Welcome everyone, thank you very much for joining us today for the launch of ITU's flagship regulatory report Trends in Telecommunication Reform. This report is produced by ITU each year and is widely recognized as the definitive global snapshot of the regulatory environment worldwide. We're delighted to have with us today two special guests who are both regulatory experts. We have Mario Manjevitz who is Chief of Infrastructure Enabling Environment and E-Applications and Nancy Sundberg, she's Senior Program Officer in the Regulatory and Market Environment Division and it's her unit who organizes ITU's annual Global Symposium for Regulators. Thank you very much both of you for joining us. Let's have a look at the content of this year's report, let's start with you Nancy. Could you give us just a brief overview, sum up the main thrust of the report this year? Yes, thanks Sarah. I think that perhaps the most important finding is that ICT regulation now has moved much higher up the list of national priorities in many countries and the government worldwide now acknowledge the vital role that technology plays in their national prosperity and getting them into international competitiveness. So what we often say is that ICT networks are the backbone of today's society and of just all the modern services that are being provided in a digital environment. If you think of banking, commerce and to the delivery of public services just like education and health. The government now understand that getting the right mix of regulatory regulation has a huge impact on ICT rollout and on service costs to the local population and to businesses as well. So in recognition of this, 160 countries have now established a separate regulatory agency. But the big challenge for these agencies is now to find ways of managing increasingly complex and trans-border markets because the environment is changing and changing very rapidly as we've seen. Mario, that's indeed the theme of this year's report, Transnational Globalized Markets for ICT Goods and Services. Could you tell us what that would mean for the work of a regulator? Well, it certainly implies that the regulatory work in the ICT sector is increasingly complex, it's becoming more and more complex. So these transnational players coupled with the regional networks that are being used to deliver services and content that not necessarily belong to what we traditionally call telecommunication services makes this very challenging. So on one hand, we have this convergence between the broadcasting and the telecommunications. On the other hand, we have these new applications and new services, for instance, the cloud services. We have their issues of ownership, issues of privacy that were not there before. And for instance, in the cloud services, the data is not situated in the same country or the service is not even situated or given, provided in the same country that you are hiring it. So obviously these transnational issues are making this regulatory environment more complex. Does it mean that a national focus for regulators is effectively outdated? Do they all have to be looking further afield or is there still a role for a nationally focused policy? Well, certainly the national regulatory framework is key in order to ensure that we have a level playing field that will promote competition and that will foster the rollout of networks and services. But of course, there is a change of the game, let's say, for the regulators because they have to also consider a transnational perspective. So the national networks are key for the development of the sector and of the socioeconomic aspects of the country, but these networks will be much less useful if they are not strongly connected to other, let's say, international networks and regional networks. As well, from the spectrum perspective, if we have a harmonized spectrum plan for a region, then we will be able to accommodate much more this boom of the mobile services, including the mobile broadband. Nancy, we're going to go back to you. I'd just like to tell all of our participants, we will be inviting them to ask questions via the chat pod on the Adobe Connect interface or you can send them in via Twitter. But let's go back to the report. Any other key findings that you would like to summarize? Yes, one of the main points that really comes out is that future ICT policies will need to focus even more closely on consumer needs and consumer concerns. And this is certainly clearly shown through the research we've done on cloud computing, data protection and privacy issues. As the regulatory environment is getting more and more complex, consumer protection becomes an even increasing issue. With social media affecting that, are you finding pressure on operators via social channels if they may be criticized? Yes, it certainly plays a big role. What we're witnessing now is a complete change in consumer behaviors, but also a complete change in business practices. And what we do see is that increasing transparency is really one important and major goal. And one of my colleagues just told me this morning, maybe the key regulatory tool today might be transparency. And what we've seen is an obvious area where this is important is in mobile rooming. For example, we saw that the new provisions to increase price transparency for mobile calls were agreed in Dubai in December during the WICCIT meeting where the new international telecommunication regulations were adopted. And what we now need to see is how operators will now implement strategies that are going to help consumers determine exactly how much they are paying when they are traveling abroad. And this doesn't apply just for voice services but also increasingly for data. And I think we all know of friends that have come back from holidays and from trips abroad and have had to face enormous bill for data download. I think some people don't even realize that they are downloading. It's not that sometimes this happens. They don't even know that they were accessing the internet. So this is certainly a big issue. And also what we see is that as machine to machine communications and automatic update of web feeds and instant access to online news and videos are increasingly becoming the norm, the industry is going to have to find a way to accommodate the need to make a good return from the services. They deliver with consumers new usage patterns and new lifestyles and new habits. Maria, could we talk a little bit, just to explain to the people who've joined us on the webinar, the origins of this report. This comes out of the Global Symposium for Regulators. It's one of our to use most popular, most successful events. I would say has a very, very loyal community of policymakers and regulators and takes place every year. This report is effectively the result of the three days discussion during that. And it's usually quite an intense and frank debate. Could you tell us why was the GSR set up? Who is it pitched at and what are its aims? Why did we establish it? Well, the GSR, the Global Symposium for Regulators, or GSR as we call it for short, started in 2000 and the idea was to gather all the regulators around the world in order for them to discuss the issues of concern and to share experiences and to come up with a set of best practices that they would agree upon that would guide the work of the regulators in the various topics that they were discussing. So at that time, there were not so many regulators around the world. We have gone from 40 to 160 today. And this gathering has continued to be the preferred meeting point of the regulators in order to share among peers the concerns they have, the difficulties they have. Many of the topics we've been discussing and the challenges they pose to regulators. And by sharing experiences and exchanging points of view, they get to a set of best practice guidelines, as we call them, that are issued at the end of the event, that are agreed upon all regulators and that although they are not binding for anyone, I mean, they provide a good guide for all regulators, mainly for the new ones, the ones that are being set up that are not as experienced, but for all in terms of how to do about important topics. So this year, we will have the 13th edition of the GSR and it will be in Poland, in Warsaw, from the 3rd to the 5th of July. And the main topic of the event is the 4th generation regulation. So just to show how the regulatory framework has evolved that we are in such a short timeframe already in what is considered the 4th generation of regulatory measures, mainly to foster broadband to all, both fixed and mobile broadband. That conference normally sees a very rich level of debate, if I could say. And I think that must be partly because it's a peer-to-peer discussion. It's quite a very experienced community of people working in the same field, facing similar challenges. Absolutely. And it started as a peer-to-peer discussion and in a framework that was, let's say, closed to them. So they felt confident enough to share their concerns and their experiences, good or bad. But as time evolved, we faced increasing pressure from the private sector for them to be part of the dialogue. So after consultation with the regulators, then we agreed on devoting part of the time of the event to a dialogue between the regulators and the private sector. So that part of the event, we call it GRID for Global Regulators Industry Dialogue. So we have industry leaders that are coming for the first two days of the event and they are engaging in this dialogue with the regulators. And then we go to the classical or the traditional, let's say, closed part for the regulators only. So it has evolved in that sense. But we think in a positive way because, of course, the regulators cannot be in a vacuum. So they have to be surrounded by the service providers and the other members of the industry. And probably in the future, also the consumers will have, as they imagine. I'm happy to say that the first day of the GSR is open to media and to analysts. I would very much encourage those of you joining us today to come to that event. This year in Warsaw, as Mario said, very, very interesting debate. We have a great program and anyone who would like more information, please just get in touch with me. Let's go back to Nancy for the moment, though. And look at some of the more in-depth key topics that this report focuses on. What are the key areas? So to answer some of the pressing needs of regulators, we've, and to try to bring an exchange of experiences and to draw best practices on really key regulatory issues regulators are facing today, we've decided last year to address the issues of net neutrality and the traffic management measures, sorry, what are the factors that are driving their use and the regulatory approaches that have been taken by the different countries. We're looking at spectrum policy for future mobile growth, looking at the high-level principles that underlie an effective policymaking. We're looking at international mobile-rooming prices and best practices. We're also looking at global and regional IP interconnection and cloud computing, looking at the cloud computing regulation, but also looking at another aspect of cloud services, which is data protection and privacy in the cloud. And in this report, we also start with an introduction chapter that sets the scene on what are the latest regulatory and market trends. Let's look at the net neutrality issue, because that debate's been ongoing for some time and it doesn't look like it's going away. From the discussions at last year's GSR in Sri Lanka, do you think what some people would call a multi-tier internet where better services are available for those who can afford to pay more? Is that an inevitable model for future web access? And if it is, what does that mean for consumers and for global internet uptake access? I think it is, we're already seeing it today. It is inevitable, as it is happening for other services and the provision of other services. But I think the main issue here is to ensure that operators and service providers do not try to block or downgrade the traffic and by using the traffic management practices that may be, that consumers may not be aware of and that by doing so, they will restrain access to the internet. There's a risk that operators may make the lower level packages rather cludgy to try to encourage people to move up some more spaces. Yes, to move up and to go to the next, let's say, subscription level. And this is something that regulators may need to be cautious of and this is again where the issue of transparency is really important. And it is really important that consumers are informed but also they can get access to what are some of these quality of services that are the basic requirements. So operators would be required to report yearly, let's imagine a scenario where they would be required to report yearly on the kinds of management practices, policies that they use and maybe even the software and the KPIs and whatever. So that consumers can understand what they are buying and what are they getting for the kind of service they are looking for. And this is really also to ensure that everybody can get access to the internet but at reasonable and under reasonable and fair terms and conditions and that they are not downgraded because of some traffic management practices that would be at their detriment but just for the benefit of the operators to generate more revenues. There are some questions coming through now but I'm just going to ask Mario to talk quickly on spectrum policy because this area is always a highly contentious one. We always hear mobile operators crying out for more spectrum and we're probably on the brink of a new paradigm shift. I know ITU has finished pretty much the standardization of next-generation mobile so the IMT advanced platform that would see mobile broadband speeds move up to effectively 1 gigabit per second. That will inevitably put more pressure on limited spectrum. What will that mean? We already have a spectrum crunch and even in some developed countries I think anyone who's traveled to New York understands that. It's a difficult environment already. How are we going to cope with the new demands of mobile broadband? Absolutely. Well, the pressure on spectrum availability will continue.  Of course, it is not only, let's say, because of the use of mobile services as we know them but also because of the increasing use of machine-to-machine communications over the top services like VoIP and the increased use of cloud services, for instance. So the expectation is that the data traffic will grow 18-fold from today to 2016. So obviously the pressure on the spectrum availability will continue. So for the time being, there are two measures that are being taken until the next WRC, the World Radio Communication, takes place. One is to provide the spectrum management best practices and to try to, let's say, convince regulators to use them more and more, like the spectrum reforming, spectrum reuse, the liberalization of spectrum. These measures can ease the need for available spectrum. And also in terms of spectrum licensing, to try to go to more agile and market-oriented mechanisms for licensing and not those bureaucratic-based procedures that took so long. So this kind of auctioning and in-band migration and the spectrum sharing, these kind of licensing mechanisms that are more agile and that can respond better to the demands of the market. If we were to favor an auction, do we not risk pushing the cost of price up? As we saw with the 3G licenses, people paid a fortune to get a hold of that spectrum and it must have had an impact on the cost of services eventually and maybe you're still impacting the cost of services. Is that not a concern? I think we have learned from the experience of that time and now the people are much more cautious on the business model that they will use for the auctioning. It's also a way of really, let's say, making sure that spectrum usage responds to demand or to a real need. And not if spectrum is granted for free, but then you run the risk of people accumulating or keeping chunks of spectrum that are not used. Just in case. I can sell it later on. It's a way of, yes. Yes. What about the next World Radio Communication Conference? As many on the webinar would know, it's ITU that handles the global allocation of spectrum to different services. The next Radio Coms conference comes up in 2015. Will we see new allocations? Do you think at that conference for mobile cellular? Absolutely. No doubt about it. It's already taking care in the agenda. There are even two agenda items that are dealing with this issue to allocate spectrum for 3G and 4G services. And there are already some groups working on trying to find available spectrum in order to be able to decide on its allocation. For instance, in region one, as America's region is called in the radio sector, has created a task force where users of spectrum, like satellite operators, broadcasters, and mobile operators are looking into areas of the spectrum that could be released and could be reallocated for new services. I'd like to take a couple of questions coming in from those who joined us today. One is, or the first one I see is, how much difference can regulators really make when so much power is now concentrated in over-the-top players who are often not subject to the same regulatory constraints as the traditional telcos? I don't know which of you would like to have a go, or maybe both of you. Yeah. Well, this is a concern, certainly. And this is something where, it's an area where we see that collaboration and international cooperation and collaboration among regulators is key. This is where you need it. It really highlights that, what we were saying, the transnational aspects of regulation today, countries cannot operate in a silo. I mean, they are not alone. They can't just be operating in their own country. They need to discuss, they need to exchange, and they need to develop with other countries policies, maybe to address these issues. And certainly the ITU and the GSR venues where we provide the opportunities for regulators to see how they can best meet these concerns and address these concerns to ensure that these OTTs do not like, how do you say, operate with, going, providing anti-competitive practices, but that they do so in a transparent and fair environment and not at the detriment of traditional telecom operators. Questioning on the GSR, noting that civil society and consumer groups are increasingly important, and we mentioned that already. The question is, is there provision for funding civil society to participate? I think not for funding, but certainly it's open on day one to a civil society organization, if I'm right, one that would be working in this area. Well, the GSR is addressed to ITU members. So either member states, which are the governments and the regulators, or what we call sector members, which is the private sector, the academia and other organizations that are members of the ITU. Indeed, which includes civil society organizations. Which includes civil society, but they have to be members in order to be able to participate in the event. Worth noting that civil society organizations, I think, can join, often the membership fees are waived in the case of smaller NGOs who may find it difficult to, not that the membership fees are particularly high, but nonetheless, I know that ITU does sometimes do that. So I think we're trying to be as inclusive as we can be in this event. Let's go back to the report and look, Nancy, I wanted to ask you about global and regional IP interconnection. What does the report tell us about the trends in that area? I see three key main message in this chapter. The first one is that the development of an effective global market for connectivity through the commercial agreements for the exchange of IP traffic has been key in the growth of internet and IP traffic that we are witnessing today. And we see that the model of peering and transit is very well understood by the majority of companies as peering agreement can now even be concluded on a handshake basis without even the need for a written document. This was one of the outcome of the chapter. Second, what we see is what's important is to note how the transnational internet connectivity market has responded, in fact, to the changing traffic mix by adding investments in internet exchange points, for example, in content delivery networks and in long-haul facilities, all of which in fact help to improve service quality and reduce costs and costs and prices. And IXP in particular have played a key role in the growth of the internet. And the establishment of an IXP in country or in region can become part of what the report mentioned, refers to as a virtual circle of investment in internet assets, as it may encourage further investment in backbone and local access networks, IT related businesses, and even encourage domestically produced content. And third, what I see is really a key message that we can see throughout the report is that countries with effective and liberalized policy frameworks are best positioned, in fact, to promote a virtual circle of investment in growth. Okay, let's go to a topic close to everyone's heart, I think, which is mobile roaming costs. Nancy mentioned that we did see this issue come up in Dubai and actually it made its way into the new international telecommunication regulations, provisioned for new levels of transparency in mobile roaming costs. Maria, could I ask you, well, do you think that this inclusion in the ITRs will make any difference to consumers? Haven't Telcos traditionally built their bundled packages and service offerings in a very complex way that makes it almost impossible for anyone to work out what they're paying? Well, it's a difficult issue because what was good about the discussion in Dubai about the international telecommunication regulations is that it was clear to everybody that the retail prices for mobile roaming remain very high. But not only that, they don't have any relationship with the costs of the mobile communications in the home country. And even worse, they are not related at all to the costs at all. Seeing as a cash cow, is it? If you're wealthy enough to travel, we can also hit you for some additional telecoms charges. And you don't have any choice because at the end of the day, normally when you choose your operator at home, then you look at the package they offer you for the national services, let's say, because it's what you are going to be using 90% of the time. So nobody is looking at the cost of roaming when they choose their national career. So the problem is then the surprise when you travel, as Nancy was saying earlier, and the bill shock that is called when you come back. So here is where the transnational issues come. When regulators can try to work, let's say, with the other regulators in other countries of the world in order to try to put a limit to this kind of cap, to this kind of prices in a bilateral agreement or multilateral agreement. For the time being, what is being done is trying to empower the consumer by being more transparent with the costs. That at least when you go to a given country, then you will get some messages on your phone saying, welcome to whatever operator you are connected to. And these are the prices that you will find here so that you at least don't have the bill shock. You know what you are going to pay and you can eventually look for other carriers in the same country that would be more competitive. But it's still an open issue. Nancy, let's go back to the GSR. And I remember from last year's event that cloud computing was probably the hottest topic. It came up over and over again. Could you explain some of the issues around that technology? Why is it generating so much debate? It is generating a lot of debate because it relates to personal information and data that you may be storing somewhere in the cloud, somewhere that you're not sure where it is hosted. You don't know exactly how you will get access to this information if you want to delete something. If you want to take the case, for example, of pictures that you could put on the social networks and you would like to delete, you don't know how to do that. Consumers may not be educated on how to address these issues. They may not always read what are the rights and obligations that they sign when they submit or they join a network. And also what we're seeing is that there is, what data protection laws that have been adopted, have been adopted in the era when internet was not around, in a time where internet was not around. So they don't really match the need of today's environment and data protection and privacy issues of a digital environment. The issue is not just for the consumers, but it is also for the businesses and governments. If you want to host information on the cloud, then you need to make sure that you know where it is hosted and you need to make sure as well that access will be secured, that you will need to have always on access, but also that if you want to move your server or if you want to move your information or your data from one cloud provider that you can be able to do so. So the interoperability is also an issue that may be a concern for not only the users, the end users like you and me, but also for the businesses. But there is no question that cloud computing has a lot of, cloud services and cloud computing brings a lot of benefit for the government, for the businesses and also for the citizens. But what is really needed right now is the right framework to ensure rights are protected, to ensure that those are using your data and not selling your data without you being aware of that, that you at least get the benefit of the information that you provide. And I think that the one of the danger is really that people or maybe the younger generation now are used to putting information and displaying any kind of information out there, but without noticing that it is personal information and that personal information that is there might be there and might stay there. I notice, in fact, I think we're all aware that the data mining systems that are being developed are incredibly sophisticated now. I read an article a couple of weeks ago on a company that had just trawled through people's public Facebook sites and had been incredibly accurate in predicting various elements of their consumer behavior or orientation, all sorts of things about them that I think people would, that were not explicitly declared when they specifically looked at sites where it was not specifically declared. So, Mario, do you think that data privacy is sufficiently well-addressed? And do you think that consumers are getting the levels of protection they deserve and do you think they're naive at the moment about the levels of privacy they still have? Absolutely. This is one of these transnational issues that if a global effort is not undertaken, it will never be solved because, as Nancy was saying, the provider of the service is not in the same country as the user of the service and maybe not in the same country as the storage of the data is situated. So, the only way to have some consistent, let's say, legislation policy framework for this is to have a transnational agreement, a global agreement on these kind of issues. So, I do believe that as older people might be more careful about the privacy of the data and that's why maybe they don't feel at ease with these new applications and then they use it. The younger generation are totally naive about them and they are not only the object of this kind of scamming but also the object of much more serious issues like cyber threats and cyber criminality. So, the important message here is that we shouldn't be saying that this is not to be used or this is not to be developed because it's really the future but that we have to work together, all of us, all the world has to work together towards defining a framework and enforcing it in a global way. We have some more questions coming over Adobe Connect, one from Carla and this one's a specific national question, perhaps not a surprising one given the momentous development. She says, in Mexico, we are living in a process of reform and telecommunication laws. What are the topics that the Mexican government would need to consider when undertaking such a big reform? Well, to understand what is exactly the reform they are undertaking? Is it to create a conversion regulator? Is it to address media under the same umbrella as the telecom? We would need to know a little bit more what is exactly the current reform taking place but what we could say is that certainly all of the issues that have been discussed in the past GSR and in the past edition of TRANS and some of the best practices that have been adopted certainly provide guidance for regulators to understand what other countries have done in areas such as expanding the mandate of the regulator, such as what are some of the measures to consider in this new environment we're living in? What is it about open access? How to ensure infrastructure sharing? How to ensure that more services becomes more affordable and that roll out of networks, broadband networks are being done in a more efficient manner? So these are all the issues that we certainly can consider but I don't know exactly what is the particular reform that is taking place in Mexico right now but what we've seen as a current trend is like, yes, expanding the mandate of the regulator to cover not just the pure telecom sector and the traditional telecom sector but expanding to include broadcasting and even include broadcasting content, media, internet issues, cybersecurity. So this often requires an institutional change and the design of the regulatory authority but also requires changes in the laws and the legislation and regulations that are governing the sector. That convergence has really accelerated, I think. We've all seen that. I notice now with my own stepsons that there's been just as much time watching television content on their computers as they probably do, maybe more in their rooms than they do watching it on TV now. So broadcasting and telecoms really have come together. So it's very difficult now to say who is regulating the content if you are looking at it in your computer. So it's a broadcasting issue or it's a telecom issue or it's an ICT. So that's why this tendency to have converged regulators which is a regulator with a bigger mandate and the more the ICTs permeate the other areas of the economy then the more this issue will come into play. As we know, the ICTs are being used now in order to provide health services, education services, agricultural services to all the population. So it's more and more across sector activity. So this is an increasing challenge for the regulators. This issue of cybersecurity, as Nancy was mentioning, that is also being put on the shoulders of the regulators or who takes care of these cyber threats and where is the framework and how do we enforce it together with the police and the judiciary system is another responsibility for the regulators because many of the scams or let's say criminal acts that you mentioned using data or accessing people in many countries, mainly developing countries they are not even in the legislatory framework they are not even characterized as crime. So we have to update all these framework and in order for them to be crimes and then to be pursued. Nowadays some of them they don't even exist in the legislations of the many countries. I can imagine if you've picked up the GSR program Nancy that's because you have a session on this at the forthcoming GSR. Exactly, we are going to have a session on fourth generation regulation and also a session that's going to entitle moving to the next level looking at new apps and new delivery platforms and the role of broadcasting and audio visual and online content who's in charge? Is it the broadcasting authorities? Should it be the telecom regulator? Are there new mechanisms? Who should be doing what? There will be questions that are really putting the regulators in the market in front of new issues. And in fact this is why we've said this year we're going to be looking at fourth generation regulation because in a conversion environment there are many things that need to be done from a regulatory perspective to not only raise awareness of regulators of some of the issues that they may not be dealing with today like cybersecurity may have not been in the mandate of many regulators like five years ago and we see now that's why you mentioned that increasingly it is becoming part of their mandate. So another aspect is like yes, on the media content and also like financial services for example is another issue. When we see that a lot of more and more financial digital transactions are being carried out over using mobile networks, fixed networks so who should be in charge when there is an issue who is responsible who should be looking after these questions and providing guidance not only to the market players but also to consumers. And as I mentioned at the beginning consumer education and awareness is I think going to be a very important issue in the coming years. Interesting, we have two questions coming in both of them relate to Latin America from Cesar Salvucci he says are there any specific challenges for Latin America's regulators? Well I think the challenges are those that are common to all developing countries. The issue is how to become from a let's say police type of regulator somebody that is looking at the rules and enforcing them so that all the market players respect them to now become a partner of these market players of these operators and service providers to facilitate the provision of services to the whole of the population. So this is the change of paradigm in Latin America and in other developing countries where the first step has been accomplished that means the sector is open we have several players be them public or private or a mix of both and let's say there is a reasonable penetration rate in urban areas and in for the business purposes and all that but we have parts of the population let's call it that way that are still underserved so people in rural areas people in underserved areas people that are minorities like indigenous people in Latin America this is an issue particularly but also let's say people with disabilities or women and youth so all this part of the population that are not accessing services or that are accessing a very restricted let's say package of these services have to be let's say helped to get accessibility and to be able to be connected and to get not only voice that was the old let's say ambition but to get really broadband to get internet in order for them to get access to information, to education to health services and to all these services so the regulator has now shifted or has to shift from just a controller to an enabler to a partner of these let's say market players in order to ensure that this roll out of services is done for all another question this one is from Alejandro Gutierrez in Colombia he mentions that Colombia is about to have a 4G auction and he wonders if there are best practices that you would recommend for the implementation of this service to be successful and he says to incentivize competition in OTT markets is there a kind of best practice framework that the GSR has come up with for we did a paper last year two years ago sorry on the spectrum valuation and on auctioning and how to conduct that refers to different auctioning mechanism and it may provide some useful guidance and best practices guidelines were also developed for spectrum looking at spectrum management and how to ensure that the conditions are there to ensure that the auctioning is carried out well for the benefit of the end users afterwards with regard to OTT this is an interesting question what we do see is that some of the OTT and I'm not too sure if this is what he is referring to are now trying also to enter the mobile market to enter the traditional let's say the network the infrastructure market so this is a new change as well but according to the current regulatory practice and environment they should be treated as any other players that is willing to enter the market to launch the auction to join the auctioning so the documents you mentioned can media and analysts find those online and they can certainly provide you with the link to that document and to the best practice guidelines fantastic thank you I think we've got time just for one last question we've only got a couple of minutes left and I have one in it says last mile delivery access to rural areas has always been a major challenge and remains a major challenge what should regulators look at in terms of building an ecosystem that would look to delivery of services and focus on availability of low cost devices and rich local content with local low tariffs it's a big ask but I guess a lot of countries face this challenge even developed countries like my own Australia where we have a very remote rural population difficult to serve but some European countries also face that and of course many developing countries yes well there are several measures that can be taken and in fact there is a mix of measures which is the best approach so some of them are related to let's say subsidize the infrastructure development to the rural areas and for that there is normally universal service funds that are established in all countries where all the operators that have licenses to provide services telecommunication services that are not providers of universal service they contribute to the fund so the fund can be managed by the regulator in order to facilitate access to those that don't have another possibility is to promote infrastructure sharing that means that when we build either between operators themselves so that when we build infrastructure to the rural areas it is shared by several operators so that the cost is divided among all of them or even sharing different let's say areas like energy and telecommunications so when you land a cable for telecommunications or for electricity you do the telecommunications one together so that the cost of this let's say infrastructure building is shared between the two aspects that's another example another possibility is also to have public partner partnerships which is in fashion now in many developed countries of Australia is an example that you mentioned the government has realized that the private sector initiative has a limit so in the past it was said well leave it to the private sector they will do it if there is a business case they will go for it and there is a limit for that so when we want the broadband for all it's not happening then the Australian government has entered into this public private partnership and is investing money in order to ensure that this broadband rollout is carried out and is a partner with the private sector in order for it to happen so it's a developed country and the market forces alone are not guaranteeing this service for all so they are investing obviously the mix of all these ideas can be a good solution for that regarding the low cost solutions that was mentioned I think by the person that asked the question there are more and more of such solutions that are coming to the market with the advance of technology and we can now have high cost solutions for wireless connectivity of rural areas where you can have a central cell let's say and all the village can connect to this cell wirelessly without major cost the most important thing here is to have the community buying into this solution so be it a telecenter mode or be it in the village library or even a private kind of endeavor the important thing is that the whole village buys into this solution and they all contribute to its sustainability because we have been helping in many of these pilot projects in order to show the the viability of these solutions but if the the community doesn't get engaged and they involve themselves in not only the use but also the maintenance and the improvement of these technical solutions they will just drain down when the provider of the solution you know falls back so it's important that the solutions are there the ways of bringing connectivity are there but it's important that they embrace it that the community buy in exactly and for that I think content was mentioned also in the question for that local content, relevant content for the local people is key it's the driver for the network to be valuable that's what they are going to look for we're overtime I think we're going to have to wrap it up I'd like to thank Mario Manjevitz and Nancy Sundberg for joining us today I'd like to remind everyone as well that the press release accompanying this launch is available directly for download off the Adobe Connect website there's a live summary and the full report if you have any follow up questions of course don't hesitate to get in touch and an archive of this webinar will be available on the ITU newsroom in about an hour's time thanks very much indeed for joining us


Scared? Bang! Hello, my name is Timmingill reporting for Cal TV Entertainment, and I'm here today with the star of American honey Sasha Lane. How are you doing today Sasha? I'm doing really good. Thank you. Good. So first we have to talk about your casting process because this wasn't like a traditional casting so tell us a story about how you got chosen for this movie. Like she found me on the beach but then we just a lot of the casting process was a lot of personal conversations between me and Andrea and we just found that we connected on so many different ways and throughout that we found that I connected with star on so many different ways. We go door-to-door with some magazines. We explore like America. We party. Come with us. What makes American honey different from your average coming-of-age movie? There's something very raw and authentic about it one because you can't ever question if these people exist because these are these people and there's something there's this light and this beauty in it like a consistent beauty in life. I've been trying to be Christian, but I can see the devil has a hold of the two of you. I think the devil has a hold of your daughter. So you share a lot of scenes with Shia LaBeouf. What is something the audience might be surprised to know about him? I don't know. I don't know what people think, but I just you know he is such a human. He's such a raw individual and I think people need to take that into consideration, you know when they judge or look at all the BS media and stuff, yeah.  Not really. Okay good. You're hired. Music is such an integral part of this movie. What kind of songs helped you get into the mindset for the role? It just depends on what mood I was getting in. I would listen to Alina Baraz, or I'd listen to Daughter, or I would listen to the hype music and yeah, just I don't even remember. Just certain things are like it's something more serene like Leon Bridges and yeah, I just I'd create my little mood, yeah. Yeah, definitely. What kind of songs do you like to sing along to when you're driving because you guys do a lot of driving in the movie? Rihanna or I like to listen to like Don't Stop the Loom by Journey and a lot of old-school music, a lot of like like the 90s or early 2000s, just stuff that you can just be like, yeah, like some JLo, you know, just that was your driving and kind of yeah, yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Make sure to spend some American money and go see American Honey in San Francisco, October 7th. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. I think it was, it's really surprising when you feel, you know, Jane Austen and her characters in her world and all of that.


And I won't be using that clicker anymore. So I was going to take a picture of the room. So thank you. If it can go back together, that would be amazing. Probably. Thank you. Nope, it'll go right here. Yes, community to the rescue. Village, the village is important. So I will not throw yours. But yeah, so everybody wave. Thank you. It wants me to set up the, OK. You know what? We're getting started a little early. So I don't know why it thinks it's a keyboard. I might just need to use my spacebar. OK. All right, so Unity. Unity is this business that I decided to build about two years ago. And the first picture up there in the top left is my team. You can see me on the right. Lexi is on the left. She's a developer. Christina is in the back. She's a marketing and business development strategist. And Johnny is in the bottom middle. He's my production manager. So he makes sure that things happen and things get done and then the rest of us do them. The top middle picture is our office. And that's kind of what we do. We do a lot of thinking and whiteboarding and planning and strategizing and finally building. And so the right is a picture of a design thinking session that we did with some clients. It was a lot of fun. We work a lot with North Carolina companies. A lot of nonprofits. It's about 50-50 nonprofits, for-profit businesses. But really the thing that is common across all of our clients is that they have a mission. And so we have our own mission. And I'll get into that in a little bit. We do WordPress development, WordPress websites design strategy and development for mission-focused companies and community-focused companies. We work out of the frontier in RTP. It is the coolest co-working space partially because it's a nonprofit that runs them. And they have a free co-working space there. And you can also lease offices as well. And they have food trucks. And it's pretty amazing. And free beer on Thursdays and free yoga on Wednesdays and meditation on Tuesdays. And it's pretty fantastic. It's like you can hardly find time to get work done. But it's a good place to be. And the reason that I'm doing this is for my kids, my family. So those two little guys are why I did this and why I continue to do it. And when the times get really tough, why I continue to do it? They're not. No. So Calvin is six. He's turning six this week. And Wesley is three. So it's my business birthday. Birthday. We're two years and one week old. When I started this company, it was just me. And I had these huge ambitions to be an agency. And so I decided that I would name it with the word agency in the name so that I would have to eventually be there. And I am proud to say that we are an agency now. I do have two full-time employees and one contractor, as you saw in the last slide. So yay. What I'm going to be talking about today are sort of how I got to starting the business and then the things that I've been focusing on since I started the business. So my idea, the purpose, the people on the profit. So the background, even though the business is only two years old, much like a person, it started before those two years. And I think common to a lot of other entrepreneurs, I have this idea that getting a job is hard, but that making a business is easy. That it's the easier option. And so I have had a few jobs in my life. When I was in college, I thought, well, I thought I'd be a business major for some reason, but I hate busy work. And so I dropped the class the first day because they said, your homework is to cut out an article from the Wall Street Journal and bring it into class every day.   And I was like, oh, this is cool. I like this. I like helping people. I'm really interested in finding out about people's motivations and understanding why somebody behaves a certain way and how can we... I'm fascinated by people and understanding people. And so I kind of have a one-track mind as I can get very scattered, but I do have this kind of I get on a path and I just kind of charge. I'm a tourist, so maybe that's part of it. But the idea I had was like, okay, well, then I'll be a psychologist because I can help people. Didn't work out. To get into graduate school, you have to take this thing called the GRE. And in psychology, there's a subject-specific one. And I was like, that sounds hard. I'm just gonna take the regular one. So I only applied to the places that took the regular one. I didn't try very hard. I didn't get in. But I got into graduate school in Chapel Hill for library science. I was really like doing research. I like helping people do research. I was like, I could be a librarian. That'll be fun. I graduated in 2009. And if you were in North Carolina in 2009, you might remember there was a hiring freeze in the state and there were no jobs for librarians. Most of the jobs in library science are public sector. And so when the state decides that they're not hiring anymore, that means nobody's retiring anymore because those places aren't going to be able to hire. So I was unemployed straight out of graduate school for good 10 months, I think. I worked as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble. People treated me like dirt. It was a really good experience. Because I got to learn a lot about people and motivations and marketing. And it was fascinating. And I really had a lot of time there to think about what I wanted in life. So I was convinced by a friend to apply for this part-time junior web developer job. And I was like, you know, I've been doing web development as a hobby. I taught myself when I was a kid. So I look super young, but I've been doing this longer than it looks. I started programming in 96. And throughout my whole life, it was never something that anybody talked about as being an opportunity to have a job doing that. And my dad's an IT. It's not like he didn't help or support that desire of mine. It was just, there wasn't such a thing as a, or at least in my worldview, it was kind of like, this is just a hobby. It's not a job. So I didn't think that I'd get the job because I didn't have my background. Like I didn't have a degree or anything. And I felt like I was overqualified for all of these things that I've been trying to do, but I felt like there had to be a place for me. And I really, like I said, I have this big deep motivation to help people and help the world. And so I was really lucky because for some reason, the hiring manager saw that in me and saw, well, she's smart, she can figure it out even if she doesn't know this stuff yet. So I had built one WordPress website before I got that job. And that job was building WordPress websites. About six months after I started, the senior web developer quit in the middle of a Drupal project. And I was like, well, I have to figure that out now. I can do that, either that or they hire someone above me. So it was my big sink or swim moment. And as a woman in the tech industry, it was really hard for me. I felt very undervalued and underappreciated. And I think that a lot of people didn't see, you know, they just see the surface and don't give me a chance to prove my worth as much without that first initial judgment. So there was a lot of, I worked there for about four and a half years. My boss totally valued me. He saw what I had to give. But it was really hard because working for a small business and a startup where they were just trying to keep things going, I wasn't able to get paid what I was worth. So as much as I loved working for clients and working just in the community, I got the most amazing opportunity to leave that job and be the CTO of a startup media nonprofit. And so for two years, I worked for Education NC and I helped launch that nonprofit. I was the designer, developer, strategist, everything, a journalist, I had my own column about STEM education in North Carolina and it was incredible. And I throughout that experience really saw the way that nonprofits give back to the state and what the people that work in nonprofits, the kind of the lifeblood of our state are the people here. And it made me so passionate about, how can I do more as an individual to really help the causes that I believe in? And so I did a lot of soul searching and realized that I needed to leave this single nonprofit and I wanted to start a company where I could be a good boss and I could build a place where people that are a lot like me that have the same kind of desires to help really build the world and build their communities. We could all, and that are in this tech space and maybe misfits in the tech space that we could all work together and have a common mission and give back to our community. And so I listened to a lot of Michael Jackson and I know this slide has been up for a while, but I mean, this is really, this is the soundtrack of my life. I really think that for me I had a very windy path but I have done a lot of self reflection and there's a lot of challenges in the world, but I think that if we all kind of take a minute to look at like, what is it that's unique about ourselves and how can we elevate that and enhance that and make the world a better place through our own actions? And so the word unity was a big part of, it came out of my self reflection, what is it that I believe about the world? And I think that there are way more things that unite us than divide us and I want my business to be a reflection of that and help people be reminded of that day to day. So our mission at Unity is to spark vibrancy in communities. I'm having to read it. By empowering our partners to inspire action with open source and accessible solutions. So we use WordPress, we don't use other CMSs or other tools, part of that is because I love the platform. And another part of our mission besides open source is accessible and so we focus on website accessibility, both in the design and the development and in the content, making sure that, I don't know if you were here last year, but I spoke about accessibility. It's something that I'm very passionate about. So inclusion is one of our mission or is one of our big values. We wanna make the web an inclusive place for everybody. I wanna make the tech industry an inclusive place for everybody. We really celebrate diversity but strive for that equity and inclusion through diversity. Another value that we have is sustainability. I am really passionate about social sustainability and environmental sustainability. I think that a big part of building a business is, it's kind of the oxygen mask thing. You have to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you can help others. So part of that is making sure that you're respecting yourself and so sustainability, something I have to remind myself about a lot because I fall victim to this a lot with not giving myself time to take care of myself. But I'll talk a little bit more about this later about sustainability, but it comes into play pretty much daily in my company. Collaboration, like I said, it's really important that I have a team that is inclusive but that we can all work together well. So it's been a challenge to find the right team members, but to make sure that we are all on the same page about our values and our mission and making sure that we're working together to find the best people in the world. Solution for our clients and then also for our community. Another value is iteration. We're agile, we do not follow a scrum, but as a small team, we can't help but be agile. So we have to iterate, we have to follow best practices in some way. We kind of learn from our mistakes, not kind of, we actually learn from our mistakes. We fail fast and we recognize when we fail that we have learned something and we move forward.  Another value is elegance. I think that one of the things that draws me the most to programming is how code can be so beautiful. And I think that's part of why I'm drawn to WordPress with just the code as poetry value. And I do believe in that with making sure that everything that we build, everything that we design is as elegant as possible and that it is simple and clear and well built. Another value is, oh it's up there now, authenticity. So making sure that we are being authentic, that we're being humble and that we have integrity in everything that we do. These six values are values that me and my team came up with together. And whenever we have a new team member, we talk about what is our, in the hiring process. I talk a lot about the mission and our values and how we have to stick true to them in order to make sure that the business is being built in the way that it was intended and that it continues to grow in that direction. So a big thing that has come out of this is we became, at the beginning of this year, we became a certified B corporation. Has anybody heard of that? Yeah, okay, cool. It's a really amazing type of, it's a structure really, that it's sort of like the, it's what fair trade is to coffee but to business. It's an assessment that you have to take as a business to make sure that your business is good for the world. And so there's like five different, I should have written them down but, and I actually looked at the book before I came here. It's like, I should take the book with me. It's like a B core handbook. Ask me about it later when I'm not on stage and I can tell you all about it. But anyway, so it has been, it's been amazing for our company to be a certified B corporation. It has given us a network of other businesses who also believe that business can be a force for good in the world. And it's sort of our compass. It's our north so that we know what direction we need to follow whenever we have big decisions to make. It's something that we can look at, okay, is this going to be the best option that we could possibly make? So people, people are our number one resource. In my company, like I said right now, there are four of us.  And if I burn out my people, then the company is going to fail. So sustainable people, sustainable lifestyle, I wanna make sure that as the company grows, we are taking care of our people. We invest in their education, we invest in their health and I think it's been a really rewarding thing for our team to be in one place as well. A challenge that I've had, this is, so when I decided to start this company, I knew that people were gonna be a really important part of it. I knew that the purpose was a big part, but that the people were really, the decisions that I make about my team kind of comes out of that purpose. So community is really important to me. I wanted to have a business that supported my community. And so I made a really tough decision that is still having a little bit of a ripple within other aspects of the business, but I only hire locally. I don't want a distributed team and I don't want to hire overseas and it's really tough when other companies are able to go on Fiverr or somewhere to get something done really quick and cheap and I'm so tempted to do that sometimes. Sometimes I'm just like, you know what? I don't wanna have to save this thing as a PDF for 15 different PDFs and do all this. It's like menial, nobody wants to do it. It would be so great if I could just outsource that, but then I have to look back at my values and how I've decided to run my business and it is the most challenging thing that I've had to deal with this year, but it will pay off and I believe in that. So people are also our biggest expense in my company and I believe that that is how my business is going to change the world and it's only a little bit at a time, but I'm starting small. I wanna start locally. I wanna be able to make sure that the economic impact of our business helps North Carolina. So our suppliers are another part of the people part of this and it all goes back to our values again. So the first one, whenever we decide to work with an outside vendor or, you know, if I'm looking for, not just hiring, but if it's a contractor or if it's another company that provides a service that would be helpful for our business, there are factors that I weigh anytime I make a decision about bringing them on. So the first one is I look for minority and women-owned businesses and this is anywhere. I wanna help support people who are in the same kind of shoes that I'm in. I did register my business as a hub certified business of the state, so it's a historically underutilized business and any women or minority owner, it's like over 50%, if your business is owned by a minority or a woman, you're able to get that certification and I look for other businesses like that. The second thing I look for is if they're local or statewide, I think of local as North Carolina, but I figured I may as well put statewide in there. I wanna work with other businesses who are also supporting our community. Also fellow B-Corporations, so there's a website bcorporation.net and it has a list of all the B-Corporations. There's other businesses that are not B-Corporations but that have good business practices or some states, so it's too much to get into here, but B-Corporation is a certification. Benefit Corporation is something that a little over half of the states have as an actual legal entity for your business, North Carolina doesn't. It's sort of a hybrid between a non-profit and a business and a for-profit business. So there's like in those states, there's tax breaks that they get for having this kind of cause-based or benefit for their business and it's really about that triple bottom line. It's more than just profit. It's about their missions. The third thing or the fourth thing that I weigh is that eco-conscious. Hosting, our host is a green hosting platform. They buy back three times the number of renewable energy credits than their whole platform consumes. So they're giving back to the environment or to the industry to the renewable energy industry by buying back extra. All of our printing materials are done by a B-Corporation that prints on 100% recycled paper and it's really good quality and they have soy-based inks and nothing's bleached. So the paper, it's white, but it's not using bleach so it's really good for the environment. And then my accountant is local. And a lot of the contractors that I work with are minorities or women. So this is another part of, I'll come back to this later, but it really impacts the business having this supply chain. So profit, I'm gonna come back to that. First, before I get into profit, I wanna talk about challenges. This is where we get real a little bit. I've had a lot of problems over the last two years. My business is very new. And one thing that gives me hope is seeing that there are businesses that survive. I know that there are some that fail, but I've had a lot of kind of heart-to-heart talks with my accountant and he assures me that I'm okay. I've cried in his office way more often than I should admit on camera. He's like my therapist. So costs. When I make decisions about my supply chain and my people, my costs go way up. So I'm still trying to figure this all out. I don't have a degree in business. I took half a day of a business class ever. So I'm totally winging this whole thing. And I'm learning day by day, month by month, usually month by month, about how to keep my costs lower while still staying true to my values. People, nobody cares about my business as much as I do. And not even my husband. And so I've had a really hard time making sure that I find support and I don't lean on my employees for support because they need to trust me. So they need to know that I'm there for them. I need to look elsewhere for my support. So people though, I heard recently on a podcast that startups, and these are like the high growth kind of startups that the investors look for high turnover in the early years. And they see that as like a sign of a good leader. And I was like, well, okay, then I might be onto something because what you have to do, and it's the hardest thing, but you have to make sure that the people who are there are the ones that care and the ones that are there are gonna stick through the hard times and that they believe in you as a leader. And so I've had to make the really hard call to let go of several people. And every time I do, I learn. And every time I do, I wish that I had done it earlier for various reasons. And I think as somebody who is very caring, that's my biggest personal challenge. No, it's not, all of these are hard. Chemistry, I have depression. I really struggle.  But I have to take care of myself. And I have to make sure that, I have to try harder to take care of myself than I think people without depression or anxiety or other kinds of mental illnesses have to take care of themselves. And so life is a challenge. I am so busy, I'm always rushing. I have two kids and a husband and one of my kids just started first grade and my other one doesn't want to walk anywhere. He wants to be carried everywhere. And my husband has a very busy job and my parents won a lot out of me and my friends and other family members. I just, I feel like I'm being stretched, super thin, and I have like a thousand hats on. So all of these things are challenges and all of these things are things that I'm working through.  I love what I do. I just, I wanna do it better. And so that's my goal is to do what I do better. So how on earth do I manage? First, my village. I mentioned that before when I threw my thing and it broke. I couldn't do this without my friends and my family and other business owners. There's this amazing place in Durham called Nido and it's where I got started. It is a childcare co-working facility. They have, it's Montessori style and it opened my eyes to one of the things I was like, this is the kind of business that I wanna see in the world.  And I met so many people there that were doing this and had small kids and were in the same kind of place as me with a dream that they wanted to launch. And I couldn't, I don't think I could have done what I did without having a community of supporters of people who are in very similar shoes as mine. And so my support system are people that I've met through that. Other small business owners that I know just from life, people that I went to high school with, people that I meet at the frontier. It's true really that raising a company is a lot like raising kids. And if you have kids, you know, you can't do it alone. And so if you're starting a business, you need to remember you can't do it alone. So find some support. The second thing is podcasts. I don't have time to read as much as I'd like to, so I listen to podcasts. And there's one amazing WordPress podcast that I listen to, KitchenSyncWP. Adam Silver is back in the back of the room. That's how I keep up with what's happening in the WordPress industry. I hired another developer so that I don't have to do as much constant learning of the space. I'm still leading the development team because I can't let go.  I want to be full-time CEO, not developer. But for now, I still am, so I listen to that. I also listen to Zigzag. It's an amazing podcast about these women who are starting a media company in New York and the podcast startup is also very good, Gimlet Media. All of the Gimlet podcasts are amazing. And I escape through podcasts. I used to escape through reading. And so I would just read, I love fantasy. I love true crime. I love mystery novels, all of that. But since I don't have time, I listen to them. So I listen to true crime podcasts when I wanna escape and it's terrible, but it gets me through. So my weaknesses. So part of depression and part of anxiety is telling yourself how terrible you are constantly.  And so my weaknesses are part of my coping mechanisms because when I listen to them and the other part of my head is like, uh-uh. So I have this constant battle in my head and I've actually started to see them as strengths because I can recognize when I'm getting really stressed out that that voice gets louder. And I know that, okay, it's time to slow down. So instead of seeing things like, or hearing things like I'm lazy, I'm efficient. And I'm not stubborn, I'm determined. And if I didn't have these weaknesses or what I think of as weaknesses, then I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. Out of laziness, instead of getting a job and applying for jobs when it was time to move on, out of laziness, I filed articles of organization with the Secretary of State and started a company. And that's not lazy, but that's what I've told myself. And my determination, I don't wanna fail. Oh, another great podcast is Seth Godin, a Kimbo. I feel like I heard it on there, but I might not have. It might have been another one, but one of the things that I heard on a podcast was that failure is just doing what everyone else does. It's going and getting a job. It's not the worst thing. So I don't want to do that, but man, that makes it easier to think about it in that way where it's like, oh, okay, then it's not that embarrassing if my company fails, but I don't want it to. So I'm determined, I'm going to make it happen. And I'm not selfish. I keep telling myself I'm selfish, but I don't give to me. I give to others. And I think that instead of being selfish, I am trying to think of the right word. I think it's that I'm empathetic and that I pull in other people's feelings into myself and then I dwell on them. And so it's not me being selfish when I'm being introspective and reflective. It's really about empathy. So my other, the way I deal is really my strengths. And so one of my biggest strengths is that I'm a really, really good developer. Not to brag, but I'm great. And so when I'm feeling really bad about myself, I'll go in and I'll dive into a deep problem and I'll figure it out. And it makes me feel really good about myself when I manage to do that. So I really like puzzles and problem-solving and that kind of thing. And so it gets me through. All right, so I want to talk about profit. And I've kind of laid out a lot on the table here about my values and some decisions that I've made in my business and then also a lot of the personal challenges that I struggle with. And one of those, I don't, not having a business background, kind of figuring this out myself. My business is totally bootstrapped. I don't have investors. When I started it, my family was already very much in debt by paying for my husband's education, which is, he calls debt. I do see it more as an investment. But how many of you have either kids in daycare or have paid for that? Yeah, it's really expensive. Luckily, our oldest got to start kindergarten when he was still four. So we got to get that off of our payment. That payment, but so I was the primary breadwinner of my family. My husband was working in a nonprofit and he was making less in that nonprofit than he was before he went to law school. He's an attorney, making not much, well, then. And so I had to make sure that when I started my company, I could pay the bills. I had to pay for our mortgage. I had to pay for food, power, but then also all of the childcare expenses. His salary's covering taxes and health insurance. And without that, we wouldn't have been doing okay.  And so the whole thing with bootstrapping was I had to make sure that if I started this thing, it was gonna pay off. So when I started, I was a freelancer and I knew I didn't wanna be a freelancer because I didn't wanna keep learning and when a developer wants to stop learning, it's time for them to not be a developer anymore. So I knew that it was temporary that I would be the primary person building these sites. But it was what I had to start with. So my mindset as a freelancer is like, okay, if I can make 4,000 a month and I have 1,000 in costs and the cost would be hosting, licenses, equipment, that kind of thing, I'd be okay because I'd be making 3,000 a month. It's not ideal but it'll pay the bills for a little while plus our savings. So that was kind of my goal at the beginning. And I did that in the first month, that was no problem. Each month, I grew faster than I thought I would. So shortly after, I would say it was probably like four months later, I was like, okay, it's time to grow. I was making 8,000 a month and I was getting more work than I could handle myself. So I was looking for help.  And they're more important to pay because there are legal reasons to pay them. And so the first person to get their salary cut is the owner, unfortunately in my case. So I started getting contractors to help out. Because I wanted to actually build a team instead of just, and a local team, I started looking for part-time employees because I wanted to get people on board and actually grow a business with employees. And like I said, I'm very stubborn. And I had, everybody told me not to do this. They said, don't get space, don't hire people. That's not gonna work. And I was like, you know what? It is gonna work, I'm gonna make it work. And so my goal for my first year was to have an office and an employee. And I did that within six months of starting the company. So I got this amazing office space for the same price at other co-working places where you could get a desk. I was able to get a door with a lock on it and a room. So I felt like that was a huge win for me. The room was 12 by 12, I think, maybe not even that big. It was tiny, but there was enough room in there for another desk, so I had another person in there. Suddenly my cost went way up. I had to pay for more business insurance. More people, even though they started as contractors, so I didn't have to worry about taxes as much. And then rent. Suddenly, even though these numbers are totally fake, by the way, they're like estimates and averages. Every month has been like this. And so this is kind of, yeah, this is basically average. So first phase of growth, my bottom line was very similar. But when I started seeing the quality of our work as something that I wanted to pay more for, I wanted to make sure that I was getting people who, A, wanted to work full-time for a place, which is hard when you're looking at other freelancers as hires because they don't want a job. That's why they're freelancers. I realized I really had to step it up with the growth and make a commitment to hire full-time. And that was a huge cost. So suddenly, second phase of growth was going from contractors to full-time employees. This has been incredibly difficult. So our revenue has definitely increased. This is not where we are right now. We need to be a lot higher than that. And like I said, it goes up and down, but our costs for hosting licenses and equipment is pretty much the same. Our costs for insurance, people in rent has gone up a lot in taxes. Oh goodness. So one thing that you might see at the very bottom here is this is kind of profit is the bottom line there. So it's like, okay, it was about the same. And then suddenly growth phase two plummet zero. I did read Profit First. I loved that book. I had a really hard time with sticking to a plan because I don't stick to plans, I wing it. But I need to get back into that where I need to value myself more. And so at the beginning, as a freelancer, I was seeing very much like, okay, after my costs, everything else is mine. Everything else is how I pay myself. And so as a freelancer, I was basically taking all of the profit as my payment. In the growth phase, I was still paying myself as an employee in a way. And I was able to save some of the money as a profit in the way that it should be seen as profit. But suddenly when I made a lot of sacrifices to make the company grow to this phase two, where I'm valuing the people that are working for me, I've suddenly undervalued myself. And so I pretty much pay myself whatever's left over and, hey, it's really good for taxes. You don't have any profit. But it's something that is the next phase of my business journey is the profit, the focus on profit. I focused on purpose, I focused on people, and now it's time for me to focus again on profit. So I'm reframing how I'm thinking about profits from being a freelancer to being a business owner. First is profit is a reward for doing well. Profit is what you get on top of your income. This is money that you're getting that's almost a thank you from the market to say thank you for doing what you're doing. You're valuable. The second way of thinking about it is it's savings for setbacks because a business is a roller coaster ride. And in addition to being able to reward people with this money that your business has earned as a bonus, there's setbacks, but then there's also future growth. I want to continue growing. I have more people that I want to hire. And I can't do that without making sure that there's money on reserve for that opportunity. And then the proof of marketability really goes back to the reward for doing well. If a business isn't profitable, and this is back in the whole view of businesses and it's like why are you a business if you're not profitable. And right now, being bootstrapped, I think about this a lot. And this is where my account is like, no, you're okay. Your business is only two years old. It's okay that you don't have profit yet. But as I focus on growing and as I focus on that profit, it's really a proof. It's proving to myself that it's worth it. And so I've built this company as something that I know that I want to see in the world. I wanted more businesses like this. But next it's really, do other businesses want to see businesses like this? Will our clients pay more to invest in a business like ours? Sort of like how people pay more for organic food. Are we going to be able to raise our prices in a way that shows the marketplace that we are this other level of service provider?  We are going to do all of these other things for you too. And this is all something that we're kind of exploring right now. So I don't know what that path is going to look like, but because I have these values and mission, I feel like I'll certainly know when I'm straying. And so if this is a path that you're interested in or that you're on, I would really like to get to know you because like I said, a village is very important. So thank you. Yes. I just want to say thank you so much for being so authentic in your talk. It's really amazing. And I got a lot out of it. I feel like I'm in a similar place in my business, which is not web-based right now, but I'm curious about, you said that you're in the second phase right now. So can you clarify what does that mean? Are you not paying yourself and also you don't really have profits? So if that's the case, how are you sustaining yourself? Or if that's not the case, what's happening? Yeah, so the question for the recording is if what does the second phase look like for my business and how am I sustaining myself? So I am lucky enough that my husband has gotten a job that does pay the bills more, but I haven't been able to pay myself and it's been a really rough few months. And so there's been a lot of soul searching. A lot of it was problems with people which I am recovering from and I'm on the track for actually paying myself this month. And so it's really, it's a challenge, but this phase of growth really is about, I've got the right people in the business now and so I need to focus on being able to pay myself and then I'm going to probably have to take another hit in order to afford another person, but it'll be worth it. And I'll know because I've learned from this experience. I think I saw your, yes. You said the problem was people. If the problem is people, is it productivity or personality? Both, and a part of that I think comes back to nobody cares as much as I do. And so I have to make sure that the people that I'm hiring are committed and we're not big enough to have somebody that doesn't care yet, hopefully ever, back there. So as you continue to grow as a business, obviously you need to take on an on-board more and more performance. What has been your strategy for getting clients, once you go past a personal and then a little bit of an extended network of people that you can connect to directly, how have you grown beyond that and made it sustainable? So the question is how have we grown beyond just the personal relationship type of business? What is your business development? What is your strategy for on-boarding clients in terms of how many clients? Okay, so strategy for on-boarding clients. We luckily are still small enough that it's all a very personal relationship. That we, is it, is your question really about after they've become clients or is it about acquiring clients? Okay, it's all been word of mouth. It's all been referral-based and it's all return customer, not all return customer, but it's many return customers, many referrals. We are working on that. How do we market ourselves? It's just hard to see when you're in agency or when you're in marketing. You know when you're talking to clients that you tell them you can't see, when you're inside the pickle jar, you can't read the label. So when we can't see our label, and so I've been working with outside consultants to help us with our own marketing because we can't do it for ourselves and that's been a game changer actually. I think there was a question up front. Yes, Judy. Thank you for your talk. It reminds me, my agency now is 10 years old and I would love to talk to you. Oh thanks. My biggest turning point that my early stage was Russell, when he said double your prices and we were working together on a project and he came back with the price and I said that's not what we said, it was like 17 and he comes back with 23. 17 I thought was high, 17,000 and he comes back with 23 and then the next time he mess with the contract it was in the 30s. I'm like we can't do this and we can do that so that was a huge thing. We have just like one day we just took our prices and we just doubled them and then I've done it several times and now our prices are like I can't even, thank you Russell. That's amazing. Two days later. Yeah, I very much would like to double our prices. Great, thank you. Judy says I can double my prices. Yes. You've been very kind to sort of describe the roller coaster business. Describe a little more detail, the kind of work that you do. By that I mean is it building new websites? Is it maintaining websites? Is it fixing busted websites? Maybe the answer is yes. So that's our problem actually, that's one of the problems that we've been having is that we, I've focused very much on who our clients are and as a helpful person I want to do everything and we can't do everything. So we have been, typically we start with a big project and then they become maintenance clients. We have gotten some maintenance clients who sites we didn't build and then we end up fixing the busted website. And so we, I think that ideally what we would be doing is working with an established marketing team within a company to help them really elevate their messaging through the website. And so we want to do really creative cutting edge designs for websites that are built well and are fast and secure and all of that but that are interesting. And so that's really where I get excited about it and making sure that they work well in the accessibility space and that they make sense to everybody. Because I think a lot of times what I'm seeing is a big challenge for a lot of our clients is that what they say about themselves doesn't make sense to everybody else. So we kind of cut through that to deliver their message in a more streamlined way. Yeah, thanks. Lydia. So the way that we kind of came up with the mission statement and the values, I started it by myself and then as soon as I had team members we would have like half day retreats where we kind of went through what does the business look like? Where do we want to go? And really refined the mission statement and the values from there. But a big thing that helped me was doing the B impact assessment for the B corporation because it has a lot of questions about like, do you do this? Do you do that? Is your mission statement or do you have a mission statement and does it have these kinds of things in it? And it kind of gave me guidelines in a way and I don't think it was necessarily intended to give me guidelines, but I certainly took it that way. All right, well thank you everybody.