Wait, the microphone, could you say your name and your organisation? Hello, nice to meet you. I'm from Hong Kong TV News Channel. I'm Cecilia Kwok, Kwok Wingsi. Nice to meet you on Sanshu TV. Actually, you have been fighting for democracy and freedom of people for many years. What are your advice to Hong Kong people for those who are striving for democracy in Hong Kong? And secondly, do you think that Hong Kong people are losing their freedom and democracy under the one-country-two-system policy? Thank you. I think if people really want freedom and democracy, they get it. I've always believed that people always get what they really want. The mind, when they find it, it might not be quite what they expected. But we have to believe in what we are doing if we are to succeed. So the first requirement is that the people of Hong Kong should know what they really want and believe in it. If they believe in it, they will get it. It's very simple, but of course that means a lot of hard work. Hello, I'm Amrita Chiba, Deutsche Welle Television from Germany. Great to see you looking so well after one year's coming out of your isolation. My question is, you said that you want to stand for president in the next elections, but the Constitution needs to be amended. What steps are required to amend the Constitution? How hopeful are you that it will be done? Well, I'm told that this is the most difficult Constitution in the world to amend. First of all, it has to be any... It's not all the points in the Constitution, but the major ones. If you want to change them, more than 75% of the members of both legislatures have to vote for it. And that's not the end of the story and then it has to be put to a referendum and it has to be approved by more than 50% of those who are eligible to vote. So that's a very difficult process. Don't forget that 25% of the members of both legislatures are military appointees, unelected military appointees. So in order to get more than 75%, first of all, all the civilian seats will have to be filled and all the civilian representatives would have to agree that they want to amend the Constitution. And then, as I keep saying, at least one brave soldier must say, I will side with the civilian representatives. So it's very, very difficult, but it's not impossible. And I think it was in an RAF outfit somewhere I heard that during the Second World War they had a motto, which was, we do the impossible every day, miracles take a little longer. The question is right there first. Joe Dain from Voice of America, Burmese Service, Ndidi Mawa. Thank you very much. Last year in Bangkok, 2012, World Economic Forum, you talked about youth unemployment in Burma. You said that it was like a time bomb. And your main message was, I believe, to the foreign investors coming to Burma was to create jobs. What is your main message to the foreign investors this year in this place? Thank you. It's the same thing because this issue has not been addressed adequately. Everywhere I go in this country, there are six requirements that people keep repeating to me. It's amazing how it's the same everywhere. I get the same message everywhere. When I go to the villages, whether it's in the south of Burma or north-south-east-west, I always try to ask them. I try to speak to as many of the people in the towns and villages as possible and I ask them what they need most. And always the answer is, first of all, jobs. They won't work. They don't want handouts. They want the dignity of being able to work for their own living, to earn their own living. Number one is jobs. Number two, water. Number three, roads. Number four, electricity. Number five, education. Number six, health. This is repeated everywhere, everywhere. And so jobs are a priority and especially jobs for our youth. In my constituency, 75% of our graduates are unemployed. And I have been told by independent surveyors that this is very much the national average for youth unemployment. About 70% of our youth are unemployed. And as I keep saying, it's not joblessness that is so worrying as much as hopelessness. When they get to a point where they lose hope in the future, then these young unemployed people will be a social problem for us. Daw Martin, sunk from CNBC over here.  And that is right now there seems to be almost like a gold rush. A lot of foreign companies want to come in, win contracts, wind tenders, do business, do trade, etc. Which is good in a way. Myanmar needs the money. But what parts of this frenzy were you? Actually, there isn't that much investment coming in. I think it's more investigations than investment. People are coming here to investigate the possibility of investing here. But yes, it is a frenzy and frenzy is never attractive. I keep saying cautious optimism and something that I'm a wet blanket because I talk about cautious optimism. But I think that's just practical. And I think those who come here and look, they're always the same problems. First of all, they worry about rule of law. And that's one of my main concerns, not just because I'm the chair of the rule of law and Tranquility Committee. Because I believe that without rule of law, we can't get anywhere. We can't get economic development either because that's what the serious businesses are looking for, rule of law. How safe are the investments going to be? That's one thing. And the other is infrastructure, which goes back to what our villagers tell us, roads, electricity. So this is why investments are not pouring in, just investigations are pouring in. And let's stop the frenzy a bit. We're going to go to the back there first. Hello, this is Adit from the Associated Press. If we weren't content with your answer before this morning, so I need to ask you again. If you succeed in amending the constitution and if you become the president of Myanmar, what will you do for the ethnic minorities and with the special regard to the Rohingya people and the Muslim, the people who believe in Islam in this country? Thank you. First of all, as I said, I believe in rule of law. And everybody in this country should be entitled to the protection of the law. Everybody, all ethnic groups, all religious groups. But with regard to the ethnic nationalities, that is to say those who are now in the states, we'll have to go for a federal system. This has always been the policy of our party that we need federalism to keep our union intact. For decades, actually, the propaganda of the authoritarian government had been that federalism equals right to secession. And we've always had to explain that federalism does not mean secession, that in fact federalism is a way of preventing secession because it's a way of removing the grievances that lead people to call for secession. We are very weak in negotiated compromise in this country. It's partly to do with our culture and partly to do with the fact that we have lived under authoritarian rule for so long that negotiation is practically unknown. And if you're not used to negotiation, then you don't get to a negotiated compromise. And we have to go in for that. We have to find the answers to our problems together. And what I would like to ask the world to do is to help us to find the solutions to our own problems in our own way, always upholding international standards of human rights. Dossou, you paint quite a bleak picture when you go into the percentages of unemployed youth and this and that and the terrible lack of electricity and roads. You also recently said, I think in Yangon, some quite negative things about the pace of reform under this government and said that the reforms hadn't made as big an impact as they could. Do you feel the government hasn't lived up to promises and could do more or do you feel that? It could do more. What I've said is that I think we've concentrated enough on good intentions. Now what we want to look at are results and the results are not as fantastic as you might expect them to be because don't forget that we're into the third year of the so-called reform process and I keep repeating this, three years is not a short period. I think you can't keep saying, well, you know, it's not been long yet, it's not been long yet. I mean, how long is long? And three years is a long time for somebody who can't get three square meals a day. And so we want results now and the lives of the ordinary people which have not changed. If you ask the average citizen in this country what has changed, they will talk about the fact that there's greater freedom of the media because there is a proliferation of news magazines and journals and then there are those who will say that there are more cars in the streets of Rangoon than ever before but these are not accessible to the great majority of our people who constitute about 60% to 70%. So we want change in the lives of those people, those who live in the rural area and also of course in the lives of our urban poor. So this is what I mean by saying that reform has not brought the kind of changes that our people want and how long will they go on waiting for it? We don't want them to lose faith in the reform process. My name is Christiana with the German Press Agency. My question goes in the same direction. What concretely would you say should the government do or have done to get those changes to the rural people or to put it in another way what would you do as president now to make sure that these people see the benefits of economic opening? Well let me tell you just what I've been doing simply as an MP in my constituency. Now as I said earlier jobs, water, roads, electricity, education, health that's what they always talk about and the most difficult thing of all is the first one jobs. Job creation, this is why when I talk to business people I always try to encourage them to engage in the kind of investment that will create jobs. As you all know the extractive industries do not create too many jobs, they are not strong on jobs but Burma is strong on extractive industries so we have this problem to deal with. I can't create as many jobs as I want in my constituency so I go for what I can do. The first thing I went for was water because that was the easiest and yet this was a great need and as soon as I became I was elected I started arranging for wells to be dug. It's as simple as all that and yet Burma is supposed to be the country in Southeast Asia with the greatest water resources and we don't have enough water and then I went about roads because this is again a possibility. So what I would like the government to do is first of all to target the greatest needs of our people, our country and then see what can be done first and then go about it. I've often made the complaint that there's no structure to the reform process. We are not aware of a government policy with regard to the reform process, how they're going to go about it, what their priorities are and what the sequencing is going to be. So that is what I would like to see, priorities, sequencing, targeting the most urgent needs of the country. A question from the Straits Times of Singapore. This morning you spoke about the presidency and your interest in it and just now you said it takes one brave soldier to help turn the tide. Oh I think we'd actually like more than one. Actually 300,000 wouldn't be bad. Have you got any indication from the military? There was a former Navy chief referring to you as elder sister at that event. Well don't forget he's a retired. Never mind. Have you got any indication from the military that they may not be averse to having you as president? No, I've had no direct indication of any kind like that from the military. But I do believe that members of the military are as keen as civilians to promote development and growth in our country. Because they know our country is poor. And don't forget that the majority of our soldiers are not wealthy either. Just to go back to your points about... Oh sorry, my name is Simon Ruckney and I file for the Irawadi and a couple of others. To go back to your point about job creation and similar needs. What legislation is being planned and is being debated in Parliament these days with that regard? I know there's a minimum wage law. Is there anything else? And what's the timeline for those? Well of course it was the FTI and we do expect foreign investment to create jobs. And they're now working on a law to promote the interests of farmers and peasants. And this is to create a rural work. And I suppose you do know already about the minimum wage law. We are trying to investigate the possibilities of what we can do as a legislature. But it's not just about laws. It's also about making sure that these laws are observed and implemented. Which goes back to rule of law. And what I personally want to do in the legislature is to make sure that the judiciary becomes independent and clean. Thank you. I am from Skynet. And please write. That's me. You're right. You're right. Right on our right. Yes. Thank you. We all know that you are very emphasizing you also the poverty reduction. The question is that we would like to know your ideas of the poverty reduction or Myanmar. Thank you. Reducing poverty in Myanmar means. Reducing the poverty of the people in our rural areas. Because as I think I'm sure the statistic has been drummed into your head every half an hour since yesterday. Nearly 75 70% of our population live in the rural area. So Burma is basically an agriculture country. And because of that, if we want to reduce poverty, we have to look to our rural population. So it's our agricultural policy. And that starts with land. I think you must have heard about the issue of landlessness in this country and the problem of illegal transfers of land. So this is a legal issue. And there's a committee in the legislature which is looking into the problem of the illegal transfer of land and what we can do to have it transferred back to the rightful owners. This is a very, very complicated business because keeping official papers is also not part of our tradition. So it is very difficult sometimes to establish ownership apart from the fact that we have to sort out how the land was illegally transferred and what it can be done to transfer it back to the original owners. Quite often we have a problem identifying who the original owners are. So I think we have to start with things like land laws, but again, it's not just the laws. It's the implementation of the laws that we have to be concerned about. And if we cannot bring our agriculture population out of poverty, we are going to remain a poor country because it means that 70% of our people will remain poor.  Hi, Dossu. Thomas Fuller from The New York Times. You've said many times that you do not want to take sides in the Rakhine conflict, but the ledger of casualties and deaths has been overwhelmingly on the Muslim side. It's a one-sided ledger, really. I don't say this critically. I'm hoping to get an insight into your political calculation, your political situation now. Do you feel like you're in a straight jacket politically? I mean, you're someone who's always spoken out for the downtrodden, for the victims. And here we've seen you be reserved.  No, I don't feel a hostage to the political circumstances of the day. What I am afraid of is aggravating the situation. I do not want to aggravate the situation by saying that one community is wrong or the other community is wrong. And what it does is to aggravate the more extremist elements in these communities. If they feel that they are being targeted, if they feel that they do not enjoy the sympathy of politicians or influential groups, then it makes them more extremist. That is what I'm afraid of, that instead of helping the situation, we will aggravate it further. So what I want to target, I want to target actions rather than communities, which means accountability. Again, that goes back to rule of law. The government must make sure that those who have committed crimes are punished in accordance with the law. There must be accountability. But I do not want fingers pointed at particular communities because it always aggravates the other side. And this seems to start a vicious cycle of people getting more and more aggressive and more and more extremist. That's what I'm afraid of. Hello, my name is Bill Hayton. I'm training journalists at MRTV at the moment. This evening I hope that state television might broadcast you talking about politics for the first time ever. But at the moment they're going to take a sound bite of you speaking in English with a Burmese voiceover. They're a bit shy to ask the question themselves. Could you say the same thing again in Burmese, explaining that you wish to stand for the presidency and the obstacles that stand in your path but in Burmese? I'm getting a little bit tired of this presidency business. And I think the reason why people are so interested is that given to me by the BBC interviewer who said that he'd never come across any politician who admitted to wanting office. And that whenever she asked him, do you want to become the president of the Prime Minister? The answer usually was something like, as well, if the people really want me to, and so on and so on. So I said to her, and do you believe them when they say this? And she said, no, I don't believe them. So I said I might as well be honest and say, yes, I do aspire to the presidency as I should as a leader of a political party that is going to take part in the electoral process. The whole thing? All right. Thank you. Thank you. Tim McLaughlin from the Myanmar Times. I just wanted to get your reaction to criticisms that presidents then saying has used the release of political prisoners as a PR tool generally coming before or after major political events. Well, I think if coincidence happened too often, people no longer believe in them. So I think that they'll have to change this a bit and just release all the political prisoners instead of releasing them before or after important visitors have been to this country. Martin's suing against CNBC. We could get back to the 70% of your people who live outside the cities in rural areas where poverty is the worst. You talked about creating jobs as one way of alleviating poverty. I'm wondering how you feel about whether you think land reform is necessary or important in the sense that, well, it worked very well for China. Not that I'm against factories and creating jobs there, but when you look at the resources Myanmar has, arable land, water, et cetera, it seems fairly straightforward that this would be an area that the government should concentrate on. Is land reform a start? Well, I've been talking about land reform. I was talking about it just now when I said that one of our big problems is landlessness, land ownership. Yes, this is necessary in our country because too many of our farmers have plots of land which are far too small. And on top of that, too many of them are beginning to lose their land now, some through debt and some through illegal transfer or takeover of land. These are legal matters that have to be looked into and as I said earlier, laws are not enough. We have to have free independent judiciaries which will make sure that these laws are observed. My name is Tantai from the GG Press. I'd like to ask about the Rakhine conflicts where some people are saying that this conflict is staged by some people inside the government who wants to turn back this current reform process. And hardliners are doing this because some people said that the problem started from a news report from the state media about a rape case which they published. And this conflict started because of a report in the state newspaper of a rape case. They published their religion and ethnic city in the rape case which is not normal in the news media. So some people speculate that it is staged by some people inside the government and I'd like to ask your opinion about that. Yes, I've heard these speculations. There are many of them. But as a believer in rule of law and justice, I would deem that everybody is innocent until proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. And speculations are not enough to use as accusations. There are always speculations when these kind of incidents emerge. But I do not think that we should go around accusing people of conspiracies because this could be very destabilizing for our country, which is not to say that conspiracies do not exist. Sometimes conspiracies do exist and people talk about them, people speculate. I think what we need is more transparency, more interaction, more engagement between different communities, between the government and the people, between the media and the local government as well as central government so that we are more and more aware of what is going on. And the more we know about the actual situation, the more transparency there is, the fewer speculations there will be. My name is Nati. I'm from nation Thailand. Two quick questions. The first one is Myanmar has built political and economic problems. If you were the president, which one would be your main focus? And the second question would be, by the time of the next election, you would be 70, if I'm correct, and you are a national democracy icon. Have you ever thought about Myanmar without Ong San Suu Kyi? What would it be like? Thank you. To answer the first question, I do not think you can separate the two. You really cannot divorce political development from economic development. In fact, there are those who say that economic growth and development are a result of political change and not something that is separate. So I think these have to go in tandem and you have to find the right mix. Well, you know, Burma has existed very well without me in the past and I'm sure it will go on existing well without me in the future when the time comes. We're almost running out of time. We'll take a few more questions. The one at the back. Hello, Dursu. Kelly McNamara from AFP. Hello. Sorry, I'm hidden behind a couple of cameras. Hi. Talking about youth unemployment. As you go into the election in 2015, what are you going to do to refresh your party? There's often been a criticism that certainly the higher echelons are dominated by kind of old guard. Are you looking to kind of regenerate the party in any way? We have a lot of younger people at the township level, at the village level and even in our central committee. It's true that we do not have enough young people in the central executive committee and this is because we need to build up the capacity of our young people. I think I can say quite openly that the younger people, the younger generations in Burma are less well educated than the older generation and it's through no fault of their own. It's because of 50 years of a very bad education system. I am told that one survey found that Burma is one of the very, very few countries in the world where the young people now are less well educated than those 20 years ago and certainly they are less well educated than those 50 years ago when we had a very, very sound education system. So it is taking us some time to build up the capacity of our young people but that's not the problem of the NLD alone. People talk as though it were the problem of the NLD alone. It's a national problem.  One final question over there. Andy Minglao. I'm Dan Sunye from 70 News. I'd just like to ask, under President Dawson Sushi, what would the cabinet look like and whether your government will be liberal, labour or conservative? I would not like to talk about my government now when it has not even been decided that the constitution will be amended to make way for me to go up to the presidency. But I believe basically in liberal politics which means that we are not dogmatic and that we do not think of our party as the most important element in politics. It's the people who should be the most important element in politics and it will be the consideration of what is best for our people which would decide what kind of government we would try to shape. Thank you very much, Dawson Sushi. It's an honor for us all of us. Thank you all very much.


for joining us today as we share some very noteworthy developments in a particular sexual assault case that occurred here in Durham in 2015. As I have said in recent briefings, one of the Durham Police Department's priorities is to seek justice and closure for all victims of sexual assault. Our team of investigators and forensics personnel have been very focused in this regard and have worked with deliberate speed to ensure the testing of every sexual assault kit within our purview. We are grateful to our local and state partners who have provided additional support in this effort. In the spring of 2018, the Durham Police Department began sending cold case rape kits to the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory for testing. Last fall, we also received a three-year, $1 million sexual assault kit initiative grant to provide additional resources for investigating these cold cases. As a result of this grant, we have assigned two investigators and one supervisor dedicated to the investigation of cold case assaults. Their hard work and commitment to these unsolved crimes has resulted in several arrests, including the one we are here to discuss today. We are grateful to our Attorney General, Josh Stein, whose voice has been loud and clear regarding this commitment to providing all the resources necessary to aid local law enforcement in the resolution of these cases. We are also working very closely with the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory and our own Durham County District Attorney, Sadana D. Berry, to ensure the timely processing of evidence and the eventual prosecution of identified offenders. Lieutenant Vaughn, who is the commander of the cold case sexual assault investigations, will now discuss the recent arrests and other work that has been done by the Durham Police Department cold case investigators. Lieutenant Vaughn. Thank you, Chief Davis. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. First, I'd like to speak about this investigation that resulted into arrest. On November 11th of 2015, around 6 p.m., the victim was walking home along West Trinity Avenue, headed towards the Ellaby Creek Trail entrance. The victim noticed a man walking in line behind her as she entered into the access along West Trinity Avenue. As the victim was walking along the trail, she was grabbed from behind and the attacker wrapped his arm around her neck. A physical struggle between the victim and the attacker ensued until the victim lost consciousness. After a period of time, the victim regained consciousness and area residents assisted the victim and called 911. As time went by on September 9th of 2019, the Durham Police Department cold case sexual assault investigations received a match of DNA profile obtained from the sexual assault evidence collection kit to a DNA profile from the combined DNA indexing system, also known as the CODIS database. The CODIS profile was linked to 32-year-old Emanuel DeWayne Birch. It was revealed that Emanuel Birch appeared to be homeless and resided in the Durham Chapel Hill Carborel area. Emanuel Birch had multiple encounters with law enforcement, especially in the city of Durham. On October 9th of 2019, cold case investigations located Emanuel Birch in the Durham and collected a known DNA sample via court-issued search warrant. Emanuel Birch's known DNA sample was submitted to the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory for comparison of DNA profile obtained from the evidence collection kit. On January 16th of this year, cold case sexual assault investigations received results of that comparison, testing from the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory. The known DNA sample from Emanuel Birch was confirmed to be a match from the DNA profile from the sexual assault evidence collection kit. The rest warps were obtained for attempted first-degree murder and first-degree sex offense. Where secured in Emanuel Birch was arrested on January 22nd of this year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He's currently still in the Durham County jail in a $500,000 bond. At this time, our cold case sexual assault investigation is working closely with our crime analysis unit and also area of jurisdictions for the involvement of Mr. Birch to see if there are any other cases we can link or have missed with this individual.  Of the 294 evidence kits sent to outsourcing at this time, 65 have resulted in CODIS eligible DNA profiles. 47 CODIS hits have been obtained. In addition to the arrest of Emanuel Birch, five additional cold case investigations have resulted in arrest, and we also have five additional cases that are in the comparison testing phase, which are a direct result of the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory's outsourcing initiative. In addition, the receipt of our SOC, or the sexual assault kit initiative federal grant that Chief Davis spoke of, our cold case sexual assault investigation has grown from one assigned investigator to two full-time investigators. We are currently in the process of hiring a full-time victim's advocate and awaiting the hire of a full-time assistant district attorney through the Durham County District Attorney's Office. These two positions will work directly with our cold case sexual assault investigations and a collaborative effort to bring closure to unresolved investigations related to sexual assault. And finally, I'd like to thank Charlene Reese and also all the advocates for the Durham Crisis Response Center who have been working to connect victims with our cold case sexual assault investigators and provide any needed emotional supports throughout the investigative process. This time I turn it to Madam D. Berry. Thank you. Thank you, Lieutenant Vaughn. Since I took office on January 1st of 2019, the Durham District Attorney's Office has been focused on those violent and serious crimes that keep us unsafe.   In this instance, Assistant District Attorney Lindsey Spain has worked closely with investigators here at DPD, both pre-charge. That was before the defendant was charged and has been working with them throughout the process to make sure that he has been indicted and that he has a bond that keeps the rest of Durham County safe. We want to really thank DPD and Attorney General Stein for all the help that they have been given to us in prosecuting these most serious and violent cases. We could not do this without that sake grant. Attorney General Stein's continued commitment to helping us clear the most serious cases is why we are standing here in front of you today. In our office, we take homicides very seriously and we also take sexual assault very seriously because we believe in those crimes, we have a living victim who has experienced tremendous violence. And we want those people to see justice done. Thank you. I'd like to introduce Attorney General Stein. Thank you, District Attorney DeBerry. Chief Davis, Lieutenant Vaughn. I want to thank everyone for being here. Five years ago, while a Durham woman was walking home from work, a man came from behind her and violently and sexually assaulted her. Today, I am pleased to join those here in announcing the arrest of the man who we believe committed this crime. I want to start with three messages. First, to victims of sexual assault in North Carolina. This state cares about you and we will do everything in our power to bring justice to you. To the rapists, we want to be very clear that no matter how long ago you committed your crime, we will never stop coming for you. And to the public, we want you to know how we want to get violent, dangerous people off the streets where they can harm no one else. Chief Davis, Lieutenant Vaughn, everyone involved in this case, I want to congratulate you and thank you for your diligent and good work. Today underscores the work that you do day in, day out. Never give up on a case, always fight for justice. Sometimes justice is swift and other times it takes a little longer. Today, after five years, the system is moving this case forward. I want to thank the state crime lab, the folks on my team, Director Vanessa Martinucci is here with me today. I want to thank Courtney Cowan and Michelle Hannon, two scientists who worked hand in hand with Durham PD to get the evidence back so that justice could be served. DNA is an incredibly powerful tool. It can link a suspect to a crime and it can exonerate the innocent. Today, thanks to determined law enforcement officers, hardworking forensic scientists and a brave survivor, DNA has enabled Durham PD to make an arrest. I want to take a moment just to talk about the state of untested sexual assault kits in North Carolina more broadly. As you all know, a couple of years ago, we did a count discovering that there were about 15,000 untested sexual assault kits sitting on the shelves of local law enforcement all across this state. Today's news underscores an important truth that if we do what we should, which is to test these old kits, we will get hits, we will solve crimes, and we will make arrests. We are making progress, but there is more work to be done. In the triangle alone, agencies have outsourced 588 kits since we've been at this. Yet, there are still more than 3,350 kits that have not yet been tested. We have to keep going. We've secured the money to test these kits through grants and through legislative appropriations, and the state crime lab stands ready to work with all law enforcement agencies here in the triangle, but across the state to test these kits so that we can reopen cases, conduct investigations, make arrests, and make communities safer. We have got to test these kits. Doing so will put more criminals behind bars where they cannot hurt anyone else. I want to congratulate again, Chief Davis Durham Police Department. I think it was last June we were here where we announced your renewed commitment to delivering justice for victims of sexual assault. District Attorney DeBarry, you were there, and this is the result of that work. What you all, what we're announcing today is the result of dedicated public servants doing the job that we want them to do and that we are proud that they are doing. I am pleased to be with you all today, and we will be happy to take any questions. Thank you. As said earlier, there would have been an arrest earlier, and I imagine that is frustrating for all of you to know that this was sitting there just waiting. Can you speak to that and just explain why there was that weight and more about what you all are doing to prevent that weight in the future? I think much of it has been said in earlier statements and also in the commitment that has been made by our Attorney General to make sure that we have the resources that we need in order to prosecute, well, process and prosecute individuals that commit these crimes. Unfortunately, in years past, the resources have not been there, and with the recent grant, the funding, a focus, a collaborative focus on ensuring that kits are tested in a timely fashion within 48 hours. They're sent off to a crime lab that can test them and not have them sitting around. We're just excited that we're at that place right now. The other thing about the evidence and ensuring that we do our job in just processing evidence and DNA evidence, even if it's not related to a sexual assault, because that evidence sometimes later on down the road can match in a subsequent crime. So it was fortunate that we were able to get a coldest hit on an individual who had a brush with the system at some time in the past, and that was how we were able to make that match. Yes. I think it's fair to say that the entire criminal justice system, the entire state of North Carolina should have done a better job in recent decades. But when it comes to pointing fingers, the only finger I am interested in pointing is the one going forward. We want to fix what was not done properly in the past, and we championed a bill called the Survivor Act this year. That got us the resources, $6 million that we can use to outsource the kits not only here in Durham, but in Raleigh, in Orange County, all across the state of North Carolina. And there was an important requirement in that bill that said that anytime a law enforcement agency in North Carolina receives a reported sexual assault with a kit, within 45 days they have to send it to an accredited lab. Because we want to eliminate the backlog once and for all and ensure that it never develops in the state again. Any other questions? I know you kind of talked a little bit about it, but just kind of tell us more about the initiatives that are underway. Well, and I think Lieutenant Vaughn mentioned what we have done in-house, the dedicated resources, to ensure that there is a unit that is not just cold case investigations, it's specifically cold case sexual assault investigations. And we have not been in a place in the past where we could put those types of personnel resources to this particular issue. Not just our resources, but also to have a grant that actually allows us to hire an ADA to work specifically with these particular cases, also to have an additional person on staff to help analyze our forensic staff to ensure that cases are forwarded on to the state crime lab. So in-house we have worked really, really hard to just change what that process looks like and really close the window and ensure that evidence doesn't ever get stale again. And we are responding in a very timely manner to ensure justice for our victims of crimes. When you say that the resources weren't there before, are you talking about the funding wasn't there? Or what exactly wasn't there before to make this happen? Not necessarily funding, but in the past during police department from time to time would have to send sexual assault kits to like private laboratories because we weren't able to just inundate the state laboratory. We weren't the only agency that the state laboratory process kits for. So the state laboratory has had a commitment to increase their staffing, increase their examiners and take in, take in more cases so that we can meet this new state legislation as well to ensure that those cases that are sent within the 45 days are processed within that period too. Hopefully that helps. And how many kits remain untested statewide and then for Durham if you know? I think that number might, Lieutenant Bond, do you have any information on that? Currently of about the 1700 and I'm not gonna give you exact numbers, say we're probably in the neighborhood about 1400 more because at a gizzard take I say that as a reason because we do find where other jurisdictions cause we have a Duke University being a major hospital. Sometimes people will come there for the sexual assault exams. So we're working through that. So probably around about 1400 is a ballpark I'm comfortable with saying with right now. In the state? In Durham. Now the state that will have to refer to attorney general. We also received a Sackie grant so that we could go to every single law enforcement agency in North Carolina and certify exactly how many kits there are in each agency's control. And we're in that process. We think the ballpark because we haven't finished the specific count there had been 15,000. We have outsourced under our watch about 1200 over the last year. And a few communities like Charlotte, Greenville and Fayville they had secured their own Sackie grant just like Durham did and have begun outsourcing. So it's really ballpark but I would guess between 10,000, 10 to 12,000. We're not satisfied with this lack of precision. And that's why we have an entire team about a dozen people dedicated to cover the entire state and actually physically go count. And then one thing that we did last year was we created a tracking system because it's absolutely unacceptable for the system to not know how many kits there are or where they are. So one thing I did is I went to the legislature and said, would you authorize my creating a tracking system at the state crime lab? And we've done that.  And that barcode is given to every participant in the criminal justice system and to the victim, him or herself. So that the victim is no longer wondering I gave over this evidence what happened. And if you talk to victims there are people who gave evidence two, three years ago and they don't have any idea what's happened to it and that's not appropriate. So with the tracking system we're going back and adding all the old kits that weren't in the tracking system into it. So we will have a number at some point we're just not done with the process. The fact is we raised $3 million in grant funds. We raised $6 million from the legislature. I want to thank all the legislators who supported that. We have the money to outsource this kit. There are some capacity issues with the private labs because what's going on in North Carolina is not unique. Other states are doing similar exercises. And so there's only so much capacity each lab has to do to take the kits but they're not at capacity yet. And that's why I'm going to every law enforcement agency I possibly can. The kits are under their custody, not the state crime labs. And I'm just saying we've got staff. We will come and sit with you. We will help you get those sent off to a private lab so that they can do exactly what Durham is in the process of doing. I know we've been calling this, or the news release calls this a sexual assault. I just wanted to clarify, was this a rape? This was a sexual assault. As far as the specifics of the case itself, I believe this one was considered a sexual assault.  Any other questions? If there aren't, thank you all for being here today and the Durham Police Department remains committed and so happy to have our DA and our Attorney General here to share in this news and we will continue to work and be transparent as developments come in these various cases. Thank you.


Yo, man, brothers need to chill, man. Brothers out here getting killed, stabbed up in a shot. Oh, like, honey, tea, huh? I ain't about that, son. It's all about equality. You know what I'm saying? Equality. Black Lives Matter. I can't say I know how it feels, but I definitely empathize with our black brothers and sisters.  Like, what the fuck, man? Oh, okay. Police brutality and systemic racism should never be accepted in society.  I think it's easy for us to spread hate, and that's why looting and burning things down is kind of our frustration and anger coming out, but that's the easy route, right? Talking about not only social justice, having the hard conversations, educating each other, and constantly being aware and talking about it is probably the hardest, because it requires perseverance, requires us to be mentally and emotionally engaged into what's happening in the world. The laws around police needs to get tighter. They need to be accountable for their actions.   You are not born racist.  Racism is something man-made, something invented by the elites, how they use the media, how they use religion, how they taught it in schools to help them justify a whole industry of people they would steal from Africa to justify slavery. So what can you do? Make your voice heard any way possible. If you have some disposable income, donate. If you can make it to a protest, definitely go and show your support peacefully. Please. We don't want you to get hurt. I was fascinated with hip-hop as a kid, especially the five elements of hip-hop. The first is lyricism. The ability to beat your opponent just with the words you say. Have a hard conversation. Speak to the people that have different views to you. Talk to your friends and teach them and educate them on what's right and what's wrong. Let's speak out about the injustice of this world. Your content creator, use your platform to make videos like this. Educate your fans. Like Akala says, knowledge is power. Let the memory of George be the spark to light the way for the future of humanity. Black lives matter. Justice for George. Peace and love. Think of yourself Chinese or the other. Think of yourself as North America. You know what I want to think of myself? As a human being. I took the hip-hop. I pled to lead just to a non-stop. Slow down. No rush. I'm here to keep the peace, but I'm prepared to bust. They want to cut my medicine.


So we're doing the report. We were reviewing what data gaps there are within the existing literature. What was missing, and what is there? With remittances in particular. There's a lot known about financial remittances. It's the same with international financial remittances. So this is the same with international migrants as well. So we're aware, as Christine just mentioned, that three per cent of the population yw ein pryngradig? This is 213 million people who are able to account for these because these are official statistics but again we can say that this is going to be a largely an underestimate because it's not accounting for those undocumented migrants in particular this is the same as well for internal migration and internal remittances. It's much harder to track so we don't have that information there covered the night out. So no doubt, considerable, especially considering the fat, that for internal migrants there's 763 million people estimated, to be engaged in internal migration, meaning migrating within their own country. But also what we don't know much about is with remittances in particular. Not only do we know about financial remittances, there's also different forms of remittances, so you have in-kind remittances. mae'r ddweud y rhaglen o'r cyfrifiadau am y cyfrifiadau ac yn ddweud yr ysgrifennid o'r cyfrifiadau sy'n rhoi o'r cyfrifiadau am y cyfrifiadau O'r rhaid i'r rhaglen o'r cyfrifiadau ac wedi'u hawdd yna, ond mae'r ddechrau yn y rhaid i'r rhai i ddweud yn ymddangos, fyddwn i chi'n cael ei hun oherwydd oherwydd o'r gwleidio'r cyfrifiadau. Felly, o'r ddweud o'r cyfrifiadau blyny, oedd y rhaid i'r chyfyddiadau. Ac mae gennych am ychydig i Chine ac yn dweud yn gweithio'r ffactory. Felly, gallwch chi'n gwybod y ffactory wedi yw'r bwysig. Mae fydd yn gweithio'r bwysig, ac mae'r bwysig i'r ffotog ar y dweud, oedd mae'r bwysig i'r ffôn nhw i'r ffaith oedd o'r rhesiwn o'r bwysig. Mae'r ffaith gwaith yn gweithio'r bwysig yn gwneud yn cael ei wneud. Yn amleydoedd 436 miliwn wladolau ar gyfer yna, bobl yn dweud yn bwysig o'r gweithio ar gyferwyr. Mae hyn yn cyntaf o'r cyfnod o'r ddweud o'r afael yn ysgolf. O da, mae hyn yn cyfnod. Felly, mae hyn yn ysgrifennu i'r cyfnod ar gyferwyr, ar gyferwyr o'r cyfnod. Ac mae hwn yn ymdweud, mae hwn yn gwneud yn cael y 2006 ymgolwyr o'r cyfrannu.  Felly, y gallwn ni'n meddwl i hyn棱 ar lŵyffodaeth, ond iawn eich hoffa wneud y pob gyda'r gael gweithio, ychydigol, ymgyrchol, yr adethau ac yn fawr yn gwneud. Ond y gallai gwaith ymlaen nhw i'r llwyfydd yma, ymlaen nhw'n mewn gwirionedd ac ymlaen nhw'n i gweithio, ac yn ymlaen nhw'n ei gweithio'r lleol. Felly, lleol gweithio'r lleol yn cyfrifio'r lleol, felly mae'n gwybod, mae'n gweithio, mae'n gweithio, mae'n gweithio'r lleol i'r lleol. mae'r migrasion yn ei gynllunig yn gweithio yn y Lleidafodol gan unrhyw mwygrasio gan unrhyw mwygrasio yn ymddangos mor fforddol, ac yn ymddangos o bwyd, yn gweithio ar gyfer bwyd, oherwydd mae mae'r mynd i'n gweithio ar gyffredinol iawn, ac mae hynny rhaid yn ei gweithio o fforddol. Maen nhw'n dweud o'r cyfyrddol i'r cyfrannu cyllidiau a'r cyfrannu cyllidiau a'r cyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu Llywodraeth y Llywodraeth is also another investment people may make and also will have profound impacts for forest cover. Llywodraeth requires low labour demands and can function as an asset so therefore may be an attractive option for people. Studies have found that international migration has related positively to increases in livestock investments. The impact of remittances on forests depends, like I just said, on a number of factors and how investments are made. It's often difficult to assess, especially at a landscape level. But where we do know that data and knowledge is lacking, especially in these micro-dynamics, especially between households, where people may migrate or choose to migrate or choose to send remittances, and how much of those implications for forests is still largely unknown but will be mediated by a number of socio-cultural factors. I'll lead on now to Bimbika, who will tell you more about the issue of gender and age. Thank you very much, Annie and Christine. So, globally, women make up about half of all migrants. But actually there are a lot of regional variations. In Asia in particular, much of migrants are skewed towards men. The aggregate figure for Asia is actually 60%. But in certain countries, which have historically increasingly been migrant sending countries, the figures are even more skewed, and I'm originally from Nepal, and migration in Nepal is one of the major contributors of the GDP, and it's actually only 6% of migrants who are women. Similarly in other countries where we're hoping to do research like in Tajikistan, it's mostly the men who migrate. There are a number of factors which explain that, and the intensity of which factors are more important depends on the context in which we're talking about. But they are related to government policies, so in Nepal, for instance, the government had actively resisted the migration of women. They are related to household and communal dynamics, and they are related to market forces. In other words, the type of labour that is demanded, and the type of opportunities that are available, the channels that exist as well. And the age dimension is also very interesting. So globally, migrants generally come from a pool of 20 to 64 years of age. That's actually 74% of migrants are from that age pool. Between 30 to 39 years, that's where migrants are concentrated. I thought that these dynamics were really interesting, and I had the opportunity to explore some of this in my research. Research in Nepal in the middle of the country where I was looking at community forestry and how people collectively governed forest resources. I got an opportunity to understand what the implications of feminisation of agriculture with the men largely leaving for migration was having on forests and on the women themselves, and also the geriatrification of rural areas, so land and labour being primarily left to old people because the young and abled men in particular were migrating. Interestingly, in terms of forest policy in Nepal, there's a paradox like Christine and Annie mentioned. Migration is hardly mentioned at all, and when it is mentioned, it is seen as a negative thing, as something a deterrent to collective action. But at the same time, it is argued or it is implicitly assumed that women benefit from men being away, so women can play a larger role in forest management when men are away. But in my research, I actually found that male-out migration in particular was a disempowering process for women for various reasons, for contrasting reasons in fact. So in one of the communities I was studying, I found that male migration provided space for women to come together and collectively govern resources, but at the same time it did little to change the dynamics between the user groups and the forest officials who they relied on for various reasons, such as registering the forest, for getting access to resources such as seedlings, and also training and community development activities that the forest bureaucracy was providing. So women, despite the fact that they were governing the resources collectively, they still had to rely on men who were largely absent to mediate between themselves and forest officials. And in another context, I actually found that migration was leading to consolidation of power and privilege and decision-making amongst senior and powerful men in the community that I was studying. So women were present in forest user group committees, for instance, but they were only participating very nominally, and they didn't really have an influence, a voice in the type of decisions that were eventually made. And you could see that in terms of the rules that forest user groups implemented in terms of how much access women were able to get for fuel wood collection, for other necessities that they had with the forest. So in general, the impact of migration and remittance and the different trends and trajectories that they are influencing are very little studied. And I think the Nepal case study provides a good example for why we need to dig up it deeper. Great. Well, thank you very much. And just to finish up, I'd like to mention that this paper, which includes considerable amounts of data and also summaries of considerable amounts of data and includes both some hints at very, very interesting case studies, also tries to bring all of these together to actually talk about what are the salient trends, what are the salient changes and trends that are occurring that are linking rural to urban to transnational, what their impacts are on communities, on both urban and rural communities at this point and how those are linked to the various kinds of forest transitions. So we expect that this paper will be published quite soon. And we hope to have an impact, especially because we feel that, A, highlighting the fact that the data that are available to us at this point are often collected in ways and presented in ways that makes it difficult to include those in discussions of what's going on with forests. We hope that this will spur different kinds of data collection, the insertion of questions about migration, about the complexities of migration trends into various types of data collecting and data summary processes. Secondly, we really hope to spur whether national governments or others to actually try to understand how those remittances, for instance, can in some ways be harnessed in order to actually promote both the well-being of communities that depend on forests and also the well-being of the forests in which they depend. Remittances, as Annie pointed out, are a very special kind of cash flow of resources that go into these communities. It's not one in which we actually have to worry about whether it's reaching the people that it's supposed to benefit because it's their money. So we hope to also work with projects. We hope to build these kinds of information into projects. We hope to influence policymakers so that the benefits of migration are actually captured by the people who are migrating, by the people who need these kinds of resources, but also in the end actually also benefit the forests. So now I'd like to thank our speakers, and I'd like again to open it up to any kind of discussion or questions that you may have. Thanks very much. I have two questions. The first one is, I wonder how, if it was possible in the different case study, also to link migration with adaptation. If you had any, because at least for a lot of countries in Africa, we have a clear trend that there is migration as an adaptive strategy. That is what happening at the local level, but at the national or international level, we have these alarmist discourses about all the migrants who will come and all these numbers who actually didn't happen. And I think also to the question to the livestock and gender, there is a link also to adaptation because it's clear that in Africa, at least, there is a trend to invest more in livestock from remittances, but specifically in small ruminants who have a different impact on forests. And this is also because there is a gender shift in the livestock so that women now are taking more responsibilities in the livestock sector and their cultural position or their preferences are more in the small ruminant. So these things are like link adaptation, gender, livestock and migration. And I wonder if you have some information about these complex linkages. Thank you. Yeah, I mean we did, you know, in the vastness of the literature that we were looking at, I mean we have a section in the reporters that sort of emphasises this case in terms of the fast onset environmental change and migration, something that hits the headlines is something people are more aware of and sort of these mass movements of people whereas often, you know, some of the slow onset of migration is often shadowed by that perhaps. I mean we do have a section as well that talks about the environment and forests as buffers so for climate change adaptation so I can't remember the exact study site but it was where forest was used as a barrier for tsunami in these types of situations but I mean we have some more details in the report but yeah, we cover that in general but I don't know if you could say more about the gender side. I think that's a really important question and I think that also demonstrates the importance of doing this exercise in the first place, that there are these data or gaps in knowledge and exploring the questions or the issues that you've outlined are really important. We certainly in our review didn't find a study that focused specifically on the issues that you raised. I should say that we found both some literature and also some interesting questions that address not only climate change adaptation but also climate change mitigation for instance in the issue of remittances that are going into these communities and what the effect may be for instance on the effectiveness of pest payments the effectiveness of red schemes for example so these are issues that have been raised to some extent but again like with many of the systematic reviews that are done in the end we also do come up with a call for more research on these issues so in many cases we're not so much summarizing we are trying to summarize what's known but we're also pointing out the enormous gaps that continue to exist. Thank you. There's documented evidence that macroeconomic shocks can have dramatic effects on migration trends and C4 has done some research in the past on how in Cameroon and Indonesia on this effect. My question has to do with whether there is any evidence of the effect of the recent global recession on migration and also remissions and whether this is going to be part of what you'll be discussing in your article. I don't know if we have those exact case studies that you mentioned but I think it was highlighted in the report that despite all these economic crisis and everything that's been happening recently that hasn't actually affected remittances which again goes to show the strength of what remittances are and what they mean for development so it seems not to have impacted so far for the remittance flows which is interesting in itself but again what we know internally we're not sure so again that's just international and what's been documented but as for those informal flows we still don't know Actually during the financial crisis there was a lot of discussion around precisely the issue of macroeconomic or depression slumps and their impact on remittance and there was a lot of forecast that that would have a very negative impact on remittances and a number of people were employed but actually recent studies have shown that there has been an impact but the intensity hasn't been as much as was initially expected I must say that we're also I think we as a group also just recently wrote a research proposal to examine some of these issues in the field one of the countries that we're hoping to work in is Tajikistan which gets 52% of its GDP from remittances and most of the migrants are in Russia or in Kazakhstan and with this enormous economic slump in Russia it's something that we actually hope to look at while we're in the field I just wanted to say because I sort of miss saying it when I summed up we talk about remittances but there's also an enormous pool of savings, diaspora savings which is I think another area that we may well want to think about when we talk about making use of financial flows for forestry issues and all that projects that may actually help to facilitate some kind of use of diaspora savings and remittances for forestry projects I think might have a great potential somebody here Thank you I guess it's very complex kind of issues and data set I imagine I'm just wondering if you differentiate the level of scale of this migrating people and what would that what would be the impact of the origin the condition in the forest sector of the origin place I think that's a really interesting point and a question that people should look into as I mentioned there's the difference between what we have for the international compared to what data that is available internally and sometimes there's so many gaps and the incompatibility that it's hard to compare across countries but within a country these are things to look at and also bearing in mind a household may have a member who's involved in international migration internal migration rural to urban so there's all these different migration pathways that can be the household could be engaged in some way or shape or form simultaneously so I think that exactly your question is what we need to think about again to move away from these simplistic motions of just someone moving away about what these different impacts and what these different movements mean for the household and livelihood strategies Why are there no single men in your team? I just want to ask you if you could help me with a problem I'm having and I'm trying to find more information about the feminisation of forests and forestry which is very difficult to do to find some case studies information, the bushmeat work that we do in Peru in the Ereu Caillali shows a lot of different changes not just people moving and landscaping transitions but different ways how the whole managing forests the whole ways of making decisions are being changes and gender has a lot of things to do there and I wonder if you can help me with this literature on feminisation of forests and forestry of forest related activities Yes Yeah sure I'd be happy to because those are some of the issues that I work on myself I think what is important to highlight is that generally when people talk about feminisation of forestry and feminisation of rural development these are trends that we can see so for instance if you were to look at employment rates in agriculture they've been going down but they've been going down a lot more for men than they have been for women so you can see that feminisation occurs but there's a very that's a manifestation of a trend but it's not necessarily a manifestation of what happens thereof so what happens to management what happens to inequalities sometimes the word feminisation lumps everything together the trend with the practice the results If I may just add a little bit I think generally what we find is this complexity and I think in many of the questions that people ask we find what seem to be contradictory statements migration leads to empowerment of women migration leads to disempowerment of women migration leads to more forest fewer forest, better forest, more degraded forest and it's obviously there are very complex things going on and there are a tremendous number of mediating factors so it's sort of behooves us to figure out what at least some of the most important mediating factors are of how people start treating forests in different ways or the different people who then get access to forests so I should say you know I think that the paper does bring together a tremendous amount of that literature it tends to not offer any simple answers but we also do I think one of the important things that I think we do do is that we identify a lot of the gaps and a lot of the areas where the contradiction may seem like a contradiction but with somewhat better data and with somewhat more better research we can show that these are real insights and that there are ways also that there are policy implications of how with some changes how with some facilitation and all these outcomes can actually change Christine actually you answered somehow the question I was going to ask about this generalisation specifically relating to the gender impact of migration and I wonder if you find some studies who challenge this view of women are kind of victims of migration because our work in northern Mali showed actually very very mixed outcomes it depends also which woman are we talking about how was their role in the society before and then how is their work in relation to forest how much are they before involved in forest and after the migration so I think that for example in northern Mali we found out that women were before not doing charcoal activities and when men migrate they are engaged in charcoal activities and the women who are engaged in charcoal activities actually their life or their income increased and also their involvement in local institutions regarding forest they have some issues with foresters because they need but that is that is a change a social change happening there and we cannot say it's negative or positive in a general way we have to look at the context great well I see no more hands up and so I'd like to thank our two speakers or our little trio here I mean


In the meantime then, over to Claire. Thank you very much. Can everyone hear me? Yeah, great. So thanks very much for coming today to my talk on small business blogging. I love blogging and I hope that you will love it too after hearing my talk. And just a little word of warning, I'm going to go through quite a long list of plugins and tools, but don't feel you've got to write everything down. There's going to be a list in my slides at the end, so you don't have to get them all. I'll have the links. So I am a freelance web developer from Edinburgh in Scotland and I work mainly with small business and third sector charities and social enterprises and I started my business back in August 2013. So why should you blog? You ask, well, one thing is you'll get more traffic to your site because as we know Google loves fresh new content and blogs certainly provide that. And in general, the more you write, the more visitors you'll get and you'll get visitors from your older blog posts too. It also helps your SEO and certainly I find it easier to rank for SEO for posts because I can write longer articles and they're more targeted. And because you're providing valuable content and if you're consistent with it, you're going to build loyalty amongst your visitors.  And certainly that's worked with people who already know me to some extent that I've already networked with, it just gives me that extra credibility. Blogging is also going to help you educate other people because if you're writing about something, you obviously have to know about it first and I like learning something and then teaching it to other people. And funnily enough, you'll actually help yourself too because I've lost count in the number of times where I've wondered how to do a task. I've Googled it and I've actually found my own post in search. And finally, you'll get new business opportunities and that includes things like guest posting, it might be client inquiries or even speaking engagements like this one. So how are you going to blog? Well, you want to have some kind of schedule for your blogging and I use an editorial calendar, that helps. And I'll mention a bit more about that later on. Plus there are tools that will help you to blog and save you time putting together your posts and publicising your posts. Again, I'll show you. Groups are really good. Online groups or offline groups, they keep you going and they give you ideas and they give you encouragement for your posting. And you need to make the time to do it because if you don't block out the time like you would with client work then guess what, it's just not going to get done. And there's a specific way that you want to write your blog posts.  You don't want paragraph after paragraph on text. It's just dull and boring to read. So you need to structure them properly. This guy here, Rob Cubbin, at robcubbin.com is one of my inspirations. I came across him early on when I was starting off being interested in web design and development. And we've never actually met. I've emailed him a number of times. He did come to work at London in 2013 but he won't be here this year because he's currently off in Thailand setting it up. And he is a graphic and web designer. He turned more into a digital marketer and entrepreneur and he uses WordPress and the Genesis framework. And he started his blog back in 2006. He attributes a lot of success to running a blog. He's now moved into doing e-books and video courses and he's got these multiple income streams. He regularly publishes income reports so that you can see what he does is actually working for him. He's very much got down to earth attitude of well, if I can do it, anyone can do it and that's a really positive thing. So this was actually my first blog post and you'll notice the date. It was January 2014. Not when I started business. I was lucky and I got a bit busy and I didn't get around to building my site right away. I was posting one post a month and I thought, well, it's not really enough one post a month but at least it's consistent but I always seem to be playing kind of catch-up by getting to the end of the month and saying, well, I've got to put a blog out. But I thought, well, it's not really enough. I've got to do a bit more. And this is the tweet that changed everything. I don't know about you but I like getting free stuff and if I find something for free then it seems like a good thing to share with other people and this was an e-book that was free. It's given away every month or so and it's a collation of 30 different e-mails for a blogging challenge. So this started up a little Twitter conversation with the author of the book, Sarah Arrow. The book is called Zero to Blogger in 30 Days and I said, oh, I actually had got the book before and I thought, well, I said to her, I want to do more blogging. So she said, well, why don't you join in with our Facebook group? So I did. Not long after I'd actually joined Facebook because I was very suspicious of Facebook for years and I quite like it. Well, I like the groups anyway. And that led on to actually signing on to do the challenge and the challenge itself is run by Sarah Arrow and her husband Kevin, their company of Starkey Media. And I started it off in February 2015. It was a good time for me to take it on. I just left a difficult project. I was feeling a bit down and all of a sudden I had a purpose. I had to do a blog post every day. It gave me something to focus on. So obviously the aim is one post a day for 30 days and you get an email sent to you about six o'clock every morning, local time, giving you ideas of things to post. And some of this stuff I found, well, I know this already. I'm not going to pay special attention to keywords and things because I know a bit about that. I did, I have to say, before it began I actually pre-wrote about three of the posts because I thought this looks like it's going to be a lot of work and I wanted to just give myself a little bit of a head start. And like I said, you get a whole lot of ideas. I got quite excited when I came to the infographic day. I thought this is going to be easy. This is going to be great. It wasn't easy. It was actually quite time consuming to do. It's just researching all the bits and pieces. I quite enjoyed putting it together in Canva.com but it just took time. So this is the blogging challenge group, the Facebook group. And this is where everyone gets to share the posts and you can like and comment on other people's posts. And the great part is that everybody else in the group is on the same journey, all at different stages. So every day someone posts something and they put the day that they're on. And this is so important getting this encouragement to keep going. And it's also great to just discover new blogs out there that might have absolutely nothing to do with what you write about. So for example, I like cooking, I like food and I really like seeing all the food blogs because they all put gorgeous pictures of delicious recipes on them and I thought that's wonderful. I want to go and make that. And the rewarding in the group is really important as well. You get these little badges when you start, when you finish and every seven days you get a new one saying, well done, you've done seven days, well done, you've done 14. And that's just something that again just keeps sparring people on.  So it's really super important. And once you have completed the challenge, there's more. There's a group for graduates of the challenge. This has got about 200 people in it. I don't know if you can see the numbers that were in the blogging group but it's rather more than that. A lot of people start and not so many complete it. And being part of the graduates group, I can keep sharing my content in there and there's extra goodies as well. There's interviews and bonus content just exclusively for the graduates. So what did I discover from this challenge? Well, it's definitely time consuming and like I said, you need to block out that time. While I was actually doing it, I was finding myself writing into the evenings because I was finding it took a good few hours to put together a post. And certainly for the kind of post that I write, being mainly about WordPress and web development, it takes longer. If you're going to review product, if you've got like a new plugin or something, you can try out and use it. But if you didn't and you wrote about it, you wouldn't be terribly credible. And putting in things like videos, putting in screenshots, you have to take that same time to make an edit. Although I did find in the course of doing it, I found tools to take quicker screenshots which I thought was great because that did save me time. So I wrote a post about it. Once you start to see people actually liking and commenting your posts and you start to see your traffic increase, that makes it all worthwhile. And like I said before, you have to be persistent. A lot of people will try and not so many succeed. But having said that, life can get in the way. People kind of have to put the pause on the challenge for all sorts of reasons. I actually had to be persuaded last year. It was at World Camp Birmingham and it was the evening social. And I wanted to put a post out and I had to be persuaded.  So my audience seems to be a mix of people. I've got, for the more technical posts, I've got designers and developers reading those ones.  Thank you to my old uni for that. I've got some people who are just lay people using WordPress or the other tools that I write about. And I like writing event reports. It's a good record of what I've been to and a reminder of who's spoken and what they spoke about. So I'll get people who were at the same events coming. And I'll get a few potential clients in there too. So in terms of strategy, research is important. You have to think, well, who are you actually writing for? What's your audience? Do you know? And structure the poster in that. Know your topic really well. Find out everything that you want to know about it. Find relevant links that you can put in. And then think about the SEO side of things, the key words that people are actually going to be searching for to find your post. Long posts are good. There's some evidence that posts over 2,000 words actually make up the first top 10 positions in Google for a particular term. And I have to write in epics. I can't help myself. I find that I just write and write a certain amount and then I get like Colombo and I think, oh, there's just one more thing I could add there. And then obviously the longer you write, then the more likely they are to be found for any particular search term. You want to mark up posts correctly as well. You want to put headings in there and put them in the correct level order and there should only be one heading one per post, which should be the title. You want to put in alt text because not only is it good for visually impaired users and you should be doing that anyway, but it can also help SEO too. And the little bit of text underneath the title and the link in Google, the method description, fill that bit in as well and get keywords in. In terms of layout of your blog, don't use justified text. That's not good for people with dyslexia to read. And break up the text with things like bullet points, images, you could put lock quotes in, you could put tweet boxes in, just anything that means it isn't a big wall of words. So a little example of some of the actual code from one of my posts, just showing the different markups where I've got the headings in order, I've got a bullet point list and I've got some alt text in there too. So when it comes to the scheduling, make sure you are comfortable with whatever you start writing. Better to start small and build up. If you start three times a week and then give up after a couple of months, then it's just going to look sad. There's nothing sadder than a blog that's been abandoned. And at the worst, people might just think, oh, they've gone out of business. It doesn't look good. And obviously, a 30-day challenge is a bit of a commitment. It's a bit of a crazy one. Oh, did I mention, I didn't actually do it in the 30 days. I did it in 34 because I did have those days off. You do need to be regular as well to build attraction. And it just lets your visitors know what to expect. If you're randomly posting on different days of the week, every week or something, how is somebody going to know when there's something new? When you've finished racing, you once put some kind of call to action at the end of the post.  So if you want them to share it on social media, tell them to do that. If you want them to leave a comment, tell them to do that.  The publicity side as well, I think that's something I neglected when I was doing the blogging challenge and I've heard it said you need to spend as much time if perhaps not more time actually on the publicity as the writing. So you can use all sorts of things, social media, groups, forums. You can email people personally. You could just tell people when there's something that you've written out of interest. Ideally you should have an email newsletter and you should be emailing those people on it regularly and telling them, hey, I've just put out some more great stuff. Not everyone has comments enabled on the blog, but I do and I recommend having them. And if you reply to your comments, it's just showing that you're in touch with your readers. You can start off a little dialogue that way. And it's important as well to comment and share other people's posts. It's just good karma because if you do that for them, the chances are they'll reciprocate and do it for you. So here's a little selection of topics that you could write about, not an exhaustive list by any means. If you write about a problem and a solution, it's just showing off your expertise. You can ask your customers or you can find out from them what are those questions that they're always asking you and then you can answer them in a post or a series of posts. And you can write how-to posts. You could do that through texts, screenshots, you could do video and audio. I had one like that where I had the client. I was suggesting that she use Dropbox. She didn't know how to use it. So I just wrote a post going exactly through all the steps of putting a file on Dropbox and sharing it. And if you do a post like that, you're showing, well, I can do it. So some people will think, well, that's great. You can do it. Rather than me doing it, I will just get you to do it instead. Everybody loves list posts. You should put in list posts every so often because they're the most shareable type of posts. They do really well. Reviews or comparisons. You're helping people to decide on a particular product or service. Plus, of course, you're teaching yourself on it too. Event reports, like I said, it makes a note for yourself and for other people of what the event was all about. And something I just tried recently, a pricing post. That is supposed to build a bit of the trust factor because when someone comes to your site, they're going to be looking and wondering on price. You don't necessarily have to explicitly say, hey, this is how much I charge, but you at least have to talk a bit about the subject. So a couple of examples from my own blog. My WordPress plugin accessibility post has done quite well. It's had 89 shares and interactions, and it's a page you want to Google for WordPress plugin accessibility. And that one is still consistently popular when you're on. I've pinned it to my Twitter page though, so that might have something to do with it. And this is my short rating pricing post. It's had 102 shares and interactions, and most of them came from LinkedIn. And I've actually been told I need to push some traffic from Facebook ads. So is anyone here a Facebook ads expert? Could you come and speak to me afterwards, please? A little bit about blogging ethics. It should be obvious, but don't steal other people's content. Be careful when it comes to pictures. There are lots of good free stock sites. I particularly like Pixabay, which has quite a good selection for a number of things. Not everything, but not bad. You need to read the license terms carefully with pictures. Check if it's got creative commons, and you have to attribute anyone. Screenshots, perhaps... I use them a lot, but there may be a bit of a gray area. There is the fear of use doctrine. I think the key question is, are you actually profiting from the use of screenshots? If you are, then you might need to think again, but I'm not a lawyer, so don't quote me. I think outsourcing things can be a good idea in some cases. You could certainly outsource things like creating an infographic or creating an e-book. I would be a bit careful with stuff you can buy, what's known as private label rights content, which is content that someone's written that they sell to a number of people for reuse.  So, onto the plugins. These are all on the repository, and they're mostly free. A couple of got paid services or upgrades, which I'll talk about. This is better to click to tweet, and it just puts a little button into the post editor with a little Twitter bird on it. When you click on it, you get a pop-up box, and you put your quote in, you can choose to add your own Twitter handle to it. It generates a short code, and then the better on the bottom is what it actually looks like on the front end, so you've got that little click to tweet link there. It just makes a little bit of interest and encourages more social sharing. Broken link checker. Guess what this one does? Yeah, broken links are not good for SEO, and they're not good for user experience. There's nothing more frustrating than have lots of links on your site that just laid nowhere. And this runs in the background for you and sends you an email every so often, warning you what links are broken, and often they can be comment links because somebody might comment at one point, and then months down the line, their blogs disappear, but the link's still there and it's broken. One thing to watch out for is that this can be a bit of a resource hog, this plugin, and some hosts have actually banned it. Co-schedule is what I use as my editorial calendar. This plugin is free, but the service is not. It's a paid service. And I use this to plan content and to aggregate ideas for content. It also shows me for each post that I put out, how many social shares I've had, and the real other big benefit for me is it's got the social sharing built in, so you can actually set up once you post something, you can say, right, I want this tweeted out a day from now, a week from now, a month from now, and once you've set it up, it's all ready to go. Jetpack. It's a bit of a love heat plugin. No, not everyone likes it. I happen to like it. There's a few features here. I've got on top left is the gravator hovercard, so that's just that little pop-up box when somebody hovered over a gravator on a comment. Underneath we've got the related posts. I think that's useful because if somebody comes to your blog and they're interested in WordPress and that you've got a category, then you can show them other posts in the same category to keep them on your site that bit longer. The sites that I think are probably a bit inflated, but I do watch them regularly. They're kind of fun. And right at the bottom right, we've got the subscriptions module. That allows people to subscribe to your blog and also to subscribe to comment threads as well. This is Sumo Mi, another one that's free, but some of the tools in it have got paid upgrades. This does a whole heap of things as well. It's mainly for email list building and for social sharing. You can see right at the top, I've got the heat map tool turned on, so that's actually showing me on a page what did people actually click on. It looked like they were clicking on the links, which is good. Underneath a tool called the highlighter, and that allows people to highlight text. And then once they've highlighted it, they can social share it out. Right at the bottom is the content analytics, and you might think, hey, I've got the best blog in the world, but this is actually showing you, if you set it up, how much of your post people actually read, so you want nice high scores on this. Above that is my opt-in box that pops up when you scroll right down to the bottom of the page, but they have a whole heap of opt-ins. They've got those ones that pop out right in the middle of the screen, which I personally don't like, but I understand that they are very effective, and they've got the one, pretty much someone lands on a page, and that's the first thing that they see, and then they have to scroll down to see your content. And finally, plug-in wise, who uses Yoast? Yeah, quite a lot of you, and I do too for all my own page SEO, and if you use it, the object is to get the green light on everything. They have gone and changed it around quite a lot lately, which has got a little bit annoying. The site map function is pretty useful as well. So now moving on to more web-based tools, writing headlines is really important for your blog post, because if you don't grab the reader's attention with a headline, then they're not going to click read through and read, so the top tool here is a tool I use for crafting better headlines, co-schedule headline analyser, the way this works is it comes up with a score for the headline. So it takes a number of things, it'll work out how many words are in it and warn you if there's too many or too few, and it will show you if you've got too many and it's going to get cut off in the search preview.  It tells you what kind of type of headline you've got, so if you start your headline with a number, it immediately recognises a list, and as we know, lists are insanely popular, and it also tells you finally what the sentiment of your headline is, so you want to be really positive or really negative, ideally, because that's going to get people more emotionally than if it's just neutral and flat. Underneath I have Google Analytics, which I'm sure a lot of you will use as well for tracking stats. The one thing I would say with that is watch out for referral spam. I discovered all about that last year. I hate to write in a blog post on it, because it's just kind of people manipulating and trying to boost their numbers and skewing all your results. Now we're on to Long Tail Pro. I've actually got the Long Tail Platinum version here. This is a paid tool. Platinum is like an extra upgrade. It links to your Google Keyword Planner, but it's kind of a slightly nicer interface, and it just shows you all sorts of metrics for search keywords. The Platinum version's got something called Keyword Competitiveness, which they've calculated, and what you're looking for with that one is to get a nice low score in it, and that tells you it's something good to write about. If you get under 30, that would be ideal. You can also use this to see what the top 10 results are for any particular keyphrase, so you can go and look at your competition and decide, well, if it's all really, really huge, massive traffic sites, you might think, maybe I'll not get much chance of ranking for this. Underneath we have SEO Edge, and that is an iOS app, and it's free to use for up to five keywords. You can track them in Google Rankings, and it produces a lot of graphs, so you can see that the positions can actually go up or down. I find that if you do get lucky enough to get something in the top 10, it does tend to stick there. There's another online rank checker, and that's called the search rank checker, and I'll use that one as well. These tools are more for actually putting together the content of your posts. I'm lucky, my mom's an English teacher, so I've been blessed with good spelling and grammar, but I still find it helpful sometimes to use tools. Grammarly is the top one here, which is Web App and a Chrome extension, and that corrects your spelling and grammar. It warns you straight away if you have got an error, which I find can get a bit annoying because my typing isn't always that good and I can just mistype things, and it immediately warns me. There is a premium version available from this, and I have to say I haven't tried it because it's quite expensive. Underneath we've got the Hemingway editor, and that is a Web App. You can also get it as a paid desktop app.  I quite like saying that on a blog post, you know, read in six minutes or whatever. The main purpose of it though is to simplify your writing down. So it warns you about if you've got sentences that are hard to read or very hard to read. I do think it could be a wee bit prescriptive. It warns you about things like you're using the passive voice. You're using adverbs. These are bad. So think those things are bad. For say, I think you just have to use your own common sense and judgment. So as far as blogging goes, don't just take my word for it that it's good. There's a few quotes here from Papel about how it's helped them. So for Rachel, she found that blogging has helped her get new visitors, and it shows off her expertise, and ultimately it's helped her to get hired. For Jo, if she blogs, then she's showing a helpful person, and she's building that no-unlike-and-trust factor with her readers. Paige, she was on the blogging challenge with me. Her big benefit has been to just get to know her audience. I started off pretty much like her, not really knowing who my audience was, and now she's got to that stage that she knows and she's developing her own products. So I hope to have some type of questions, and I have some time. Thank you very much, Cher. That was pretty exhaustive. The questions are coming thinking fast, so we'll get straight to them. Hi. Thank you for a very insightful presentation. I have a two-part question. The first part is do you happen to have a writer's blog and how do you fight it? Because as for me, blogging is something I'm yet to master, and I find it very hard to keep up with the schedule. So I created a rule for myself to write at least 50 words for a day. So do you have any secrets like this or overcoming ratios? Yeah, I think it's just making that time and just making yourself right, but I suppose if you're not really in the mood to do it, then put it aside, go off, do something else, have a cup of coffee, come back to it or something, because I think sometimes I can write something and then just get really sick of it and then it's like anything. If I come back to it, then I've got a fresher mind and I'm able to write on it more. Thank you. Hi. Our team was using Grammarly and because of the technical language you have to use in Internet and SEO world, it was driving us crazy. Have you got any tips about settings and stuff? We probably didn't give it enough attention but it started driving us mad so we had to turn it off. I think you can turn it off on individual pages and things like that. I haven't used it for probably long enough. I know it does sort of send you those reports and it sort of says how well you're doing overall with it and you are like 95% better at something than the average person. I would just say if it gets too annoying, then just turn it off for a time and maybe just put it back on right when you're at the very end and you're ready to edit. Good question. Thanks very much Claire. One of the most challenges I have faced with my blogs is the spam comments or the bogus comments. What would be the best way to counter those who send in spam comments? Well I use a kismet which is automatically installed for you with WordPress. You have to subscribe to their service. I think it's $5 a month although I've now done it for the year. There is another one I know of called anti-spam B which is a free spam comment plugin but you definitely need to have one of those in there. Kismet is pretty good. It catches most of the spam. I think very occasionally I have the odd comment that slips through and recently I actually had one where somebody told me they'd commented and I only knew that it had gone into the spam and they told me they'd left a comment but other than that I would say it's good I recommend it. Thanks Claire, great talk. You mentioned about knowing your audience, using the blogging to learn more about audience. I just wondered how you actually because you were quite specific on some elements there was it that you judge what they're doing from the comments that they make on your blog or is there some other insights that you use to get that information? Well I've had one or two people leave comments and that's maybe given me more ideas because I think I wrote about 2015 theme and then I thought the natural thing to do after that was write about making a child theme for it and I've had the same sort of thing writing about 2016 as well and yes I forgot to mention this is keep an eye on just what people are asking you and you can go to say like Quora.com and type in something that's related to your niche and you can see all the kinds of questions that people are asking about that and that could be quite fertile ground for you to find things to write about. Okay, thank you. Okay, do we have any more questions from the floor? Yes at the back there. I have less of a question and more of a helpful tool. It takes me ages to write blog posts because I'm constantly rewriting and re-editing as I write and a 500 word blog post could take me half a day. What I started doing was dictating it and sending the MP3 to a transcriber on fiverr.com so a blog post now takes me five minutes to write and five dollars to have transcribed. Brilliant, can't recommend it highly enough. Well that's the ultimate note sort of thing isn't it? Instead of sending it to fiverr.com there's a free dictation app on your iPhone and a very good dictation app for your iMac or your PC, it's Dragon dictation, it's unbelievable. So it works really well and you can speak this fast and it's faster than those ladies over there. Dragon dictation. Obviously not as good. So I had a little question so there was a thing about putting blogs live that I did hear from someone who worked in SEO and this was some years ago that it was actually could be really helpful to schedule the time of day that a particular blog goes up and I wondered if you'd sort of looked at that and whether you looked at different sorts of audiences for your posts and how you schedule maybe at the sort of microscale at less than a day. I don't tend to schedule a lot but I think it comes irrelevant when you're actually doing the sharing that I find that if I send out tweets like certain times a day I think I find between like eight and nine in the morning is quite a good time to do that because I think people are maybe committing or something and they just happen to be connecting their phones and seeing what's come up that kind of thing but in terms of publishing posts it tends to be just when I've written them then it's going to go out and at the moment I'm trying to stick to every Friday. Okay and the other one the blogging challenge looked particularly interesting you did touch on a few that have been harder were there any that you either got sort of picked a subject and really regretted having been it off or I mean this is like a general one as well like do you ever sort of post something sort of think it a week or maybe even later go back and you've changed your mind completely and want to rewrite it and would you do a follow-up post or would you actually edit the old one? I have had to revisit a few because I've written something like one of my popular ones is actually about networking groups and I've had to just go back and revisit that every so often because the information's got out of date and I think yeah that is something that you have to do periodically if it's not sort of ever green information then you have to just keep an eye on what's there. Would that be an edit of the original post or like another thing in a common category? Well I ended up just rewriting it and then just putting a little note at the top saying revised on but yeah I mean I think there are some people who actually don't put dates on at all on their blog which could be viewed as a little bit disingenuous because I think I like to know when it was written but I can see that there's some logic to that because if you don't put a date on then you know it's going to be seen as ever green. Okay your slides are basically going to have all the tools listed that you spoke about and I guess if we should keep visiting a bright clear web to see the new tools that you play with and read the reviews. Thank you very much indeed Claire, thank you and thank you for great questions on the floor.