You know, I still had to run my dojo, people were looking up to me and relying on me and I would come in and I'd be like this butterfly floating and not really feeling into what are the needs of other people and not being able to fulfill them. I would be kind of giving half-ass lessons, being all happy about myself.  It's all about me feeling good about myself. Hey, travel journey men, women. So I'm sitting here, actually just recorded an episode beforehand and I thought, you know, should I record one more? And this one is one which I kept thinking about and I kept remembering this story and I kept thinking. I felt, I felt this intuitive feeling that I just need to share it, you know, that there's probably going to be something value in it. But there was also a bit of a hesitation in me there before recording it. And I thought, like, should I do it? Should I not? And I said, you know what, let's do it. So I'm going to tell you this story, which is quite a fascinating one, but it's kind of a bit of a chaotic one. Usually I like to tell stories which I kind of have well figured out in my brain and my mind and I told it many times. But this one, now that I think about it back, I probably didn't speak much about this one, maybe a couple of times. And the story is of a time that I actually meditated way too much. And I'll probably actually, now that I think of it, I'll bring up a number of stories related to it, like the times I overdid it, because that's actually kind of my character. I'm an either-all-or-nothing guy. If I do something, I do something 100%, sometimes it works to my favor, sometimes it works against my favor. There's good and bad, so actually that's already a valuable thing to look at, especially if some of you have that same thing. But anyway, so let's focus on meditation and a quick intro to my background to make sure you know that I know what I'm talking about. I started practicing meditation super early. I think I was maybe like 11, 12 years old, maybe 10 when I saw an episode, or that's a loud car. So I saw an episode of Dragon Bowl where a young sangoku was meditating, and I really liked that idea of calming down your mind, being still like the sky. There was a coat there. And actually, at that day, I also had nightmares. I also had really bad nightmares, like, like, niters, I believe, a lot. And somehow, intuitively, I had that sense and feeling that if I will meditate, that will help me overcome that. And it did, actually it did. And it just made me calmer and more composed. Even at a young age like that, 11 years old or so, I kind of felt and realized that it's useful.   And there was always this clue that, you know, meditation will lead you to become more powerful. And so I think all of that kind of drew me in to meditate. And so, long story short, I started meditating early on. And then I kept digging into meditation. And I kept meeting, like, people like Buddhist teachers and, like, at a young age, maybe like 14 or 15, I was really looking for answers. And that's priests and monks and spiritual teachers. And I kept trying to figure out, you know, how meditation works. So I'm pretty sure I will talk more about that in other episodes. And there's some of you asking me about what meditation I practice. And I'm planning to definitely talk about that.  The no voodoo meditation. But for some reason I just felt I need to tell this story before I get more technical. So this story actually takes us way forward. And for me living in a spiritual school, martial arts school for years, meditating there a lot. We would do, like, meditation retreats and sometimes meditate, like, for hours and hours. And also eventually I opened out of my own Aikido Slash, you know, martial arts, yoga school, meditation school. So I was constantly teaching people to meditate and I was meditating all the time myself. But there was a significant moment during me running my Aikido school. It was the last years, maybe a couple of years before I closed it. I closed my Aikido school after seven years of running it. So maybe five, six years into it. I think, you know, I kept repeating this, but it's the truth. I always felt inspired to inspire other people. I always wanted to make, like, a positive, powerful impact on other people's lives. And that gave, I realized early enough through exploring and going on my journey that you need to have a lot in yourself. You need to know as much as you can, be as good of a human being as you can be in order to have value in you so you can provide value to others. So you kind of need to excel at how you are in order to give to others. And at that moment I really, I did meditation already for a long time, but at that particular moment I felt like I need to push things. And I got really inspired about Advaita Vedanta. It's something I mentioned in a few episodes but never dug into. Advaita Vedanta means non-dualistic, non-duality, I think. Yeah, so basically it's non-dualistic teaching. That, to give you a quick summary of what that is, it's, in my understanding, the way I understand it, I spend a lot of time investigating and practicing it by Advaita Vedanta. It's the, you're seeking to realize you're not your body. That's kind of one of the parts, but that even goes deeper. You're going to, aiming to perceive that even this reality is kind of not real. That's what most Advaita Vedanta teachers would kind of show. And they would be kind of like Romana Maharshi, probably one of the most famous Advaita Vedanta guys. He was, he got enlightened very early. He was 14, but he was so deep in his kind of Nirvana blissful state that he was sitting at this mountain called Arunachala, like a sacred mountain in the south of India. It's still there, the whole ashram to Romana Maharshi stands there dedicated to him. But back then the ashram wasn't there and he was just sitting there meditating and he was so deep in the non-dual state that apparently this story bugs started making nests in between his thighs, inside his thighs. And they started feasting off of his thighs. They're starting eating it and biting it all the time and he didn't care. He was so deep in that non-dual state and he didn't care about his body because basically that's kind of what Advaita Vedantas are aiming for, is to realize that kind of, and I don't want to misguide you. It's not like the way I perceive it, it's not like a negative negative thing. It's not like nihilistic, I guess, although I don't know that much about nihilism, but basically you're in that state where you want to figure out that this is all just a perception and you don't exist as an individual.   All that matters, I'm just in this blissful state of oneness and nothing really exists, so I might as well just sit here and enjoy the experience, something like that. You know, I'm not being so clear about it, but that's kind of the image. That's the image kind of I developed for years of my training, simplified, hardcore simplified.  But for the rest of his life, he was like that. His body, he looks a bit like a cripple all the time because from what I understand he would barely move, you know, he would mostly just sit there and sometimes people would ask him questions, he would answer questions, but he didn't care at all about sustaining a life, getting a profession or whatever. He was always in that non-dual state. He wouldn't identify himself as an individual. I guess it would be more identification of the consciousness moving through him. And so if you look at his pictures, he's always cool, chill, kind of fits based out It's hard to say, but the pictures I think are often very beautiful. You see his eyes glittering. He looks like a cool guy actually.  And at that particular life, I always was interested in Advaita Vedanta. I always saw it as a valuable tool to gain, but I was never completely lost in it. But I can honestly remember what exactly made me dive into it like head in. It might have been the fact that I read the book about Ramakrishna, the greatest saint before Ramana Maharshi of the previous century before him, who was also, he wasn't really like a full-on Advaita Vedanta guy, although he did learn Advaita Vedanta from one of the top guys of the day of Advaita Vedanta. He kind of even surpassed him. It's a funny story about that, how it happened, but I don't know if it's going to come up in this episode or not. But he was more, he was like a mix of everything. He wasn't like, he was a devotee of Kali, but he was kind of a mixed bag. But Advaita Vedanta was familiar to him and he didn't like, he didn't, he wasn't concerned about like a regular lifestyle either. He was very much like always being in that blissful state. And I think something about that attracted me. I think I was also believing, how is that Mooji, a Western enlightened guy, who was very popular at the day, became popular. And he was all about kind of being in a blissful state too, like a light version of Advaita Vedanta. Man, I'm giving you a lot of names, but for some reason I feel like telling them. So the lineage actually was the same. So one of the top students of Ramana Maharshi was Papaji, a very well known spiritual teacher. And then Mooji was the student of Papaji. So it was a clear actually at the center of Ramana Maharshi, but he was kind of like more laid back version, more Western version of him. But still, basically Advaita Vedanta. And I was reading that to him too, and I kind of liked his teachings. And I think probably something, it's funny, I usually have a very good memory, but I can't put a point, a finger on why specifically, like what was the main cause of me really diving head in into Advaita Vedanta that period of my life. But my best guess is probably I just came to a conclusion that I need this in order to be more valuable to humanity. I was still an Aikido instructor, and I felt like my ego was getting in the way, I guess. And then if I will become a vessel to life, it's kind of one of the existing ideas of spirituality, is that you need to kind of direct you to disassociate yourself from the identity, to dissolve your ego and to just let life or universe work for you. Like, you know, leave no ego bits and pieces. And I kind of thought, okay, man, if I do this, I will be really useful to humanity. I will provide a lot of value that was always important. I mean, it still is. And as soon as I come to a conclusion that this is going to be good, I usually dive head into it. So before I start telling you how that worked out for me, drink some coffee, too, actually.  All good. So, that's what I did. Funny enough also to use an important point to mention, at that day I was still married. I'm divorced now, but I was still married to my partner. We were having bumps and bruises in our relationship, but no wonder. I mean, we got divorced, but on certain levels she was supportive of it to me, which we always appreciated. She gave me the space to explore. Sometimes, yeah, it's a long story, worth another video, but so she gave me kind of the space to explore. Or maybe, now that I look back, I think, could it be that we were actually separating already, like we were kind of on and off and living on, living separately. Could be that. I'm kind of mixing in. You know, it's actually funny, too. I think part of the reason I'm mixing this up is because that's something I'm going to talk about right now is I spend so much time being in that zero state, which I call the zero state, and it's something I will bring up later as well. A very important key concept in meditation for me in my practice. The zero state is basically a complete state of peacefulness, of rest, where you're completely disengaging from your story.  You're just in the state of this moment. And kind of because it's an important part of the story, I'll give you a bit of a glimpse of what that is so you could feel into it. So basically, if you look at this moment, your name doesn't exist in this moment without the past and the future, basically the past. You know, you were given that name and you came to a decision that this is your name. You know, initially kids are like, they're growing around and they speak about themselves in third person. And then the parents are like, no, this is you. Your name is Rokas, and then they start to refer themselves. Rokas wants to pee. And they're like, no, I am Rokas. And you know, and go through that process and then you decide, okay, I am Rokas. But you inherit that. And it's a valuable tool. I'm not saying, you know, disassociate yourself from that. But in the zero state, if you let go of the past in that moment consciously, you just leave the past be, your name pretty much doesn't exist to a degree. Your problems don't exist. And this is a very interesting question actually to ask yourself. It's a question I would sometimes bring up to my meditation students or yoga students. I'll ask you this as well. So in this moment, what could identify and tell me a problem which exists and without a relationship to past or future. So I'll repeat it again. Identify a problem which exists in your life, which is not related to the past or the future. So let you think for a moment, drink some coffee. Probably you're having a hard time finding one.  But usually all problems will be, oh no, tomorrow I will need to pay my taxes. Or even like, today I will need to pay your taxes. But today is later. You know, right now in this moment, it's an idea that you need to pay your taxes. Actually, you're not like, if you disassociate from the future, taxes don't exist. I'm not saying don't pay taxes. That's not the message. It's just kind of the perspective, your relationship to it. That if you're completely in this moment, then the past and the future don't really function. And even like if you're saying I'm cold, cold, the degree is a sensation. The problem is that you will get sick, you know, or you will feel uncomfortable later, the more colder you get. But if you're focused on just this moment, even cold is not a problem or even pain is not a problem. The pain is the problem, pain is just an sensation.  So you do something about it. But basically my message is in this moment, if you release the story, pretty much problems don't exist. Barely anything exists. But consciousness, perception still exists. You hear things, you feel things. And actually it's an interesting moment is that if you let yourself dive into that and let go of the past and the future, which I'm kind of doing myself right now, and you become connected to this moment, aware of this moment, because otherwise we're constantly in our head projecting the future, guessing what's going to happen, trying to understand what happened before. And that's kind of a burden. It always stimulates us. But if you let go of that, there's very little that stimulates you. It's just light sensations, you know, like sounds and experience. And if you let yourself go into that kind of a sense of peace and restfulness comes up, actually a sense of happiness. I will make a different episode about that, but actually that's like when I was pursuing of trying to understand what happiness is, that was my answer. Happiness is usually in being in this moment. Long story, I'll cover it later. But hopefully now you're trying to start to see what I'm talking about, and that is what I call the zero state. I usually point out two more states. I might cover them more in different episodes. But let's focus on the zero state, right? So, Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna were all about the zero state. Muji as well, to a degree. I mean, sometimes maybe they would expand out of it to be more accessible to Westerners because we're all about the second state. The state of two where we're creating and establishing and, you know, overcoming stuff, which is an important state as well. But at that day I made a mistake of disregarding the state of two, and I started to associate it as bad. And I started to feel like it's all about zero state and one state. The state of one is where you're engaging, you're acting, but your engagement is very, and very light. Let's say you're washing dishes and all your attention is in the dish washing. You know, you're kind of acting in this moment. So, I would kind of allow myself a bit of that, but I was all about the zero state. So, I would try to, like even daily, like in very regular situations, I would always try to focus my mind. Not on the story, I would kind of try to ditch the story entirely, forget my story, my personal story, and fully focus only on this moment, all the time. It was a constant effort, a constant training, a constant kind of point of focus. And I would meditate as much as I can, like every chance I would get, I would meditate. And I'm waiting, and I still do this practice a bit, subject for another video, but let's say I'm, you know, waiting for someone who's late, I don't wait. I sit there and I just either meditate in the state of one, just, you know, feeling into what's happening.  But then I would do it all the time. So, you know, I'm making food, food is cooking, I'm not waiting for food, I'm going into a state of zero. You know, I didn't watch TV, I didn't use my computer, I was in the state of zero. So I would do it all the time, I was meditating all the time, and then I made this kind of a journey for myself per se. I decided to shut myself off for a full weekend from Friday afternoon till Monday afternoon.  Mobile phone, I announced to everyone that I will not be accessible during this time. And I decided to not use any electricity at all and pretty much not use anything and just to completely be in the state of zero as much as I can and go out of it as little as I can. So just go to the bathroom, maybe read some spiritual books, and make some food when I have to. And I also even shut down clocks and watches so I wouldn't know the time. And I was always in that state, so I was really like, for a few weeks I was really heavily into it. And now the key moment of the subject, the lesson I learned, well let me first of all tell you it was a disaster. And I'll tell you why and I think it happens to all of the people who focus too much on the state of zero and who want to be too spiritual. The thing is, when you're in the state of zero, problems don't exist for you, right? Kind of like how I try to bring you into that practice of the state of zero right now. Forgetting about the past, forgetting about the future. Problems don't really exist in that moment. But it doesn't mean your problems disappear in the greater scheme of society.   You can kind of just try to swim through and be on the current, on the wave and kind of pass through in that zero state and expect everything to work itself out. And sometimes it does, but still I think eventually I came to a conclusion that it's not fair. Because when I was practicing that state, and with my now ex-wife, she would come to me and she would bring me up some problems. She's like, oh look, Brokus, you didn't do this. I'd be like, I'd be so much deep in my zero state that I was like, what's the problem? Why are you upset about this? It's like, why are you wasting your energy? And the thing is, she would get really frustrated, and to some degree it sounds cool. Now it sounds like, oh, he's so spiritual, and he doesn't have problems. It's awesome, I wish I wouldn't have problems like that. But my final conclusion is disrespectful. You cannot really conduct a good relationship like that. And a relationship for me is, whole life is a mix of conflict and peace. I think that's why you need to balance, that was my main lesson. You need to balance the state of zero and the state of one and two. That's the crucial way of, that's my main way of how I practice and proceed meditation these days. It's a balance of all things. And if you disregard the two in one, yeah, you can be that guru guy, you know, sitting there smiling and being happy for yourself.    And there are people who are addicted to drugs and then they are, you know, there's war, there's famish and famine.  There are men who are beating their wives and there are children who are being abused, let alone, you know, talk about sexually. There's a lot of injustice. And then I'm in that peaceful state and that's kind of the philosophy of Advaita Vananda.   Don't care. But then how do you tell that to a child, you know, who's being molested at the moment?  And there is a chance that, you know, there are stories like where prisoners get enlightened. You know, they realize that prison is just an idea and they forget their crime and so on and so forth. And it can kind of maybe help a person yield to a degree from past trauma in this way. But at the same time, I think it's unfair. I just personally think it's unfair. It's unfair to take your state of peacefulness, your non-existence of problems, and just throw it on others and expect others to become enlightened as well. I don't think the world is supposed to work that way. I think conflict is beautiful. I think part of life's, part of life's interest is the journey, is, you know, overcoming obstacles and overcoming challenges and solving problems. The problem is, if you're too much in the state of too, if you're always in the state of too and you're not able to turn off and you're not able to be in the state of zero sometimes, then yes, you're fucked. And most people are fucked. And sometimes I slip and each of you mind myself, broke us, you're too much in the state of too, come on man, chill a bit. Because then happiness and joy and appreciation is in the state of zero. It's really difficult to appreciate things and be happy in the state of too because the state of too is all about problems. It's all about, fuck, there's so much wrong and you can do something about this, but then, and you can be useful in it, but then you're also burning yourself out and you're not also enjoying life and you're not recharging yourself to keep on going. So it's important that you recharge. But I think people are, you know, people are too divided and people are too focused on one or the other, I was definitely. There were moments where I was too focused on the two and I burnt myself out and I wasn't so much useful anymore because I was too burnt out. And then I was for too long in the state of zero and then I would be fucked because, you know, I still had to run my dojo, people were looking up to me and relying on me and I would come in and I'd be like this butterfly floating and not really feeling into what are the needs of other people and not being able to fulfill them. I would be kind of giving half lessons, being all happy about myself.  It's all about me feeling good about myself.   And that's kind of what I realized at that moment. I think maybe my relationship problems started to kind of get to me and I started asking myself, I saw my ex-wife suffering from me being, you know, this spiritual douchebag, you know, all without problems, all enlightened and happy. And part of me was kind of starting to bug me and say to me like, dude, she's suffering, you know.   I feel free to have a different opinion, but I've been in this spiritual shit world for a long time, really devoted. And I'm not in a blissful state all the time now, especially these days when I'm starting this new journey and I really want to have great impact on the world, like positive impact. Sometimes I allow myself to stay in the state of two for longer and I do burn myself out sometimes, then I catch myself and I'm like, oh, focus, chill, you know, add some state of zero practice in your life, but at the same time I'm very happy and that happiness is different. It's not just blissful, yes, the world is amazing and everything is great, but it's a mix, it's a mix of I'm so happy, I'm so happy about facing this challenge. I'm so happy that I'm looking back at these difficult experiences and traumas in a way and kind of revisiting them and selling them and sharing them and, you know, I'm very happy when I get some comments who appreciate these stories and I feel like, okay, I am doing my purpose bit by bit. You know, sometimes I do get down and get demotivated by the challenges if they're too big at certain moments and you're not, I'm not like super happy, I'm like, it's all blissful, peace, man. But then I recover and then I stop and I appreciate and I'm like, holy crap, this is amazing. I have a wonderful girlfriend, wonderful dog, weather is beautiful, coffee is good, I have a chance to contribute to this world. You know, we have so much to be honest, you know, we have electricity, we have food, most of us do. Not everyone, but that's the point. Not everyone has everything. Not everyone has as much as we do. And if we are privileged to have it all, it doesn't mean, you know, we should forget others. If we're enlightened, it doesn't mean we should expect others to get enlightened. I think that's kind of the point of Buddha.  But let's make it more simple. Let's not, you know, talk big about enlightenment. Let's just say, you know, be happy with your own life but then accept that others are suffering and go out there and do something about it and enjoy your life once in a while but also solve problems. That's the main message. That's the goal of the journey of this channel is to inspire more people to live that way. Because I think that's an awesome way to live. I think some people will enjoy living like that.  I don't think it is. I think the balance is the point.


So, good morning. This is, I am very pleased to say, the last of 15 LawDoc of Workshops. Thank you very much. I want to thank Phil Malone and John Palfrey and Michelle Pierce who set up this Harvard LawDoc of Workshop. It's always a pleasure to work in places like this because it's just so easy. Everything gets done properly. Again, a reminder, we are videotaping today. If you are tweeting, our hashtag is log of with no period, pound LAWGOV. There's a pretty extensive tweet script that will be published of all these workshops as well as transcripts of a lot of the video. Like I said, we've done 15 of these workshops. We started January 21 at the Sanford Law School. Paul Blomio and Erica Wayne, the Law Librarians there were our hosts. Jonathan Zittrain was one of our speakers and he gave a very interesting talk about how grassroots efforts can eventually reach a tipping point and change the world. And I found that to be very inspirational because the whole idea of Law.gov, this $10 billion year industry, the way we distribute the law all over the country, how we actually change has been at first described as somewhat quixotic, but I think it's an actual really achievable goal that we can get to. And in these workshops, I've become more and more convinced that that's possible. We went after Sanford to Princeton and Yale and the New York Law School. At Columbia, I saw the Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States, Beth Novak, sitting next to the Chief Architect of Lexis and Access, talking about how to make the law more readily available. Ian Koenig, the Chief Architect has participated in several other workshops as have many of the other Lexis and Access folks, including our CEO. In Cornell, Tom Bruce, who you're going to hear from later, hosted a two-day technical workshop which went in great depth into issues of metadata and document structure and document ID, put a lot of those issues on the table. At Colorado's workshop, Paul Holm began the investigation of what are the research applications of the corpus. If this data were more broadly available, what could we do? At that workshop, we had two past presidents of the American Association of Law Libraries there. We had a Justice of their Supreme Court, their Secretary of State, the Head of their Judiciary Committee, all talking about making the law more broadly available. At Duke, we had people like Jamie Boyle and Dean Levy. Dean Levy, if you don't know who he is, was the Chief Judge of the Eastern District of California and Chair of the Rules Committee, the Standing Conference Committee on Rules of the Judicial Conference. He is now the academic representative to the Judicial Conference, the Standing Committee. We had the Archivist of the United States and Andrew McLaughlin talking there. We went on to Texas and Berkeley where we had another Secretary of State, Deborah Bowen, do a fascinating interview with Tim O'Reilly about government as platform. We had an in-depth examination of privacy, which is one of the topics we've looked at repeatedly in these workshops. Pam Samuelson, one of the leading experts on intellectual property, went in with Brian Carver in great depth on the issue of copyright and contractual restrictions on access to the law. We're going to hear a little more of that from Philip Bowen this morning. At Chicago, we had some fascinating discussions about the business of law from David Curl, who is the leading analyst for a company called Outsell and Traxxas Market. And some fascinating looks at how the market has been changing and the potential for Law.gov to increase the market opportunities for not only the established players, but for new entrants. We also heard from Professor Stout about access to justice, which you heard again from Judge Fine yesterday, which is one of the key topics. Larry Tribe, a Professor Tribe at the Department of Justice also spoke on that topic. One of the most fascinating workshops was at the U.S. House of Representatives in the Committee on House Administration hearing room video is online. We had Congresswoman Zoe Laughlin, who is the Vice Chair of the Committee on House Administration, and Congresswoman Lundgren, who is the ranking member on the committee, both speaking about Law.gov in very favorable terms. Eugene Meyer, the President of the Federalist Society, Roberta Schaefer, the Law Library of Congress, and an official representative from the AALL, all going on record as supporting the basic concept of access to legal materials. The day after that we had an equally fascinating session that was hosted by VinceSurf at Google about open source and building an ecosystem of software that anybody could use so that if any city decided they wanted to serve their bulk materials or any vendor wanted to serve the materials in a way that made sense that was interoperable with other implications. And so it was a fascinating discussion about how you build an open source ecosystem that both for-profit and non-profit vendors can build on. Brian Bellendorf was there, who is one of the authors of the Apache web server. He's a consultant to Health and Human Services, which has been doing really great work in this area. We had people talk about the European community approach to open source procurement, and another guy who's been developing the Department of Defense guidelines on open source talk about that. And then finally this week we were at the Center for American Progress where we ran through 25 speakers in one day. Everyone from Professor Tribe to John Podesta. There were four White House officials there, I'm speaking, including Pritiband Sal, who is General Counsel of the Office of Management and Budget, other than Kundra, who is the Chief Information Officer of the United States. And Paul Verkyle, who is the Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States, newly appointed. If you don't know his name, he's a fairly distinguished figure. He was the Dean of Cardo's Law. He was the Dean of the Tulane Law School and the President of William and Merritt. So he has a pretty distinguished background. So it's been an interesting process, and throughout this process one of the things that's been constant has been this national inventory of legal materials. Erica Wayne tells me there are 195 law libraries involved in helping build this national inventory out. Whether or not this becomes a complete inventory of everything in a way that's immaterial, because what we're getting is some fascinating stories like we got yesterday about what's happening in Massachusetts and where the success stories are and where the unsuccessful stories are. And that's helping build a case that this really is a problem, that there's an issue that needs to be solved. Now what we're going to do today is we're going to start with two nagging questions that we've been circling around for all 15 workshops. And these are really the hardest questions. We're going to start with John Palfrey, who is of course the Associate Dean here at Harvard, runs the Harvard Law Library. And the question I put to him is, is there a right to access the law? Is this just a tech issue?  I do the Constitution. I do issues of law. Go talk to our technical people. In fact, one dean of a law school shall remain nameless. A distinguished professor went to the dean and said, gee, we ought to do law.gov. This would be really cool. And the dean referred it to the IT manager for the law school. It has an issue. And to me, this is a really fundamental issue about access to the law. And when you see Caroline Fredrickson, who runs the American Constitution Society, and Eugene Meyer both saying this is an important issue, I begin to think that maybe that's the case. But we need to make that case. This is not a techy thing. And that's really the question I've asked John to look at. Phil Malone is then going to do a session on who owns the law. And that's the issue of copyright and contractual restrictions on access to the law. There is an interesting story that I remember when, so you remember the Magna Carta when sovereignty went from the king to the barons. During the Constitutional Convention, there was a big question about whether it was proper to take rights away from the states and give it to this new federal government. It was taking away the sovereignty of the states. And the way they resolved that issue is they finally realized that the sovereignty was not of the states. The sovereignty belonged to the people and had been delegated to the states. And the people were simply undeligating that sovereignty and giving a little bit of it to the federal government. But that's a really fundamental issue. Can a governmental employee really own this and make decisions? And is copyright the right vehicle? I mean there's other vehicles such as authenticity, there's defamation, there's misrepresenting the law as potentially a tort, right? If you say the law is this and you fool somebody. But copyright ownership is one of the fundamental issues and I think we need to get over. This afternoon, and today is mostly going to be discussion because this really is the last day of these workshops. This afternoon we're going to do a couple things. Our hope is to walk out of here with sort of a consensus on some principles. Some core, simple principles. Not the full gloss, but the core things that we might be able to hand to the deans of the law schools and say, can you endorse these? And the hope is that maybe we can get a dozen of these deans to endorse these principles. And so we're going to start with Tom Bruce. And Tom is the co-founder of the Cornell Legal Information Institute, the official purveyor of the U.S. Code for the United States. If you search in Google on any U.S. Code, that comes up first, way before the Congress comes up. Tom started Cornell LiI with Dean Peter Martin in 1992. Him and Tim Stanley and a couple others, you know, truly were the pioneers that saw the potential for this many, many years ago. And have continued to work on issues of serving legal information since then. And so we're really pleased to have him. I'll do the session after that on the non-technical principles. So Tom's going to do the technical principles and I'll do the non-technical. I want to give you a preview of what maybe that declaration of principles might look like so that you can mull it over this morning and over lunch. And we're not going to be wordsmithing. We're just trying to figure out, you know, are we missing something? And to me this principle begins with a prologue. And it says the primary legal materials are the raw material of our democracy.  Primary legal materials are the raw materials of our democracy and should be available to the broadest possible audience. Then there's a definition. By primary legal materials, we need documents of primary authority issued by governmental bodies such as court opinions, laws and regulations. That's pretty simple. Supporting documents issued and maintained by those bodies such as briefs, forms and hearing records. And as I said yesterday, that's sort of a slippery slope because you got to ask yourself, gee, so, you know, what about an attorney general opinion? Is that primary legal materials? And, you know, what about all the hearings of every municipal council? Gosh, we couldn't possibly make those available. But at the peak, at the Supreme Court, I think it's pretty clear that every brief and opinion and moral argument needs to be available. For the Congress, I think it's very clear that all congressional hearings from day one should be available as well as every law. And so that's kind of the prologue. And then there's five tech principles and five non-tech principles. And I just divided that arbitrarily and I don't think we're going to call them that. And the tech principles and Tom will go over this in detail this afternoon. Number one, primary legal material should be available for bulk access. That's kind of the fundamental premise. Number two, the documents and access methods should be authenticated. That's also a fundamental premise. Historical archives should be available. There should be a development and use of interoperability standards, by which we mean things like metadata and document IDs. And there should be vendor and media neutral citation employed. Page numbers don't make any sense in the modern world, requiring you to cite to a page number that's only available from a book that's available from a vendor and have that be the official citation just doesn't make any sense on the internet. And there is a well-developed body of literature about how to do that right. And how you do that right is pretty simply a number of the paragraphs. That's simple. The non-tech principles are a little more high in the air. But again, I took a crack at those. So principle one is that fees for dissemination of primary legal materials are inherently inequitable and should be avoided. I'm not saying they're prohibited, but I'm very skeptical about any paywall on the dissemination side. And Pacer is a very good example of that. And it's a very slippery slope. The minute you start charging and saying, well, gee, cost money doesn't make this stuff available, you run into the poll tax issue. So gee, the poll tax is only a dollar. Everybody ought to be able to afford a dollar. Well, it turns out that everybody had that dollar, and we were denying access to the polls. Now, I'm very sympathetic to the revenue needs of our governmental bodies. But if it's primary legal materials, if it's the law, the paywall on the dissemination side doesn't make as much sense. Principle two, copyright on primary legal materials is contrary to long-standing public policy. And there's a whole raft of supreme court decisions that have to do with this. I think we're on solid ground on that. Maybe not though. The final authoritative text and where possible the source coach, such as XML, should be available without restriction. Now, that's a little bit of a tanky thing. And I can see some deans going, what are you talking about? And I'll tell you what we're talking about. This might show up in the gloss. Number one, a lot of states publish slip opinions for their court decisions. And those slip opinions are tentatives and subject to correction. And by subject to correction, where it says the party is guilty, sometimes the final opinion says, whoops, that was a typo, the party is not guilty, right?  And the final opinion is only available from the vendor. And so that's one aspect. The other aspect is often governmental bodies will publish the final PEF, which is handy, and it's great. Like with the Federal Register, that's what they were doing. But they author an underlying XML. And if we had that underlying XML, we could do much better. And so that's kind of the point of that one. Principle number four is that an active program of research and development in conjunction with the university should be undertaken to meet unsolved technical challenges. For example, the development of standards of research and authentication mechanisms. For example, automated detection and redaction of personal private information. There is no decent software out there to find social security numbers and names of minor children. There is no research funding. It's something I've been trying for two years to get funded. There is a very good grad student Princeton working on this. This is a classic national science foundation, two to three year kind of research program. And we have immense benefits for our legal system. And principle number five is that access to the law should be considered a fundamental right in the United States. That's a pretty simple principle. And then the epilogue to this statement of principles is that this is important for a variety of uses that are not available today. And use number one is legal education. Our law students are not getting access to the legal materials they need to complete their education properly. I'll give you a couple examples. A lot of the briefs from the Supreme Court are hard to find.  If you're a law student, you can't access PASER in at least 63 law schools that we surveyed. And that seems kind of silly. Legal research and nonprofit research such as audits of the courts for privacy violations are not possible today. Innovation in the legal market is incredibly hard for a small startup to get into the business today because of the barriers to entry. Small business access to the law. Tom Briss talks often about how the most important laws are things like the Code of Federal Regulations and that there are dozens and dozens of provisions in the CFR having to do with dry cleaners and what they can do. And it's very hard to get that information today. And as I explained yesterday, if you wanted to build a site about, you know, juice in California, it would be very hard to put together that siting that the juice people in California and what their legal requirements are. International trade. In order to trade with America more effectively, you need to know the rules in the United States. If we don't make those rules available to other countries, it would make America more competitive if we made our legal system more transparent and easier to understand. And then finally, the two big ones are access to justice, both by lawyers and by poor people and by many others. I mean, it's a pressing issue of lawyers not having access to the materials they need. And as we've learned, you know, many people cannot afford access to our system of justice and we don't make it easy for them. And finally, democracy. And again, it's that fundamental right to be able to read the law so you have to obey. And so that's kind of the draft we've been thinking of and the hope is that we can discuss it this afternoon and see are we missing something big, right? Or is there something in there that just doesn't make sense? And then what I'll do is take that feedback and draft a one or two pager and I'll circulate it and get some edits and then we'll post it and make it available for everybody to comment on. And the hope is that there might be some consensus and if there is consensus perhaps some of these deans might be convinced to sign off. And that brings it up to a different level. When you go to the judicial conference, it's one thing for the head of a small nonprofit that of its pacer on the fly to be talking to a judge. It's totally different when the judge is talking to the dean of the law school they graduated from. So that's kind of our hope is that we can bring this up to the higher pay grades and that they can take it from there. So John Palfrey, it's for you for the next half of the morning.


Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to my channel. This is Laura's Little Library. My name is Laura, and today's video is my February bullet journal spread. I am using a new camera that I recently got, and so the shot might look a little different. I plan on using this camera mostly for my bullet journal videos. So for this month's theme, I have chosen to do a love letter type theme, so anything that has to do with letters or notes as well as like love. So a lot of hearts. This is of course inspired by Valentine's Day because it's my first February bullet journal spread that I'm doing, so I thought I'd just do something classic, something not super original just to have it done. So the title page is a massive envelope with February in the heart. I learned my lesson when doing this front page to do the color before I outline in black, and you'll see why when I cover in February, but the page is a little empty and just a little more free, and I don't mind it that way. It's got the colors that I'm going to use in the spread, but otherwise it's just kind of open and light, which is how the spread tends to go. So my first spread in here is the calendar spread. I feel like I've said spread a lot, but I enjoy having the calendar right at the very beginning so that I can just have an overall month view of any readathons that are happening, or events that I want to keep track of, reading sprints, ideas, everything like that. It's just nice to have it first and foremost. So as you can see, I actually did little blobs of color before I wrote in February as well as draw the little hearts over top. If I did the black marker or the black pen first, it would smudge onto the color, and then it just wouldn't quite look as nice. So I planned out where I'm going to put all the hearts, and then I did the color first, and that kind of gives it like a little bit of a messy vibe, which I ended up really liking. So there is color outside the heart and not completely fulfilling the heart, and it just, I don't know, it clicked with me as something a little more interesting about the spread rather than just your clean cut hearts for February. Then the next two pages that I do are a pair, and that is my TBR and my books red. So again, I'm putting down the colors for each of the envelopes where I'm going to put the heart before I actually write it in. I decided to do the very tall, skinny font for all of my headers for each page, I guess. I really like this font, and I was able to replicate it better than I thought I would. It was kind of a last minute decision just for fun rather than doing cursive the entire time, because that's pretty, but I use it a lot and it can get boring pretty quickly. So I decided to use the tall, thin font. I gave myself six envelopes to for six books that I want to read this month. Hopefully I will read more than that, but just in case. And then that way, because I am a mood reader, I can choose to read more books, not necessarily on my TBR, just for whatever mood. So it's a lot less pressure. And then my books red spread is a old-fashioned scroll looking because I wanted to kind of diversify the type of love letter, so it's not just a bunch of envelopes on every page. So it is an attempt at looking at a scroll. I'm not very artistic, but I definitely tried my best here. And then next to each line that I keep track of all the books that I have read, I do put a little heart that I do not color in, and that is to be colored in when I do post my reviews on Goodreads. And I decided that on the bottom half of the scroll, I was going to have the total amount of books that I read, just so it's easier when I'm doing my wrap ups to just kind of see a number rather than count, because what happened last time was I read more books than I had planets for my January spread, and so I wasn't able to count very well how many books I had read. But then next is my ranking spread, and that's the same as last year, or last month, and I enjoy having this spread. I feel like it kind of sits in my journal for most of the month and at the very end of the month when I fill it out. It's a lot of fun, and it is very helpful when I do wrap ups, and I'm sure it will be very helpful when I do end of year type videos. And these are modeled after the little candy hearts, so I've got little messages in the hearts like, love you, kiss me, hugs, and then the envelope at the bottom is the worst book that I read this month. Moving on, it is the books that I want to buy spread, so this is a relatively new one, but I have done it in the past two months, I believe, and this is because of my book allowance that I have been given, and so I tweaked it just a little bit from last month of the organization of things, so this isn't very strong with the love note theme, but it is much more functional than it used to be, so I have the amount I'm allowed to spend and how much I've saved the book I chose for this month or books. And then I have my brainstorm before I have the next two months to plan. Moving on are my social media spreads, so my YouTube planning and my Instagram planning, I am keeping them very similar. YouTube is only slightly different. It allows me to have spaces for all the videos for this month, and they're going to be better lined up for when in the week they happen, so I post on Wednesdays and Sundays, so you should definitely subscribe and hit the bell so that you are notified when I post. But then I decided that instead of doing two months worth of video planning, I was going to do only the first two weeks of the next month. That way I know what I'm doing in that transition period, but I'm not tempted to plan ahead or pressured to do two months of videos planning at once. Plus when I do my March spread, I don't want to just copy and paste what I had from my February spread, so that's what I've decided to do with the big space with brainstorming at the bottom. Instagram is the exact same. It is just, you know, four by three squares for ideas for each pose, trying to post three times a week, and I can brainstorm either words or image ideas, anything like that. It's pretty simple, pretty explanatory, like not much to it. And then a little area to track my growth on each. I had to flip back to my old spread just to make sure I was getting all of them correctly. But then I decided to add a Twitter spread. I'm going to try and be more active on Twitter, so I'm going to do a daily tracker to make sure that I tweet something every day because there are a lot of cool people on Twitter and a lot of book recommendations and things happening.  I also noticed as I was doing this that the hearts were not exactly even because as you can tell, I just stopped using my little ruler to keep line straight so I didn't really care too much. And it was a lot more work and effort than if I were to just do an almost straight line free-handed. But the hearts were pretty off, so I ended up just changing it a bit with the pen to make them more even, and I'll go back and erase it with pencil. And then I have TikTok. I plan to do TikTok videos every week, so I just have simple boxes with brainstorm ideas of what sound to use and what the TikTok is going to be. Again, pretty simple, not super into the theme. This next spread is completely new.  I decided to just add this in for myself. I don't have enough things that I want to keep track of or do in order to have my own personal spread, so I just thought, I'll just add it in here. I wasn't even sure I was going to keep the footage in, but there's no harm. I'm just keeping track of how many days and things that I do for self-care. I'm trying to be more aware of taking care of myself, especially on my days off or after a long day of work. I want to keep track of that so that I'm more motivated to actually take care of my mental health as well as my physical health, so that's just in there. It's a daily tracker. I think it probably is one of the nicest spreads that turned out. It just looks so much neater, and I like the colors in it a lot more, whereas all the other ones have some element of, oh, I messed this up, or this could have looked nicer, so I kept that in. But now I start with the reviews, and those are just three lined boxes for the title, the author, the star rating, and the publisher. And it got really, really dark, like the sunset when I was filming, so I just lit some more candles to try and make the lighting a little bit better, because there is not much I can do. We don't have good lighting in our apartment, and when the sun goes down at four o'clock, that's it. That's all you get, so I found more candles. And now it's time for the flip through. Overall, I think this was a fine spread, like it's not, there's a lot of white space yet, and I could definitely just add in more colored hearts or more little candy heart designs, but I mean, it looks nice, it's functional, it has a color scheme. There are definitely things that I wish I could have done differently, like chosen a lighter shade of purple rather than this dark one, but you know, it works. I'm happy enough with it. It's gonna serve its purpose, but I'm definitely going to be planning a little bit more when it comes to March. All right, thank you all so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you like down below, subscribe, hit the bell to be notified, and feel free to leave a comment if you do a bullet journal, what are some of the spreads you've done, or what is the spread you would like me to see or do, but until I see you all in the next video, I wish you happy reading!


We are very lucky to have these three amazing speakers from very different parts of the world But all of them working in a very similar sector, which is the artisan sector I'll start with a few very interesting statistics But I don't know if you know that there are more than 300 million artisans around the world and it is the largest source of employment in Latin America, Africa and Asia just after agriculture and as it's mostly made by women it's one of the clearest paths to eradicate extreme poverty across these regions and This session is very special because we have three amazing people from Different countries, but also that are tackling the same problem from three very different angles One has their own brand trying to connect with companies and create really beautiful products in Kenya One is attacking this more from like the ventures perspective and investing in Native communities and the last one is a foundation working in the Amazon and also making beautiful things So I would like to start by asking you First of all a little bit about what you do, but more importantly, why are you doing it? How were you inspired by or to start your ventures? Maybe Caroline can we start with you? Good morning, everybody. My name is Caroline Ganga. I am from Kenya I'm the founder of a business called crafts with meaning We are five year old social impact business in Kenya We just try to harness the artisanal spirit of our people mostly in rural Kenya to create bugs Home decor and lifestyle accessories which we sell in our local market and we also do a bit of export here to the United States So I came across the opportunity to be of service to the artisans while doing my Just going through my career, you know and I happened to be working for the government of Kenya in the Ministry of Tourism and As you may know around the tourism hotspots is one of the places artisans try to sell their products Most of the times the products are not standardized. They are not done so well. The designs are not more done Probably not so useful. So the way they try to do it is what we call PT selling So they'll come to you. Oh, please. Could you buy this item from me? Because I can't feed my children, you know, and they will relay that the tourists borderline harass them, you know to get the items off their hands and Observing this everywhere we went in the course of my work I just thought because the technique is the same that they would use to make better items and then sort of do better value addition and seek the market. I adopted one of the groups That I met and that's how it all started It was initially just something I did on the side as a passion project to support these women I honestly didn't even really think of it as a way. I could make money I just thought about them firsts and as we will, yeah as we move along It just sort of got a life of its own Eventually, you know, there is one group and there is another one and there is a product and there is demand from the market And you start to be seen now as a more organized structure around which artisans can work because that's one of the challenges We have corporations want to buy from artisans, but where do they find them? Where do they? Connect with them are they formally registered companies won't deal with you if you're just an individual and we've been going through the paces And our company is growing and I look forward to sharing more. Thank you Thank you so much, Caroline. A big applause for her Now Kelly, could you tell us the story of Scott and Bernchers? How did you start and why did you start? so That's a very good question. I and I Have to move back a little bit like I have to start at the very beginning of my journey I am actually an entrepreneur I Founded my own Multimedia company and magazine when I was only 20 years old and this year we celebrate 11 years of existence for that thank you and I am I'm a creative entrepreneur. I come from a very artistic creative family I'm Native American. I'm in a Kojula culta to be specific originally from South Dakota and I grew up around art, but I Just really disagreed with the You know exploitation and the lack of support for our native artists You know, I know artisans are literally living from you know paycheck to paycheck, so Just growing up and seeing this it was tough to see you know my mom Make these beautiful star quilts and only sell them for $80 $60 just so she can buy food for us so That really fed into my passion. I started my company and just even Growing my business. It was a struggle. I had zero resources zero support and zero funding but I did it anyway, I bootstrapped and invested whatever I made into my business and Last year We were working with our entrepreneurs that graduated from an accelerator program that I also host but in reaching out to the Potential funders and investors in Denver. I invited them out and It was a mess. It was very bad They sat across the table from our native indigenous creative entrepreneurs and There's just a lot of going back and forth handing off Trying to refer them to someone else there again I seen this when I was coming up with my own business and it was frustrating So then I looked at my founding partner Alice Loi and I said hey, let's start a fund and she was like, okay so random what and So that's where the I at the purpose of Skodan and why we founded Skodan ventures, so Skodan ventures is a fund where we are ten million dollars and We are looking to invest in indigenous black brown and women entrepreneurs in the creative sectors that precede so very very rare But again, I how can I continue my work and empowering our Marginalized creative entrepreneurs and artisans so that's about Skodan Thank you, Kelly and Leo, can you tell us also how you started and why did you start? I feel like indigenous people as indigenous people you have no other choice that to Support your community protect your territories go to school if that for that will become your platform to support your village and your community and and Haku Amazon Foundation came out because In the in the Amazon especially a lot of like partners and NGOs have this very paternalistic ways of Working with the people in the Amazon a lot of times indigenous people get like In reality the indigenous people get less than seven percent of the funding That is being given towards the indigenous people around the world So that is to this is really is it's very bad for the people who are working towards You know climate change issues indigenous rights issues and we don't get any of that funding directly so in in my life have been working with Human rights advocacy and I had been in the world of NGOs to support Indigenous communities in Latin America So I decided to quit my job in 2016 and Basically said like I feel like we are at a stage in which we can take things into our own hands in terms of financial support in terms of in the implementation of projects in terms of Deciding what to do with our own lives because most of the the International political agenda or the NGO agenda is not what we want in our communities And it's not what we ambition on doing and it's not our reality. Those agendas are just mainly imposed by the people controlling the money and Therefore I decided to open up my own nonprofit to work directly in issues tackling our territory on issues that We as community decide what that we want to work for so in 2016 I quit my job I moved back to my village and And decided to support like one of the the very key elements in my village was like the women every time I I Had a job or I move out. I was traveling for work. They will say please help me sell this thing You know, please help me sell this thing I was you know, I can't just do this all the time like go to a conference put aside a table and try to help them Or at the end of the day I will end up buying them myself So then I have a stock of things because like with the money that I was making I was like just buying handcrafts from my aunt and cousins in my whole village So at the end of the day I decided to create a platform in which we can include fashion and Activism, you know fashion and human rights. I think that is the key element because like What I was when I started like selling and creating the platform I wanted to include the story of our people include the story of activism and Artisan and the women and why what are we doing this like like one of the key elements of Supporting reticence that are mostly women is that once we leave our territory our territory is left for fossil fuel extraction violence Destructivism so if we are able to Create a way that the women can have a sustainable source of income I think that is a game changer not only for the community but for the protection of the territory for the protection of the water for the Protection of our biodiversity ecosystems kids culture everything and holds like in globes like women Having this alternative source of income So that's how I decided that I want to be working and have one muscle design is one of the The projects that we have with the foundation and with the foundation like we have like a range of projects We have we have created the black indigenous liberation movement We have created the the fashion line the artisan line and now we have a production company To create videos and to tell our own stories So like it diverts into different things that in globes things that we want to do and that we decide to do as A community that in globes our own reality and the way we want to move forward Wow So as you could hear we have really really amazing speakers I think we could be for a full day listening to your stories and And I think another very interesting parties that all of you Understand very well the problems from the roots not from another place and came to the region So that gives you a very unique perspective. I would love to listen to What are the main challenges you haven't seen in the communities that may not be that obvious for people not being there and After that I would love also to talk about all the opportunities that you are envisioning and all the things that are going on that You believe can make the industry keep growing thriving and creating more impact So Leo, maybe you can start with you now. Could you share what are the main? Obstacles and barriers that you have seen in the community and how have you been able to overcome them? Yeah, I think one of the main Obstacles is like the the social capital that we as indigenous people do not have access to to open doors to open Financial advisors to open to funds to open to anything that has to be with money I think that is the biggest challenge. So for me that had had to grow into that I have like, you know, like 10 years have to pass before people start opening doors, you know And my career and the philanthropy world in the any kind of work that I did so once I had that in into Philanthropy or the financial space that was when I decided to open My own doors that to create I think like that that is the biggest the biggest challenge is finance the bill the biggest challenge is like access to finance and The other and one of the opportunities I think is There is a market. There is a market for stories. There is a market for our story. There is a market for people that want to consume things that do not damage the the planet because You know, you have like this old, you know green green fashion green green things But if you can say, okay You you can buy this green product But also if you can support this community in the way that you are supporting other products that are not necessarily indigenous I think that is that is something that is happening currently I think that that is the opportunity that I I think we're trying to have an in in that stake of the cake because Yeah, we hadn't had that chance in so many years. It was really really hard like for us We were just we just presented a fashion week, you know and last February and and it was it was really hard to have an Invitation to come to fashion week to even attend fashion week and no other than present at fashion week and that was February this year and then In September this year We're gonna ask another fashion show in Jacob and one of the indigenous designers of in the US had had its own show And it was amazing So I think like there are doors that are opening and now do you see like indigenous people are named team Other magazines and I think there is an opening and there's like a different kind of awakening of consumers of people and Which is need to know how to handle that because we also we don't want to be used, you know for promotion We want to be seen But we don't want to be used and that is a fine line that we have to be very careful with Amazing you. Thank you so much Kelly on your end. Could you tell us which obstacles have you seen on your part of the world and how have you been able to? overcome them The first thing that comes to mind is Because we are here in America People tend to assume that we have it just as good as other Americans and we don't a lot of reservations are Compared to third world conditions. There are reservations that don't have clean water running water electricity Transportation is sometimes shot usually it's just a gravel road and That you need like a Truck to drive on because the roads are that bad the infrastructures I What else lack of Service so like just even Wi-Fi Come on, you know, and a lot of people just don't understand that or haven't I guess you know learned that but so in my work with my my company native max magazine I Have featured native artists Since the 11 years that we've been in business. So I know what it's like or I I've seen you know the These artisans these artists struggle in North Dakota like the nearest To even ship out products say an artist wants to ship out some product out of their office or their home they have to travel like two hours to the nearest post office and On a lot of reservation on almost all reservations to you don't have a home address to get Packages and mail shipped you have to go to the post office and check your p.o. Box or your your post office box So that's another challenge in itself as well you can't just call you know UPS and hey, can you pick up my packages because I have to deliver them to my customers? Again, that's here in America That's the infrastructure that we are dealing with that we have to just you know, but we adapt native people indigenous people work We're adaptable. So whatever but so that's one of the challenges just automatically off the top of my head and I think the solutions are oh And another challenge as well as the exploitation that we touched on The tourism industry is well known for exploiting native people here in the US Yeah Loads of challenges again, I could we could go on and about this all day I have a whole list and obviously as a native person from here We're typically excluded from a lot of these conversations, you know, especially around problem-solving It's like, you know, hey, we want to talk about this and this but we're just gonna leave the other ones out You know and it's frustrating because we are indigenous to this land We I feel like and I believe that we should have some of the first say in a lot of these problem-solving conversations, but Yeah, so but with my work with Skodan, hopefully, you know, I can help Help start these conversations because it can't be just me either or can't be just native people either trying to figure out these solutions. So Yeah, those are some of the obstacles that I see Thank you, Kili and you Caroline Okay, I resonate with most of what you say just maybe in different form and it just shows that the bottom line is the same Exploitation and all that but what comes to mind that I'd like to speak about is The statistics that you just mentioned show the potential of this sector to get people out of extreme poverty But it is not seen as such important work. It is not seen as For instance, I'm educated. I have an MBA So when I say that I want to quit my job to start working with artisans, everyone thinks I'm crazy You know, they're like, oh, I mean you don't have any other work you can do and it is the general notion that is spread around The kind of work we do most of the times it's seen as a last result for people who do not have any opportunities So when people see that you have opportunities, but you've taken this work they're not very sure why you have done that and I think that limits the number of people that get into this very important work That would cause a ripple effect in the villages and so on and we start to concentrate on things that don't have immediate impact in the circumstances under which we live in our various places. So I always find that as a Big problem and I mean how I have dealt with it is just going for it and talking about it You know and when people see Sometimes they'll ask you also does your work really pay the bills, you know For those who know me they're like all these people shouldn't be asking these questions It pays the bills and pays for many others and many more people maybe should come up and do it Because also if this work is done by people without exposure, then there is an automatic limit to how far they can go with that I mean, it's not easy to come all 20 hours from Nairobi to attempt to sell things here to interact with people here To try and go into the retail space here Even locally in Kenya just getting into the retail space is not just something you wake up and do there is a bit of you know You have to put together a team and that's not just something that can be done by Other people it has to be done by people who have the experience who have the education to go with it Who have the exposure the connections to go with it? So I hope by the work that we are doing that more people will be encouraged and we'll see it as really a fruitful career that Both supports the artisans and their livelihoods and their homes, but also contributes to Giving the world better products more carbon-neutral products as compared to all the ones that we are competing with Thank you so much Caroline I think there were a few things said that I really really love for example the concept of being seen and not being used is very powerful and also the fact that the artist and industry Could be a big part of the solution to the climate crisis as well. So I would love to ask you Two questions one is how can we make indigenous people be seen and not used? What are the tools that you envision for this and to how can the industry? Be better at communicating that working with artisans is at the same time a Very good way to have more sustainable production. So Caroline would you like to start? I think as Leo said one of the most important ways is to create our own stories our own narratives and not wait for people to come Look at the people we are working with Try to create stories that fit into their narrative. I mean these are people living in their homes Generally successful in their own right and we should see them as that and see them as people of dignity And we must communicate that story our way It may be slow how the uptake of that story But if there is a critical mass of people who consistently share that as a story and Having even this conversation specifically in this conference about artisans is one of the ways I see as important I mean we've had Sessions on all the other Hype Topics so to speak the topics that everyone has in their mouth are everywhere But just to have one that speaks about this Usually ignored sector is important. So I see and probably that's how I am trying to do it just tell the stories profile the artisans with work with as people of Dignity people who have their homes who live in their homes who have a talent that the world needs and not as very needy people who the world must really pity and you know help just Profile the industry as part of all other important value chains. Yeah Okay, can you repeat the question real quick so I so How can we ensure that indigenous people are seen and not used? Inclusion Being prioritized There's again, just so many conversations that indigenous people are left out of especially when it comes to solving these problems and What I've noticed with you know Skodan We Have our we had to develop our own impact model Because you know there are tens if not hundreds of different impact models out there, especially for venture capital, but I Didn't see one that fit in from the indigenous perspective and said it was switched around It's like we're doing all the harm, but how can you help us fix the harm? We are inflicting on you I am not about that. I am like nope. I don't want to be gas lit. So I Sat down with Dr. Lee Francis. He's Laguna Pueblo. He's one of our advisors in the fund And I asked him to help me develop an impact model a Proprietary impact model and we'll measure our own impact within our portfolio companies and Also it promotes data sovereignty. We keep the data. We're not gonna You know, it's not going anywhere. So it's gonna be ours and we came up with this system to be able to measure the impact and it's really based on indigenous values and I Don't know how many people have approached me and like hey You know native people indigenous people have kept up the earth for so long and you know now We need your knowledge so Keep it up more into the future like how can we how can you help us again? So then it's like again like coming back around of like, you know exploiting like our knowledge to fix the problem you started and it's it makes me laugh every time but I see that now is all of the I don't know different people and Whatever Are looking to indigenous perspectives to help solve these problems But Yeah, I would say you made a problem you fix it Like a lot of times they're like in terms of climate change. Yes. Yeah, we have been resilient. We are the forefront of the fight We're doing we have community Law called perspectives and projects, you know in terms like tackling climate change We're doing it if like if you don't protect the protectors of the forest There's no way you can tackle climate change that is basically because we need We we need to defend the defenders and that when people talk about climate change They talk about the forest the co-systems the species, but they don't talk about the people in the community is thriving And the community is thriving we need thriving communities for thriving forest and That is one of the key elements that we do and in terms of The fashion line, I think like one of the key elements for climate like we were just talking right before the session The fashion industry contributes like 10% of the global carbon food print emissions of the of all of it so And we went and it's one of the most lethal industries for the planet and how are we going to change that narrative? How are we going to change that? Consumerism because at the same time we are selling things yet. We want to protect the planet. So how that? goes with our bottom line and for me in order to do because we were selling jewelry with haku amazon design and The way that we think undo it was like what is our next step? How can we improve or going to ready to wear and one of the key elements to go into the next step was We need to be a conscious line. We need to do We to make things that will not harm the planet. How are we going to make that? How are we going to talk about upcycling? resourcing and reducing the impact and I think that has to be at the bottom at the bottom line and what on the other two key elements I think when we first started we started with creating like the Like the jewelry line with the community and I remember in the second year One of the one person one one person wanted to invest and was like I will buy you out I'll give you three hundred thousand dollars.  We need to support the artisans We need to support the women we cannot leave them stranded and that was like we need to understand How to grow how to move forward how to escalate if we want to escalate But the most important thing is how to protect the people that we work with Because the people that we work with they're not just numbers that our families are causing our aunts and The people that we live with so I think that is like One of the key elements that we have to think in order to move forward with business because business and indigenous people how We are going to intertwine in the elements of Moving forward, you know, we have to be a business savvy, but at the same time protecting our forest defend the people who are defending the forest a creating alternative sources of income Stop mining companies that's a lot to do with and then throw like business You know and money and interest and I think like we have to establish those like core boundaries that core Values in our companies so then we can move forward into whatever what industry that we want to do in terms of like narrative, too Like we are like how how can we be seen and not be used in the fashion industry? That that's really really hard because people want to see like in the stories that we put people want to say I remember the first time I was featured in a In a national Magazine in Ecuador, they basically wanted to say that oh, I just came from the jungle Straight to the city and it was just it You know, that's the perception that they have of an Indian of an indigenous person And my mom was so pissed because she wanted to to show her coworkers that I was it was like this is not you I was like what have you? What what have you said? I'm like, you know, like we invested in you and like your education like all of this things But like the narrative that people want is that you cannot thrive as an indigenous person This is just like something of luck, you know that you didn't have all of this as steps before you Accomplish certain things so like I think that that is changing and that is that is upon us as well to keep our boundaries and Do not let other people wear feathers, you know, like I want to shoot for this thing Can you wear a feather?   What is the the the the things that we don't want to portray as indigenous people and How to be truthful to the way we are to the way our people are and not trying to Create that narrative that they want to hear it's more of like how we want to be seen in the way That is more true and natural for ourselves Amazing Look, could you repeat the phrase about protecting the people who protect the forest so we can all use it No, I usually say like how can we protect the planet? We don't protect the people who are protecting the forest You know forest try the thriving people thriving So that is like one of the key elements because when we talk about forests and and ecosystems and climate change I was like, how do you want to protect all of that? You don't protect the people who are protecting the forest? love it So my last question before we let the audience also make some questions would be I Think it's very clear that you are amazing in a lot of different fronts. You are smart You are driven you can communicate very well How can we have ten times more? Caroline's Kelly's and Leo's in the world Do you want to start Kelly? Where's the clone cloney machine Again, it's it's helping Create opportunities and accessibility to these systems I come from the res where I think just Financially we're considered poor, but we're rich in culture. We're rich in knowledge So my mom would always tell me we're not poor. They think we're poor, but we're not poor But I really just looked around me and I I just knew in my heart we deserved better We deserve better, you know, we hear the stories of our people and the resiliency is there And I'm just like, you know what I refuse to just Keep living this way and you know, I really want to change. I want to see change I want to have change within my life and I really have my mom to think for that and I Really had to learn Every everything that I know now it was either through mentors or I had to learn myself Again being an indigenous person We don't have access to again a lot of resources That promotes upward mobility we don't have that Society assumes these different things about us.  You're able to adapt your but again, and that was all survival mode. That's survival mode Because we needed to survive we will look at something You know, it'll take us a minute But we will learn it real quick and I have my family to think for that as well because again I come from a family of artisans Which you know, it's Another thought that I had too was on My reservation, I think it's the poorest County and the country is Zibach County and But yet we Have artisans that create beautiful work like this like this is dentalium shells This is a ribbon skirt, this is native designer made, you know, so we are very creative people right we have great style and I love that about our people So again, and there's not just me I'm not, you know Crazy story that just you know a once in a One in a million like Amazing person or whatever whatever I hear when I share my story. It's like wow How did you come out of where you came from the rubble or whatever like all of these different things and I'm like there's Many of us out there. We are very creative. We are very smart. We just need that the access, you know to the again resources funding Capital Technical assistance the market, you know, it's it's everything so Yeah, I wish I could clone myself because there's so much work that needs to be done and as a native woman I tend to take it on native women tend to take on the community's work and Society put us there Unfortunately, but I mean I'm again. I don't care how much work it's gonna take, you know I I have a responsibility to my community and not only my community but seven generations from now, you know, so Yeah Thanks Two things come to mind when I think about maybe what we need to do The first one is that we need to work really hard. We have no choice This is the path we have taken We have to align ourselves to the conversations that are happening around the world We have to bring our work to the front not just stay in the shadows not stay in the villages where we are working come to the stage of Worldwide conversations and that will highlight the work that we are doing Secondly, we need to offer ourselves as mentors that we never had, you know Now that we know that that's part of the problem that you had to try and figure it all out on your own So what would have probably taken you two years to Q4? offer that to other people and Show this as valuable work that is part of how we change the world And then maybe we will attract more people to come and do the work that we are doing I think one of the key elements that we have to change is to change the all the systems of oppression where there be like universities Access to funding all of this. I think we need to Help change that narrative. We need to change all of those systems that have Not supported indigenous people thriving or artisan Artisanal people thriving think that is one of the key elements. The second thing that we have to understand is that We are not here forever and that we have to change that like get the younger generation Take the leadership take the leadership position like train the people like what we're doing in Haku is that we started seven years ago and one of the One of like one of the the women in the community now went through college And now she's like an international spaces. Now. She's taking care of like the Data space, you know, so we we have to let people come in and we start other things You know with always supporting that and I think that one that is one of the key elements and for for myself You know when I was growing up and I started like going to the UN and talking about climate change There would like I only seen like other indigenous person from the Amazon at the same spaces and like I felt alone and for me It was I was the most happy when I see now the new generations Occupying the different spaces and I think that is something that would help that we need to help thrive for the future and Let things go, you know, let things go and start and support with the new and and that is good and Retry back out to our homes back in the village and stay there and like happy, but Yeah, I think that's how can you do it and support training support other people. That's what we're trying to do Amazing. Thanks, Leo. How much time do we have? Right, so I think we have time for a couple of questions Anybody who wants to ask one, please Can you share with us what some of those are? so we just looked at what made a group of people society a tribe whatever how Did they live successfully a long time ago pre colonization and it was community and all of these Different elements so what we did was we turned them into pillars of impact so it's cultural cultural human natural and social pillars of a Successful group of people and then now we have to throw in financial because no choice so those are impact pillars and when we look at a company or a Yeah, when we look at a company of those impact pillars We also look at the impact capital of those pillars. What do they contribute to? either their Themself their business the Community around them or the ecosystem that they're in what do they contribute to each of those layers? so essentially it's a theory of change cyclical model and I hated that somebody called it that but Again that comes from indigenous knowledge. We've always known that so to describe it and for someone to say Oh, it's like this or that that's how it works. No, it comes from indigenous knowledge We believe that everything is a cycle In a cause and effect you do something today what you do today will live into the future It might not seem like it and you know again, but this is already knowledge that we have You know, so we just incorporated it into our impact model and we have a metrics and modifiers as well That really helped us with the output Which is really cool. Again. I'm not an academic or anything I honestly got to where I am at without a degree. My highest education is a high school diploma so it's but I was able to communicate this to dr. Lee and he Spit out this like cool thing and I'm like Yes, you got me you know because that's really the impact that I want to make with Skodan. It's With our impact model. It's revolutionary. I haven't seen an impact model such as ours. It's indigenous made Incorporates indigenous knowledge because again people are looking to us for solutions and Yeah, so that's a little bit about the model little a lot of it But yeah, I'm really proud of our model Other questions And then we're having to go For us it's been more of Two ways so there's a referral model So people who know what we are doing tell others who need our kind of work and we get to know about them from that perspective But also we have really been out there Communicating on social media and letting everybody know that this is a kind of work We're doing if you know any great people who can benefit from the support Then you should let them know this is a way to to let them know that we are here So I suppose there's really no other way other than making sure that everybody first of all knows what you're doing a Lot of times they will find a way of plugging in sending out the message They are using the network you already have to achieve the referral model and also just communicating in all the platforms The people who need it will most of the time reach out to us at times more than we can actually be able to incorporate But which is a good thing because it creates a pipeline and every time our capacity increases then we can bring more people on board Yeah I'm gonna be very honest with you we're We don't have that problem with Skodan or my company We are closely plugged into the community what we're trying to Do it continue to do and we're Finding new ways but creating transparency with all of the systems that we're in because obviously marginalized communities, right? aren't included Again in a lot of conversations. So There's a lot of mistrust there disconnection there. So, you know within our community. There's curiosity like hey And and then that's also a reflection of my work because again, I've been doing this for 11 years So already people are like hey, what is this? I read about this So then when I tell them I have to also explain that you know It's just really funny that a native indigenous person is inside the finite this venture capital world. It's completely bizarre It's so like yeah, so I have to explain, you know What we're doing and what we're about again with the transparency part Is my suggestion as well on top of what you suggested? Hi I Don't know like one of the this when we first started We found a fund and we did like a lot of workshops for many communities and then we Found out that we didn't have the market So that was very detrimental to the work that we did and it was like one of the challenges But the one of the thing is was that the people were forgetting how to make those hand crops so that was beautiful because we're able to train a lot of people and Then they were able to sell in their own communities without us necessarily buying from them And now we have reduced the amount of people or communities that we work with and now for example, we'd say oh, we'll do the the Will do the embroidery with you will do the earrings with you and then that's how we separate we are currently not expanding Because we're trying to focus in the communities that we already work with And that is that is sad because we will love to work with as many communities that we have but also we I think we have We owe them, you know, we owe our community. Oh my village I owe like the people that already work with that process, you know of growth And once we have that established, I think we can go into other communities Yeah Reciprocity with our communities. Yes, and and I think that's the the key element of you like of indigenous people in general like a black brown communities that Once somebody has done something you have to give back to your community. You have to give back to the earth and That's basically that's the model I think we have one more question Maybe you can ask both and we can try to be very quick I Think the work we are doing Fundamentally comes from that place that the items these communities make they don't have any value for them They do it for survival and we know that these are actually items that can be sold in a real marketplace And that people can value so we start from there We create for them a marketplace because there is on there They go out on the roads trying to sell is from a very basic domestic need for money to buy other items So if our businesses our social impact businesses can create a market for them Then I think we will sort of be on the way to solving that problem The other thing that I see from my own experience is that a community in a certain area will always make the same thing the same exact thing So the first one the second one who comes to talk to you they are selling exactly the same thing So can we support them in the design work in creating using the same? Inherent talent for instance if it's weaving you can all make bugs or some of you can make mats Some of you can make wall decoration Some of you can make red ones others can make pink ones Not just one thing which you're now trying to compete at the bottom of the price range So I see those as the two ways in which we can support them Can we put them in decent market places where they are trading from that point? And then can we support them to use the inherent talent that they have to create a variety of products? Of course amongst other ways, but I see those are the two that come to mind right now


Often when we step outside the walls of our churches and look for God in our daily lives, in our daily routines, in our day in and day out meeting places, we see God's work. It is in those sometimes brief moments encounters with strangers that we see and feel God's love. He takes us by the hand and walks with us to those sometimes uncomfortable encounters and says, I love you and you are mine, all of you.