got permission because Alberta, three days ago now, she said, Phil, can you deliver this talk? Because I can't go there. She sends for apologies. So apologies, you don't have Alberta. You have me. But she also gave me permission to change the title. I'm not going to change what you came here to do, but I added a little bit more. So I added this thing is that actually, instead of the all blacks, instead of high performing sports teams, we'll come back to that point later on. Actually, I would like to subtitle this talk, practical considerations for our everyday teams. So just hopefully like there's three or four tips and techniques, and we'll finish early. Don't worry. Three or four tips and techniques or just things about teams that I've been working with over the years. Yes? Okay. More nods. Excellent. Okay. You know I'm not Alberta. I'm this one here. This is what you signed up for. So if you're here, it's probably because you read this. And if you read this, you also read this part here, about leadership styles, building and heriting teams, all these sorts of things here. So there's a big list of things that you can learn about. There's one thing that I've highlighted here, which is why I've gathered you around here, is actually we're going to go and try and go through some of these here, these aspects and these considerations as a role play. So we're going to be, yeah, we're going to be rolling up our sleeves. Are you worried about my sleeves already? Or you're wearing short sleeves? Very good. You came prepared. We're going to go role play. Don't worry. It's not going to be, it's not a test. It's just going through the motions of some of the things that we're going to be talking about today. Okay. So the next 75 minutes, but maybe even 50 minutes, because we usually, we can stretch or move this in and out. It's going to look like this. So we talk about hiring and culture and fit. There's only going to be five minutes of that. I'm going to be talking about capability and screening and diversity inclusion. Okay? Just five minutes or so. Then after that, then we'll be forming our teams. You've done that already. So you've already saved 10 minutes because we did that before we started. By the way, if you see boxes like this, this is activities. So don't worry. This part here I'll just be talking. And you can drink your tea and coffee. Good skills on that. We're talking about expectations of purpose. And then the rest of this is something called a key scenario matrix. By the way, when I talk about stars here, I'm hoping that it's different. It's kind of stars that you're thinking about right now in terms of teams. The key scenario matrix is about team structures, skills assessment, lots of graphs for that. But again, don't worry. Motivational retention. And after this one here, then you can go back to listening. So you can relax again. Words and language, communication, oil, and then succession, growth, network, letting go people. Or pushing them out, however you want to talk about it. Does this sound all right? Okay. I'm not talking too fast. Shall I talk faster? Shall I talk more in a New Zealand accent? Okay. Right. Team. Not the thing above. It's probably hard to see that a group of players forming one side of competitive gamer sport. You've already heard my thoughts about that. I'm going to change my mind later on right at the end. But for now, believe me, when I say it's not about that, it's about team of being two players and more, whether you're a product owner, manager, or otherwise. And the first bit, this will still be talking hybrid and cultural fit. This will go pretty quick because actually you have managers amongst you. So you already know about all the basics of teams. You're here for the extra stuff. So when we talk about what are the design aspects to this then I'm going to be talking about what are the human aspects and what are the things that we can do such as visualizing. Imagine if, for example, our team, the life cycle of a team, which you saw previously, was a customer journey. And those are the two aspects of my thinking about this in a design sense. Okay. In the next three minutes, it's about getting designers to hire designers. It's about quality really. So maybe this gentleman or this gentle lady in terms of hiring. Being human and social. Screening in versus screening out. I'll explain that a little bit more when I get to that. Diversity and inclusion. Big theme. I used to work for a firm called Microsoft and they're big on diversity and inclusion. Quite sad that I left it because of that, but I've joined a... By the way, did you see the keynote at two o'clock with Dan McCoskey? Yes, yes. So I work for Dan now. So this is why it's not there anymore, but I joined Dan's group six weeks ago. Because I joined his group six weeks ago then I've got a couple of pictures and exercises that we're going to be asking you to do that I did with my team there. So you can see whether or not the theory holds water. And then starts. Okay. Just one slide on this. Obviously, and then looking to yourselves, good quality design. Maybe. Okay, not really. I'm hoping that you would see this and think maybe that's not good design or otherwise. The only point here, and forgive me, because my notes are up there. I'm just going to be doing this live. Yes, you should get... So even though the next 60 minutes or so is going to be talking about the human aspects, even though it's about the soft skills, we don't forget that there is a quality here, that there is a quality bar about getting... So yes, if you're a product owner or manager, but you have access and you're hiring design folks in, get advice and counsel from someone who's from design. And the human part. This is actually Alberta's... Again, I'll forget, but this is me talking. If I'm over this side, this is Alberta talking. I'm just trying to listen and channel her. This is Alberta's first job description that we... I'm not allowed to say how long ago it was, but she said that this was her first job description. And when she was trying to read it, she said, well, I can't get through all of this. And so again, just be human. She said to me, I said, okay, but that's just a normal point, right? Be human. Yeah, okay, fine. Just make it easy though. So if you're looking for designers to add to your design team, make it easy for them to understand what you're looking for. For sure, you're going to have creative technologists that understand development as well, such as some of these things here. But just be human about it. And when you're human, then also use human channels to recruit. So this was here again, looking for... So instead of the list that we just saw, which had all of these words in here, she was thinking about outcomes. So there's a little bit of humanist to it, but actually, she also had outcomes of mine, like folks that did this, that and the other. That's all. There's sort of response and so forth. And the other source, of course, as well as all the books that you will read about going to hiring forums and so forth, is your friends. And the folks that if you know a designer, then who are their friends, hire from this. And of course, here. Yes, that is here. Actually, it's the next room, next door. This is a great way. I'm not looking for a job because I've just started one with Dan. But yes, of course, these networking places. So these are in addition to those other channels that you would use. I did used to work for Microsoft. So two months ago, I left. So I started with Lloyd's Banking Group six weeks ago. So I had a two-week break. My last hire was this person here. So I have got his name up. His name is Sean. This is his public profile on LinkedIn. So he's all good with sharing this. And he joined in February 2019. He was my last hire into the group that I used to work for, and I'm putting this up here because I've got at the top screen in versus screen out. When we usually hire people, then there's a screening process. Oh, okay, what's the filtering? It could be the resumes or the CVs, what's the portfolio like, etc. One of the last things that the Human Resources folks at Microsoft were talking about, and Sacha Nadala, the CEO was talking about was, we've shifted, or they've shifted, I have to switch now. They have shifted from a screening out to a screening in mentality. And what does that mean? I asked. Or figuratively, I asked. And it's looking for the things that actually are the things that would make you want to hire this person versus looking through CVs and so forth with the mentality of oh, they don't have this or they don't have that. So there's a tiny mind shift happening at places like Microsoft, for example, which is a little bit more about the human side. So you can see that he's now a user experience architect. I used to be one of those at Microsoft. When I pressed the slide, then the things that I was really interested in was, oh, okay, you were a musical engineer and you have a music background. Not only that, but you used to be a carpenter, if I go back again. Yeah, like he spent 15 years at a place that manufactures boxes out of cardboard. So actually, not not really someone you think this is a designer that I want to hire into a team that goes out onto client situations and so forth. But the things that I saw were curiosity. The things that I saw in the portfolio was a deep, deep passion enthusiasm for design. So even though I said use designers to hire designers, actually it's not the fact that they went to design school. Look for that curiosity and that passion and enthusiasm. So like, you know, we are actually all designers. So there was a trick question that I had earlier about we are designers. So even me I went through design school. I'm totally brought into screening in and looking for the reasons to hire versus to screen out. Okay, next slide. I think there. Okay. We've heard before in many of the talks already and I think Dan talks a lot about diversity inclusion as well. The talk that was just here previously also talked a little bit about unconscious bias and bias and machine learning and data and so forth. It's all of these things. Even your height. Am I tall enough?  So all of these discriminations are there and again coming from the Microsoft side then yes, diversity and inclusion is something which is not only being more human from our teams, but that sensitivity and the sensibilities that we develop within teams. Again, not only be more human, but actually, you know what they're helping us with and let me just go beyond this with addressable market. Okay. So not really Alberta and Phillip, but actually if I'm designer and then I put on the business hat actually Microsoft, for example, and others as well, it's not only about being a good person in the world so that people like us. Actually, you know what, you're increasing your addressable market. So bring all the way back down to teams then in our teams do we have different perspectives and different points of view that allow us to, for example, see have an accessible controller for Xbox that's more recent, that's going the wrong way. Or you're probably familiar with this. This is more old. This is older. This is probably about 20 years old where a kitchen tools company was interested in what they call universal design, making design something which is much more open to different perspectives. For example someone who doesn't have, who's a bit older or maybe doesn't have such good hand skills in there. But if you go back even further, then actually close captioning in other words the text on screens that was also the result of people that were hearing impaired. So having that come out as a service and so forth. But now, of course, you go to an airport and it's great. Or you go to a bar and you can see that there or you want to do something else while you're looking at things. So close captioning is another example of what people call universal design. This is a little bit of design jargon but also inclusive design. So they're slightly different but if you talk to a designer who has trained in schools or gone to a course which is all good. But actually so the diversity inclusion not only is it about being a good human not only is about having good teams and good perspectives but actually you are thinking about the addressable market. And if you talk to Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, that's his primary thing is that actually not only but it's about making money too. Okay, wrong way again. Enough of that. The stars that I was talking about was the stars. So not so much the rock stars in terms of design. But if you read a book called The First 90 Days and if you're a manager you've probably come across it. Yes, three nods. Inside there then there's a concept called stars and that's to do with what kind of company am I working for. And I would say that as well as what kind of company what's the team that I'm working for in what sort of situation. So the stars is you start up turn around you can read the rest for yourself. There's a little bit of high light. There was a little bit of high light. It's probably, I can't see it now. But you have different challenges if you're in a situation which is a start-up. That might inform what kind of range and profile of skill sets you'll want. Do you want the folks that really, really have get up and go? Do you want the all-rounders in a start-up because you have lack of resources, etc. So there are some considerations there. So the stars that I'm talking about not so much the design stars or the rock stars but actually what sort of organization do you want to have to be part of. Okay. Section 2. And I think that was about 6 minutes. Yeah, faster. Okay. Not quite falling asleep yet. Building design team and hearing design, 15 minutes. And actually this is about two things. There's a wedding proverb. It may just be a Western one, I don't know. But there's also about aligning expectations. And warning, we're going to be starting to do some stuff in a minute. Okay. The first wedding is there's a wedding proverb that I've heard before which is, oh, when you get married, you've got to wear or bring something, something cold, something new, something borrowed or something blue. Have you heard this before? Okay. A few more nods. I asked Alberta because this is her thing here. I said, well, I got the rest of the slides but what about blue? She said, forget about the blue. I said, okay, you've only got three quarters of a wedding proverb then. So when you're putting these teams together she says is that make sure you've got someone old. So this balance that she talks about I'm allowed to say I'm old because it's about me but yes, I've been working for, I've got gray here it is real and the black is real as well. So something old is about experience. Again, you'll want to modify regarding whether you're a startup or otherwise but wisdom and then having that historian who is part of the organization allows you to then integrate with the rest of the organization or it might be wisdom about design, maybe, maybe not but actually someone who has got a head and knows how to work with the organization the borrow, sorry, something what was it? Borrow? New. Okay, the new is young people so instead of the old people then all of you youngsters and you're supposed to chuckle at that point as well and the youngsters is so that you have that fresh understanding that fresh, I was going to use the word blood but that fresh thinking that comes from and also actually it might be that you're market as well so even though I've been in this game for a long, long time I try and I try and suck the young blood from the young people from around me. Okay, next one something borrowed one of the things also with teams and this may or may not be the case, it might be in your own situation or it might be the folks that you work with borrow people and what we mean by that is have contract staff so as well as your permanent team you'll probably need to surge and then shrink or deserge whatever it might be and also there might be specialism so there's probably going to be the core team you can't, I mean, oh no you can't, sorry this is me suggesting often times it's difficult and you don't have the resources to hire a full-time staff you have to sort of concentrate on what your core capabilities are in your capacity but you know so the borrowing is like you know use freelancers and so forth. Okay, we're nearly we're nearly going to get to some work expectations and purpose. I said earlier that I had joined Dan McCoskey's team at Lloyd's Banking Group about six weeks ago three weeks in I had a session and that session was a purpose and alignment session and it was about the expectations this is a real slide from that you can see that I've tried to fake the other the other people but if you look up there then there's something actually let's get closer, not that one there it's probably very very hard to read and this here I'm going to show you the table in a second but that says as well as the things that should be on this side which I'll show you in a second this says what am I really thinking so what are my expectations but actually what am I really thinking about being here and so we just don't need to get underneath the covers of what the expectations are and then actually this one here says what book would I like to write this expectations chart is pretty simple but it's just doing the exercises in the open with a new team or maybe a new group of people you know who I am in fact actually let's go to the next slide what it is is me so this is what I did with my team and I think it's useful that's it I mean it's so simple you don't even have to have a printout it's who am I but also what's the role that I have and then one of my expectations when I usually ask people what their expectations are whether it's like a customer or a client or in this case it's with my team then they'll give me one or two or three answers one is oh I want to save the world I said that's great what do you want to do today and then they might say yeah I really really want to I want to finish and get out of this meeting because it's not my time zone and I'm yawning and I said that's fine what do you want to do for tomorrow so in other words there are different levels of answer to this here which is why there's more than one question when I answer this myself then I would say okay then supposedly I'm one of the team leads this is half real and I did still want to save the world and that my expectations and aims for that particular proposition was to help my team my company achieve great human centric products and services okay pretty normal also to help my team be happy and amazing at the same time okay so this is all stuff that you would hear and understand and so forth but the thing which is about the ambitions or what would I want to write the book on what's the new thing that I want to talk about what did I say do good in the world by championing inclusion diversity design actually if you really really want to ask what I'm thinking coming from my recent experiences and so forth that's the thing that's the shtick that I internally inside want to bring so this here is a little bit more open and then I'll take push in and embed design into business if I really want to write the book and I was talking to some IBM design folks earlier today where whenever designers and actually also engineers these days they have conversations with their management they say okay what's the bridge to business we have to start with the business if we talk about okay ours we measure what matters then it's all about all making work visible what's that kind of work and how does it relate to objectives in business so absolutely how do we there still hasn't quite read me for designers designers we haven't quite written that book about how does business interface and bridge like what are the metrics and so forth okay save the world as well have we formed our team yet now we form our team okay so that template that you just saw I'm going to bring it back again this is what I'd like us to have a go at because we're role playing this feeling comfortable so the folks either if you're else at the back either we have another table but that's what these are for so I'm going to hold this up now so even though you all know each other you two work together I know that because I was doing Nemo washi we'd like to do this sheet with us on the table is this making sense yep go okay I'm going to bring back that template and I'm going to be here so wait I think I'm going to the wrong no let's go back let's go back you can tell this is my slides okay making sense go you might have to stand up you might have to right large it looks like you've it looks like you'll scribe because you're next to this no I know one sheet for the table so yeah in fact actually I'm going to sort of if you don't mind I'm going to just try and gently kick us off because the other sheets will be you can put that away the other sheets that we might want to go through so actually it looks like you're scribing and what I'd like us to do is to draw that table and then just go and then maybe just speak the answers and then have someone write it down and again it looks like you're volunteered I think you have that's cheating making sense who's the scribe here you put the pen down I saw you put the pen down but you had it in your hand you're now scribe you have to replicate that there so that's going to give so that two minutes that it takes to replicate that will give these folks time to think about what their answer is you have more people are you sure you don't want to do another team you're sure you don't want to do another team because you want this guy to do the work excellent that's team spirit okay how are you doing doing very well very very neat handwriting we're all looking at your smelling is this making sense so far it's a very very gentle start to the afternoon maybe we could bring cookies in should I go get some are they still out there no oh you're doing you okay very good I trust everything now because that's also what it says on his name badge as we're waiting for this what was the expectation you had of coming to the session I could bring it back on the slide if you want to design as a designing team I can't even remember it's not my slide deck design teams design exercise okay what was your expectation coming to this okay okay okay right okay so some of these questions let us answer them as you're going but please go around the table first I'll come back probably not but we can talk afterwards okay I think is your role so as we go around the first start is what's your expectation in the role because at the moment we're all naked right now we don't have any idea about so naked is the wrong word we don't know about each other so actually this first it's a good question you know like what is it what is it that you do now and what's your expectations on your team or otherwise so it might be that you're all managers I expect actually that most of you are managers because you've come to this for this and then what your expectations and ambition are and actually this exercise might then start in the next ones to think about well then to your question well how do we manage our expectations in terms of the teams that we run and so forth so sorry that was a very long answer what your current role is and your expectations of that role or your understanding of that expectation does that make sense okay you're nodding I'm going to come over here you folks have done something different right no no no it's whatever it's whatever yeah so when I ask this question usually then people will give us those different levels of questions of answer so it doesn't have to be it's whatever the scope of your ambition might be it doesn't have to be a life ambition but if it is that's fine too yeah so for this one for this table over here then they ask that question which was well what are we putting down and so we gravitated towards just put down your role now so if you're a manager then put that down and what your expectations of that role are for yourself and then what we'll do as we go through this exercise is share that learning amongst ourselves maybe we have different expectations from other managers so this one here because we're brand new we are not a team we just meet each other they just let us talk a little bit about ourselves for now is it making making sense what have we got so far um yeah I think you lost your most legible scribe but I'm just kidding just kidding yeah okay and just as Sean is writing that down I was also asking at that table what were your expectations coming to this session so this is a different question but what are your expectations so some of the answers that we had over there oh to learn a little bit about design thinking not really but we can talk about that to learn a little bit about what's the difference that a design team has instead of say a normal team whatever that is we'll talk a little bit about that but probably not much it's much more about if I summarize I think what the talk is about you can go and read books on team management you can go and read books on these things here the design approach is what are the human sensibilities for any team not just a design team that may be useful uh that you know that that that we've learned over over time yeah okay trying to make friends here how's it going you have much tidier writing doesn't mean that you have a tidier mind I don't know is everyone else reading what it's beautiful I live in the ambition after we do this it would be useful for us to read out what this means and remember we're just role playing we're just sort of getting into the muscle of doing this well scrum master you know rugby okay is that everybody there's everyone are you folks done yet you have more people you're finished I didn't need the pen I'm the one talking maybe maybe maybe you folks need some help because those guys are finished I wonder if we have a flip chart we don't have any stands do we have any stands oh great nope we're gonna put those things up do we have any tape or blue tech just to put it like this just to put it here just one thank you thank you I'm just trying to stall for time so that's uh you know what you could probably have more than one piece of paper and write at the same time how about that there's not a piece of paper underneath there I've uh on on the Kanban board I've discovered that there's a bottleneck over here we might need to you folks are done you're talking about dinner oh you know each other there you go there you go that was the whole point of the workshop right do people mind if I take photographs is it okay to take photographs here yeah yeah yeah absolutely what can I take photographs I want to take a picture of the people that finished first but but then a picture of the people that are more thoughtful perfect thank you okay you folks are done right let's put this up let's put this up here because what's going to be great once they're done is we'll talk through what we sorry yeah here we go uh over two I think is okay because yeah because that it'll be easier to how you doing I promise I promise that we kick people out early today so I can tell you're really enjoying this exercise you're supposed to be with family supposed to be with family tonight you should go now right you should you should come back for this later on those guys are talking about dinner how are we doing here last one okay luckily I don't have very much to talk about because though you already in user experience you know about design thinking okay okay okay I used to work for a firm where uh it was part of the I used to work for a firm called IDO yeah okay so I used to work for them and when I was there we didn't call it design thinking we just called it design but then it became popular and then Harvard talked about it and then they started teaching courses on it and then you get certification but uh interesting yeah that's now a thing I think that over the last 25 years design has been much more commoditized it's much it's not special anymore yeah I think though it also has a little bit yes I think you're absolutely right I think also that it has a little bit more intellectual framework behind it so they can talk about it and yes you can read about it in business and so forth okay cool thank you very much I'm gonna ask everyone now to maybe well maybe not stand like maybe maybe you because you're closest could you please read these out for all of us yeah good luck okay and also please listen please give attention to our volunteer be happy like the song with people nice you were listening for the first five minutes do we have any translators in the audience yep yep do you mind if I ask questions when you say be more relevant relevant to what the industry okay thank you please continue especially tonight you need to find a family to eat to eat with okay is anyone local that's offering Sean okay we'll ask again we'll ask again at the end when they know you sorry it was customer so hopes and dreams right okay yep okay that's done next is Ravi UX team manager his aim is to make a better team okay ambition is to create a positive impact nice custom that's me scrum master currently taken up a new role my aim is to improve team efficiency to satisfy the customers my ambition is to see how to sustain and keep learning and see how I can grow forever constantly Rajiv current role is a director PE product engineer current aim is create a high performing team and deliver his ambition is to go driving all around the world wow nice okay cool thank you very much team two the sheet let's go through this thank you for volunteering to talk it through thank you very much for volunteering for talking it through we're just going to put it on top of this just in case you don't mind so I've got one piece of tape here I've got another piece of tape if you don't mind taking that for that side okay so let's talk through these here this is me manas I'm a project manager let me get another piece of tape because we didn't make good use of that resource then okay oh okay nor did I this was my side okay thank you that should be good okay so this is me manas I'm a project manager my mission is to deliver project within budget and schedule and I want to save 10% of the budget assigned to me for every project Sunil, product owner help the customers understand what they want help the developers know what they are going to build is it make the products that solve the world problems and improve life Ramakanta, product owner define roadmap of the product line support team in customer customer satisfaction with quality product Amrut, director engineering enable continuous portfolio growth, lead the entire team to success bring about better cultural channel and technology innovations ambition is to make at least some positive change in the society with the experience and knowledge gain Mohan, who is an architect technical leadership and ensure development team to deliver scalable and performance solution technical leadership and provide innovation to deliver ahead of time with quality great we need to do the tape thing again I'm the holder of the tape I pull it all together I'm the glue is this all it was it okay just just two more Julia who is an architect provide technical solutions and leadership technical leadership is the ambition Sripath, solution director to build solutions for client requirements and solve business problems with right technical and innovative cost effective means Manish who is a senior manager to make my team deliver better products and value to customer expectations to grow myself along with the company and the world great that's it that's everyone thank you very much you can stay standing if you want you can also thank you I should clap for you as you were reading those out and thank you for reading those out I was demonstrating that I can have even worse handwriting than anyone else but what I was listening for actually let me go back a little bit so first of all it helped us get to know each other a little bit so instead of maybe give me a story actually we wanted some of the real life things I gave you the model for actually what's our purpose in life a little bit and this is just role play you know we don't really we are not really a team but the but it was just a little little exercise it took five minutes or 15 when I'm talking it took five minutes just to get and tune the team okay what's your expectations and actually secretly I'm listening for are those expectations in line with the business because I'm hard I'm not just a soft designer we work in a business and what I was writing down when I was running in here were things like growth and saving money cost efficiencies be relevant to the industry there were three customer mentions like being customer relevant and I can't even read this but customer hopes and dreams I remember the concept better team portfolio growth high performing team scale solutions technical leadership so from those things that I was hearing what I was doing in my head and what you could do in your head as you talk through your teams what is your hopes and dreams how do they match with what do you really want to do what are the things that I can do as a team leader to make you happy but also the director it's about you know making it's deliver as well as have the team happy okay end of that exercise was only five minutes very very tiny concept but something which is hopefully quick and practical if you want to get the teams aligned let's see what's next security team structures more alignments so this here is now that you've done that five minutes with your team the next time the next the next thing is to do a little bit what I just did live for you so you've already had the theory and you've already done a little bit of the practice as well you don't need to do this anyway so what from there what we're secretly hearing and listening for is what are the business aims and are they in alignment with the business so again this is hard to fill up thinking about it even though I was pretending to be soft Phillip and asking for your hopes and dreams I was actually thinking about both those things which is of course what management is we're looking for metrics as well okay and then from those this is the next thing the next piece of paper is that I will typically then and again very very so simple it's only on there what are the key scenarios we had the question before one of them was was well what's so different about a design team I'm not answering that question here but actually we are stealing a little bit of what's the design process if we're thinking about teams as a continuous life cycle and as a continuous journey what are the scenarios that we're going to live through so key scenarios matrix I'll explain it is and actually I have to go up for this one I think because I'm going to draw on it so the key scenarios are three columns three columns people settings and tasks and you can read it there so let me just see if I can do this live I did practice but the writing will be terrible okay let's go to it's working right you can see me okay yeah so the people are more than one person these are these are androgynous people and the people could be the roles so you've already done that already like in other words I'm a product owner or so forth if I'm thinking about the wider team though how does my team so if this is my team how do I interface with who might be that actually who are my stakeholders who's my internal customer who's my it's really bad writing who's my external customer you know we had some things down there such as what are the hopes and fears of these so in terms of the people ecosystem who are they and there'll be different sets of different people okay the second column is settings and settings three things and you saw that earlier before the first one is where are they physically what's your physical setting right now you know we are sitting around a table in a hotel and so that's the physical setting and then the second part of this is what's your digital setting what am I packing in terms of technology right now we probably we probably have our phones with us we probably have our laptops but our laptops are in our bags so effectively all we've got is our phones and then the third one is what is your connectivity broadband is it wifi is it ethernet is it mobile cell phone is it bad is it zero so the connectivity is the thing in the middle so the settings one is three things it's your physical location where are you what is your digital setting what are you packing in terms of you know it might be a laptop or phone or nothing and what is your connectivity like in other words can you connect to the outside world and the task of course is task like I need to write a report or whatever it might be that there is all you need to know about the basic theory one that I did earlier and I'll see if I can come down again now put this back is okay I need to move this just move it to the left okay this is highly interactive I can tell the director is up for action thank you sir that's great thank you thank you okay from these so okay we've done our who are you and what do you really want to do and does it align with the business and do I need to refactor any of that from those from those aims or the roles let's think a little bit wider now who are the folks that we need to interact with again applying a design approach what are the key scenarios who are they so your role might be maybe that's design maybe design is the role within the wider team developer or you're a stakeholder or you're a work colleague etc so who are they all in terms of who you work with and then what are their settings and the top one is in an office like the picture that you saw before maybe not a rugby field but laptops and then generally pretty good connectivity because it's usually on wifi whatever it might be that I'm remote I'm working from home and my last job I was always working from home and remote I was always on Skype for business or teams these days if you're Microsoft so absolutely the setting was there in fact I was this is irrelevant to the story but before digitization I actually built a curtain behind me because my room was so messy for all my video calls or you're on a plane or you're here at a conference you're in the hotel room so what is that setting for your team very very often there's going to be a mix of remote in situ again my last team was all remote we were global all the time and then what are the tasks you're actually in the middle of a dev cycle are you in the field researching for the customer insights to understand what those hopes and dreams and instilling fears into customers are you designing wireframes etc so what are those tasks so we're going to switch a little bit now and I'm going to ask to see if we were a team because you've had 14 minutes to get to know each other if we were a team or you want to talk a little bit about what these scenarios might be just go through the role play but before I set you loose on the second piece of paper then I want to tell you a little bit about why is it called the key scenario so this here I found is useful were okay people you haven't met each other what are the people you're making sure that hey remember designer you're not just for the external customer you're for our internal stakeholders as well remember developer you're not just for dot dot dot dot it's a little bit like making work visible it's making teams visible to paraphrase the book title so it might be that scenario one which might be the one that you say what are the scenarios you think about and then someone will say well yeah I'm a stakeholder and actually I'm always here wherever here is it's a different place maybe on the road or maybe okay so I've just joined a bank if I were to do this which I have some of my folks are in a high street branch where they're in a retail situation so what are they doing that's what they're doing they have zero connectivity because they're not allowed to have their phones when they're there with money and the customers et cetera et cetera but then they have to do so in other words working through this candidate scenario one okay what's another one what's another scenario and then it will be oh well maybe it's the designer and the developer and actually they're working remotely from each other but they're doing this so this is one way for okay now that we've had the expectations we've aside the next 15 minutes I'm pretending here is tell us what our expectation of the ecosystem is what is the scenarios that we have to deal with when you when you get this from your folks then as a manager you will know there's some missing and that's the time where you can say oh yeah what about dot dot dot dot dot dot dot so again I can see some nods I can see people nodding inside making sense and then there's one more slide yes I made the little theater and the role play around oh thank you very much for your expectations and then I wrote a very very messy writing the things like the business aims once we have these scenarios down then again wearing the business hat instead of the team hat as a team manager what are the highest priority scenarios for my team and the way to get to the highest priority scenarios is making sure they align to the business aims so going through and walking through those two items just helps get alignment and understanding and you might discover you know what you're on the wrong team because there's no alignment between these different things and so forth okay this is the scenario outline oh actually we'll do that first paper number two and you can probably if you've got two tables two teams here then yeah two pieces of paper the task is if I go back is to do that so just like we did for your expectations may we now please do this for five minutes making sense yeah well I think that you can I think that actually if you have a little discussion about what areas you work in again this is just role play pick a company and then imagine that you're part of a team and just put yourself in that mindset maybe you put yourself not as a manager but you put yourself as one of the people that reports to you does this make sense so let's do the exercise live do you mind if I ask you what industry do you work in or division yeah or software okay and okay okay so you two can snap to anything industry okay oh you know each other okay you don't have to pretend you are a team okay in fact actually if you're a team and do you know each other any more people know each other okay I would maybe if if you four have a piece of paper snap to what these folks are you have to pretend like you're part of their team and then go through the exercise but these folks are the authority on what's what's reality you folks are doing this already so going through who are the people that you work with and what the settings are and so forth and what the scenarios might be does it make sense you're nodding okay I'm assuming nodding is good okay I'm going to run away to this table and as I was saying that you don't know so maybe maybe yeah three and three maybe like you have okay if we were a company you have to think about it are you all consultants or do you work in a particular industry your banking healthcare insurance okay so that means you could probably snap to you have to have a bun fight about whether it's healthcare or financial services or banking what about yourselves okay so let's so do you mind if we make it telecoms because consultants you do anything right okay so telecoms is the situation this person is the authority and that but then to sort of work through the activity of okay what are the scenarios making sense more nodding I'm about to distribute the golden pieces of paper okay and I'll make sure there's paper there too no no so let's work through this once you get the titles up let's try and work through this one I'll sit down with you because I'm sure that you need the most help no no you don't okay yeah so who are the people so you work together already right yeah what are the roles that you have on your people you have to do the funny picture oh the funny picture is not there you can do yeah that's perfect please write the role underneath the the icon the beautiful icon okay what other roles do you have what sort of consultant what kind of consultant okay okay so just keep writing these roles down VA okay these guys are racing ahead they're going faster now okay cool is it technical architect infrastructure solution you don't have front end okay and may I ask so this is probably the people that you work with directly inside your team are you part of the same team oh okay right okay you're pretending good role play okay what about customers who's your customer what product manager should be there I would say I'm just gently suggesting and do you have other internal customers because the product is a product manager is it I'll call that internal customer do you have other internal customers only do you have anyone talk to you are you the customer for anyone inside okay nice and do you do that very often okay so what I would do is put that role down because one of your scenarios is delivery not delivery in or out I think you know what I mean but it comes to you yeah exactly so there's one of the tasks okay and then the settings and so forth I'm going to keep going you're good keep going settings tasks how you doing you haven't even got the frame up wow that's okay because I'm here okay so I would use this person as the authority so let me join your team for one minute okay who are the people that you well first of all who are you what's your role I mean sorry which we had before over there we had your role but can you remind me of your role UX manager may we draw the funny icon but better than that for a person and then a symbol perfect see that yeah very good underneath there can we put sorry user experience UX please underneath there my next question is who do you interact with in your role okay product manager owner they go down there perfect and then other questions that we had from the other table just to sort of tease out who are the people that are in the people is who might be in my team because there might be different roles in my team okay that's fine who are the people then that my team interact with who are my internal customers and then who am I a customer for internally if you're in user experience you might have a touch point with the external customer as well okay so your external customer also goes that's the role play in terms of who are the folks that it could be that well okay so an end user might be someone who uses the enterprise software for my company it might be but it might but if you're producing software in healthcare for an end consumer then that might be an end customer it might be though that you're delivering clinical systems and not end user systems so your end user is the clinician or the doctor it could have lots of different answers so your end user could be someone who's in the company so the terms that I use is internal customer you're nodding because you like me right but also yeah so external customer is the ones that are outside the organization another category so I said before that there's usually three or four categories one is yes in my team what are the different roles so that I can get them here so that when I do the scenarios I'm taking care of them and I'm thinking about what's the detail secondly who are my who is my team interacting with all the individuals that might be internal customers that take work from me so I produce an output to give to them or I'm a customer of somebody else they give work to me so that's that there and then there's the external customer which might be B2C so it might be clinicians in a healthcare setting it might be the end consumer so it might be an app for tracking diabetes or blood sugar for example so those are end consumers but typically those are the categories and there's one more which is partners which is so it might be B2C it would be who am I rocking up with you know who do I need to have to deliver so if you're a mobile phone company if you're in telecoms it might be my service providers in region it might be the hardware handset people because all of these people we're just trying to get the ecosystem of what are the touch points in terms of people they might be technology partners they may be distribution partners they might be marketing partners again I'm just asking the question this is making sense so those are the categories there and then the settings you've got it so this how does this help this so let's switch here now that you're writing in your yeah your did you did you decide banking or healthcare this are you happy with banking are you happy with banking okay so this here is okay so again the categories would be right what are the roles if I'm as a manager am I concerned about my team yes then what are the roles of my team and what do they do and how do they interface it won't usually be my team that interfaces with a whole another team it will be those individuals that is a user experienced person interfacing with the business analyst and so forth so it's just getting those roles down yes no please please do yes what's next yes really great question in fact actually maybe I should tell everyone absolutely yeah don't worry I mean these are really really good questions and I appreciate it so we just had a really good question that I should have thought about I'm just going to go here 70 70 okay well that's really quick the thing the question the question was why am I doing this what's this key scenario for and why am I going through these scenarios and the intent is to go from here once we've identified what is the key scenario to this one here and so the the output of this exercise is so that the team is aligned and what are our key scenarios what are we doing here as a team so the extent of talking about it is about let's go through the exercise so that everyone in the team knows so the first one is alignment secondly is making sure that the whole team knows what are our key scenarios what are the ones that matter to us because you're going to have on the previous one lots of scenarios oh you know I really want to do a lovely user interface designed for this if it doesn't snap to the business aims and the key scenarios you've got a tool to say please stop doing that I'm going to concentrate on this so that's the hard Philip talking about this so that's the second sort of part of this but the step after this is to get to this page here and this is the third thing and I was just reminding that we had 17 minutes and and I was shocked because time is going so fast or maybe few is going very slowly but so we're going to go faster but this third thing once we've got that to use design as a design design teams as design exercise what is the journey of the work that we go through so for example if it is creating a if it is creating a design specification is if it's doing user research so that we understand the hopes and dreams of a customer if it's a UI design specification and handing off and so forth then in terms of the scenes what are what are the steps that that go along with that that our team understand so that we can design the detail of it so I understand what are the things that are hiccuping us so if role a says you know what it takes me days to get the spec or you know what it's five days because I always have to go back and forth between understanding and the design is never there because he's remote and it's a different science and so forth so to your question great question was what is all this for so the first one was trying to get out of people from your team if you don't know it already what really drives them what is their internal purpose and the secondly wearing hard hat making sure that it snaps to business alignment in a nice way the second this thing that we've just done that you have on your tables is what are the key scenarios what what is the work that my team does so we talked about purpose and alignment how do we take that alignment and what is the work that my my team does and who are the folks that I give that work to and I take take it in and again this exercise is many just that you can get on a piece of paper maybe in a team exercise so that everyone knows and then and then if there's an intervention or correction that you as a manager want to make you've got the evidence there to act and it's in the open and then the third thing which is this one here how do I then improve the journey how do I improve my team how do I understand the detail of how I do work in this workflow so that I can talk about this that and the other so that was the round answer to does it make sense yeah and because we've got about 10 minutes left or so then and this is just a role play then we've gone through these different steps and I've got to crack on through some of the rest of this so it might be all of these sorts of things work estimation I usually have only the five you don't go through everything unless you go into real detail but you go through these because again this is these are just exercises to understand if we apply design thinking a little bit to the journey of a team then how do we understand the detail and they work with our own team to get it out so we've done all this already I won't go through this stuff because because your managers you've seen this already you've probably also I'm going to crack on through this there is another sheet actually I will spend I'm going to spend my last five five five ten minutes on this once and I'll come back down again once we've done a little exercise to align our team and purpose and they trust me and they trust you once we've snapped that to business to make sure that we're in alignment with the business once we've then done the previous one the one after that which is what's the detail of our journey so that we can identify what we can improve and what we can accelerate or otherwise then we know what are the skills mix that we want to support our business orientated profile and outputs again hopefully this is making sense and so then the next and this is another you can take it away we can give it to you but what all it is is then assessing from whatever the skills are through an assessment where you're this or that and you'll have the PDF so you can get the PDF of that you can get the PDF of the first one you can get the PDF of this but once you've got the you're clear about what you want to do and the capabilities that you want then this is pretty normal stuff I'm going to crack on through the rest of these things this is when we did it with our team or this is when Alberta did it with her team and she was all the names have been changed there's not real names so it's okay but hopefully they're real skills but it gives her where she can see where people want to be versus where they are so this is the next level of detail about having those performance not performance there's management discussions with teams where do they want to be whether it's user experience or otherwise you know and where do they want to be the team in 12 months so as a manager you can start to get an idea if you map it in Excel pretty easy because we all know Excel mostly then okay what is the visual and what are the metrics for skills assessment I'm going to keep going through this because you are the team did the team so we didn't go through an exercise but one of the so as a manager if you're a user experience person if you're a scrum master or so forth you will know what are the capabilities and skills that you want and so you will declare yourself within the team if you do it within the team and they agree then then everyone knows what is seen as good what does good look like as a manager if you see that you have a lot of people in a particular capability you may want to retrain some of them to fill a gap for something else and I said that versus fire them and get somebody else because we are kind people right yeah yes yes yeah so the process that Alberta uses here this is Alberta versus me I have to put Alberta's hat on but this is data from her team again the names have been changed but this is one of the things that she used for how do we assess in a little bit more of a metric versus oh I'm good at this or otherwise and then it was about growth so they will be self reporting but there is also then a normalization around that and they will probably then have the manager sir you can make a clearer question yeah where do you want to be in 12 months or is it done now and then after 12 months this is where she wants to be but when you do it in 12 months you will see the next cycle but again I feel like I am not telling you anything new and I think I am not but what we have been trying to do is to think about what are some quick things that get right to the point that are not a big intellectual exercise but hopefully they give us value in terms of understanding alignment so I will go back up to here we got 5 minutes 9 oh I can slow down actually that was the question actually where are you today where do you want to be et cetera motivation retention unless we work in HR we probably can't control how much money we give to our team so this is not really about the money part the things that we can control are the things like you are saying keep the team happy and there are 2 things labels and language and communication labels when I talked about inclusive cultures then it is making it welcoming for people not only about increasing the addressable market but it is the words that we use and again at Microsoft and at Lloyd's bank then I am learning that they want us to be very careful about the words that we use for example is it really my is there a sense of ownership there 4 is there a sense of equal value or otherwise apart from the hierarchy he or she is just this versus someone else so even these words are things that we take care of so when we are talking about the human side as well as direct tools like this to understand what is your purpose and so forth even the language that we use is something that we take care of I am going to skip this so apologies because the last thing is about letting go and I talked earlier about pushing out it is not really pushing out because it is pushing out for good I think another part of the team in the whole life cycle of team how do we make it so that people leave in a really really good way but also that they don't wreck the team so it is like pre-planning for that and payback so off-boarding, growth network cycle of life just two more slides and what is the clicker down there so the questions are my head and I did this with the last couple of I think I have left quite a few jobs but from my own choice and the off-boarding experience was never there it was either very very hard actually leaving Microsoft was pretty easy it was three clicks in the HR tool and then all my permissions were revoked but is there an off-boarding experience is it easy is it easy to get the last paycheck but also is it referenced there and the off-boarding is also like have I got all the knowledge hand over staff and make sure that all the information documentation is there and there's two things it's of course your network which is this here as well you've grown a little bit of your network but the payback one is there because you never know later on then there's going to be something which is positive there Mikoski, Dan Mikoski is not here today like here he's asleep because he came in this morning about 8am and then he gave his talk earlier Dan used to work for me at Microsoft 15 years ago and I think that was a good parting because 15 years later he asked me to work for him and not only that, I said yes so I think that in terms of payback you never know I'm old enough as I said with the grey hair to have gone through the cycle a little bit not only with teams but with me and with that I'll stop if you want you'll have the PDF but these are the things that we talked about we talked about this is where I say I did lie at the start I do respect all the things about high performance teams, I do respect that I do read the books, I do respect all of these things about team management and concepts like that we did try to be a little bit more designally and those designally things are all the things that we talked about today we talked about things like screening in and diversity the stars but not the stars like the rock stars expectations, purpose, we have a couple of tools for that the skills assessment we didn't really do but we talked through it and about these things here so that's it, we have time? four minutes so I, because I promised that I would kick you out early you've managed to stay awake, thank you very much I'm going to finish it there if you have any questions, take them outside that's it for today, thank you very much


By the way, just in case It's not clear. We're already in war with many countries Cyber warfare. It's tech warfare right now The war has already been going on for a number of years. Okay Stut next Stut next look into that virus that UK United States and Israel released against Iran That was equivalent to a nuclear weapon going off in World War two. Okay, we entered the the A new age in warfare, which is cyber warfare on a level that we've never seen before Okay, Stut next was the equivalent the same level as us going into a nuclear age with the With a dropping of Nagasaki and Hiroshima the bombs and Nagasaki and Hiroshima, okay? Stut next was on the same level. We're into the Whatever this age is going to be called technological Nuclear age tech warfare. What are we gonna call it right virus age? No pun intended


Does America need a reality czar? That was New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roos' suggestion for how the Biden administration could help solve the so-called reality crisis facing the country. The chaotic events of January 6th marked the beginning of a new era of online content moderation. Not only did every major social media company kick Trump off their platforms, but Amazon Web Services, which owns about a third of the global cloud storage market, affected Twitter competitor Parler and Apple and Google removed it from their app stores. Parler, which had signed on more than 13 million users at its peak, announced its relaunch on February 16th. Both Democrats and Republicans want Washington to have more influence over how big tech companies operate. And there's a bipartisan push to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, known as the Internet's First Amendment. That's a pretty foundational love of the modern, much-based internet. Exactly right. And it should be revoked. Which would give the government more power to hold social media companies liable for the content that appears on their platforms. But the great de-platforming of 2021 has also energized the movement to bring a new radically decentralized internet that would allow users to escape whatever form the realities are takes. Many of the projects in this space are trying different approaches to solving the same set of problems, such as how to give individuals control over their own digital identities and how to store data in the cloud so that it can't be controlled or accessed by a large company subject to political pressure from the state. Regardless of which side of the debate you're on, with certain political figures getting banned on social media platforms, that is not the point. The point is no one should have that type of power. Muneeb Ali is the CEO of Stax, which has garnered some major backing for its effort to build a new computing platform that could become the foundation for a new decentralized internet. Stax is one of several startups in this space that has come up with a way for internet users to own their own digital identities. Today, Twitter, Facebook and Google own and control user accounts on their platforms, which as the tech giants have demonstrated, they can suspend or revoke at any time. With Stax, Ali and his team are hoping to make it possible for users to take control of their own identities by storing them not on the proprietary computing platforms of big tech, but on a public database that's shared and maintained by people all over the world, the same one that's used by the cryptocurrency bitcoin known as the blockchain. The idea grew out of Ali's computer science dissertation at Princeton. Just as no central entity can stop a bitcoin transaction, no central entity can revoke a participant's account or change the rules of the game. People feel really frustrated when Facebook changes the privacy terms of them, or recently we saw Robinhood halted trading for certain stocks. It's really a battle for making sure that the rules are the same for everyone and they cannot be changed by a handful of people. Google's motto was once, don't be evil, which it later dropped. Ali says the idea behind Stax is to make it so that we don't have to trust the good intentions of fallible humans. Instead, we can trust the same mathematical tools that undergird bitcoin. Google has the saying, don't be evil. Maybe a company shouldn't be powerful enough that they're sitting there thinking, should I be evil or not? What we mean by can't be evil is no one should have that kind of power. And instead, you can replace that with mathematics and mathematical guarantees on certain things. Google and Facebook earn most of their revenue through advertising, which is so lucrative in part because they collect personal data about their users, allowing for direct targeting. A key component of the decentralized Internet is replacing advertising and data harvesting with a new set of monetary incentives. Participants in the Stax network stand to earn bitcoin. Other decentralized web projects are taking a similar approach, but using different cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum. And on LokiNet, users earn a cryptocurrency called Oxen by running nodes on a private network to make all web activity anonymous, creating a kind of decentralized VPN. Bouncing your connection through service nodes like this allows you to interact with other users and the Internet without leaving a trace. Another problem that stacks and other decentralized Internet projects are trying to solve is to give Internet users a place to store their websites, documents, photos, videos, and more. The type of information that currently lives in the giant data centers owned and operated by Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and others. A project called Filecoin is building a decentralized cloud storage system that allows computers all over the world to contribute space on their hard drives, which can be accessed through the interplanetary file system, an alternative protocol to the HTTP that undergirds today's web. In exchange, they get paid with a digital token. If Parler ran on IPFS and Filecoin, it would be difficult for a government or any third-party actor to shut down their service. So in a world in which you can truly take your data with you and take the app with you and everything, you have so much more control. Molly McKinlay is a project lead for IPFS. This is a much better model that's going to reduce a lot of the the angst and problems we've seen with centralized and like monetized and manipulated social networking. Welcome to Erbit. We just addressed the problem in its root. It's like, all right, well, may as well just rewrite it. Galen Wolf-Polly is a co-founder of Erbit, which isn't just a new network, but an entirely new operating system that Wolf-Polly envisions becoming as all-purpose as WeChat is in China, which allows users to make social media posts, send direct messages, make calls, play games, hail taxis, and pay bills online and in person. Except with Erbit, the user owns all the data, as opposed to a Chinese company that shares it with the government to monitor the activities of its citizens. WeChat is this sort of like single unified interface where I can do all the things that in the West, we do with all these different apps. And what you really need for that is you have to address this like industrial-scale software stack and get people a human-scale software stack where they can actually control their computing again. Users purchase an identity called a planet in Erbit's cosmic nomenclature, which is issued by a star, a more expensive ID, usually owned by a developer, which are in turn issued by galaxies the top of the identity hierarchy. You'd be trying to compete with the big players, the apples and Googles of the world. Why would someone switch over to this new kind of experimental software stack? I find using centralized communication tools to just generally not feel good. It's very clear where you're being manipulated or forced to see and engage with stuff that is going to keep you around basically. And you know, the crazier it makes you, the longer you stay. The feeling of using something that you own and control and can do whatever you want with is like a wonderful feeling that far outstrips anything that a centralized and ad-funded provider can give to you. Decentralization projects face daunting challenges. They're going up against the world's wealthiest companies. The engineering challenges of building a decentralized platform are far greater than building a centralized one. And consumers almost always choose the most convenient option, even if it means handing control of their data and identities over to a third party. But the great de-platforming of 2021 may be waking some Americans up to the risk of trusting big tech with their digital property and identities. Signal and Telegram, which have ironclad end-to-end encryption, became two of the world's most downloaded apps in early January, with encouragement from Tesla's Elon Musk. Decentralized systems are hard to build, but certainly like historically, long-term historically, like most of the systems that run the world are just naturally decentralized. The arc of history just generally bends towards decentralization. People want to be free. They want to be in control of their environments, their communities. The centralization of the internet, it's just totally unnatural. It's not going to last. Kevin Roos, the New York Times reporter suggesting the need for realities are fears that encrypted apps could become huge shadow social networks, which can't be adequately monitored for misinformation and dangerous speech. Urban, for instance, was created by the programmer, Curtis Yarvin, a controversial thinker whose ideas largely formed the basis of the right-wing philosophy known as neo-reaction. Yarvin, who is no longer affiliated with the project, is just the type of thinker researchers and journalists worried about extremism point to when arguing for stronger social media guardrails. What do you say to people who think it's actually good to have some corporate gatekeepers because of the problems that online hate speech and radicalization can legitimately cause? The benefits of basically people having control over their tools just far outweighs the risk of somehow having to figure out how to moderate or enforce a singular rule set. Do you want to live under a almost like a quote-unquote dictatorship, where one person has a lot of control and power? In this case, that would be Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey. Different people can then make different choices, which is what free society is about. The cat's out of the bag. I mean, the world has been networked. Like the internet is kind of its own state in some ways. And you kind of have this one world, which is the very managed centralized world, or you give people their own tools and let them run the network. I'll definitely take the latter.