If the military campaign in Ukraine is successful, Russian President Vladimir Putin will choose Georgia as his next target, former US Secretary of Defense and former CIA Director Leon Panetta spoke about it in an interview with The Voice of America. Therefore, it is absolutely important that the United States try to work with Georgia to ensure its security, he said. I think it is clear that if we do not stop Putin in Ukraine, he will continue his aggression not only against Georgia, but also against other NATO member countries that border Russia. So, it is absolutely important that the United States tries to work with Georgia to ensure its security. Georgia is an important country for many reasons. But the most important thing about Georgia is the ability of the Georgian people to enjoy the benefits of freedom, Panetta said. Leon Panetta added that, in addition to Georgia, Putin could start an aggression against NATO countries bordering Russia. He stressed that Putin's main goal is to undermine democracy in the United States, as well as to undermine democracy in other countries. Sure, to protect our national security, we have to make sure that Putin fails to accomplish his purposes, Panetta said. UK helps Ukraine carry out attacks against the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The Kyiv's regime's attacks against the Russian Black Sea Fleet were directed by UK special services Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RTVI. It has been detected that the British, along with the US, acted as spotters supplying the Kyiv regime with coordinates of targets. As for the terrorist attacks against the Black Sea Fleet, they were literally conducted under the direction of British special services, she said. Zakharova made the remarks commenting on reports that UK's chief of the defence staff Admiral Tony Radikin played a significant role in developing Ukraine's military strategy in the Black Sea. The diplomat also said the Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly pointed to evidence of traces of British special services in anti-Russian activity and in the fighting in Ukraine, as well as in the implementation of terrorist attacks. In general, the question that should be asked is not about Britain's involvement in separate episodes of the conflict in Ukraine, but about the unleashing and participation of London in the anti-Russian hybrid war, Zakharova said. Earlier, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the UK is helping Ukraine and is effectively directly involved in the conflict. Overall, it is no secret to anyone that the British are indeed providing various types of support to Ukraine, both with people on the ground and intelligence and so on and so forth. That is, they are practically directly involved in this conflict. The Kremlin official said, commenting on an article in The Times that the UK Defence Secretary allegedly was clandestinely helping Ukraine develop combat plans. Russia captures US Bradley IFV in Ukraine and analyses its combat capabilities. In February 2024, images of a captured intact US Bradley M2A2 infantry fighting vehicle with its vital equipment removed circulated on Russian social networks. This reflects the Russian authorities' intention to study technologies developed by NATO militaries. This was not the first time, as in July 2023, photos of a captured Swedish CV9040 IFV whose equipment had also been analysed surfaced. Army recognition media outlet reported this. The capture of the US Bradley M2A2 by the Russian Army could have several implications and uses. Firstly, studying a vehicle designed for NATO troops like the Bradley M2A2 and the Swedish CV9040 could provide the Russian military with valuable intelligence on Western military's latest technologies, engineering and design principles. This information could be used to identify strengths and weaknesses in the vehicle's design, tactics and operational capabilities. Analyzing these captured vehicles could help Russian engineers identify vulnerabilities or weaknesses in the vehicle's armour, sensors and electronic systems. This knowledge would allow them to develop effective countermeasures to improve the survival of their armoured vehicles and strengthen their defence against similar platforms used by potential adversaries. It is also very likely that the Russians will develop new weapons capable of destroying Western vehicles. Furthermore, the Russian military might be interested in integrating some of the advanced features or design concepts found in the Bradley M2A2 IFV and CV9040 IFV into their armoured vehicle programmes. By capturing and examining the vehicle, they could learn about innovations in areas such as crew protection, mobility, firepower and situational awareness, potentially influencing the development of their future armoured vehicles. Finland allows Ukraine to attack targets in Russia with Finnish weapons. Ukraine can use the weapons transferred by Finland to attack targets on the territory of the Russian Federation. The Finnish side has not imposed any restrictions on the arms assistance provided to Kyiv. The corresponding statement was made by the head of the Finnish Defence Ministry, Antti Hakkinen-Yeli informs. According to the Minister, the restrictions on the use of their weapons were mainly imposed by those countries that supplied Kyiv with long-range weapons. The Finnish Parliament's Defence Committee said that the Ukrainian army had the right to attack military facilities on Russian territory with the help of weapons supplied by Helsinki. In particular, this was said by the head of the committee, Dzuka Kopera. The head of the committee, Mikko Savola, also noted that the weapons supplied by Finland can be used by the Ukrainian army for strikes against targets in the Russian Federation. At the same time, he adds that the range of the weapons supplied by Finland is not very long. In general, the Finnish authorities are in constant contact with their allies on the issue of restrictions on weapons transferred to Ukraine. British President Soli Nynisto, who is leaving office, has promised that his country will continue to increase military aid to Kyiv. Nynisto said Finland has provided Ukraine with 22 aid packages and will not limit itself to this. We are increasing aid, primarily, of course, military aid. This especially concerns ammunition and air defence assets. Everyone agreed that we need to act as we did at the beginning of 2022 when decisions were made in a timely manner and very quickly, Nynisto stated.


In this video, I'm going to share with you the core mindset for joyful productivity, which is the name of one of my books and something I like to talk about occasionally. In fact, what I'm going to do is to read to you the first chapter, the introductory chapter actually of the book, Joyful Productivity, and this is in part to celebrate the availability of the audio book for joyful productivity, and I recommend that you check out. It's narrated not by me, but by a lady with a beautiful voice and just an enjoyable experience to listen to it. So we're going to talk here about how do we really intentionally situate our energy and our spirit so that we can get a lot done and still remain calm and joyful. I think a lot of you wonder how I'm able to get so much done with a full client roster and a full group coaching program and writing two books a year and teaching on new course every month, et cetera, et cetera, besides the fact that I don't have kids, which is just like a really big, big factor. But even so, I'm probably more productive and calmly so than most people in my situation. So here we go. Is it possible to be emotionally relaxed and joyful yet highly productive? Think of a master in martial arts. They aren't fretting, tense, worried, or stressed out. They have a relaxed focus, a calm strength, a powerful composure. Their face might appear emotionless, yet their body expresses a wide range of powerful motion able to accomplish a great deal with precision as well as flexibility. Inside, they are experiencing clarity, confidence, and a deep joy.  Or martial arts could be like a ballet dancer. It could be some other, some musician. So any master of their craft is so well-practiced as part of that that they are able to accomplish great amount. Their bodies can move a lot. They're very flexible. They're very powerful, but they're not stressed out as they're doing it.  When you're working, are you stressed out? Are you tense?  Or can you intentionally today emulate some of that master that you're thinking of? Let me continue in the book here. I'm not a martial arts master. In the past few years, though, I have developed a sort of calm, joyful productivity within my own sphere of work, which is content creation, business coaching, and now book writing. While I was writing my first book, Authentic Content Marketing, a dear client asked me, George, as the grand finale of your book's completion approaches, what are you feeling right now? Soon is the moment of letting go. Any thoughts on that? My response, I have never really held on to what the book's results would be, so there is no letting go. As for a grand finale, I don't see it, I said to her, since I was already planning my second book, Joyful Productivity. I now see each and every project as simply a mile marker on a lifelong journey of ever greater service and self-knowledge. Joy occurs throughout the process, at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of a project, and onto the next project with a calm and joyful heart. So, you know, yesterday I had a couple of calls that didn't go quite as well as I would have liked. One of them was a group client call, and I didn't feel effective in that call. I felt like maybe I wasted my client's time and I felt like I wasn't at my best. So, what can I do? I mean, what do you do when you have a call with a client or a group of clients where you don't feel like you're at your best and, you know, you could have done a lot better, et cetera, et cetera? Now, in the past, I would have beat myself up. That was natural for me in the past. That was how I grew up, beating myself up, you know, because I had, you know, harsh parents, right? So, beat myself up, learn to beat myself up all the way until the last couple of years, really, I think. Really the last five years I've learned to stop the self-blame, stop the self-punishment. And just, I think what happened in the last five years is the realization that there is always the next chance. There is always the next chance. And by the way, I can't change anything I've already done. Nothing I could have done. There's no reason to punish. It's kind of like I've got a dog and two cats. And something we learn as pet owners is that you don't punish the pet, you know, except what happens immediately. Like, you know, they went to the bathroom in the wrong place and you pick them up ideally right when they're doing it and put them in the right place. That's how you train the pet to do the right thing or they're chewing something they're not supposed to. You don't, you know, kick them and like do whatever. No, you take them away from chewing whatever and you give them something better to chew. Okay, chew this instead. This is the thing to chew, right? So why don't we train ourselves in that way rather than kicking ourselves, you know, even immediately after the thing. You know, because that just creates a negative reinforcement on that activity. If I kick myself after the client group meeting, then the next client group meeting I'm not going to look forward to it, right? So how do you treat yourself when things don't go, you did a bad job of something, right? You don't want to reinforce a bad emotion for the next time you think about that activity. Instead, you pick yourself up like you're picking up a pet, right? You pick yourself up and you say, oh, do this instead next time. That's it. Do this instead next time. Oh, next time, next time I do the client group, next time I get this particular question from a client. Instead of doing this, I'm going to try doing this instead. Okay, because there is always a next time, you see, always, always there is a next time. And in fact, not just the next time, you have more opportunity ahead of you than you do behind you. Almost certainly that's the case. If you're building a business, that's certainly the case because you're just starting out and building your business or you're somewhere along the line. But your business is going to go a lot longer than you can imagine. So that's what we do. Instead of self-blame and kicking ourselves, pick ourselves up and go, oh, try doing this instead. Chew on this instead. Don't chew that. Chew this instead. And when you catch yourself and self-blame, just don't chew this. Chew on this instead. Chew on what you could do better and maybe what you did well.  Nobody is. Whatever thing you thought you could do better. There's always something that you probably take for granted, but it's time to use your creativity to say, well, what is something I did well in that meeting? How this thing I wrote, I'm not proud of it, but what was good about it? Oh, I didn't misspell every sentence. That's pretty good, you know, or, oh, I really like this particular part of that that that I did. That was good. Right. Okay, let me keep going in in the book here. Okay, so there is no anxiety about results, no gritting of teeth, no failure, nor success. Only constant experimentation, a steady progress of learning, and a consistent joy of self exploration and service to the greater whole. So I am never really after a part, I mean, yes, I celebrate along the way, you know, for example, this month, my book creation course did really well. And I'm celebrating that it is an above average number of enrollments, more than I expected, and it's great. But I don't go, oh, my God, this is amazing and I better match it the next month. And this is what a lot of people do when they reach a success is they're like, oh, I better match it the next month or the next time it better be the same and then it's not the same and all I'm so disappointed. Oh, I knew it. I'm not that good. You know, it's just so much drama, so much internal drama. You know, I have to say, studies have shown that I think it's testosterone or estrogen or something, but I think the way that men males are set up. We are less sensitive. You know, we are less emotionally sensitive, which has good and bad, right. The good part is that we're more, we're more dense. We're more dense, we're more duh, right. So therefore, we don't have as much a tendency to emotionally like keep dwelling on a problem or oh, I didn't do that well or oh, what if this happens. So men have it good in that way. Women, those of you, you have the positivity of being less duh, you're more sensitive, you're more in tune with what people are feeling and thinking and what you're yourself, what you're feeling and thinking, but the downside that you have to be really aware of is the downside of it. The flip side of the coin is watch your tendency to keep perseverating, you know, keep on, you know, just working through those negative emotions or keep repeating that over and over again. Self-blame, self-punishment, anxiety, that kind of thing. So just be really, really conscious that there's strengths and weaknesses to every type of person and I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's biological or if it's hormonal. I'm sure some women act more like men and some men act more like women. It's, you know, I don't know, but that's just what I've seen in terms of studies. And just in my own kind of regular observations, you probably have seen the same thing, similar thing as well. So, so yeah, try to intentionally move yourself away from any kind of emotional repetition of especially negativity and move yourself towards chewing on what you can, what you will do next time. Not just what you can do, but what you will do next time. Visualize yourself doing the thing better. That is what I always recommend when it comes to visualization. Don't just visualize, oh, I'm going to have a million dollars or I will have this many clients, you know, that kind of end goal visualization is helpful to show us what direction to go into. But then to get to the million dollars or to get to the 100 clients or whatever, you have to do a lot of things to get there. So visualize yourself doing those things with joy, with calmness, you know, and as you keep doing them and you make mistakes, you say, oh, what could I do differently next time? Visualize yourself doing it. Okay, let me continue on with the book. Recently, I came across an Alan Watts lecture that summed this up beautifully, so now I'm going to read to you a section from Alan Watts. What do you do if I say to you, take a hard look at me, take a real hard look. Now what are you doing? What's the difference between a hard look and a soft look?  If you stare at a distant image far away from you, you'll make it fuzzy. If you want to see it clearly, you must close your eyes. Imagine black for a while and then lazily and easily open them and you'll see the image. The light will come to you. And what do you do if I say, now listen carefully, listen very carefully to what I'm saying. You'll find that you're beginning to strain yourself around the ears. Supposing somebody says, okay, now you've got to use your will. You've got to exercise strong will. That's the ego, isn't it? What do you do when you exercise your will?    But all these activities have absolutely nothing to do with the efficient functioning of your nervous system. Just as staring at images makes them fuzzy, listening hard with all this muscular tension distracts you from what you're actually hearing, gritting your teeth has nothing to do with courage. All this is a total distraction. And yet we do it all the time. With the chronic sensation of muscular strain, the object of which is an attempt to make our nervous system, our brains, our sensitivity function properly, and it doesn't work. From the moment when we were little children, teachers in class streamed at us, pay attention to see or hear more clearly, to concentrate or to will something, which is supposed to be difficult to do, and that constitutes a habitual tension over the whole body. That feeling of unnecessary tension is, as it were, the material on which we fashioned this concept of I. We hang it onto that feeling. That concept is not us. The feeling of tension is completely phony. It has nothing to do with success or seeing or hearing or acting. That's the end of the Alan Watts quote. I think it's amazingly brilliant. So continuing on with my writings here. So let us question our hard efforting, trying to make things happen, and instead relax into what we are to do in this moment. So can you imagine this? Can you feel yourself when you are trying to write, when you're trying to make a video, when you're trying to reach out to a client, when you're trying to teach something or whatever work you're doing, when you're trying to figure out a technology issue, you are going like this. How does this help? How does this help? It doesn't help anything. It just makes things harder to see. It makes things more tense. It makes things more anxious. Instead, let's say you're trying to figure out technology issues.  And instead of tensing, why don't you go, let that be the normal state of confusion for you or working? It's not interesting. It's more like, yeah. That's kind of the attitude that I invite you to try on instead of this, you know, right? Just go, hey, you know, it's that kind of feeling. Okay, so continuing on with the book. Being in this moment doesn't mean that I don't plan. I plan every day. And then I simply do the plan with an inner calmness of non-attachment, even playfulness, rather than trying hard. So as a sidebar again, I have to say, I live by my calendar. So there's this paradox that I live. On the one hand, I am incredibly regimented in my schedule. Every part of my day is scheduled to the half-hour mark. If you look at my calendar, I just follow my schedule from 6.30 a.m. when I wait. Well, I give myself a buffer. So I wake up between 6.30 and 7.30-ish, but I really try to get to work around 7.30 or 8. But then starting then, I follow my schedule all the way until 7.30, 8 p.m. Now, there's huge breaks in the middle. I take an hour and 90-minute morning break. Well, my morning break is breakfast, nap, walk my dog, 90 minutes. I take a one-hour break for lunch early afternoon. And then I take a two-hour break in the late afternoon to have a snack, take a nap, walk my dog on a longer walk. And so I have huge breaks in a day. But basically my day is 12 hours with large chunks of breaks in the middle to break up my work periods. So I'm very regimented. I know exactly what I'm going to do every day. But then when I show up, for example, when I'm preparing a new course, I have a new course every month. So as I prepare for it, I show up and it says, prepare for the course. I show up. I have nothing prepared. It's completely blank. Oh, my God. How am I supposed to teach the course? I have nothing. But that's when I have an hour set aside to start preparing for the course. So I'm just going to, something's going to happen in an hour. Something is going to happen. I'm really curious what's going to happen in an hour preparing the course. I don't feel like doing it in the beginning. I rarely feel, and this is important, I rarely feel like doing whatever is on my calendar. Almost never do I feel like doing it. I didn't feel like starting this video. I never feel, I never feel like doing, you know, if, if there was nothing left for me to do for, just to help the world, everybody, if everybody is, has perfect businesses that they love. I'm out of a job. I have nothing to do. I wouldn't make these videos. And if there's nothing else for me to explore within myself, I wouldn't make these videos. I make these videos to in part explore what I really think about something, but in part, hopefully to help you, you know, move forward in your authentic business.  Now that's how I feel in the beginning. I didn't want to do this. And then once I start doing it after five or 10 minutes, now I'm enjoying it. Now I'm feeling the service. Now I'm feeling the self exploration. Same thing with the course. Oh my God, what am I going to teach? I don't know nothing. I don't know what I'm going to say. Five, 10, 15 minutes into it, not really making myself do it, but just showing up calmly, curious, curiosity. Oh, playfulness. Oh, I wonder what's going to happen. In the hour, maybe I'll write three words. Maybe I'll write 300 words. Maybe I'll have an outline. Who knows what's going to happen by the end of the hour, but I'm showing up for what I planned for. You see, because otherwise, how is the course going to get created? It's not going to get created by itself. So I show up. I'm curious. I'm playful. I don't know what's going to happen by the end of the hour. And then 10, 15 minutes into it, or sometimes it takes as long as half an hour into it. Now I'm in the float. Now I'm like, oh yeah, I can start to see what the possibilities are going to be for this course. You know, and same thing with writing. I show up with a blank screen. There's nothing there. I don't know how a blog post is going to come up, how it's going to be created. I have no idea. But I just show up and I just try to type something. Just try. Just say, curiosity, calmly, just, and then 10 minutes into it, 15 minutes. Oh, I can start to see the shape of the blog post. It's probably going to be like this. Ah, something is happening here. Channeling. I am then channeling my spirit guide or muse or whatever. I'm using the word channeling probably in the wrong, the wrong way. But, but you know what I mean, I'm channeling my creativity anyway with calmness, with curiosity, with playfulness. So let me keep going. And then the book here. Again, what I have planned in my work, I do, even if I don't initially feel like it, I show up with curiosity, wondering what will emerge as I give my energy to it. Always I am glad that I stayed and tried instead of avoidance through distractions, because certainly I promise you, it is much easier for me not to create the course, not to write the blog post, not to do this video. It's much easier for me to play games on the phone. So easy.  I'm playing this game. I know I'm good at playing the game. I know if I do this, I'm going to, you know, get the score. It's very clear. But you know what? This life that you are living right now is the ultimate video game. And the score you get to win is, did I stay and try? Did I stay and try? And how did I stay and try? Was I, did I bring calmness to it? It's kind of like when you're playing a video game. Ah, superpower.  Well, the calm joyfulness is the superpower of this game called living this life. And we're playing a game. And the score is, did you stay and try? Number one, because you stay and try, you'll win.  Is it courage? Is it humility? Is it forgiveness? Is it love? Is it lightheartedness? Is it joy? Is it playfulness? Is it curiosity? I don't know. Whatever it is, you know. So, all right. Let me, let me finish the book. We're almost, we're almost done with this chapter here. Here is an important nuance to all of this. However badly I do the task is just fine. I am not trying to force a result. I stay curious as to what outcome might emerge. I simply focus on the calmness and the joy that is possible within that work in the moment. And I'll complete the chapter with this quote. One of my favorite quotes, written thousands of years ago, summarizes this. To action alone has thou a right and never at all to its fruits. Let me say that again. To action alone has thou a right. You have right to your action and never at all to its fruits. You don't have a right to the results of your action. Let not the fruits of action be thy motive. So don't let the results be why you do something. Not the success, not the money, not the clients, not the views, not the likes, not the comments, not the shares, not the accolades. Let not the fruits of action be your motive. Neither let there be in thou and you any attachment to inaction.  Okay. Don't be procrastinating. Don't be stuck. Don't be. Oh my God, I'm fearful. I'm not going to do it because I might do it wrong. No, neither let there be in you any attachment to inaction. Therefore, without being attached to the fruits of activities, one should act as a matter of duty. So I interpret that as, Hey, I planned to do this. I, it was on my schedule and I'm going to do it. And also as a matter of duty, I interpret that as to the greater whole and to my own self development. Right. That's my duty. Right. For by working without attachment. One attains the supreme. For by working without attachment, one attains the supreme. For by working without attachment, one attains the supreme. That was from the Bhagavad Gita. So continuing on and finishing up the chapter here, what matters is not the result. What matters is the action, the learning and the inner composure and joy along the way. Therefore, no performance anxiety. As I take action, I may also pause occasionally to update my systems and processes as I learn what's more effective. So I'm always, you know, Oh, I could have remembered. Oh, don't chew on this, chew on this instead. Try this instead next time. Oh, let me update my process. I'm going to try this next time. This prevents strain, exhaustion. Oh, I simply do what I plan step by step and enjoy the scene of productive actions that I witnessed myself doing. Just as you do this after a while, right? It's really strange. It's almost like you'll be witnessing yourself doing it. Like you're not the one doing it anymore. It's like you're witnessing it. And I think this is partly what, you know, Lao Tzu and, you know, Dao De Jing says it's kind of like, I'm not doing anything anymore. I am being done. I'm the one life is doing through me. I'm not the one doing it anymore. So this prevents strain, exhaustion and burnout. One can be active outside, but deeply relaxed inside productive externally, but deeply joyful. So with that, I hope you enjoyed this introductory chapter to joyful productivity. The Kindle book as well as the audio book are both now available. I recommend the audio book. You get to hear Jill's beautiful voice narrating it. It's enjoyable to hear. So go to audible.com or Amazon, either way, and you could get the audio book of joyful productivity. So thanks for those who were able to join me here. Cornelia, Captain, Carissa, Stacy. Thank you. Cornelia says five minutes ago, I was just, I read this from a Maharishi text and now you tell the same. Yeah, wonderful. And Cornelia says, are you meditating? That's a great question. You know, I have tried meditating for years. I even meditated. I've always had a hard time meditating, just sitting down and, you know, meditating. But I tried for like six months where I started with one minute of meditation per day. And then I moved that to two minutes. Literally, I gradually went up to being able to meditate for half an hour a day. And then I went on a 10-day Vipassana silent retreat. It was very painful. And then I just, you know, I don't meditate anymore. I haven't for the last couple of years. I think what I do is what I do is called energy reboot. And you can Google George Cow energy reboot if you want to see my process. But I think generally I probably meditate throughout my work and throughout the whole day I'm kind of meditating by just noticing my thoughts, noticing my actions and then trying to bring some more joy and calm to it. So that's probably what I do, I think. Noelle, thanks for joining as well. Okay, everybody, I wish you a wonderful rest of your day. I wish you much calm and joyful productivity as you go ahead and do your work and find that service, that sense of service and that sense of self-expression. Take care. And oh, one thing I was saying, obviously there's something wrong with meditation. Meditation is amazing for a lot of people. So I think, and some people like prayer, some people like journaling, some people like dancing. I mean, there's a lot of, some people just like walking, long walks. So I think we each need to, thankfully, there are all these different modalities. So I disagree with someone who says, oh, you must meditate. Everyone must meditate. No, not really. I think everyone must practice consciousness of their thoughts and not get caught up in their thoughts. I think that's true. But how you do that is maybe different than how someone else does it. So anyway, all right, be well, take care.


Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva, and I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Professor Tim Unwin, who is UNESCO chairman in ICT for Development, Royal Holloway University of London, and also former secretary general of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation. Tim, great to see you in the studio today. It's always nice to be here, and pleasure to be with you again. Thanks very much indeed. Now, this year we're celebrating the 25th anniversary of the ITU development sector. The ICT landscape, I think you would agree, has changed tremendously in the past decades. ITU is launching a study on ICT for SDGs, and I wanted to ask you, how do you think this study will contribute to responding to many of today's challenges? First, let me congratulate the ITU on this great event. I mean, 25 years, and as you say, the world has changed hugely, and ICTs have been a fundamental part of that. There are those, yeah, not too many people, but there are those who actually see ICTs as being very unsustainable, and doing a lot of damage in the world, leading to greater inequality, leading to higher demands for energy and satellites in space. So, this ground-breaking work by people in the ITU and they brought together a range of primarily economists, is going to try and write about these issues in a slightly different way from the normal arguments that tend to be put out there. So, it's going to be, I hope, a little bit critical, a little bit, actually asking, well, why haven't we had all the benefits that ICTs are often seen as delivering? How do we make them more sustainable? How do we make the interventions that they offer more sustainable as well? And we can look at sustainability in a range of ways. There's obviously the environmental agenda, which has come in through the so-called sustainable development goals, but there's also actually the sustainability of the sector, the sustainability of the economic models, and all those sorts of things. So, we're hoping, and we're having some very fun discussions amongst people from very different backgrounds, trying to resolve some of these issues. So, we're hoping it's not just going to be the same old standard publication ICTs and SDGs, but to drill down a little bit. A second key aspect, I think, is very much around ensuring that it has some practical recommendations. Again, how those are going to come through, but there's little point in the ITU producing a book unless there's some good, clear advice for governments in, okay, if you've got this issue, these are the options that you can choose from. It was lovely. We've spoken before about these things, but I hate the word best practice or the term best practice, because there are just lots of good practices that people adapt to their own local context, and that's going to be a theme coming through as well. It's not a best practice publication, but these are the range of options that if you want to ensure that ICTs can contribute to the SDGs, but also more broadly to sustainability, you might like to take forward and explore. And I think the ITU and the work of the BDT, particularly its focus on development, is always here as a partner to work with governments, the private sector and the civil society in actually putting that rhetoric into practice. So it's an exciting project to be part of. Now, putting this study into context, there are several studies and debates on how ICT key enabler to economic growth and innovation, but perhaps you could tell us a little bit more about the main outcomes of this study, and its added value to the existing discussions, and especially its contribution to the UN and sustainable development goals. Well, we all know there are far too many sustainable development goals, and nobody remembers all of the 169 targets. So we're not trying in this publication to be universal. We're concentrating particularly on three or four main areas. Economic growth is of course clearly important. We're focusing on things like job creation, entrepreneurship and innovation as well. Yes, there have been publications on those, but we're also going to situate it more broadly within other aspects of the SDGs. So how can those contribute to education, for example? It's very sad that there actually wasn't, from my perspective anyway, an SDG specifically on accessibility and affordability of ICTs. And when I was at the CTO, this is something that Commonwealth governments were very keen to see, but it didn't happen. It's also very sad that ICTs are only formally mentioned in four of the 169 targets. But as the work that the ITU's been involved in and other UN agencies in the WISIS process, there's a fantastic matrix which of course shows how ICTs can contribute to everything. But our core focus is on these critical things around job creation, innovation, economic growth, but also how they can influence the others. One of my particular interests and in the work that I'm contributing is to focus on inequality and it's nice that SDG 10 is of course about inclusion. And so the book will look at that aspect because if we don't ensure that the use of ICTs is inclusive, that is going to lead to a much more unstable world, which is unsustainable. So in terms of the content, we're going to be writing around those issues. And yes, there have been other publications on them, but not quite approached in this way. I think a second thing that this book is going to be novel at is, as I mentioned earlier, around the practical implications. Okay, there's no point in writing unless we can come up with something forward looking and things will make a difference. And thirdly, it's an interesting model in kind of co-creation of knowledge. It's bringing a group of people together from very, very different perspectives, different parts of the world, mainly male sadly, and we need to do more about getting alternative voices around the table. But each of us has gone out to our own communities and is working with them, getting insights from them, getting feedback. And really discussing the shape of the book as a whole, and we're just down from a discussion about exactly what the title should be. But also then going through each chapter, there's several of us involved in each chapter, and everybody then puts comments on other people's chapters. So we're having fun things around whether or not we actually need to define terminology. And we do have a get out clause that actually the ITU all too often is quite cautious about defining terminology and enables people to use terminology in its own ways. But there is a UN language, there is an ITU language. And so one of the interesting things that the editorial team is going to have to do is to ensure that that ITU language features. So having great debates about exactly what sustainability means and what networks mean and portals and things like that. Now, you're leading the chapter on critical elements of sustainability and development. Perhaps you could tell us some of these critical elements. Yeah, well, we're using critical in two main ways. One is what are the most important, but the other is actually also being quite critical of some of the notions and arguments around sustainability. There are those who say that sustainable and development actually don't go hand in hand because any development implies change or a sustainable isn't change or it's continuing change. So we're going to tackle those questions head on. We're going to explore the notion of sustainability in a range of ways, particularly around what is the impact of ICTs on the physical environment. I mean, a lot of the notions of sustainability that went into the SDGs came from the environmental debate. And that's going to be quite challenging. There have been a lot of studies which have focused on a particular area of the environment showing how technology can be carbon neutral and companies are encouraged to be carbon neutral. But that is just a tiny fraction of the environmental impact that ICTs and technology more general has. So we're going to be challenging some issues around that. A second complaint one often has about ICT projects, especially those designed to support poorer marginalized communities is that the projects dry up and stop after funding ceases. And many of these projects are funded by bilateral, multilateral donors or civil society organizations. And so the standard complaint is we've done this wonderful pilot project, but it doesn't go to scale and it's not sustainable. So we're going to tackle that head on as well. What needs to be in place for some of the great things that ICTs can do to be sustainable and systematized. And these are things like ensuring a holistic approach, ensuring that the full financial cost of such an initiative is planned through the system, ensuring that projects are designed at scale from the beginning. If you can have a wonderful pilot project that companies will throw lots of money at to persuade the government to roll it out more widely, be that in the health sector or be it in education. And then when you actually realize, well, this has to go to 50 million children in school, the sum's add up and you can't do it. So we're going to be looking at that. We're going to be arguing particularly that whether one calls it a multi-sector approach or a multi-stakeholder approach, definitely not a public-private approach because public-private partnerships tend to ignore civil society and other people as well. So a multi-stakeholder approach is essential but there's remarkably little good practice in multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder approaches that people could draw on. Everybody talks about them but they still don't deliver them very well. So we're going to be addressing that. And I think a key theme that's going to come through the book as a whole is there's a cost to that. Sustainability doesn't just happen. If you want to focus on it, you're going to have to pay in some way. That payment can be in cash, in finance, or it can be in actually doing things in very different ways that you're not used to changing the organizational approach. Another kind of cost. So all of that in 6,000 words. I've probably said more than 6,000 words in this interview. So it's a real challenge compressing it into something that makes sense and is very readable. It's going to be a book that I hope will be fun to read as well. We wish you the very best of luck with this and thank you very much, Steve, for being with us today. It's always nice to be with you. Thanks.


Creating a website using Adobe Express. Adobe Express is an online graphic design tool. It can be used for creating many different multimedia projects, including one-page websites. Adobe Express has both a free and a paid plan. Using Adobe Express for free limits the use of the platform's free graphics, templates, and features. The premium version unlocks access to all the platform's features and graphics, as well as extra cloud storage for $9.99 US a month, or is included if you already have an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Whichever plan you choose, you can publish your site for free. It will be hosted within Adobe Express, so you'll never have to pay for a domain. Creating websites in Adobe Express is relatively simple, no matter your previous experience with the tool. In this video, we will cover the basics of using Adobe Express to create a beautiful website. The first step to creating a compelling website is to write the content and collect any supplementary images or logos you'll be using. Adobe Express has a great stock photo library, but you won't always be able to find the perfect image for free, so it's better to be prepared. Once your content is nailed down, it's time to begin creating an Adobe Express. The first step is to log into your account. Go to www.express.adobe.com and press login if you already have an account. If not, you'll need to create one. To do this, click the Sign Up button. Now that you have access to the site, it's time to begin crafting your web page. To begin, click the purple plus sign button in the top left corner. This will open a window with a basic overview of all the things you can use Adobe Express for. Navigate down this list until you find web page. Clicking on this will bring you to a blank page with prompts to add a title and add a subtitle. The first thing we're going to do is change our theme. Click on the word themes in the upper right corner of the screen. A drop-down menu will appear with 13 choices. Remember, your theme can be changed at any time, so don't worry if you can't decide right away. The theme will establish the look and formatting of your portfolio, so feel free to play around with different themes until you find one you are happy with. This will be the first thing a user will see when they get to your site. So, add a title and subtitle that gets across the purpose of your web page. You can drag this text around the page where it can snap to nine possible locations. This will help the title pop against whatever background you choose. To add a background, go to the plus sign at the bottom of this page. You'll see three options pop up. Choosing photo will open the Adobe Stock Library. You can also upload a photo from your own computer or click the three dots at the top of this pop-up to add photos from alternate sources such as Dropbox, Google Photo, or Google Drive. When you've selected a photo, click on the background of your page and you will get another menu. Here, you can make sure the right portion of your photo is visible by clicking focal point or you can replace or delete the photo. You can also change the size of this page into a short cover or a split layout if you want two pieces of content side by side. This just divides your pages in half and you can add a photo on one side and your chosen content on the other. Adobe Express sites are made up of multiple sections or pages combined into a one-page scrollable website. You'll see if you scroll down, there's another plus sign. This is the button that you'll use each time you want to add a new section to your site. There are seven layout options to choose from here. They are photo, text, button, video, photo grid, glide show, and split layout. Click on text and a toolbar with formatting options will appear. Heading one for titles and heading two for subtitles. Quote, which specially formats text with large quotation marks and is perfect for things like testimonials. Bolded list and numbered lists for any list. Bold and italic to place emphasis on different words or sections. Link to create a hyperlink by highlighting any section of your text. Clicking the link button and pasting the URL you want to link to. Left align, center align, and right align to change the alignment of any text. Keep in mind that any list text or quote text alignment will be locked to the left side of the page. Clicking photo will open the same stock photo menu as before. Once you've selected your photo, a couple options will appear when it loads on your page. Inline is the default way that photos appear centered on your page. Fill screen will make the photo the same size as the window it's being viewed in, just like your first page. Window makes the photos with the same as the screen, but only shows a slice of it as you scroll. This option works well if you want something like a title to stand out. Lastly, full width displays the photo at its original ratio, so chances are it will be bigger than full screen, especially if you're using a portrait-oriented photo. You'll notice in the bottom right corner of every photo there is a gear icon. Clicking this will allow you to add alt text, which will help to improve the accessibility of your page. You can also add a caption to go alongside your photo. Adobe Express has two other options for displaying images. You click on the plus sign again and choose Photo Grid. The same photo menu will appear, but this time you're able to upload or select as many images as you'd like. They'll appear on screen in the order that you selected them. When you click on one, you'll be able to replace it, toggle its size between small and large, change its order in the grid by clicking the left or right arrows, or delete it. Once you're happy with how your grid looks, click Save in the top right corner, and it will appear in line on your webpage. The last photo option here is called the Glide Show. It is a feature that is quite unique to Adobe Express. This option works best when you use a photo as a background and add text or images over top. Choose Glide Show from the plus menu and select or upload your photos in the same way as before. Keep in mind that Glide Shows are full screen and can be quite a strong visual feature, so try to select relatively simple images that look nice together as they will glide seamlessly into one another. Once you've chosen your images, click Save in the top right corner. When the Glide Show appears on your page, you'll notice a grayed-out box over the image. This is where you'll add any foreground content. Click on the plus sign here to add any photos, text, buttons, or videos. Your window will be aligned to the left by default, but you can always drag it to the center or right of the background image. To add a button or a video, click your respective buttons on the plus side toolbar. A pop-up will appear with the space to enter your chosen URL. For a button, you can choose the text that will appear on the button, as well as the alignment on the page. For a video, you can not upload directly from your computer. You'll have to upload the video to a site such as YouTube, Vimeo, or Adobe Express Video. As mentioned earlier, you can change your theme at any time. You can also view what your finished website will look like to a user at any time by clicking the Preview button on the top menu bar. In this same menu, you can also set up Google Analytics for your website by clicking Settings. You can go through your web page like a slideshow by clicking Present. And lastly, there is Share. When you click the Share button, you have the option for Print. If you want to print your website or save it as a PDF, send to Google Drive, invite if you want to add collaborators to work on the website with you, and lastly, to Publish and Share Link. This is what we're going to use to publish our finished website. Click Publish and Share Link, and a pop-up menu will appear. Here you can decide the title of the site and the category, as well as if you want to display the authors along with a list of photo credits if you used any stock images. There's also the option to allow Adobe to potentially feature your work on their website. Once you're done here, click Publish and Adobe will generate a link for you to share with the world. One important thing to remember about Adobe Express is that your website will not automatically update. Every time you make a change, you'll need to click Publish and Share again and click Update Link for Adobe to generate a new link for you to use. You now have a fully functioning website that you can continue to edit and approve upon. For a more in-depth look at the features of Adobe Express, check out the digital portfolio series on the Learning Portal.