Hello and welcome to this world economic forum session on skilling the global workforce. It would have been fantastic for all of us to be physically in Davos at the World Economic Forum. But this is the way it is in a pandemic stricken world which has changed not just how we also changed the skills required to bring the session alive and that extends to every part of life. What have the past 12 months taught us about where the global workforce is at this moment and where it needs to be to be ready for a post-pandemic world. That's what we hope to navigate over the next 45 minutes during this web session and we have a very high powered panel with different perspectives joining us from across the globe. Allow me to welcome first and foremost Guy Ryder, Director General of the International Labor Organization with us from Geneva. With us is Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Grass and Steel, one of the bright stars of the Narendra Modi government in India. With us is Josephine Teo, Minister for Manpower and the second Minister for Home Affairs in Singapore. A lot of work being done in Singapore when it comes to skilling their labor force. We'll see what lessons she has for the rest of the world. With us also is Ilian Dehiz, Chief Executive Officer of one of the world's leading HR Consultancies, the Ideco Group and last but not least, the pride of the Indian IT sector, Saleel Parikh, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the IT Behemoth Infosys. So welcome and thank you so much for taking our time to join us in this session. I want to start by asking Mr. Guy Ryder for his opening comments on where you think the workforce needs to be going forward, the trends that you've picked up over the past 12 months because the pandemic, which of those trends do you see now having forever altered what it will mean to be a successful member of the global workforce. Mr. Ryder. Thank you very much indeed, Raul.  We've estimated that global working hours have gone down by 8.8%. The equivalent of 225 million full-time jobs lost around the globe. This is a bad place to be in. As we're scanning the horizon for the future, being in this deep hole doesn't help us. One thing I want to draw attention to, particularly in the context of this debate about skills, is that a large part of this loss in employment and work is due to people withdrawing from the labor force. We think that 81 million people have become inactive in the global labor force over the last year. How are we going to recuperate them? How are we going to reach them in terms of the skills acquisition that they probably more than anybody badly need? Second point to make, Raul, is there has been a massive interruption of education and training in the course of the year, and this of course doesn't help us. We have seen a remarkable migration to some extent to online and online and distance learning techniques, but this is very unevenly spread. We know that access to the connectivity and the opportunities are very uneven. Very worryingly, we've seen school kids simply dropping out from distance learning processes. Then looking forward, what is this new normal, which is talked about so much, going to look in that hopefully not too distant post-pandemic environment? I think we need to be cautious because we need to make a distinction between what we are doing today and having to do, if you like, under the duress of living with COVID-19 and what we can choose to do once we have hopefully vanquished through vaccines and all the rest of the pandemic. I want to make the point that we have choices about where we go and those choices will fundamentally affect the skinning requirements of the future. If we look at the skills required for the green economy, well, that depends on policy choices that will be made, for example, in Glasgow later this year. If you look at the care economy and the skills there, all of these things come out in the WEF report. It's going to depend on policy choices, so there's a lot in our hands. My last point, Raoul, and I think this probably will concentrate our minds in this conversation, of course, we have seen an acceleration of the pre-existing trends towards digitalisation of work in various aspects. I think the question is, is this simply an acceleration of the path we were already on, or is it taking us to a different place? I'm not sure I know the answer to that question, but I also think that if we are imagining a world where digitally intermediated ways of working in the future are going to be more predominant, then we have a really wide bundle of issues to address. Skills, of course, but issues of regulation, issues of employment contract, it's a whole agenda for action, and we have to address the whole of it. I'll leave it there. Thank you. You've touched upon multiple layers, and hopefully we'll build on these as we go along in this conversation. But Minister, in Singapore, your country has always been known for being at the very cutting edge of innovations when it comes to skilling. What are the major changes that you've been grappling with over the past 12 months, and how have you been re-gearing your workforce to deal with the challenges of skilling in the post-pandemic world? Well, thank you very much for the opportunity to participate in this very important conversation. I think in the first place, we always consider that the future of work is evolving at any time, and so our efforts are really a journey without end. From a long time ago, we started with building up good schools and teachers to make sure that young people enter the workforce well prepared. From about two decades ago, we decided it was just as important to build up a robust system of continuing education and training. It is our key strategy to enable our people to keep progressing in life through better skills and access to good jobs. And in 2015, we started a nationwide skills future movement to try and cultivate a stronger personal ownership over lifelong learning. Now, as it turns out, and the last 12 months continue to bring this point out very clearly, employers have a very big part to play in this. People are much more motivated to put in the time and effort to learn new things when they can see them impact their jobs. It can be to make their work easier, less tedious, or more meaningful and enjoyable. Now, this does not happen unless the employers are effecting change at the workplace, whether it is the production line or bringing about new processes or new operating models. So I think the key is learning how to involve employers a lot more and encourage them to think about what it takes to succeed in the future. And a good example is our financial services sector. In 2019, we had the Institute of Banking and Finance systematically mapped all the job roles in our sector and asked the employers what would be different in three to five years because of the emergence of AI, automation, and the adoption of data analytics. And so in every job, we identified the new skills that were needed and shared this very broadly, including the C-Streets. And as a result of this, thousands of people got help to reskill. In many local banks, we had former bank tellers picking up new skills such as digital marketing, something quite unthinkable. And now they are taking on new roles in customer service, in bank operations. And so even as some jobs disappear, there are always methods to help the workers stay, to contribute, and to help the businesses succeed in different ways. And it's really not just about the existing employees, when the skills requirements are evolving so fast as it does in saline sector, for example, employers are always looking to chop up from outside. And rather than poach from one another, we are trying to support the employers to expand the talent pool by training people from other jobs, from other industries with transferable skills. And so that it is a win-win for both the employer as well as employees. So the big story really is that workforce transformation goes hand in hand with business transformation. Get business transformation going in every sector of the economy, get employers to improve quality of every job and support them to upskill every single one of our workers. And that also relates very much to what Guy was talking about earlier. These are our policies, they're partly driven by our policy choices. And the policy choices must drive the business transformation. And through that, the workforce transformation. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Yo for your opening comments. It's interesting that we have a country like Singapore and a country like India represented on the same panel here at the World Economic Forum because Minister Pradhan, the reality is the challenges of skilling are so very different, wherein in Singapore we're seeing the government lay more and more emphasis on automation, robotics, artificial intelligence machine, learning to try and up the skills of their workforce in India at a very basic level. The challenge of your government is to equip the Indian population, 1.3 billion people, with the basic skills to be able to productively enter the workforce because we're producing more people who are entering the workforce everywhere than anywhere else in the world. So how are you dealing with the challenge of skilling and then upskilling and re-skilling in the context of what the pandemic has shown? Thank you, Rahul. In India, if I divide the scenario in the two parts, pre-pandemic phase and pandemic and post-pandemic phase, every year in India 960 million people are coming in the bracket of working age group, 15 to 459. Out of that around 420 million people are real-time workforce. Every year, 25 million new people are joining the workforce. This is the broader canvas of Indian workforce scenario. Our challenge is in an aspirational society, how to blame the aspiration, education, knowledge, and employability and skill. With the recent reform on education policy, which is known as new education policy 2020, we are very much giving focus for the re-skilling, upskilling, and this pandemic has given us enormous opportunity to re-look certain pending things. If I cite one example, digitalization with the good penetration of internet, good articulation of IoT, big analytics, big data processing, all these things has facilitated new job opportunity, new skilling opportunity to our new workforce, to our existing workforce. If I cite two, three examples of the recent pandemic time, the digital network, digital financial transaction has increased multi-fold. They all need skilled manpower. They all need skilled manpower. We use this opportunity on policy platform, on implementation platform, how to cope up with the expectation of the global changing scenario. And we are preparing, we are very confident and very focused in one area. We have to convert this aspirational community, aspirational society towards more employability and skilling, upskilling, re-skilling is the need of the time. And Government of India is very much focused on that. Thank you, Minister Pradhan. Mr. Salil Parik, you are at the other end of the skilling challenge as far as emphasis is concerned. And skilling is forever a constant part of what a company like Infosys tries to do with its employees year after year. How has the pandemic impacted or disrupted your skilling plans? And what are you doing differently now going into the future than you were before COVID struck? So, thanks Rahul and thank you to the World Economic Forum for having me and Infosys here. What we are trying to do with the skilling activity is making sure that it's available in the first step for all of our employees. Second step, we've expanded it to a lot of our clients. And now we've put in place an infrastructure essentially for all students, primarily engineering and science students, but really all students in India. So what are we doing? We've made skilling available for our employees through a platform that we call Lex inside Infosys. And it's available to all the employees. They have about 1200 different courses on it. This is essentially technology skilling. And that's the narrow focus we're working on. We've also now started to use this with about 30 of our clients who are building on this platform. So there's 200,000 employees of Infosys, about 300,000 employees within the client base. And now we've made a version of this available to all students in India on a free basis. And about a million students have already started to access it and started to use it. So our idea is we must go ahead with reskilling because the change in technology, the digital transformation that was referred to by Minister Pradhan, by Minister Josephine Thio, that is the key that enterprises or companies can do. And with the reskilled people that can support all of the new digital world. That's the main focus that we have going ahead as well. Thank you, Mr. Parik. Mr. Ilyan, your sense of the trends that you're picking up globally, as one of the world's largest recruiters, what is it that you're picking up about, how the nature of jobs, job requirements, expectations of employers are changing, and your thoughts on how the workforce should be gearing up to meet these new expectations? Thank you, Raul, and also thank you for having me here today. Yes, we are active in more than 56 countries in the world, putting every day at work around 2 million workers, around 100,000 companies. And what we see indeed is that upskilling and reskilling is from crucial importance. But what is from crucial importance is that individuals, employers, and governments are doing a so-called tripartite engagement, a tripartite engagement with specific call to actions, or like Guy Reider was saying, with specific choices. And it starts with the individuals. I think everybody in the world should be aware that it is either her own responsibility to stay attractive on the labor market, especially because when we look at the technology acceleration, on average people are losing 40% of their skills every three years. So it means after 10 years, they are obsolete on the labor market. And that's why when we speak about lifelong learning, it's not because it is a new kind of sexy name. No, it is a reality that individuals are facing. They have to study, they have to learn on a lifelong basis. And that's the call to actions on the individuals. On the employers, what we see and what we say is that we should not protect jobs, but we employers should invest in employability. They should make sure that they have, like the country Singapore, that they have a clear vision, that they have a clear strategy regarding their workforce, and especially a planning on the skills they would need in three years, in five years from now, with a clear plan. Because if they don't upskill and re-skill their workforce, they will lose their competitiveness. They will lose their attractiveness. And by the way, financials are also speaking for upskilling and re-skilling. ABB has done studies. If you re-skill one or if they re-skill one of the employees, it will cost them 35,000 US dollars. If they lay off somebody, giving the burden of this layoff to the society, and at the same time, a new person with the right skills and capabilities, it will cost them 100,000 US dollars. So also financially, there is a case there for employers to upskill and re-skillings, much less disruptive socially, and it is financially attractive. And then we come to the third stakeholders, very important stakeholders, governments. And governments have to put framework and incentives in place. And there are already many initiatives and best practices in the world. Again, I would like to quote the individual training account in Singapore or in France, or the training voucher in Brazil. But there are some other ideas that could be put in place. Differentiated tax treatment for layoff versus upskilling. Today, there is no real tax treatment differentiation. Accounting treatment of the training and the re-skilling and really take upskilling, re-skilling as an investment and not as a cost. And last but not least, a new idea. We see many countries, many governments putting hundreds of billions supporting the local economy. But from my perspective and all perspective, this huge amount of money are quite short termists. There is no strategy behind this short term support. Why shouldn't we use this money putting in the economy to re-skill and upskill people and link the money, this amount of money, to the efforts of companies and individuals to re-skill themselves and be prepared for the so-called new normal post-COVID. Back to you, Raul. Very interesting thoughts there, especially about differentiated tax norms for those who lay off employees and those who actually make the effort of re-skilling employees. What we also want to tell everyone who's watching on top link and on the World Economic Forum website is that we're encouraging you to join in this conversation. We'll try and make it as interactive. We'll try and empower you and bring you into this live Davos agenda conversation as well. So what I'll do is I'll take the first question, which is along the lines of what I was about to ask. But since this is coming from Enrico Nano, who's a global shaper from Rome in Italy, from our Global Shaper Hub, he asks a very important question about who does the responsibility for re-skilling lie on? Does it lie on the individual employee? Does it lie on the company that he works for, the concern where he's engaged, or the government? And this is very important. So is it just about individual survivals? You need to do what you need to do to survive and ensure that you're relevant. Or the government comes into what extent does the government have the capacity, the bandwidth and the resources to be able to enable this re-skilling? So I want to put that question first and foremost to Guy Ryder about who you think, who does the ILO think should take the responsibility for facilitating this re-skilling process? Well, I think the conversation has brought out the answer to the question already, Rahul. It's not the exclusive responsibility of any one party. I've heard the Minister from Singapore talk about the role of business. I've heard voices from business talking about the role of government. It's quite interesting. And I've heard Alan talk about the role of the individual. Now, if we accept, and I absolutely do, that this re-skilling, upskilling business has to be within the context of lifelong learning, there is no final destination in this process, then I think what we have to do is set about in a way that we are only in the foothills of doing, of working out what effective lifelong learning delivery systems look like, crucially how they're to be financed, there's going to be a big investment required in this and we all know what public finances are likely to look like post pandemic. And then we have to really work out what the distinctive responsibilities of the state, of private enterprise and the individual are. And these have to be complementary. They don't have to be the same in every country, but we have to work this out. I'm really interested by what was said about the interest that companies may have, not in laying off a worker, but in re-skilling him or her, that of course presupposes a lasting, a durable relationship between the employer and the employee over a longer period of time than sometimes business decisions are taken in. So I take also very seriously Alan's point about taking our current circumstances, a longer term strategic approach to recovery processes and the role of skill formation and acquisition within it. And this is where I want to ask Salil Parik about the kind of role a company like Infosys can be expected to play in the mission that Minister Pradhan and his government are engaged in because you build your own upskilling platform called Lex. And you have the capacity to be able to deliver at scale using technology in a way that the government simply doesn't have the capacity and the prowess to be able to do so. So how seriously are you thinking about offering your platforms, your expertise to the government, how many people can use this expertise? And how closely are you collaborating with the government at the center and in the states and possibly even at the municipal level to ensure that the generic pool for upskilling which is available, the techniques and technologies that are available are made available to as many people as possible, Mr. Parik. Thanks Rahul. I think our objective is to make this platform available as much as it needs to be used by any of the governments at the center or in the states or as you said even at the municipal level. The thinking that we had was first by allowing it to become open for students. All students in India now have access to it and they can use it for any of the technology skills. But in addition to the technology skills, the platform can also take other skills, whatever skills are relevant for that set of people and individuals and package them and make them available on the platform. So the more and more this mobile technology is available around India and around the world, the more this sort of skilling platform is feasible to be used. So my view is we already have some discussions going on but we are open to expanding them to the extent that is needed. This platform is truly something we think can be used by almost anyone. Minister Pradhan, one of your government's marquee projects is called Skill India. The title speaks for itself. How successful in your estimate has this program been, not just in creating basic skills but also in helping upskill the workforce that they're more relevant for the job requirements of companies like Infosys and other such companies going forward. Are you concerned if things stay the way that they are at this moment, we could end up in a situation where there are millions of people entering the workforce but who simply don't have the skills required like education is not keeping up with the technology requirements for companies to be able to employ you successfully. Minister Pradhan. Raul, I'll answer the Veshik question raised by some audience and I'll answer your question also. Veshik question is whose responsibility is re-skilling and off-skilling? Individual or government or industry? My categorical answer is everybody's. Company and industry should spend money, spend money on technology, spend money on spreading. Governments should facilitate and individuals should also pay something otherwise any free training or skilling is a waste according to my experience of the skill ministry. This is part one. Part two is how successful is skill India and how successful is this skill India movement? It's a it's a it's a notional or it's a real time. My categorical answer Raul is is very real time. All the government of India since last few years has mobilized and created a public momentum to create more skill and off-skill momentum like Salil has mentioned. This is all due to a collective poose by industry and government body. You will understand with one example. Now one driverless car company working at California, the server, the planning and the intellectual support is given from some very urban area of eastern part of India from the Chovish Pragana and city like Bhubnaswar unless until this is the outcome of our skill India initiative. I can cite an example during this pandemic time in city district of Gorakhpur. One group of official in the leadership of district magistrate to how to tackle this lockdown. They have created their own e-commerce network for the district. This is the blending of technology, risk skilling, upskilling and the need of the market. In that way, we're taking the lot of things has to be done. That is that is the region. Prime minister given the new education policy, the employability and knowledge both has to blend and skill India is one of the outcome. Ilyan Dehes to a great extent would you agree that skilling is driven by self-selection. Those who are ambitious, who have the hunger and the desire to stay relevant over a 15-20 period in their careers going forward will make the investments in time, effort, energy required to upskill themselves. Whereas those who have moderate motivational levels may not be as enthused. They run the greatest risks of being disrupted. How can companies and governments try and ensure that the opportunity for skilling is more equally available and not just more equally available, more equally utilized by those who may not have the high level of motivation of those who want to go out and pick up every new skill that is in the market. My answer is related to what I said in my first intervention. It's really the three parties, the three bodies that have to work together to make sure that the individuals are on one hand incentivized, why not also financially motivated to stay competitive in the labor market. Because it is not only important for themselves, but it is important for the employer.  And so if on one hand the motivation is not there, I think the system, the systemic approach should make sure that this person is motivated to take this lifelong learning path. And perhaps one of the the conclusion of an initial assessment is that this person has to leave the current role, the current companies, and eventually the current industries. But the system should make sure that this person is getting the right skills of skilling and reskilling to move on to another job, eventually in another company, in another industries.  So you need to stay relevant as an individual, as a company, and as a country. You know, one of the things I'm interested in knowing from you, Mr. Dejesus, about what do you think happens when a few months later governments in Europe and in Northern America start pulling back from a lot of the very generous in income support goals they're giving to individuals and to companies at some point in time. The financial tab will need to be squeezed. And what could be the consequences of that? And how should we be doing the consequences are pretty clear. So we expect then a serious increase of restructuring layoff in some industries, massive layoffs. And I would the challenge and the political challenge is to synchronize, to synchronize the job destruction, with the job creation. And so that's why when I'm preaching for having, let's say, a strategic support, allowing people to already today upskill, reskill themselves, it will allow the the synchronization to take place. Otherwise, statistics of unemployment will really arise tremendously. And we will enter again in this negative spiral of unemployment, increase, recession and so on. If we are able to really create new jobs, to reskill people towards these new industries, these new activities, this will limit the impact of the structural change that will take place through restructuring and layoff. Guy Reiner, do you foresee this eventuality as well as governments pull back on financial support to companies and to individuals? A lot of concern in many of the reports about the massive layoffs, retrenchments, joblessness that we end up having to deal with. What is your prognosis and do you have a solution? Well, I absolutely follow what Alan said. Sequencing is crucial here. It's clear that furlough schemes, job support schemes, income schemes are not a permanent state of affairs, but there is enormous danger, I think. Let's look back to 2009, 2010, where we had a premature return to what was politely referred to as fiscal consolidation. Today, governments are not all governments, but many governments are in a position to maintain the type of support, which is absolutely necessary to keep people attached to the labour market, to do all of the things to mitigate the economic and social consequences of the pandemic that we need. But it's not a permanent state of affairs. So it is about sequencing. It is about being strategic in the way that Alan has referred to. All of these things matter a great deal. Can I point to one thing which I think is a looming danger in practically everything we've talked about? And this is the aggravation of polarization of labour markets and growing inequality. It applies in respect of skills. Yes, Raoul, motivation may be different amongst individuals, but what is much more different, if I can say that, is access to educational and training opportunities. Those in a position to acquire new and needed skills are much more those who already have skills than those who have none. And I would say the same in terms of the restructuring that is coming down the line. We see some sectors actually doing very well at the moment, the high tech end of the global economy doing very well, the low skilled, they're doing very badly. Those who have to not adapt to new circumstances, because they can't, but just to be resilient and to carry on. Think of the 1.6 billion people who still work in informality around the world and with the people online today, we must think of those as well. We run the risk of coming out of this crisis even more unequal and divided than we went into it. And that should, I think, inform all of our discussions. Very interesting, Mr. Yo. Can you share what you believe are the best practices of the government in Singapore, which are relevant for countries outside, countries which may not have the level of technological, economic development or education levels that your people in your country do. What of the Singapore model when it comes to skilling, do you believe is a case study for other countries to try and replicate? Well, Singapore is obviously very different and we are also very keen to learn from others. I would perhaps just share two perspectives that may be helpful. The first is in relation to the withdrawal of support schemes that have captured employment levels the way they are. I think it is quite clear that it won't be possible to save every job. The transformations will continue, but we must all try our level best to save every worker. And in relation to what a guy was talking about earlier, particularly for workers at the lower end, the risk of permanent dislocation are very real and the long tail of support that will be needed for this group of workers is something that we must keep in mind. So the way in which we are thinking about it is that even as we are planning for the withdrawal of very broad based job support schemes, we are putting in place new forms of support that essentially try to incentivize hiring in sectors that still have the capacity to do so. In other words, we want to redirect displaced workers into areas that still have the hiring momentum and to embolden the employers in those sectors to take on board people which they would not ordinarily do until they are very certain about the business prospects. So transiting from the very broad based schemes that incentivize the retention of the existing workforce to schemes that incentivize the hiring of new staff to boost growth, I think that sort of a transition is something that we are heading towards. The second thing, second perspective to offer is really this. I fully support the idea that employers have a part to play, but the reality is also that we cannot rely solely on employers, especially just a few enthusiastic ones, to train for future needs. When budgets are tight, employers are almost always focused on the present. They also tend to have a plug and play approach where they hire workers that are previously trained by a competitor firm, rather than to train the workers in their own companies. Now, at the same time, I think to rely on workers to upgrade themselves runs the risk that the training that they pick up will be outside of their prospective employer's needs. So you might have an even more severe mismatch of skills and needs of the workforce. So the way we are thinking about it is that we need to create win-win approaches for both the employers and the workers, as well as to get ahead of the curve to train in advance of needs. So one of the things that we have done is to try and scale up an intervention called the professional conversion programs. This is not the typical classroom type of training, but very much bespoke on the job that is tailored to the person, the industry, the specific job roles. We have programs in more than 30 sectors for different job roles. And the results so far have been quite encouraging. About nine in 10 of the participants remained in employment even 24 months after they participate in such programs. And about seven in 10 of them were able to earn higher wages. So the key is to try and scale these programs. And I would just like to note that they are certainly high resource, but they are also high payoff. Thank you, Mr. Yo. As always, I just love the level of thinking and planning that goes into everything in Singapore and your articulation of what you're doing. I want to take, as I said, questions as many as possible from those who are listening in live on the World Economic Forum website or on top link. I'll take the next question. This comes from Abdul Samad Dawood, Vice Chairperson of ENGRO and Director of Dawood Hercules. And this is for Salil Parik. And this is to do with emphasis saying that you're targeting engineering and IT students more from the STEM sector. So do you believe that it's only those who come from the STEM sectors who can be upscaled and reskilled? What is it that you believe needs to be done to target the larger population? There are so many people in countries like India, Pakistan, elsewhere who are unskilled to the extent that they aren't even educated. So how do we bring them up? Do you have any ideas about those who don't come from the engineering background? And what about those who are languishing in the ladder of skilling? So thanks, Rahul. I think that question is extremely critical. The focus for emphasis was on tech. We also have a focus on design and creative visualization. This is a new area that's emerging, which is very important because today all of us use technology is through how it's visually working with us on our cell phones or other devices. But that's still a smaller percentage of people. I think the point that the question makes is what do we do with essentially everyone in the population? And my view is of course all of that and all of those people we need to find a way to skill and upscale. And I think all different types of skills are needed broadly on a society platform. We focus as a company on one set of areas. But there are different areas, whether it's the arts, whether it's music, whether it's essential skills, vocational skills, all of those need focus and attention. And the point that was made by a guy with regards to access, in fact, maybe one of the more critical issues that we see across the world. And that's something that means deeper addressing even as we come out of COVID. What is the solution to access? Because otherwise we may end up being more inequitable as we are coming out than even as we went into the COVID situation. Minister Thio, there is this one question from Laura Renade-Garza. And this deals with the gender gap because the new report of the World Economic Forum on gender gap talks about the inequalities in industries like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning. How do we ensure that the opportunities for skilling, future job creation are more equitably distributed across gender? Do you have any thoughts and ideas on that? Let's start a question directed to all the women ministers only. No, this is for all. I just put it to you first. And I'm going to go across the earlier days and get into the conversation. I think it is a very important area. I think we do want to empower women to participate fully in the economies of the future. And I think it starts with ensuring that they are aware of the opportunities and they have the right role models because there is still a perception that some of these disciplines in STEM are more suitable for gentlemen. And so sometimes we have girls, even though they are equally talented in STEM subjects, they make the exercise the decision not to participate in these kinds of disciplines when they sign up for college education and even in terms of the first jobs after they leave institutions of higher learning. So that is one area that I think we are trying very hard to address. Having the right role models I think is critical. I think secondly, it is still very much the case in Asia, I think that in terms of the expectations of what women do, particularly in terms of caregiving, there is still an imbalance that we have to address. We can try and help in terms of government action to strengthen support for caregiving, whether it is for children or whether it is for seniors. But I think at the same time, societies are ready for a shift and for a more equal sharing of the family commitments that we are inevitably going to face. The shift is happening. I think that we can all make an effort to try and accelerate the shifts. Women are equally talented and I think from the perspective of many employers, they would really like to be able to retain female talent and to help their businesses to succeed. Not least because I think women are also very much consumers and having the female perspective in organizations are tremendously helpful. Both my wife and my daughter are going to be very unhappy if I ask this question only to minister to you. So therefore, Elin DeHiz, I must get your thoughts as well on how we make the upskilling revolution more equitably distributed across gender and across levels of education. This is indeed extremely important, especially as we see that this COVID situation is mainly impacting female workers in many industries. So again, I come back to my to my recipe of this tripartite engagement and coalition. It's about individuals, the choice of individuals and also really motivating, motivating female workers, female leaders to to to reskill, upscale themselves, but also companies, employers to take also the responsibility to reduce this gap and governments to work in a systemic way to incentivize and motivate individuals and employers. But Minister Teo said it in such a nice way, it's difficult to to elaborate after her. It was perfect for me. We've come to the end of what's been very engaging conversations. I want to thank all of you for lighting up this conversation on skilling at the World Economic Forum. I want to go across to Sadia Zahidi at the World Economic Forum for her comments as we bring this session to a close. Sadia. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rahul. It was such a rich conversation that I won't try to synthesize, but I think a few takeaways are incredibly clear. One, the next wave of government stimulus and support has to take a more strategic and sequenced approach into account and start building in the reskelling and upskilling now. And in fact, it need not be seen as a burden. We found this week in a research piece published with PWC that this kind of investment from governments could add six trillion dollars to the global economy by 2030. So there is a return on investment even from that perspective. Second, that our ROI is very clear for most employers, but at the same time we need to build in systems for those that may not get that support in the workplace. And at an individual level, not only are there vast inequities that got exacerbated for women and for young people through this particular crisis, as well as for people from different races. There has been different effects. At the same time, there's the biggest impact is lower skilled people are far more affected by this crisis than higher skilled people. And to Guy's point, if we want to ensure that this crisis doesn't exacerbate even more the inequalities we already had, the window for action is very much now. And that's where the World Economic Forum is focused. One year ago, we launched the reskelling revolution platform with the goal to provide better education, better skills and better jobs to 1 billion people by 2030. Over this last year, that set of work has already reached 50 million people. And that is exciting. But even more exciting is the work that has been put in place to build those lifelong learning systems. And I think that's what we need to get to because this is not a single shot effort. This is something that needs to be put in place at a systemic level. 10 countries and six new countries are coming on board in 2021. Over the last year, those 10 countries reached 50 million people, six more, so much more progress to come in 21. And much of their efforts will also be focused on the kinds of innovations from public policy that Alain talked about. Second, 10 industries because all of this has to also be nested within the realities of specific sectors. What's happening in the consumer sector is not the same as what is happening in the IT sector. So we're deep diving with 10 different industries and helping them reskill and redeploy their workers. Third, trying to put in place the right kind of language. Often the public sector, private sector and education sector are talking about very different things when they talk about skills. So we launched this week a global skills taxonomy, which allows everyone to dock on to the same language. And it's produced by a number of online learning platforms, the Coursera, the Udacity, the edXs, which together account for 200 million learners. And so they really have the right information about how to qualify some of these skills. With that, let me simply add that we invite all of you to join the Reskilling Revolution platform. Thank you so much to Rahul for your moderation today. Thank you to Director General Ryder. Thank you to Minister Pradhan. Thank you, Minister Teo. And thank you very much to Alain and to Salil, who are Reskilling Revolution champions. Thank you.


Let me begin by saying how privileged I am to be here joining you to honor the memories of the recently departed leaders in the media. The roll call of these leading lights that have left us is a truly impressive one and it can be said without exaggeration that eternity has claimed a rich harvest. These men were remarkable and outstanding giants of their crafts in every right. While we recognize that their exit leaves a significant vacuum, this gathering serves a threefold purpose. It is at once a celebration of their lives and the illustrious tradition to which they belonged. A reflection on their legacies and an affirmation of the great values for which they stood. The Nigerian press has deep roots going back about 150 years. Indeed the Nigerian press came into existence before Nigeria itself and was instrumental to the birthing of this nation. The pantheon of heroes of free speech as an institution is one to which all our honoraries belong and this is a rich one indeed. Several luminaries of the anti-colonial and nationalist movements were also leading figures in the press. Namdia Zikwe, Ernesto Ikoli, Anthony Enahorom, Herbert Macaulay. First established themselves as journalists of repute. Indeed at one point between Namdia Zikwe and Obafemi Aholoa, the controlled five and ten newspapers respectively. Considering its origins as a bastion of the nationally struggle, it's not surprising that the relations between the Nigerian press and the Nigerian state were always largely adversarial. In the years after we gained our independence from the British, this dynamic was accentuated by the succession of military dictatorships that seized power following the collapse of the First Republic in 1966. Since military rule is defined mainly by the abbreviation of civil liberties and in particular the right to freedom of expression, the press found itself on the opposite side of confrontations with the military regimes of that era. The apogee of the tensions between the press and the military in the 1970s was the nationalization of the daily times. Those with long memories will remember the 70s as the era in which Bola Boogunsoho and Adi Adi Rinoku came into their own as editors of the Sunday Times and Daily Express respectively. Both of these giants held court as two of the most respected journalists and public commentators of their time. Who can forget Bola Boogunsoho's interventions in the Joseph Taka Godwin Dabo affair, the cement importation scandal or the cement armada, Kuku and Toss Benson, the Kuku and Toss Benson Tango. Adi Adi Rinoku was exceptional and accomplished poet with compilations like Ebony on Snow, Dance of the Vulture and the Pritiants Dark Days are here. He was one of the earliest and most influential promoters of Nigerian music and entertainment. Broadcast journalism also had its shining exemplars of professional excellence with the likes of the late Berné Guna who was the golden voice of the network news of the Federal Radio Corporation in the 1980s and 1990s that guided the nation through a turbulent period. A 40-year veteran of broadcast industry he would serve as news director of the voice of Nigeria and rise to be the director general of the FRCN and also serve as the president of the African Union of Broadcasters. But what will live long in our memories is the rich texture of his voice interpreting national events for millions of Nigerians for nearly two decades. And there was also in that era another iconic figure, B.C. Lawrence, Uncle B's law, whose multi-faceted career saw him write a hugely popular long-running column in the Vanguard. He served as general manager of Radio Lagos from where he midwives the establishment of the Lagos Television which pioneered 24-hour broadcasting in Nigeria and also he also earned acclaim as a seasoned sports administrator. Having begun his career at the Nigerian Broadcasting Service, the precursor to the FRCN, these laws remarkable footprint of excellent spanned radio, television and print journalism as well as sports administration. In the illiberal and hostile climate of the 1980s and the 1990s many journalists took to the front lines of civil society's struggle against tyranny and they did so at great risk to their personal well-being and safety and they used their publications to advocate democracy. Many of you in this room and your absent colleagues are veterans of that period and paid the price of voluntary deprivation, imprisonment, exile and in some cases the ultimate price. We will remember of course Ismail Aisa for example who served as president of the newspaper proprietors association of Nigeria from 1995 to 2002 which is possibly the darkest era in the life of Nigerian media and he was right there in the trenches at that time rallying the press call against official censorship of the press. There are of course many stories of how he helped many news publications to stay alive in those days but we have a democracy today owes in large part to the sacrifices of the media of those of you gathered here and those that have departed. These are sacrifices that should never be forgotten. As I said earlier your departed colleagues were true giants of their craft whose significance in public life loomed larger than their chosen vocations might have indicated. Alaji Latif Jaconde, the action governor of Lagos State is best remembered now for serving with great distinction not just as the first elected governor of Lagos State between 1979 and 1983 but also for numerous achievements ranging from infrastructure to laws covering practically every aspect of governance. What even before then he had an accomplished career as a journalist that started in 1949 from the daily service and led him in 1953 to join the Nigerian Tribune where he rose to become editor in chief. He was the first president of the Nigerian Newspapers Association of Nigeria NPA and of course his life has been celebrated again and again and especially by chief Olushevmo Shoba. Tony Momo we've heard already about him an authentic prince of Auchi Edo State just as Mr. Rieku pointed out his father had 257 children all I can add to that is that he was the 165th child of King Momo I of Auchi. Tony Momo's personal battle for press freedom earned him a place in the constitutional annals of Nigeria in the famous case of Tony Momo v. the Senate Joseph Wires of Blessed Memory, former Senate president someone him to appear before the chambers over an uncomplementary and contemptuous publication he had actually referred to senators as glorified contractors a matter which at that point was considered a grievous insult the Senate sought to compel him to disclose the source of information and as you've heard Momo sued the Senate at the Lagos High Court over what he described as an attempt to infringe press freedom in the country Momo argued that a journalist had the constitutional obligation to hold the government accountable at all times and that this duty will be jeopardized if he had to disclose his sources the High Court agreed that an individual had the right to refuse to disclose their source of information whether that individual was a journalist or not however and I think it's important as a professor of law to correct the notion that the matter ended there it did not on appeal unfortunately the High Court was overruled the appellate court held that under the 1979 constitution nobody, no individual including journalists was shielded from disclosing their sources of information especially in exceptional circumstances Tony Momo went on to become one of the founding fathers of the APC we'll also of course remember Sam and Isaiah was also another media icon whose path led from journalism to politics though originally a pharmacist what earned Sam national acclaim was his forthright and uncompromising columns first in the daily trust and then in the leadership newspaper which he founded in 2004 and he carried that principled forthright disposition into politics in the years before and after his presidential bid in 2015 he established himself as one of the most principled voices in the media one remarkable attribute of all of the luminaries that we're celebrating today is the wide-ranging nature of their careers their vocational pursuits cut across public and private sectors and the scaled impressive heights of accomplishments in both domains I have in mind also a man like the gentleman Malam Wida Maida who served as chief press secretary to President Muhammad Buhari back when he was the military head of state he went on to serve as editor in chief of the news agency of Nigeria between 1985 and 1994 before becoming the agency's managing director in 1994 he would go on to co-found the daily trust and was chairman of the board of the news association of Nigeria until his passage such was his work ethic that he was at work right until the day of his death I'm gratified that members of the media are honoring the memory of departed colleagues today there is a great need to immortalize those who have gone before us and ensure that their words and deeds are kept aflame as a guiding light for successive generations especially so that younger people grasp the significance of the traditions which they belong and I've gone to these lengths in exploring history because the true character of an institution and the true weight of its calling is revealed by its past by its trajectory through the times at times it may seem that the media and the government are mortal enemies but the occasionally turbulent nature of our relationship is in my view part of the natural creative tension that must exist between institutions arising from our different mandates those of us who govern must do so with the understanding that power is a public trust and it is your calling as journalist to invigilators and hold us accountable I urge you to do so relentlessly, fairly and unapologetically when we are both true to our respective callings our democracy is strengthened however there is a reason why the media is described as the fourth estate of the realm in terms of the share ability to influence hearts and minds and direct the public imagination no other institution comes close to its power you can shape how people think and you can interpret reality in a way that animates our most constructive public spirited instincts or in a way that summons our darkest and most destructive impulses you have the power to elevate public debate in a way that no other institution can it is said that journalism is the first rough draft of history it is true that reportage shapes the perception and understanding of events it shapes memories and because of all of this it can influence behavior for good or for ill there are arguably no bigger influencers than those who report and interpret the world to us this is considerable power and it comes with responsibility and I emphasize this because we are at yet another defining moment in history the age of technology where once the dissemination of news was the preserve of states and corporations the information revolution has completely democratized the media environment the very meaning of the term media owner has changed and no longer refers to people with the profiles of some of those of us who are here in this era of citizen journalism everyone now has a voice whether through blogs, websites, online publications, podcasts etc the democratization of information unleashed by the information age has also introduced related risks with the serious implications for economic and socio-political stability individuals and private interests now control means of information dissemination that were once the exclusive preserve of corporations and governments who we could easily hold to account these capabilities are increasingly used now in all sorts of maligned ways by those who harbor ill intent fake news has been trafficked on a scale that is capable of warping the perception of reality by huge numbers of people and inducing social conflict I believe that media leaders must use the considerable influence that you have to seek ways of achieving a consensus on the responsible use of social media but that is a matter for much fuller discussion perhaps another day for the moment this developments converge with this period of turbulence in the life of our nation there is really no question at all that what should occupy our minds today is whether we are building up our country or whether we are intent on tearing it down this is a question that we must ask ourselves in every sphere of human endeavor it is the plumb line by which history will judge our generation because there is really only one divide at this point is the line between those who are committed to constructive action and those who are pursuing a destructive cause our country is not perfect and we all know this but the cure for her imperfections is certainly most certainly not destruction nor a heedless descent into anaki especially has been promoted by some voices we all have a share in the much needed work of rebuilding redesigning and reforming and healing our nation creating a commonality or purpose in technically diverse and culturally diverse society is challenging the world over however nation building is not the sole preserve of politicians and governments in fact it is just as much a task for civil society of which the media is an important member the giants that we celebrate today understood that journalism operates in a social context and cannot be value neutral this same cognitive commitment is incumbent upon all media practitioners we are at a time in our national odisy in which retailers of discord and merchants of strife are working assiduously against our collective potential as a people among the powers of the press is the ability to amplify and to drown out voices media practitioners have a responsibility to exercise discernment in their deployment of their platforms in this regard we must ask ourselves are empowering and amplifying the most insensit and intemperate and incendiary voices in our midst while marginalizing the voices of reason of course the most dramatic voices are those voices that are calling for nihilism in one shape or form of the other it is true the freedom of expression is enshrined in our constitution but we all agree that society progress and order depend upon responsible exercise of freedom of expression and other freedoms otherwise the end result will be anaki as we struggle to build our nation with the bricks of mutuality plurality and tolerance I would suggest that those of us that stand as gatekeepers in the fourth estate must demonstrate a greater awareness of the sensibilities and sensitivities of our society debates over our country's future may be intense and passionate but they need not be toxic or polarizing the media can help to promote a climate of civility in which even the most contentious national issues can be discussed in full and frank terms without degenerating into chaos let us reject the temptation to fracture our society and choose instead to elevate those constructive elements in our midst that can promote justice healing and togetherness the media has been at the forefront of all our epochal struggles from the fight against colonialism to the struggle to entrench democracy a third struggle is now underway it is a quest to deepen democracy and to realize our collective possibilities as a just, prosperous and progressive nation I remain on yielding in my personal belief that we have a common destiny and that we, the constant parts of our nation are stronger together than apart I personally believe that all of us have a stake in advancing the cause of justice of equity and progress this is a task that is incumbent on everyone the media leaders in whose names and memories we have gathered today are giants precisely because they understood the struggles of their times and they embraced their roles in them in so doing they wrote their names in gold and remain reference points for succeeding generations today we too must embrace all of those quests that are before us to make common cause with progressive nation builders across all divides to take ownership of our country and build a sustainable future for our children finally let me commend the MPO and BON who conceived of such immemorial immemorial of such taste and magnitude among our people there is a common saying that the care or loyalty demonstrated by those championing our causes when we are no longer there or when we are no longer present is more genuine than the obsequousness of those engaged in eye service still in a position to pay back so for this let me salute the exemplary leadership exhibited by the NPO and the BON with this you have really lived up to expectation as the ultimate custodian of the finest traditions of our media tradition very well done thank you very much thanks for listening


Made 24. Ha! Burnin' trouble, 24. That's how my partners roll. Oh, man, man, you don't know me.  When you're holla, when you speak, remember you know me. What? ASAP. ASAP, ASAP. Don't boss talk one-on-one. That's you this, man. I seen you hangin' out with T.I. I don't know what that was about.  Young Drow, shout out, I'm gonna be in your ear in a minute. I got a guy for to get right there at you.  Y'all doin' comedy together now? Yeah, I went to T.I. Trap City Cafe. And, um, bless the stage, Sean. Okay. Hang on, you know, T.I. Good People bumped into him. A nice conversation with him. Um, you know, I'm working. I'm that working. Okay.  So, he like comedy. That's somethin' that he done fell in love with. Yeah, he love comedy. I know a lot of my f*** out that madder tip. Call him a snitch.  Do you hear me?   Do you hear me? I don't act that's not gonna make me not a f*** with tip. Do you hear me? I sold a cool tip with the prison for them guns. I sold a cool when he came home. This n***a really need to come do a boss talk. Get a few budgets. That's why I be mad at him. I'm like, n***a, don't you understand I was with you when you went to prison, n***a? When you was, when you went to prison the first time. I said, okay, I met him and I got the deal at Caesar's Palace. Me and him was at the Caesar's Palace together. I started buyin' a cool. The n***a come home. I meet him at the Taker's Premier. Here I am, spendin' my money. Let me go to the Taker's Premier.  See how he doin' support him. All right, I'll support the n***a. The next thing you know, the n***a go to California that week, that same week. Do a U-turn, go back to jail. I'm still buyin' a cool the whole time at this store.  Buyin' a cool. Supportin' this n***a, man. I'm down with you no matter what you do. And at the end of the day, he come back this time.  They say he told on somebody with dead.  Wait a minute, they say he told on somebody who was dead. His cousin or somethin'. And they say they mad about it. And I'm like... Man, let me say this.  I'm thinkin' they gettin' all the publicity goin'.  Now they done build up all this heat and intensity.    They goin' fuckin' with it.  Watch him drop it. They gon' have everybody fooled except me. I ain't foolin' me. I know him and T.I. so I'm worth makin' money.  Cause I bring around T.I. just for a small amount of time.  And Boosie intelligent too. People say what they wanna say about Boosie, but Boosie's super intelligent.  Man, what you talkin' bout, man? I'm tellin' Boosie, man. I'm rockin' with your niggas. You over there at Vlad niggas. Come to the ball shop. You gotta say, come to their room. Come to the ball shop, man. I'm gonna start my new tour, the tellin' tour. Tellin' they bring up their thing I know. Man, these guys, man, are really guys that when you think about the rap game, these guys are appellacles when they come down to what they done during their time. You know, you really can't take nothin' from neither one of them.  He can tell on God, nigga. Niggas made 24s. Burnin' trouble, 24s. That's how I'm my partner, yeah. Ooh, ooh, ooh. Do you know what I mean? That nigga wrote a band, man. You don't know me. Hey, see me in the street, but shout it, you know me. When you holla, when you speak, remember, you know me. What? ASAP. ASAP, ASAP, ASAP. Shit. Motivation. Haters, get on your job, nigga. Motivation. Haters, better get on your job. Man, I can never turn my back over, too. T.I. made that song, uh, uh. If you don't like what I'm sayin', then buck. What I'm sayin', then buck. Swing when you see me.  Swing on the nigga.  Yeah, yeah. That was him and that boy BG, man.  And then you can have whatever you like.  You know, he went commercial. You know he went commercial. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She got that bad. Yeah, so.  Then you had your boy in the car with him. Mike Epps. I ain't forgot I seen you in the video. Yo. He was doing, he was, he done worked with a lot of people, man. Hold on. And they did that movie with him and Mike Epps. Him and Mike Epps did the movie together. Damn, man. He was in that movie that Get Hard with Kevin Hart and Will Farrell. The nigga works, man.   Man, Boots have been going crazy on them game, on the movies, and just it's independent hustle. I just love seeing black men working out and getting money.  I just look, I think it's just setting us back. I think, I think they do it, you know. But I know it's going to happen. It's inevitable to happen. Yeah, but I feel like him and Boots are playing those goddammit. I can't agree with your bubble dub on that one, man.


Former NFL players Eddie Kenneson and Robert Parrish visited Naval Support Activity Bahrain with a group of NFL cheerleaders and put on a cheer and football clinic during the Armed Forces Entertainment NFL Celebrity Tour. It's been really special for us to interact with the children on this level and you know just give back to them. I know that they're also in a great sacrifice with their parents that are in the military. They don't get to spend as much time with them as a normal child may. So we'd like giving back to them just because we know what they're going through and want to do as much as we can for them. More than 30 children seem to share the same sentiment towards spending the afternoon with the NFL athletes. Reporting from Bahrain, I'm Petty Officer Greg Johnson.


Everybody forced here ripping 2021-22 NT basketball hobby four bucks. No, not four bucks. Sorry. I'm reading the wrong thing this is a Prism and NT two box mixture number two, sorry I Like refresh another page to see how many spots Brad had left and I just started reading the first thing I saw Like a goober goober move, right Jake Sure is man Nt prism number two You can always find those results lane sports cards calm. Good luck everybody start with prism here See it. Can you get scared of the fire when he's on the stage? I'd be too. They're like right up against that. Yeah So if you don't know what's coming All right prism hobby first There's a warriors base rookie Moses moody Celtic silver pulp here's blazers hyper norm Powell Hornets Ricky James book nights There's gruba Ruby wave Rockets Christian wood blue ice Hornets Kelly ubré That's to 125 Spurs rookie base Joshua Primo silver going to the next Dwayne Bacon orange rookie Nets Cam Thomas to 49 nice one Nets 28 to 49 Go bear 75 years insert Suns Ruby wave Jake Crowder Sixers Hypershake Milton Jackson Silver Kings Harrison Barnes Silver fireworks Bulls Zach Levine. It's my chat not working Strange People interested got the mellow base Davion Mitchell Kings rookie purple prism Nets Joe Harris out of 99 God wow big card here magic mojo rookie auto Jalen Suggs boom Sick card six of 25 Orlando, that's Nam cue congrats Nam cue Love the mojo man. That is fantastic looking big prism rookie out of there Silver rookie Kade Cunningham now two packs his box is hot Mag Decade Hypersperes Derek white crowd today Jake Pulsar Hornets Mason Plumlee blue jazz Carl Malone To one ninety-nine Nicks silver obi toppen 75th anniversary Luke good dodge itch to 75 One of 75 nice one Dallas Off-center left to right sub Thorpe Scotty base rookie for the Raptors Kaminga base rookie Warriors Ruby wave Nicks Pat Ewing Pacers rookie hyper Isaiah Jackson Sarves Jackson Cameron Thomas Silver pelicans Brandon Ingram silver mindset Tatum for the Celtics Hornets base auto PJ Washington, Jr. A very good box of prism red prism magic Robin Lopez out of 299 and NT one box good luck Thank you very much everybody for joining all the breaks today Let's get brad's breaks filled up tonight more NT in prism at 5 p.m And a bunch more NT tonight as well his spots were going fairly quick though, so Let's get him filled up for him to 75 bucks Chris Middleton base parallel Nuggets printing play Michael Porter, Jr. From flawless Say logo man printing play can't see the logo though I'm all sleeve confused today Cavs patch card carousel avert to 25. That'll be a net patch on the Cavs card T Wolves Jersey card Carl Anthony Towns 51 of 99 Lakers with a great hit It's a National Archives Inc. Jerry West auto to 49. That is the logo right there Jerry West He go Lakers To logo man in the box. Well, I won't bag that Got a Scottie Lewis RPA auto NDA 75th anniversary Hornets Scottie Lewis, that'll be read to 75 Nice hit there Hornets Bucks auto on card Dante David Chenzo to 25 Blasting legacies patch auto Monty Morris Nuggets to 99 Blazers Jersey card Anthony Simons to 99 Bulls Jersey card Nicola Wojcivic to 99 that'll do us do a quick recap I guess I'll see you in three minutes. I guess you're gonna see right here That was one of the nice cards yeah Prison prison was nice in this break. All right, so we had relics vooch Simons Towns carousel avert Autos Monty Morris Dr. David Chenzo Scottie Lewis NBA 75th RPA redemption for the Hornets PJ Washington, Jr. We had silver prison rookie kid Cunningham for the Pistons Mojo magic rookie auto Jalen sucks to 25 Filthy for the magic there 625 and National Archives Inc. The logo Jerry West auto to 49 That's gonna do it more in team prism coming up next


Live from Madrid, Spain. It's theCUBE, covering HPE Discover Madrid 2017. Brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Welcome back to Madrid, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. And my name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with Peter Burst. This is day two of HPE Hewlett Packard Enterprise Discover in Madrid. This is their European version of a show that we also cover in Las Vegas. Kind of six month cadence of innovation and organizational evolution of HPE that we've been tracking now for several years. Sherrod Singhal is here. We cover software architecture for the machine at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Matthias Becker is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bonn Gentlemen. Thanks so much for coming in theCUBE. Thank you. You know, we talk a lot on theCUBE about how technology helps people make money or save money, but now we're talking about something just more important, right? We're talking about lives and the human condition and specifically, yeah, hard problems like Alzheimer's. So, Sherrod, why don't we start with you? I mean, talk a little bit about what this initiative is all about, what the partnership is all about and what you guys are doing. So we started on a project called the Machine Project about three, three and a half years ago. And frankly, at that time, the response we got from a lot of my colleagues in the IT industry was, you guys are crazy, right? We said, we are looking at an enormous amount of data coming at us. We are looking at real-time requirements on larger and larger processing coming up in front of us. And there is no way that the current architectures of the computing environments we create today are going to keep up with this huge flood of data. And we have to rethink how we do computing. And the real question for us, and those of us who are in research in Hewlett-Packard labs was, if we were to design a computer today, knowing what we do today, as opposed to what we knew 50 years ago, how would we design the computer? And this computer should not be something which solves problems for the past. This should be a computer which deals with problems in the future. So we are looking for something which would take us for the next 50 years in terms of computing architectures and what we would do there. In the last three years, we have gone from ideas and paper study, paper designs and things which were made out of plastic to a real working system. We have, in around Las Vegas time, we basically announced that we had the entire system working with actual applications running on it. 160 terabytes of memory, all addressable from any processing core are in 40 computing nodes around it. And the reason is it's, although we call it memory-driven computing, it's really thinking in terms of data-driven computing. The reason is that the data is now at the center of this computing architecture as opposed to the processor, and any processor can reach into any part of their data directly as if it was doing addressing and local memory. This provides us with a degree of flexibility and freedom in compute that we never had before. And as a software person, I work in software. As a software person, when we started looking at this architecture, our answer was, well, we didn't know we could do this. Now if, given now that I can do this and I assume that I can do this, all of a sudden the programmers started thinking differently, writing code differently, and we suddenly had essentially a toy to play with, if you will, as programmers where, we said, you know, this algorithm I had written off decades ago because it didn't work. But now I have enough memory that if I were to think about this algorithm today, I would do it differently. And all of a sudden a new set of algorithms, a new set of programming possibilities opened up. We worked with a number of applications ranging from just Spark on this kind of an environment to how do you do large-scale simulations, Monte Carlo simulations. And people talk about improvements in performance from something in the order, oh, I can get you a 30% improvement. We are seeing in the example applications we saw anywhere from five, 10, 15 times better to something which where we are looking at financial analysis, risk management problems, which we can do 10,000 times faster. So many orders of magnets here, but you don't have to wait for the horrible storage stack. That's correct, right? And these kinds of results gave us the hope that as we look forward, all of a sudden these new computing architectures that we are thinking through right now will take us through this data mountain data tsunami that we are all facing in terms of bringing all of the data back and essentially doing real-time work on those. Right. Matthias, maybe you could describe the work that you're doing at the University of Bonn, specifically as it relates to Alzheimer's and how this technology gives you possible hope to solve some problems. So at the University of Bonn, we work very closely with the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases and in their mission, they are facing all diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis and so on. And well, in particular, Alzheimer's is a really serious disease and for many diseases like cancer, for example, the mortality rates improved, but for Alzheimer's, there's no improvement in sight. So there's a large population that is affected by it. There is really not much that we currently can do. So the DZNE is focusing on their research efforts together with the German government in this direction. And one thing about Alzheimer's is that if you show the first symptoms, the disease has already been present for at least a decade. So if you really want to identify sources or biomarkers that point you in this direction, once you see the first symptoms, it's already too late. So at the DZNE, they have started a cohort study in the area around Bonn. They are now collecting the data from 30,000 volunteers. They are planning to follow them for 30 years. And in this process, we generate a lot of data. So of course, we do the usual surveys to learn a bit about them. We learn about their environments, but we also do very more detailed analysis. So we take blood samples and we analyze the complete genome and also we acquire imaging data from the brain. So we do an MRI at an extremely high resolution with some very advanced machines we have. And all this data is accumulating because we do not only have to do this once, but we try to do that repeatedly for every one of the participants in the study. So that we can later analyze the time series when in 10 years someone develops Alzheimer's, we can go back through the data and see maybe there's something interesting in there. Maybe there's this one biomarker that we are looking for so that we can predict the disease better in advance. And with this pile of data that we are collecting, basically we needed something new to analyze this data and to deal with this. When we heard about the machine, we thought immediately, this is a system that we will need. Let me see if I can put this in a little bit of context. So Dave lives in Massachusetts. I used to live there in your Framingham Massachusetts. I was actually born in Framingham. You were born in Framingham. And one of the more famous studies is the Framingham Heart Study, which tracked people over many years and discovered things about heart disease and the relationship between smoking and cancer and other really interesting problems. But they used a paper-based study with an interview base. So for each of those kind of people, they might have collected, you know, maybe a megabyte, maybe a megabyte a half of data. You just described a couple gigabytes of data per person, 30,000 multiple years. So we're talking about being able to find patterns in data about individuals that would number in the petabytes over a period of time. Very rich detail that's possible, but if you don't have something that can help you do it, you've just collected a bunch of data that's just sitting there. So is that basically what you're trying to do with the machine is the ability to capture all this data to then do something with it so you can generate those important inferences? Exactly, so with all these large amounts of data, we do not only compare the data sets for a single person, but once we find something interesting, we have also to compare the whole population that we've captured with each other. So there's really a lot of things we have to pass and compare. This brings together the idea that it's not just the volume of data, I also have to do analytics and cross all of that data together, right? So every time a scientist, one of the people who is doing biology studies or informatics studies asks a question and they say I have a hypothesis which this might be a reason for this particular evolution of the disease or occurrence of the disease. They then want to go through all of that data and analyze it as they are asking the question. Now if the amount of compute it takes to actually answer that question takes me three days, I have lost my train of thought. But if I can get that answer in real time, then I get into this flow where I'm asking a question, seeing the answer, making a different hypothesis, seeing a different answer, and this is what my colleagues here were looking for. But if I think about, again, going back to the Framingham Heart Study, you know, I might do a query on a couple of related questions and use a small amount of data, technology for do that spin around, but when we start looking for patterns across brain scans with time series, we're not talking about a small problem. We're talking about an enormous sum of data that can be looked at in a lot of different ways. I got one other question for you related to this, because I got to presume that there's the quid pro quo for getting people into the study is that 30,000 people, is that you'll be able to help them and provide prescriptive advice about how to improve their health as you discover more about what's going on. I got that right. So we're trying to do that, but also there are limits to this, of course. Of course. For us, it's basically collecting the data and people are really willing to donate everything they can from their health data to allow these large studies, so. To help future generations. That's what the quid pro quo, yeah. Okay, there isn't, okay. Yeah, so. But still, the knowledge is enough for them.  I mean, if it is not me, if it helps society in general, people are willing to do a lot. Yeah, of course. Oh, sure. Now, the machine is not a product yet, that's shipping, right? So how do you get access to it, or is this sort of future? So when we started talking to one another about this, we actually did not have the prototype with us. Okay. But remember that when we started down this journey for the machine three years ago, we knew back then that we would have hardware somewhere in the future. But as part of my responsibility, I had to deal with the fact that software has to be ready for this hardware. Does me no good to build hardware when there is no software to run on it. So we have actually been working at the software stack, how to think about applications on that software stack using emulation and simulation environments where we have some simulators which essentially are instruction level simulators for what the machine does or what our prototype would have done and we were running code on top of those simulators. We also had performance simulators. We say if we write the application this way, this is how much we think we would gain in terms of performance. And all of those applications on all of that code we were writing was actually on our large memory machines, Superdom X to be precise. So by the time we started talking to them, we had these emulation environments available. We had experience using these emulation environments on our Superdom X platform. So when they came to us and started working with us, we took their software that they brought to us and started working within those emulation environments to see how fast we could make those problems even within those emulation environments. So that's how we started down this track. And most of the results we have shown in the study are all measured results that we are quoting inside this forum on the Superdom X platform. So even in that emulated environment which is emulating the machine, now of course in the emulation Superdom X, for example, I can only hold 24 terabytes of data in memory. I'm saying only 24 terabytes because I'm looking at much larger systems. But an enormously large number of workloads fit very comfortably inside the 24 terabytes. And for those particular workloads, the programming techniques we are developing work at that scale, right? They won't scale beyond the 24 terabytes, but they'll certainly work at that scale. So between us, we then started looking for problems and I'll let Matthias comment on the problems that they brought to us. And then we can talk about how we actually solve those problems. So we work a lot with genomics data and usually what we do is we have a pipeline so we connect multiple tools and we thought, okay, this architecture sounds really interesting to us, but if we want to get started with this, we should pose them a challenge. So if they can convince us, we went through the literature, we took a tool that was advertised as the near optimal solution. So prior work was taking up to six days for processing. They were able to cut it to 22 minutes. And we thought, okay, this is a perfect challenge for our collaboration. And we went ahead and we took this tool, we put it on the Superdome X, it was already running instead of five minutes instead of just 22. And then we started modifying the code and in the end, we were able to shrink the time down to just 30 seconds. So that's two magnitudes faster. So we took something which was they were able to run in 22 minutes and that was already had been optimized by people in the field to say, I want this answer fast. And then when we moved it to our Superdome X platform, the platform is extremely capable. Hardware-wise, it compares really well to other platforms which are out there. That time came down to five minutes, but that was just the beginning. And then as we modified the software based on the emulation results we were seeing underneath, we brought that time down to 13 seconds, which is a hundred times faster. We started this work with them in December of last year. It takes time to set up all of this environment. So the serious coding was starting in around March. By June, we had nine X improvement, which is already a factor of 10. And since June up to now, we have gotten another factor of 10 on that application. So I'm now at a hundred X faster than what the application was able to do. Two orders of magnitude in a year. In a year. Okay, we are out of time, but where do you see this going? What is the ultimate outcome that you're hoping for? For us, we're really aiming to analyze our data in real time. Oftentimes we have biological questions that we address, we analyze our data set. And then in a discussion, a new question comes up and we have to say, sorry, we have to process the data, come back in a week. And our idea is to be able to generate these answers instantaneously from our data. And those answers will lead to what? Just better care for individuals with Alzheimer's or potentially, as you said, making Alzheimer's a memory. So the idea is to identify Alzheimer long before the first symptoms are shown because then you can start an effective treatment and you can have the biggest impact. Once the first symptoms are present, it's not getting any better. Well, thank you for your great work, gentlemen. And best of luck on behalf of society. Really appreciate you coming in theCUBE and sharing your story. You're welcome. All right, keep it right there, everybody. Peter and I will be back with our next guest right after this short break. This is theCUBE. You're watching live from Madrid, HPE Discover 2017. We'll be right back.


So why is it important to build some things that are highly damped? Well, it's not always true that you want things to oscillate. In the 1940s on a particular windy day, there was a suspension bridge at Tacoma Narrows that was really unfortunately driven rather hard by the wind. Now the wind wasn't pulsing, so it wasn't like a child being pushed on a swing, but the wind was pushing and the oscillation of the bridge wasn't sufficiently damped. What that meant was that the oscillations just kept on getting bigger and bigger as they were being pushed by the wind. You can see there's a car on that bridge and there's also a person there. And that person was trying to get to his car because his dog or indeed his daughter's dog was in that car. Eventually he had to give up and go away because that bridge did not survive that oscillation and he only just made it free himself. You can see that the bridge went down. This is a famous example of resonance. It doesn't just hold to things like bridges and whenever you're building a skyscraper, it's really important that you make it so that doesn't have one good frequency that likes to oscillate at. When you're building a skyscraper, there's a natural tendency to make every floor the same and to make them out of the same materials in the same way. And that does in fact tend to lead to very clear resonance frequencies for your skyscraper. And that's bad. So engineers have to very deliberately mix up how they build the interior structures of skyscrapers when they're going higher and higher. So how damped an oscillator is is called its quality factor. If you have a really high quality factor oscillator, then it tends to have a really low amount of damping and will oscillate really hard. Sometimes you want a really high quality factor. Sometimes when like when you're building buildings, you want a very low quality factor. And sometimes you want something in between. If I had a guitar and I made a lovely pure sound, but it wasn't damped the environment, then you'd never hear it. It wouldn't be emitting very much sound. So the fact that there's sound coming off it is how we get our actual music. And yet if it was a very low quality factor, it'd be more like plucking a bench and you wouldn't get a lovely sound. And finally, if I place my finger on this fret here, then actually this note here and this string here are basically the same frequency. And that means that the waves coming off this string, the sound waves, must be the right frequency to try and excite the second one. I'll see if I can zoom in really close there and I'll show if I pluck one string Both of them actually vibrate.