I'm an artist, I'm a sculptor, and I do installations. Art is indeed a product of human experience and imagination. I'm sharing with you my creative process in the hope that you will see that art is not separated from life, whether that life is lived, and experienced, or imagined. I wrote poems and published some of them. I thought I was an artist, but I produced poems only when intensely moved or inspired. But with my visual art, my sculpture, and my installations, I work when I'm inspired. When I have a scheduled exhibit, I discipline myself to work even when I'm not inspired. I work until I feel inspired. I began working with stones after a trip to a coral island in Antique. I picked up a piece of stone and looked at it, and I looked at it, and it looked like a torso. So when I got home, I got my bolo and started working on it. Voila! I realized I could sculpt. I'm largely self-taught as a visual artist. So my early works were mainly about getting rid of my angst, which I did not realize then. So my early works were mainly about getting rid of my angst, which I did not realize then. I am moved by stories I hear, and I try to represent them in my works. This is one of my early works, The Mourners. I exhibited this in Manila. This is made of coral stone. This work was inspired by the Moque's reactions that we have, especially when there's a burial, when almost everyone would cry, would really faint from crying. This one is The Burden Bear Race, inspired by the Pieta, images of the Pieta, but it's also inspired by the caros that I see during Lent. But here I infuse an introduction of a feminist concept where the mother carries her son like a cross. This sculpture is a well-hiding. It's a work I did in my wrapped series. This was inspired by a distant relative who was so pretty, but every time suitors would come, she would be hidden by her elders inside a rice basket. This one is Lucila. This work was inspired by the first woman, Chop Chop Lady, Lucila Lalu. I heard the story of this lady who was murdered and chopped, but I didn't really know her personally, but the story kept on ringing in my mind and I was able to do a sculpture inspired by that story. This one is Hide and Seek. This was inspired by a real experience when I was a child. We played Hide and Seek and we hid inside the Patadyong and we climbed the tree and fell into the fish pond of my grandmother. So this one you see heads, feet, a foot, I think, and hands. This one I did a bus series from 1995 to 2011, but this was inspired years, years ago when I was still a student in literature and broadcasting. There was a rule during the martial law period where if your film exposes two breasts, then it's x-rated, but if it only shows one breast, then it passes the censors. So I was inspired to work on exposing the bust, the breast, but this one is my take on the bust, the bust as a sculptural form. So what I did was to twist the whole figure, rearrange them, and created a figure that looked like phalluses. And this is still part of the work which I exhibited at the CCP in 1999. And this one, of course, is still part of the bust series and you can see here that on the left side it looked like balls but on the other side it looks like a vagina. So it's about sexuality also and gender. Then these two slides, these two images show my own movement towards feminism because I was inspired to work on images of women, but the one that's titled Lourdes is inspired by a former dean and a close mentor, who died of cancer. So I goaged out the breasts to make it look spooky. The other one is inspired by Manining Miklath, who died after she fell or she intentionally dove down a building with the back of her head first.  Then I'm still kind of haunted by the story of Lucilla Lalou so that there were other stories in the news talking about chop-chop ladies or chop-chop victims of murder. So I made another version of Lucilla in 2008, showing only parts of the body. Then Clara Bell is inspired by my classmate who had alopecia. She had big breasts but she has no hair. Then Osith is part of my Dream Women series, which I exhibited at the Allianz Francaise in 2012. But this one is inspired by the title of the show was Dream Women. So these are women who have kind of inspired me or have affected me in some way or the other. But this Osith is based on the story of Saint Osith who goes around the Abbey bringing her chopped head. Then Wawa is based on my student who was so fat, I could not imagine, she could get husband.  So it's kind of funny but at the same time that's my take of the stories and inspirations I see when I meet people. Then this is also part of my Dream series. Mebuyan of course is a very famous character in the Manobo epics and mythology. So Mebuyan has so many breasts because she takes care of dead babies. And then Jujel is inspired by this visionary in Agoo but actually she is also transgender.  And then Gertrude and Alice inspired by Gertrude Stein and her lover Alice. So I thought that they're too close and maybe they look like they're an ecstasy and I thought that forming a breast there that looked like a clitoris would kind of intimate that idea of their oneness. Judith and Holofernes is inspired of course by this apocrypal book of Judith and she was the one who beheaded Holofernes. So here is Judith sort of exhibiting ecstatic feelings while holding the head of Holofernes. And then in 1999 I had my first exhibition at the CCP. This was inspired by my bust series and I did an installation there of mirrors and profiles as well as my sculptures. So on the floor I also scattered parts of the breasts. So it's about sexuality. The funny thing about this is when they tried to make comments on the guest book, the Filipinos said, oh puro titi, but the foreigners thought, it's great. So you can see the variation in terms of reaction of audiences. When I was doing my residency in Vermont Studio Center, I was kind of hearing stories about American lives ruined by divorce. I have several friends who are divorcee or her parents are divorced and so I thought that America was fragmented. And I did a series on fragmentary states. This is an exhibit titled Fragmentary States and I use it to, I use the marble sculptures and they look like ruins. And then I use also soil to scatter the sculptures that I made. And then when I was doing graduate work in fine arts, I got some courses in fine arts. I had some projects and this one is refreshing memories. I thought of the fishermen who would try to keep their fish fresh by putting ice on them.  So the idea there is the more you try to refresh your memory, the more distorted they become. And then when I was young, I thought that haircuts are really awful sessions and I would cry a lot. So I did an installation called Haircut. I went to the barbershop, had my haircut and then I looked at all my baby photos and then cut up the upper part and then shredded them. Because haircuts, I really realized, were very important to children as far as their self-identity is concerned. This particular installation tried to capture that. Eventually, when exhibited this in Manila, one child played around it. And even the caretaker thought, patay na ba yung bata jan? He said, that's me. So they thought it's about death. And then I did this installation also titled Nude so that when you see clothes scattered on the floor or somewhere else, you think that the guy must have been naked somewhere or the person must have been naked somewhere. So what I did was I took my old Levi's jeans, my underwear and all my shirt and then put them on the floor and then exhibited them also in a gallery. Because the nude is not what we see but it's what is in our mind. Then I did Salt Bed. Salt Bed is my take on punishments did on children years ago. They're made to kneel in Mungo or they're made to kneel in salt. So what I did was to create a kind of installation. I bought several kilos of salt and then I used my own blanket which I used in my own boarding house. And then I just created a kind of bed, a literal take on the salt bed. But that's how I imagined the difficulty and unease you feel when lying on something that is not usually comfortable. And I also did a little bit of performance by lying on the bed itself. And then reduction. Reduction is about how we are reduced to ashes eventually when we all die. So before I had the fear of dying but after some time I got over it. But I realized that with the popularity of cremation how much will I be reduced in terms of cups of ashes. And so what I did was I went to an app and then I saw that with my weight I could only be about 12 cups. But what I did was to use ordinary charcoal ash which I asked my father to take to Manila so I could put it in my project. So that's me. I tried also to do a little bit of performance alongside my own installation. And then aboyaboy is about a cradle improvised cradle used in most rural homes. And I thought of the Japanese story where babies are bi-united, thrown to the air. And so I thought of putting a malong, hang it like a cradle, improvised cradle and then put a knife under it. This has been shown also in a gallery but I want really to do a large scale installation of this one eventually. Then of course I was also trying to play with the Filipinas pension for drinking themselves to death when they're broken hearted. So I used Red Horse Beer which is the strongest beer there is in the Philippines. And then I put up an installation which I literally titled Broken Heart. So what I did was to gather pieces of Red Horse Beer and then broke them and then just formed the heart there. I did an installation of this in also another gallery. Then the Virgin is an installation I did based on the poem of my friend the Virgin. In essence, the Virgin is about preserving yourself for your man or your woman. But I thought virginity is not only for women but it's also for men. So that's why the installation is kind of phallic to a certain extent. And when I exhibited this one in a gallery they were kind of clamoring. It looked like it's sacrilegious, it's bad influence because there's blood or kind of a suggestion of blood over there. And there was this guy looking at it so they thought that they want to take it down. But I said it's not about sex at all, it's about even preserving yourself. And then I did Forgotten Painting. So what I did when I got home, I tried to paint a large canvas in our beach cottage and then eventually set up an installation Forgotten Painting. And this was exhibited also in a gallery but it's also about artists who are forgotten and have never received recognition. And maybe there's studios you know just cluttered with paintings or artworks that have never been exhibited. Abortion of flight is a funny, funnily inspired piece because every time we go use the national highway there are road kills and I thought that a lot of chickens are killed along the road. But it's also a kind of a metaphor for our dreams. So when we wanted to fly but our flight is aborted. And then eventually when this was exhibited in a gallery people were stepping on it. So there's a kind of action because they thought that these are just feathers. I just used chicken feathers here. And then shedding. Shedding is of course using also chicken feathers. I did an installation of this exhibit that is in Magnet Gallery in a group show. This is about trying to unravel ourselves and I realized that only sick chickens shed their feathers. So that's the work as installed in Magnet Gallery before. And then I'm also inspired by children's games. Especially the ones that you know would require drawing on the sand. I live by the beach and most of us you know would play in the sand and then we would draw on the sand. And so I did an installation titled Arena. So this is the way I set up the exhibition in the UP Art Gallery. So it's also about memories and so there's an overlapping of the drawings that we you know would draw on the sand as we play games like Jose Jose Comansi and Inns or Barrol in our own language in Hili Gainon. And also Tin Tin Baka which is hopscotch in English. So this is the finished product of that one. And that's me with my dad in the installation. And there were also people who tried to play in the gallery when they saw the drawings on the sand. I used white sand and brown sand. Then catch. Catch was something I did in UPV. It's about the futility of fishing when fisherman you know would engage in communal fishing but all they get is stone. So I just hang stones on the net itself. This is an actual net. But I realized there are aesthetic also shapes that were formed as you hang the net. And then I did do yankanang magitting. Do yankanang magitting. But this one I used the title Cradle of Noble Heroes from the Americanized version of our National Anthem. So do yankanang magitting is also about UPV but it's also about how UPV has become the cradle of heroic people. But you know that LGBT flag was just coincidental because when I did that installation it was in November when they had that flag hanging there in the ablation. So that's another view of do yankanang magitting. I just used hammocks. So I used available materials and then tried to create new meanings from these. And then I also doubled in steel but what I did was to cut steel. When I was in the States I worked in steel but because of the scarcity of the equipment in the Philippines and I did not invest in a cutter. So I had to look for several years for a steel works company who can cut the material for me and I was able to find one. And so I was able to create works and I titled the exhibition Penetrations in Steel Mask. It's about multiple personalities but one makes use of simple cutting like you cut a piece of paper and form several figures from it. So I made an installation of this exhibition. Your movements are reflected in the wallbound pieces which are all made of clear stainless steel materials, reflective. So you have here a vision of people watching the gallery even as you capture only one angle. So the idea there is that when we meet people we are actually meeting several other people and we are seeing several other sides of ourselves like you don't only have a single personality. As you meet people you exhibit the different personalities that you have. Recently in 2017 I did an exhibition well my broken heart series continued so I did my broken heart meets your heart of stone. So I did two big hearts, one made of broken beer bottles and the other one made of stone and that's the whole figure eventually. Lastly in Singapore I did the circle of broken hearts still continuing with my broken heart series. This time they don't have beer so they had wine so what I did was to create a circle of sorts using the broken wine and shaping hearts from it. It's an idea of sad people meeting other sad people. I love to think a lot and rationalize. I like reading and listening to ideas. My installations are expansions of the ideas I am attentive to. So I hope you learned from my sharing today.


10 Social Skills Every Successful Person Has According to Daniel Goleman, an author and science journalist, when we focus on others, our world expands. However, we can only focus on others when we know how to socialize, which is the act of learning social skills. Social skills, as defined by skillyourneed.com, are the skills we use to communicate and interact with each other, both verbally and non-verbally, through gestures, body language and our parents. Social skills help us integrate ourselves into groups and communicate effectively, even if you are not the smartest, most attractive or eloquent person. If you have solid social skills, it'll be easier to succeed in both your personal and professional life. Do you know what the good news is? Social skills can be learned and developed with consistent practice. Just like learning how to cook, develop software, or play a sport, the ability to connect with others is a skill and you can learn how to do it more effectively. In this video, I'll share with you 10 social skills every successful person has. This, I believe, will help you become a successful person. If you're new here, consider subscribing so that you won't miss other interesting videos like this. 1. Speak Less and Ask More Questions One of the most important social skills you can build is learning to speak less and ask questions more. Not a way that makes you seem interrogative, but because you want to understand people better and strengthen your relationships with them. You see, people like to talk about themselves and ask in questions that take them down memory lane or cause them to air their opinion about a subject will help foster the relationship that exists between you two. 2. Maintain Eye Contact When you make eye contact with the person you are speaking with, it shows that you are confident and fully engaged in the conversation. Even if you are trying to take note or certain points of the conversation, ensure that you'll make eye contact from time to time. 3. Respect Others No matter your level of achievement in life, you need to show respect to people. When you respect people, it shows that you regard them and that you care, admire and value their position. Even if you are better experienced and knowledgeable than they are, staying calm and humble is one social skill that will earn you a soft spot in their hearts. 4. Use Proper Body Language Sometimes it is not what you say that matters, but how you say it. Your body language can communicate and provide plenty of information and make people figure out if you are interested in the conversation or not. For instance, your body language can project a nonchalant or unserious attitude and no one wants to have any business with an unserious person. So when conversing with people, pay attention to your body clues and avoid postures that might speak ill of you, such as folding your arms, turning your body away and so on. 5. Be Polite People appreciate and connect with people who have manners. For instance, you'll be surprised how much same things like please, thank you, you're welcome and the likes can do to a person. It always goes a long way when you are polite to people regardless of their financial, educational or professional status. 6. Smile More When you smile, it shows that you are receptive and approachable and attribute people always admiring others. According to Pamela McClain, TDSS, a past president of the American Academy of Periondontology, she says and I quote, when someone has a big smile, it shows they're willing to open up and expose a part of themselves. A smile conveys confidence in professionalism, says Lily T. Garcia. When you smile, you say a lot of positive things about yourself, even without talking. This makes people enjoy being around you and enjoy spending time with you. 7. Be Teachable Successful people are constantly looking for avenues to get things done effectively and efficiently, hence they are always learning and growing. They never stop seeking knowledge from others. If you're going to satisfy your thirst for knowledge and keep learning, then you must be teachable. Learn how to ask questions and seek help from experts even when they are younger than you are. If you are not teachable, then you won't learn new things. And when you don't learn new things, you won't grow. Nobody wants to be around someone who is stagnant and making no effort to grow. So be teachable. 8. Use Criticism Without Getting Defensive Criticism, constructive criticism, are there for a reason to help us understand a better approach to that which you are doing. When people give you feedback about your work, especially criticism, take time to understand what they are saying. Absorb the information properly instead of getting defensive. Be open-minded and relaxed. Even if you didn't ask for their opinion, be careful not to immediately attack them and get defensive. 9. Celebrate People's Wings When you commend people for a job well done, they want to get closer to you because you are not a selfish person who is concerned with only himself or herself. So when someone shares a piece of good news with you, instead of dismissing it by sharing your personal experiences, be excited and celebrate with them. 10. Be Resilient Successful people are resilient people. Resilience is the ability to overcome emotional pain and adverse situations. Being resilient will help you survive and prosper no matter the situation that you find yourself. That way, you'll serve as a motivation to others who are interested in becoming successful entrepreneurs. Thank you very much for watching our videos. We'll like to give you another interesting video for you to enjoy next, but before then, our team will be very happy if you can like this video and share it with your friends on social media. If you're new here, don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss other interesting videos like this. Look at your screen now to see two other videos we handpicked for you to enjoy next. We love you.


This is Stink Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. Okay, we're back. We're live. It's Monday, and it's Meena, Marco, and me, except this time it's Marco and me. And we're talking about energy in the state of Hawaii. We're getting current on it. And today, you know, the show, of course, is about developments in energy, news, and events about energy. And Marco is a great resource for that, and we can have great discussions with him. Square, fair-minded, straight-ahead discussions. And we're going to call this, as a tagline, we're going to call this Hawaii a state of energy dysfunction because we have some things that lead to that conclusion. Welcome to the show, Marco, again, yet again. Well, the more we talk, Jay, the more I just fall ever so more deeply in love with talking about energy with you. You bet. This is where it lives, honestly. So let's talk about a number of things today. We've got a shock-a-block kind of agenda today, and I'd like to cover it with you. And for number one, I'd like to talk about this thing with D-Bed. D-Bed's going to spend just about a million dollars on looking at ownership utility models. And I'd like to get the facts on what's going on and I'd like to discuss what it all means. What's going on? So back in the 2016 legislature, the legislature passed a bill that was signed into law by Governor Ike that appropriated, I believe it was $1.2 million for the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism, of which there is an energy office in the D-BedT acronym, to look at utility ownership, electric utility ownership models for the state of Hawaii. And keep in mind this was in the throes of the decision remaining to be made or arrived at by the Public Utilities Commission regarding the attempted purchase of one electric industry by next year energy out of Florida. So as we know, July 15th of last year, the commission would thumbs down on that purchase and the next Monday next year pulled its stakes up and went back to Florida. But nonetheless, this bill signed into law appropriating money for D-Bed to be able to send out a request for proposals, which they did for a consulting company to do a comprehensive analysis and present that analysis to the legislature looking at utility ownership models with the three main ones being investor-owned utility, which we have in the form of Hawaiian Electric and Miko, Hiko, and Helco. We have the co-op model, which we have on Kauai right now, in which my group, Hawaii Island Energy Co-op, has been espousing and promoting for this island as well, for the big island. And then finally, there's the muni model or municipal model, where you would have a city or a county actually being the owner of the electric utility and you have that places nowhere here in Hawaii, but you have it on places like the mainland. Or on the mainland places like Palo Alto, Santa Clara, in my home area of the Bay Area and many other parts of the U.S. So this study, the bid was won by a company called London Economics, which is based on the East Coast. The winning bid, they bid somewhere I believe around 980,000, if I remember correctly. And they are on Island or they're in the state right now and they're doing a number of public forums where they're soliciting the input of the public on all the islands that Hawaii Electric serves, Oahu, Lanai, Molokai, Maui, and the big island. So the two meanings that you're going to be on this island, one is going to be this evening over on Kona at the Nelha, the Natural Energy Lab of Hawaii, which is right off of the Queen K Highway there close to the airport. And then tomorrow is going to be the one at Hilo. We're at Waiakea High School at the gym at Waiakea High School. So I'm actually going to be meeting with one of these scout teams tomorrow for lunch and I look forward to my conversation with them then. So they're on an intel gathering mission here. And the goal from what I understand, Jay, the goal is to have a report ready to be submitted to D-bed by sometime by the end of 2018 so that it would be ready for the review by the legislature when the legislature meets next, or not next, but in early 2019, sometime January 2019. So we are more than a year away, most likely, from seeing what the fruits of their labor is going to be and what the fruits of this $1.2 million of taxpayer money is going to what it's going to look like. I've got some questions for you, Marco. They're rhetorical, but maybe we can talk about them a little. So this was done in the 2016 legislature, which would have been over by May of 2016. Here we are now. We're cruising into the last quarter of 2017. And only now we get a successful contract. What held it up? How come the state cannot move faster than that? Well, it was awarded. I don't remember exactly when it was awarded, Jay. I believe. And then I wouldn't want to go to the bank on this. I believe it was awarded January of this year, OK? And why it's taken London Economics the time it's taken for them to come out and talk to the peeps on the ground here. I really can't say I'll have a better idea after I meet with them myself tomorrow. But as to what the delay has been, I don't know.  They're going to have it ready for the next legislative session, which of course starts January, you know, just several months away, January of 2018. So as to why these things take as long as they do, you got me, my friend. I don't know. OK. Yeah, let's just have a lingering question and issue. And it does get in the way of energy and everything else in Hawaii. The other thing is why not Kauai? Why aren't they looking at Kauai?  Is this really just an attack on Hawaiian Electric? Oh, I wouldn't constitute as an attack on Hawaiian Electric in terms of why not Kauai. I'm looking at the schedule of the meetings. And in fact, they will be there on Thursday in Lihui, meeting a public meeting on the island of Kauai. So they will be most likely these scout teams, I believe there are two of them, are going to be meeting with various energy stakeholders, including utility companies, interest groups, and also members of the public. So I would think as part of their analysis, they would look at how KIUC has been performing in terms of serving their members over the past 15 years. You know, there are other options other than just IOUs, investor and utilities, co-ops, and munis. There's also the ITO, Independent System Operator, which is what we have in California. There are also regional transmission operators as well on the U.S. mainland. But I don't think, given the fact that our islands are not interconnected and won't be for the foreseeable future, that any type of ISO or RTO models necessarily make much sense here. So it's just going to be very interesting to see what kind of conclusions they come to. You know, it also strikes me that I've seen this before. I was part of the Hightech Development Corporation for a while in the early 2000s. We get these, you know, huge contracts, million dollars for consulting. I'll take that deal. And, you know, the question is why we really need to have an East Coast company who's not familiar with Hawaii. Hawaii is unique. It's a sui generis. It's an island state. You know, in the middle of the Pacific, it's different from every other market, every other energy arrangement in the world, really. And they take some consulting company on the East Coast, and these guys come out here and they talk to everybody, and everybody talks to them. I saw this happen in D-bed when I was associated with it. And then they regurgitate exactly what we told them. And that they get a million dollars for. You know, and I think often it's an abdication of the part of D-bed. D-bed gives all these big contracts out to get all these reports. They put the reports on the shelf. Nothing happens except we spend a lot of taxpayer money, and there's actually very little input from the guys, from the energy officer who is supposed to be running energy in the state of Hawaii. Why can't we do this ourselves? Why can't we actually sit down and do the hard work ourselves in the PUC, in the legislature, you name it, actually talk to each other, actually find a model that suits people? Why do we have to bring in million-dollar contracts to talk to us and to regurgitate what we tell them? What are your thoughts about that? That's a great point, Jay, and I don't have a satisfactory answer for you. I mean, it's not the first time, as you know, that this has happened. So Maui County had some money left in their budget and Mayor Alan Aracau has spent, I believe it was somewhere in the $70,000 range to pay a, I believe it was Oklahoma-based, Oklahoma-based company whose name escapes me right now to look at the possibility of what the possibilities are for the county of Maui getting into the electric utility ownership business if they were to, let's say, make a move on taking over Maui Electric. And that study made some blurbs in Pacific businesses when it came out, but it certainly didn't rock Maui in order to lead Mayor Aracau to move in the direction of doing any kind of hospital takeover of MECO. So, I mean, as an academic, I find those kind of analyses always are typically interesting to read. But to your point, in terms of why do we have to spend so much money with hired guns from the mainland to look at this and then issue their reports and get a little bit of press, and then we put it on the shelf, like you said, and it gets dusty, I don't have a good answer for you. Okay, but we can continue to talk about Maui for a minute. In Maui, we have an interesting phenomenon. We have bad news about the affordable tech industry there. PV permits are down 62%. There were only like 100 permits in the last quarter. And gee, it looks bad for PV in Maui. What's happening with PV? I thought we were on a roll with PV, but apparently not. And Maui is only one island. I mean, it's also to some extent happening in Oahu too and around the state. What is wrong with our PV system that we're not maintaining the same momentum we had earlier? Well, it's the vicissitudes of the solar coaster that's been named in terms of the ups and downs and the hills and the valleys. And I think fundamentally, after net energy metering came to an official close October of 2015, just about two years ago, that the solar coaster has been slowing substantially. So you can look at the incentives for those who haven't gone solar PV, of which the large majority of homeowners and business owners have not. The incentives have decreased, have been decreasing over the past couple years. So it's harder to make the value proposition convincing, harder certainly than it was prior to NEM coming to a close. So that's one big part of the puzzle. The other is that our island utilities, as I've been saying for a number of years and kind of stating the obvious, they are fixed grids. In other words, you can only have a finite amount of power being generated in a finite grid. And there's no such thing as an infinite grid that Elon Musk may dream of such things in terms of energy revolution and smart grids and so forth. But the reality right now is that the grids are finite. You can only feed so much power into a finite grid. You can't just continue to add, add, add, more generating capacity and many circuits across the Hawaiian Electric and KIUC service territories are just reaching a point of relative saturation. So the ease of which the utility companies were able to accept new systems to be tied into their system and feeding power into their system, the ease has become substantially more challenging. In other words, it's much more difficult right now compared to just the handful of years ago. So you combine these factors together and fewer consumer choices, less incentives, more of a challenge to add more rooftop solar to these island grids. And I think that's what we're seeing is a substantial decrease in the number of PV systems sold and the number of PV systems that are being permitted. I mean, Q3, from Maui County this year compared to Q3 from Maui County in 2015, the drop was 84%. So it's hard to spin anything real positive out of that. And I wish I had better news. Well, you agree with me, Marco, that if we made up our minds and said... It's hard to come up with a scenario where there's going to be a dramatic uptick and the solar coast is going to start climbing, climbing, climbing to the higher hills that we enjoyed years ago. You agree with me, Marco, that if we made up our minds and said we are going to have Maui or some islands or all islands in an integrated statewide grid, which I haven't forgot about, that if we made up our minds and said we are going to have a lot of solar and renewables on it and we're going to have batteries on it, we are not going to have fossil fuel, we're going to stop all the fossil fuel plants, that this is doable. It's not an infinite grid. It's a grid that we can manage. They have the technology to deal with it. It's just they don't have the money or political will. But if we had that, if we made our minds up to do that, it's doable, don't you agree? Yes, in theory, yes. But in practicality, that's where the challenges are much more manifest. And I think one really just has to look at it more specifically on kind of an island by island basis and what's doable, what's practical, what's cost-effective. That's politically acceptable. Even though I've had some issues in principle with this Huho Nua decision where the plant up in Pepe Kea up on the coast from Hilo is going to go back online using biomass, burning eucalyptus grown here on the island, that's scheduled to go online later, late 2018. So let's say the first full year of operation will be 2019. And although Helco can't predict with 100% accuracy, most likely with Huho Nua in operation, that's going to bring Helco's renewable percentage to somewhere in the 70% range, which is pretty darn fantastic. Oahu has more manifest, more challenging issues than the Big Island does.  And the cost of running inner island cables, even when it comes to the very, the simplest, quickest, shortest routes are between Lanai and Maui, Molokai to Oahu. And we want to talk about money spent, Jay. I mean, there's been substantial money spent by HNEI. If I'm not mistaken, another is looking at studies, doing studies, spending millions or million or more dollars looking at inner island cables and what's come out of it. I mean, yes, we understand more. We understand that if we're estimating, if it's going to cost a billion in reality, it's going to cost probably substantially more than that. Substantially more than that. Substantially more than that. I mean, look at what's happening with the rail fiasco on Oahu, right? So I just don't see inner island cabling probably in my lifetime or yours. Yeah, no, and I would not disagree. And I think it's a question of distraction in the fickle finger of fate moving on and people forgetting about studies and analyses that are on the shelf gathering dust. And, you know, I mean, I haven't forgotten, I haven't forgotten inner island cable, but I think the state has, and it's not going to go anywhere. It's no longer not only in favor. It's no longer, you know, being thought about and LNG no longer being thought about. And, you know, for that matter, I'm not so sure the alternative business model analysis by London Economics is really on the table. We can have a study. We can have a hiatus of a year or more before we get results. But, clearly, whether we have moved on beyond that past that and we're into some other level of distraction right now. Speaking of which, we can take a break and get distracted in the break. But when we come back, we're going to talk about a factor that definitely has an impact on the solar development in Maui and elsewhere. And that's the competitive bidding process for renewables in the state. Is it efficient or are we in a state of dysfunction on that point? And how does it affect the development of renewables? We'll take the short break marker. That's Marco Mangostoff of Providence & Solar in Hilo. And we'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Guys, don't forget to check me out right here at the Prince of Investing. I'm your host, Prince Dykes. Each and every Tuesdays at 11 a.m. Hawaii time. I'm going to be right here. Stop by here from some of the best investment minds across the globe. And real estate, finances, stocks, hedge funds, managers, all that great stuff. Thank you. Absolutely right. Marco, you're absolutely right. And I hope the audience realizes that we have the most incredibly profound discussions where we find out the truth. So back in December of last year, the Hawaiian Electric Company submitted their third rev, their third revision, third edition of the Power Supply Improvement Plans, or PSIFS for short. And I'm looking at the executive summary table right here, which is, they did a real nice coloring job here in terms of making it very easy for lame brain people like myself to understand. For example, for Oahu in the next four years, four plus years, in other words, 2017 to 2021, they are proposing that there be 352.2 megawatts, 352.2 megawatts of grid scale PV on Oahu alone. Just kind of point of comparison, if I'm not mistaken, the typical peak demand for Oahu for the whole island for Hawaiian Electric is around 1200 megawatts, 1200, so 352.2 megawatts of additional grid scale solar is not Manini, it's not Chump Change. Maui, another six close to seven megawatts and another 62, 62 megawatts of grid scale wind. And if you look at peak demand on Maui, it's somewhere sub-200 megawatts. So again, these are rather substantial, would be rather substantial additions to these grid. And the other 25% more than what we had. Five megawatts of wind, ha, ha, that's never going to happen. The Illinois 4 megawatts of wind, the big island, 22 megawatts of wind, one megawatt of grid scale solar. So what's the takeaway here? The takeaway is that these numbers from Hawaiian Electric in terms of proposing for utility scale renewable energy projects are very bold and very ambitious. And the commission noted as such when they ruled or essentially agreed to accept the last iteration of the pieces that were submitted to them last December. So how do we go from these high-faluting numbers, these very ambitious numbers, and how does that translate to actual renewable energy, cost-effective renewable energy generation that's brought online? Well, as you might imagine or take too much imagination, you need to go out and find the easiest, cheapest, best way to bring these additional megawatts online. And the way typically to do that is you have an open bidding process, which is something that Hawaiian Electric very much wants to do. And they asked Hawaiian Electric, went to the PUC early this year. If I'm not mistaken, it could have been as early as January, but I wouldn't necessarily bet on that. Okay, they went to the commission. They said, we want to move forward with the request for proposals for these renewable energy systems across our service territories. What month are we in now, Jay? We're in October, October 9th. The commission has yet to rule on Hawaiian Electric's request for the commission to approve of moving forward with the bidding process to be able to get these bids, which will come from local companies, which will come from mainland companies, maybe international, in order to bring cost-effective renewable energy online. It is a torturous, relatively dysfunctional process if you talk to the folks in the utility business here. It just takes forever. It seems to be able to put out a bid. It takes, and I'm exaggerating, because, of course, it's not forever forever, but it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to get the bid process nailed down to submit the bids, or open the process to accept the bids, to review them. Every bid has to be approved. Every project has to be approved by the commission. They have to agree with the justification and the merits of each project. So I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad process or it's being done malevolently by any means. It seems to take a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of hiccups and a lot of starts and stops and 10 steps back, sometimes in order to bring all these much needed and much desired hundreds of megawatts of additional grid scale, solar and wind across our island. So to what extent the commission understands that there have been challenges and they need to do a better job. I don't know. That would be a great question to ask. Mr. Owase or Jay Griffin or Lorraine Akiba. But it certainly has been anything but quick or efficient or effective in terms of bringing online additional renewable energy generation in a cost effective way. So now we're at the end of 2017, the bidding process hasn't started and it's essentially kind of pushing almost the utility companies to try to be creative and what else can they do other than wait for the commission to approve of the bidding process that they propose to them. So I feel I've been talking a lot so I think I'll quiet down now and let you talk. Oh, I might have a thing or two to say about this. You know, talk about sea changes. I mean, we love to identify sea changes, examine them, how they happen, how they're happening, what was likely to happen in the future and so forth. And I remember a time when we didn't have renewable energy. I remember before the energy initiative got started in 2008, I think it was October, when the utility was building its own power plants and it was handling the generation and the equipment and structures for generating electricity. And that was going on for 100 years. And it was all kind of in-house. There wasn't a whole lot of engagement except on rates with the PUC. And all of a sudden it changed and now they had to go out and get contracts. I do not understand for the life of me why they just didn't do it in-house. Now maybe it's a legal issue or regulatory issue but it would have been a lot easier if the utility just did it in-house instead of always having to get a contract and this kind of examination. And I think if you count the years, what's it, nine years since 2008, increasing the PUC has been involved in every little detail of these deals. And my own question about that is, does it really need to be? Does it need to be involved in every little detail? I mean, is this over management or micromanagement? What would happen if they got into a deal that wasn't so good as the PUC thinks it is? So what? I mean, the market will ultimately resolve that, won't it? The other thing is that why do they have to write these really long opinions, you know, in a judicial situation, and these guys are quasi-judicial, not judicial, in a judicial situation, frequently a court enters an opinion, a decision, per curium, as everybody agrees. And it says approved, disapproved, rejected, accepted, confirmed, denied, affirmed, you know, remanded, whatever it is. And I don't understand why we have to have these huge long opinions, and to your point, I don't understand why we have to have these year-long, two-year-long kinds of, you know, processes about really issues that should be resolved at the utility level, the management of the utility. They have to make some decisions themselves. And it's not after the facts, before the facts, so nothing happens until the PUC, you know, authorizes them. I don't think the system is really working too well, and I think it actually depresses the market. It depresses creativity, innovation. It depresses confidence in the utility and in the industry. It depresses confidence among the public. So we are moving a lot slower because of these delays and these, you know, bureaucratic involvements in what should be, what could be, you know, business decisions at the utility. Don't you agree? You said a lot there, Jay, and I agree with a lot of it in principle. The utilities of today are not our fathers or our grandfathers' utility companies, which were much more vertically integrated in terms of generation, transmission, distribution, sales. The trend over the past couple of decades has been across much of the U.S.  But the utility company model has really changed substantially in terms of divestiture of power generation. So it's become much more competitive in that regard, but I think that works a lot better on the mainland, which is interconnected east to west, north to south, and round and round and round. And to what extent these trends or divestiture of the utility zoning power generation has really helped here. I mean, you can make the argument that that allows the market to and in bidders to come up with power purchase agreements that are going to be in the public interest that are going to lower rates or stabilize rates over time. But it just seems to me, and I've been in the arena here, you know, in the trenches for the past 17-plus years and for, you know, a partial observer slash participant for almost 40 years, but I have no doubt in the 17 years that I've been in the trenches here that it's just become so much more complex and so much more cumbersome to move forward. I think the Public Utilities Commission has always got to keep an eye on having whatever decision it comes up with to be appealed, even though it would be extraordinary that a PUC decision would be appealed and successfully appealed. In fact, I can't think of one single example, but that doesn't stop people like Henry Curtis, for example, challenging the Huonoa decision to approve Helco and Huonoa moving forward with additional combustion generation at this power plant because, according to Henry, they didn't take into account essentially the pollution and the contributing traditional, you know, greenhouse gases that burning eucalyptus would do. So that's not to defend what the commission does with these lengthy decisions, but I think part of it must make them as bulletproof as possible to appeal. But it's just become way more complicated, way more complex, way more burdensome and just much more lengthy in terms of, oh, we have a wonderful idea, everybody around the table who thinks is also a wonderful idea, and we hammer out a deal to move forward, but the deal moving forward with the consensus around the table is one thing, having actual power generated from said project is, you know, years away. And, you know, is there a way to break that bottleneck? I really don't think so. I don't know. I've become perhaps more cynical as I get older, but it just seems so fraught to be able to get from point A to point B, and I think, you know, to circle back to the efforts of Hawaiian Electric and Nextera to make a transfer of HEI to Nextera. I don't think either of those parties were able to really grasp what they would go through for the next 18 months, you know, until they finally got a know. And if they had had a better idea of what they were going to have to go through, you know, what they have pulled the trigger to begin with, but again, you can't Monday morning quarterback the HEI board of the Nextera board. I mean, they believe they had a reasonable chance for success, but it turns out, in the end, they didn't. Well, you know, if I would run the economics, you know, doing my consulting work on the issue of utility ownership models, I would definitely want to cover this too. I hope there's room in their contract to do that. And if you get a chance to talk to them, if anybody listening gets a chance to talk to them about the issues we're talking about, moving ahead about getting decisions made, about not being distracted from our ideas and our innovations, maybe they'll cover that too. Maybe that's within their purview or should be within their purview. Anyway, thank you so much, Marco. It's great to talk to you always, and I look forward to talking with you and Mina again in two weeks' sense. Aloha. That's great. Thank you so much for having me again, Joey. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure.


Hey everybody, welcome back to the Nintendo Prime. I just knew something right now that I've been waiting for a long time to do. We get to talk about breaking news. You can literally go down to the time stamp right quick and hop right into that breaking news. And yeah, there's a couple things I wanna talk about briefly before we get to that breaking news because I can't contain my excitement over this. First off, yes, we have moved our Nintendo Prime podcast or are slowly transitioning our podcast to a new podcast channel. There's a link down in the description in the pinned comment that I'd appreciate if you guys would do. We also have a giveaway going on on the 28th called Prime Gimmie. There's a link down in the description and the pinned comment as well to enter for that. You can win a Switch OLED bundle.  You do need to be at the stream as well to win. So if a winner is drawn and they're not actually at that stream, we will draw a different winner. So I know, I know. I'm just so excited. But I don't know if I have anything else I really want to tell you about. I guess you know what? If this video can also get 1,000 likes. It looks like the one earlier today did. If this video can get 1,000 likes in the first 24 hours, I will do a $20 eShop gift card to someone down in the comments. So yeah, that's really exciting as well. We're kinda doing something like this for every video in the month of Prime Gimmie as we're calling it. So, whew! Without further ado, let's get to this breaking news because I can't believe it. Nintendo has done something that I never actually thought they would do. There have been attempts at this. There have been partnerships that fell through. There have been a lot of backlash from the Nintendo community. Nintendo shutting down events.  It is now official. Nintendo will now have an official professional eSport circuit for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. And oh, by the way, it gets better, Super Smash Bros. Melee as well. Remember how Nintendo was shutting down Melee tournaments and all of that backlash? It is no more. It has been officially announced. It does not get more official yet. First up, let's show the initial tweet on this and then we'll show Nintendo confirming. So first up, this was tweeted out by a Panda. Panda on Twitter. Also known as Panda Global. They said, we are proud to announce our partnership with Nintendo America. In 2022, Panda will bring the first officially licensed circuit for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Super Smash Bros. Melee to North America. More details for this short series of events with cash prizes. This is a real professional eSport circuit, folks, to come later. We don't have additional details right now, but we do have Nintendo of America's Twitter officially quote tweeting it and adding this. Confirmed, ready your A game. Super Smash Bros. competitors. We partnered with at Panda Global to launch the first officially licensed Super Smash Bros. Championship circuit in North America coming 2022. And as I said, cash prizes. This is a legitimate eSports league for Smash Bros. Ultimate and Smash Bros. Melee. Can you believe it? I don't even know if I can still believe it. This is the company that has been refusing to let Super Smash Bros. be a legitimate eSport. It's been thriving solely on fan support. It's been yanked from several events. Nintendo has never been willing to contribute and create a full eSport around it. And just as Ultimate wraps up its DLC, here's Nintendo partnering with a legit company to make this a reality. I can't tell you how excited I am and I'm not even someone who's like a mega fan of Smash because I'm not really that into fighting games and I know how important this is. I've been covering Nintendo constantly alienating the Smash community for years and I mean this goes back decades at this point. And it all led to this. In fact, I wanna read some of the responses to this on Twitter because you're gonna see a lot of Super Smash Bros. just flabbergasted that this actually happened. Have you guys heard of Hungrybox? I'm sure you've heard of him. One of the best Super Smash Bros. Melee players of all time. He put out there, today is the first day of a beautiful future. Thank you for acknowledging competitive Melee and providing support to both scenes. I'm looking forward to what can be accomplished with both parties working together. This is going to be something very special. Just wow, remember all of this by the way is happening in wake of people acting like the Smash community is crappy because there's been a few bad apples in the community. Guess what? There's a few bad apples in every community. Did you think Nintendo was gonna run away from any possibility of this happening? Well, many people did. And guess what? Nintendo said, nope, we're just going to do this right. We're gonna make this official. I'm so excited for this. So then you see this Connor eats pants out there saying cautiously optimistic until we see what you have planned after years of negligible, negligible. I can't pronounce that. Of negative support, let's just go with that word. I know how to pronounce that. I just can't, I'm too excited right now. Too late. An act of suppression to the scene. It's hard to believe in a sudden change of heart. I trust the Panda guys, but I don't have any reason to trust Nintendo. So this again is bringing up the fact that Nintendo has been suppressing this community for so long, all of a sudden, they do a complete 180. And here we are. I can't believe I'm even making this video. That's how shocked I am. I'm just looking for some more comments here. You can just see that everyone is just, people are giving a lot of weird reactions. There's a lot of excitement. There's a lot of optimism. There's also a lot of people just telling Nintendo to f off because you know what? They have treated this community so bad for so long, but this should be celebrated. I know folks, it took decades. I understand the importance of this. I understand that Nintendo should have been encouraging this at least 15 years ago. They should have never suppressed Melee tournaments. They should have been supporting. They should have been encouraging things besides their official E3 tournaments where nobody wins any money and just gets neat little trophies. I understand that Nintendo should have been doing better this whole time and they should be doing better with all of their potential Esport games. Splatoon should have official Esport cash prize leagues. That should be a thing. It should also be a thing. You know, if arms too becomes a thing, that should join the fray as well. But it's all about the baby steps. And while Nintendo is behind in many aspects as a company, their online services isn't great. The way they're handling their classic library could be done so much better. I understand that they have even had issues with their online servers just to play games online until quite recently. Obviously they have a new server infrastructure, not implemented in every game yet. But this is the kind of change we want to see Nintendo do. Acknowledgement of the scene, support of the scene, cash prizes, actually acknowledging Esports. This, by the way, it does put Smash games up for Esports awards now officially at the Game Awards, which is also gonna be really, really awesome to see at the end of 2022 that Smash Bros. is gonna be nominated for some of that stuff. I'm just in shock.  But whoever inside Nintendo, whether it was just folks at Nintendo America or Nintendo of Japan, whoever pushed for this, I just wanna say from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Not only does Nintendo need positive press, not only is it just the right thing to do, the Smash community that's been trying to make this a reality for so long had practically given up. You could tell by some of the anger in the comments that it took this long, but you know what? It's here. And assuming this does not get messed up next year, I don't think it's going anywhere. I think this is gonna be around potentially for the rest of my life so long as Smash Bros. is relevant. And that matters. It matters more than I think some people can even acknowledge. Thank you to whoever helped make this happen. Thank you to the Smash community, especially those that never gave up on the dream. And good luck to everyone that's gonna be competing in this official Esports circuit next year. Good luck, man. Good luck making careers out of this real careers, not just live streaming online. Good luck, you know, winning that, getting that bag from Nintendo. Good luck. I can't wait for more details to be announced on this. We'll be covering it as the details come out. Yeah, this definitely deserved its own video because this has been decades in the making. I am so proud of the Smash community for never giving up the dream.  I don't think you understand the immense popularity of Esports, nor do you understand how healthy this is for your company to be actively participating and encouraging it. I know it's hard sometimes when you're a family-friendly company to sit back and try to support something that could encourage children to really think they could play video games for a living. I understand it's hard to swallow that pill that some people are literally going to colleges specifically to train for Esports. I know it's hard, but it's a legitimate career for the select few. And I wish that select few luck and I just can't wait to see what happens next. And I am Nathaniel Rumpfelschance from Nintendo Prime. I never thought I'd be this hyped for a Smash video until today. Thank you guys for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.


Good morning and welcome everyone to the Largest Taker Conference in the free world. Oh my goodness, look at all of you here. My name is Geraldine. I first started attending this Congress all the way back in 1999. And I remember so well walking into the dark, smoky, central hackspace and getting into all these random and really, really exciting conversations. And I also remember feeling so much more welcome than I ever thought would be possible. But I never thought I would be standing here today opening the show and this is such a huge honor. Thank you very much. My name is Ed Geist and I first attended Congress in 1998, which is one year prior to Geraldine. What a noob. But I now officially attended more Congresses that I didn't, which means that now I'm old. And knowing all the love and enthusiasm that went into preparing this conference, I am so incredibly proud to see how everything worked out, how you got together, how this conference just blows everyone away, how you showed up and made this work without anyone telling you what to do. Just amazing. So I know what you're all thinking, we're going to spend the next half an hour selling you a show that you've already bought tickets for and this is kind of true. However, we feel that we have hopefully something interesting to share with all of you here. But this also goes out to all the people who can't be physically with us today for various reasons watching from their telescreens at home. So whether you are watching by yourself in front of your device or you're hosting a Congress everywhere then and watching together with like-minded people and whether here in Dar es Salaam, Tel Aviv or Chemnitz, welcome to the show. Last year when Tim did this opening, the gravity of the situation that we're all facing in the post-Nodan era was of course apparent to everybody here in the room. But what is really important is that we managed to transport our message out of these wars to the general public and people finally started listening to what people in this room had to say. We know the services in the world are still out of control and sometimes it's a little frustrating that things are not moving faster but we need to keep pushing towards a common goal. We need to keep our doors open to those that we want to reach with our message. Last year we were parting even though we figured out that smart people from our ranks were working for the bad guys. Last year we were parting even though the complexity of what was happening was so deafening and we couldn't even find a Congress motto to express what we were feeling. But when we learned that the Google engineers started raising their middle fingers towards the NSA and started encrypting their server network communications, we understood that this is not the end but a new dawn. When we learned that WhatsApp of all clients started introducing end-to-end encryption making it even more secure to use than D-E-mail, we learned that developers around the world weren't standing back in shock but rolled up their sleeves and got to work a new dawn. And when we learned that you guys finally got all your differences and started the let's end trip that project, we understood that the community is not just standing by and seeing our community and the internet being split on by NSA and the British Secret Service. But you were working on it and came together and started fixing what we've been left with by the snake oil search vendors of the world and the Secret Services and you made it work and I think it's a new dawn. And I'm very confident to say that this community obviously rolled their sleeves up and made for once and for all clear that it's not the shady spy agencies with their ridiculous budgets ruling the internet but we are and it's a new dawn. So now we would like to know whose first Congress is this? If you're here for the first time can you give me a sign of hands? How so many people? Amazing. That's why you're all here so early. Everyone take a good look at them because it's because of them that we need to explain everything from square one. But we would like to say thank you for that. For two reasons. A, we'd like to say thank you because it's so important that we know how to explain everything from square one and B, it's because of you guys that our community keeps growing every year. And the community keeps growing because there's all those tiny gems like the Kiles Partner project which is our interpretation of how a mentor's program is supposed to work. So this is how it works. This year there are about 30 Kiles Partner taking care of 100 new attendees called Partner Kinder. They could apply for this and it wasn't just a random selection but the Kiles Partner actually sat down and made sure they matched their interests with the ones of the people that they would be mentoring. And they're basically going to help show them around for the next four days, show them all the hidden secrets of the Congress, help them put together an advanced bucket list and make sure they get the most out of this first Congress experience. And one of those Kiles Kinder is Elia and he wrote to the Kiles Partner and made a list, said that over the last years he's been fascinated in technology and hacking but he could never afford coming to the Congress and now for his 18th birthday his parents gave him a ticket to this show and a ticket to Hamburg. So welcome Elia. So welcome Alex. Alex is a really good example why this program is so important. She's studying maths and she's studying cognitive sciences and is currently working on her PhD and she was yet never really sure whether she was supposed to come to Congress, whether this was the right place for her because she didn't feel like a real hacker. So we'd like to say welcome Alex. You're perfect here and we would like to welcome one other Kiles Partner kind who'd like to stay anonymous but she confessed to us that she used to have to spend the holidays eating so much unhealthy food and celebrating with her family and fixing computers. We just want to say we know what that's like. We feel with you. Welcome. And we hope all of you have a great time. There's a lot in store including a field day, a field trip and even going backstage and getting to visit Tim. Yes, they have an audience with the Tim and they're going to see Nock and they're going backstage to the party. I'm so incredibly jealous. So I think next year I will apply for the Kiles Partner project too and just for the trip. And what Kiles Partner is for are new participants. The Press Angels Core is for the press. So if you come to the entrance and say you're a member of the press, you get your complimentary press angel who will show you around, help you get a feel for the conference, show you all the nice spots and make you familiar with the photo policy of this conference. And this service is of course not mandatory because we are not in North Korea here. Don't make jokes about North Korea. You never know what's going to happen in these days if you do that. All that might happen. So we know that there's two students from the University of Kiel here who have been getting there. I think I go over there but just closer to my computer. So we have two students from the University of Kiel here whose prof sponsored them a ticket for this show. And I think this is a nice development. I think that all universities in Germany should make sure that their students get the best education possible. And you may believe it or not. Like 16 years ago I started out like over a thousand of you last year and this year as a cause angel. I've been sitting in my first congress through the mandatory TCP IP for beginners lecture. And I would never have imagined that like 16 days later I would be standing in front of 3,000 people and cracking jokes about my TCP IP for beginners lecture and most of you would actually get it, which is rather amazing. And well, I feel jealous for the cause partner or for the mentees. Even though I did not have the head start cause partner project provides today. I still felt very welcome with the cause angels and well came back year after year. And now about those cause angels. They're the integral part of what makes this conference work and you over there at the camera. What's your name? Mario. Mario is a camera angel and he's helping at the conference. But I'm standing here getting all the good vibes, getting all the fame and this is why I'm standing here. But this guy has been paying full price and he's still doing his shifts to make this conference work. And I want everyone to give him a warm round of applause. Also say that if you go outside and meet an angel just go and say thank you and well actually do mean it. And if you're being blocked from entering the lecture hall you want to attend just remember that the angel is volunteering too.  Don't be angry. Just say thank you. Maybe turn around and watch the stream on the back of the hall. And I would even go so far to say make today hugs and angels day. Consensually, of course.   It's all the people that have set up the OCs bringing the internet, the deck and GSM phone networks. It's all the people who have put the schedule together for you behind the cash desks at the entry points. And also all the people that are doing translation service. We're actually going to translate all the German talks into English for you and a whole bunch of the English talks into German too. And you can even make requests which talks should be translated via Twitter. So it's really all these people that are making this possible. Let's give them a big round of applause. I am assuming that with around 200 people giving over 150 lectures over the next four days a couple of people presenting are in this room right now. Can you give me a sign of hand if you're going to be speaking on this or another stage in the next days? Yeah, there's some. Okay, everybody take a good look at these hands going up. In order for these people to be able to give their talks at least two other submissions were turned down. And so you'd better do a really, really good job.  No pressure. No pressure. No, really. We would like to say thank you to all of you as well for coming here and sharing your knowledge. And we'd also like to say thank you for all of you who handed in suggestions whose ideas weren't selected this year. Seriously, the number of rejected talks this year was heartbreaking. You know that we organized the content in tracks, five different tracks each being curated by a different track team. And in some of the track teams the ratio between accepted and rejected talks was close to one to five. So if a lecture was not accepted that doesn't necessarily mean it was bad but the competition was so brutal. So thank you for your submission. And I know it's hard to ask to maybe just go and make your lecture and lightning talk. There's still some slots free or present the topic you wanted to present in a workshop. And this year in fixing up the Far Plan we had some help from you guys. We had that amazing tool where every one of you could just submit their preferences and say what lectures they want to see. And we used the data wisely to make sure that for most of you you could see your favorite talk while not missing another talk you wanted to see. Well, except for that one guy. What? Yeah, we were using heavy data mining and number crunching to make sure that for that poor fellow's guy all the lectures he wanted to see there was at least two conflicting lectures. So you know who you are. Just kidding. We're still using the data from the tool. So if you keep submitting the preferences for your lectures we will know which lectures we need to stream outside. And the translation team is also using that numbers to see what the interest in those lectures are. OK, well, hopefully that was going to make all the rest of you enjoy the show. Sorry for that one person. But in case this isn't just hard enough with all this content going around you have also thrown in over 100 workshops into the mix all completely self-organized. There are going to be dozens of lightning talks over 230 assemblies on anything from smart card hacking, 3D printing. There's even going to be a cocktail bot. Yes, and to my delightment there's a coffee nerd area on the fourth floor. I will definitely be hanging around and yes. Applause for coffee nerds. And I recommend to enjoy the crazy joy right that has been set up for you outside in the hall. There's so much exhibitions. There's the second installment of the Seidenstrasse, which is an amazing construction. It's last rehearsal before the camp. And I recommend taking a dip into the Bella Bart. Don't forget to bring your towel. And this is all has been set up to fulfill the promise that has been at the core and in the name of the conference from the very beginning. It's communication.  Go and attend a lecture whose title and abstract you do not understand. Go and tinker with somebody's installation. Try not to break it if possible. And just go out and have fun and meet people. Whatever you do, don't go sit in a corner and wait for something to happen. If you really don't have anything better to do, why don't you use this very network to retrieve some classified information you have access to? Using an insecure connection of course. And incidentally there's an ethics hotline on this conference again. You might call to get some feeling if it's all right what you're doing. And I think it's fair to say that I'm proud of this community because we've built ourselves what we think libraries should look like. We do have that hot, shiny, new media CCCD where the lectures of this conference are being streamed and where on average one lecture is being posted every three days from conferences like this one for everyone to download and learn and watch. I think it's fair to say that with this conference we've built what we think universities should look like. Teaching and learning is equal and taking the presenter of the show afterwards to enhance on workshop. Well, enjoy a chunk at the Bella Bart together. And no matter what the social or religious or sexual background is, we're communicating as equals which is what makes this community cool. Yes, and the strength of this community is also apparent in the way that you support each other. Even if it's just by little things. Now, there's a lot of support from the CCH but this is still very, very pricey. So basically we can use every penny that you're willing to give us to organize this event. And we'd like to point out how fantastic it is that over 25% of all of you chose to buy support tickets and not just regular tickets. Now we know that 25% is far above the ratio of people attending the Congress who are actually super rich and wealthy. So that means that you guys went out of your way to spend a little extra and support other people who are not so wealthy in this community. And we'd like to say thank you very much for that. At this conference is recurring, yet unfortunately only temporary installations. So we ask you to take the spirit of the Congress back to your local hackerspace and establish or re-establish weekly lectures to, well, make yourself mini-congresses because those hackerspaces are the petri dishes for what's going on here on the conference. They provide the open space to teach, to learn and to communicate. Yes, so over the last years, over the last decades even, we have all broadened our cultural contexts. And we believe that now we have a serious chance to pass on all that we've created and all that we've learned for ourselves to new generations. All that we've just spoken about, exploring how learning can be fun, creating blueprints for how to exchange with one another. We've created a lot, but all this greatness also comes at a price. Well, we've all had our history of being bullied, of being bullied for wanting to learn, for not being mainstream and for having interests that were not so prominent at the time. But I think we made it through and we made it so far. And I'm really proud of the community, what they've achieved and not what they were in the beginning. We have to acknowledge that we're not the underdogs that we used to be anymore. Fifteen years ago, you were special if you knew how to use a computer. Nowadays, you're special if you don't. And those people need our help. It's us, we are becoming mainstream. And whilst it is happening, we believe it's really important that we lead by example and do not become the bullies ourselves, but embrace new and old generations to pass on what we've learned. And to be honest, concerning the cryptographic applications out there, we hackers just had a head start, that's all. The current sorry state of cryptography, we have been left in by a design that was broken by negligence or by design. We've given the chance, would never build the cryptography the way it is right now. So I think we can't blame others not to get it.  And I, for my part, apologize for the annoying CA SIRT situation. It's been a cool project over the years using that SIRT, but right now it's preventing more communication than it's securing. So I'm looking forward to the summer of 2015 because the Let's Entrypted project will make deploying SIRTs and entrypting much easier. And in the summer of 2015, there will also be a new camp. Yay! As you know, the camp is going to be an amazing playground. There's going to be a lake, there's going to be forests, there's an old factory that used to burn the limestones that Berlin was built up with. So we hope you're all going to come and join us there. Bring a tent. And because this is going to be in the far out dark skirts of Brandenburg that even folk songs warn you about, bring some food too. I recommend everyone to connect outside with a Seidenstraße. It will be huge on the campsite in a much larger scale. So take a good look at how you can connect to the Seidenstraße installment. I would recommend connecting to one of those assemblies out there because the assemblies were modeled after the villages on the last camp and will of course be the seeds for the new village. So go connect and try to see if you can go with some of the villages to the camp next year. Yes, and of course it's like we said, going to be one big party as well. There's going to be a lot of great work being done, but there's going to be a lot of celebration being done too because as is true with any revolution, it is true for our digital one as well. If I can't dance to it, it's not mine. So we have embraced the electronic music scene a long time ago because it's an integral part of the camp and Congress today. So I think now we're about ready to open the show properly with our first keynote speaker. I hope you're all familiar with him, if it's like for instance from the 33 C's triumph for him. It's a almost prominent audio angel I think. Incidentally, Geraldine and I met him for the first time on May 1st of 1999 around the same time we were starting to hang around close to CCC and there he was playing on that famous scheduled riots in Berlin. So now we'd like to ask you all to give a really, really big warm welcome to Alec Empire.