Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us for today's event. My name is Daniel Lowe and I am the curator of the Arabic collections of the British Library. We are happy again to host the Seif Khubash Banipal Prize lecture this year given by a well-known Palestinian novelist short story writer and film director Liana Badr. This event is in association with the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature. The event will be in two parts. In the first you can hear Liana's lecture. In the second she is joined by journalist and literary translator Samira Qua for a conversation and to take your questions. Just a little bit of housekeeping before we get started. You are able to watch the lecture in either Arabic or English. You can decide by clicking on the tab below the video. If you have any questions during the event you can submit them using the question box below. A selection of questions will be presented in Liana during the second half of the event. You can use the menu above provide feedback on the event and also to donate to the British Library. The British Library is a charity. Your support helps us open up a world of knowledge and information for everyone. You will also find a link to the bookshop where you can find relevant books. You will find social media links below the video in case you want to continue the conversation on other platforms. Now without further ado we will turn over to Samira for the rest of the event. Good evening. On behalf of the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature I'd like to welcome you to our fifth annual lecture hosted by the British Library. The Trust was set up in September 2004 by the publisher of Banipal Magazine to support and celebrate the publication of Arab authors in English translation. It aims to contribute to deepening and enriching cultural dialogue between the Arab world and the West particularly Europe and North America. To that end it works to bring the literature of contemporary Arab authors to the UK and to English speakers worldwide. The Trust views such intercultural dialogue and exchange as a means of giving Western audiences a glimpse of contemporary Arab culture in all its diversity and vibrancy. The Trust works to fulfill its aims by supporting and promoting the translation of literary works by contemporary Arab authors into English. It also supports the publication of Banipal Magazine of Modern Arab Literature in English translation three times a year. Our annual translation prize known as the Saif Ghubash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation was set up in 2006 and is made possible by a generous grant from Omar Saif Ghubash and his family in memory of his late father Saif Ghubash. The annual lecture also supported by Omar Saif Ghubash and his family was set up to celebrate the 10th yearly award of the prize and can focus on any aspect of Arabic literature and translation. The inaugural lecture by Anton Shamas, poet and professor of Arabic literature at the University of Michigan, was hosted by the British Library in London on the 14th of October 2016. Historian and scholar Robert Irwin delivered the 2017 lecture and poet, philosopher and author Adonis gave the 2018 lecture. Last year's lecture was delivered by novelist Hanan Shikh. This evening's lecture is being given by the well known Palestinian novelist short story writer and film director Liana Bedir. Liana was born in 1950 in Jerusalem and grew up between Jericho and Jerusalem which had a cosmopolitan atmosphere and was home to a cultured elite that celebrated the art of translation. After 1967 she lived in Amman Beirut Damascus and Tunis and returned to Palestine in 1994 with her husband. She's lived in Ramallah since her return. Liana studied at the University of Jordan in Amman and graduated from Beirut's Arab University with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and psychology. After returning to Palestine, she earned an MA from Beirut University. Her first novel, A Compass for the Sunflower, was published in 1979 and translated into English in 1989. Three of her other works have also been translated into English. A collection of novellas entitled A Balcony Over the Fakhani, The Stars of Jericho and a novel entitled The Eye of the Mirror which I had the pleasure of translating into English in 1994. Her novel, The White Tent was published in Arabic in 2016 and her latest novel is The Land of the Tortoise. In addition to her literary writing, Liana ran the cinema department at the Palestinian Ministry of Culture in Ramallah. She also edited the ministry's periodical, Deferter Taqafiyah. Liana has directed seven documentary films which have received several international awards and she's written several film scripts. It gives me great pleasure to welcome Liana on behalf of the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature this evening to deliver our fifth annual lecture. She'll speak on the topic of creating a mosaic of literature. Hello everyone, creating a mosaic of literature. I reckon I fell in love with writing through being born and growing up in Jerusalem where I could look at every star and planet of the universe. The city seemed to its inhabitants and its visitors like the center of the world and it was always full of people of every country nationality and religion. My small family world was not confined to people we knew. A considerable part of it consisted of a search for pleasure with new visitors and tourists for whom this might be their last or only visit. My family had taught us that these human relationships were the most valuable thing we could possess when we shared our love and happiness with those who loved our city. It wasn't unusual to send last minute invitations to lunch or supper in our homes to the strangers or pilgrims, wandering around the street and alleyway, markets and camp. Many a time my father would stop his car to give a lift to a foreign tourist walking along the Jerusalem Jericho Road with his thumb outstretched as a sign that he was hitchhiking. I was born and fed myself on whatever was brought to me by that cosmopolitan city, a precious jewel for religions and perhaps for all the people of the earth or so its inhabitants believed. A popular proverb in our country says neighbor before house and that applied whatever religion or sect the neighbor belonged to, for the sacred city makes him an equal, a twin, a companion and a relative of all who live there. So as children we awoke like but growing in the shadow of difference making of it a real game to regulate our daily life. I opened my eyes to the Christmas tree as I awaited my present in the house of my neighbors and family friends and with the children discovered with shock and joy that it was their father the lawyer who was disguising himself by wearing a Santa clothes outfit unaware we had recognized him from the color of his bird and shape of his chin when his costume moved a bit and slipped off his neck. Even when I just appeared in exile for 27 years these children who had grown up with as my friends were here and this was not just confined to us the plates of sweets that the Christian Arabs used to make for their festivals would find their way to the houses of their Muslim neighbors and vice versa. To this day Najwa the same family's daughter still sends a plate of sweets made of wheat seeds and fruit for Saint Barbara's Day to remind me that we are all united by the same affection in which we grew up playing singing and going to the cinema with a shared pleasure in running and playing in the streets of Jerusalem or the fields of Jericho that stretch across the valley. At school it was quite usual for girls to exchange with each other the chains and links that hold miniature copies of the Quran or Golden Crosses without any attention to religion or sex out of pure affection we would attend midnight mass in the Latin Church in Jericho with the full agreement of the family because shared festivals were the first symbol of the existence of the original Palestine as it was before the occupation which wanted to give to one party the legal right to control the city and wipe out the mosaic of people that guaranteed its diversity. We lived an intertwined life in Jerusalem like color threats in an embroidered and this also applied to Jericho where we exchanged conversation with Umnazir the Christian seamstress who lived with her daughter in the old hotel that Market Wayne stayed in when he visited Palestine. Then in Jericho we would follow the trips to the site of Christ's baptism and the Christian pilgrims and look at the icons drawn by passing travelers and all the local families would go up onto the roof of our house to observe the stars and planets through my father's telescope which he had taken six months to carve by hand. Even after 1994 when I returned from exile I could see those pictures colored with gold paint on the outer brick wall of that tiny house that my father occupied and which was once the only surgery in the town. In Palestine before the occupation religions were a source of kindness and harmony between people. It was the nuns who gave us music and piano lessons so it was not surprising that I should join a Jerusalem school that was keen for its girls to attend concerts of Western classical music presented by the Goethe Institute on a semi-regular basis. Nor was it strange that the Christmas celebrations at our school, the home of Dari Tufel, should be accompanied by popular Palestinian depke dances that I found in the streets of Jerusalem and gardens of Jericho. Not just the words of the east but the whole world. What does the literature consist of? It consists of this beautiful mosaic which brings together people, faces, places and nature. However much the shapes, colors and waves may differ as they appear from the outside. It was my good fortune that my upbringing in Jerusalem gave me a sense of diversity and the ability to look at difference as a great advantage. The best teacher to teach me Arabic of elementary level was a Palestinian from Jerusalem of Turkish origin and my wonderful English teacher was a Jerusalem woman from Al Hosseini family who volunteered to teach us English because she had plenty of time. She went to great trouble to teach us the art of appreciating poetry and especially those poems that she encouraged us to turn into a solo or group dramatic performance. When my mother didn't want me to go to see the film and God created women by the director Roger Vadim starring Brigitte Bardot, fearing that I would be affected by the nudity for which the film was not notorious, my elderly aunt encouraged her to give me the freedom to watch it even though I was only 10 or 11 years old. There was a Jerusalem elite that tried to look at the world from every angle. My mother and her sisters were graduates of the various foreign schools in Jerusalem which influenced the growth of a cultural atmosphere with very taste and perspective. Palestinian radio broadcast a program of foreign songs which was very popular and boys and girls would rush to listen to it and get together to repeat the songs. Jerusalem was like a meadow full of birds and flowers. There was never a hint of Panathasism, narrow-mindedness or hatred of the other that the occupation constructed and which left its effect effects later. Perhaps it was because of this diversity which creates literature that my life changed when I came across Margaret Mitchell's book God with the Wind translated into Arabic. I had already started to read novels by that time aged 11. Near my Jerusalem boarding school there was a cultural center with a library full of American and world literature. I acquired a special right to borrow four books at a time from this library while most people could only borrow two. This was because I was a fast reader and needed to change books frequently and the kind like Behran thought she might spare both me and her the trouble of my coming every day or two. It was the fascinating character of Scarlett O'Hara that made me so fond of novels for I discovered through gun with the wind which I read in full a thousand pages in two parts that it is people stories that make history and that it is these captivating characters who resemble us as we resemble them that make us look at events at people and at ourselves at the same time. For the first time I was reading about wars in other parts of the world before that I had thought that war was something made for us alone to sleep under the beds of the children orphaned in the scene who had been in terror streams of sweat pouring from our brows because the explosive sound was usually directly over the university. I asked myself at the time if the pilot realized what a hellish mission he was undertaking in terrorizing us just because we were sitting our exam. The experience of having my first novel translated brought me much pleasure because I got to know a lot of people specialists and lovers of novels and it influenced my future writing because I felt that I was writing for a world reader and not just for a local reader. I had become a citizen in the vast kingdom of literature. I also discovered that Edward Said had got the book accepted in the syllabus for comparative literature in the Middle East at a well-known American university. This made me more conscious of the role of translation in creating a field for universal mutual understanding through literature for it shapes our reading towards our shared horizon and trains us to read our differences and disagreements in a spirit of love and tolerance. The extent of the welcome received by the eye of the mirror translated into English by Shamira Kaur was a lovely surprise that was quite new to me. I had written this novel about the Palestinian presence in Lebanon. I spent several years researching in parallel the facts and the personal stories behind what happened. I gathered dozens of statements from people who had lived there and drew successive maps of tell the daughter under siege because I really wanted to make it a novel like an epic reflecting the difficult life of people in the camps during the long siege. I was aiming for something like Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and specifically I wanted to tell Palestinian history through the eyes of women. So I was surprised at the eagerness to read and teach the novel in a number of universities and its institutes in the world. Later I learned that the effort a writer devotes to his work will find a limitless appreciation anywhere in the world and not just in his homeland provided that he does all in his power to present literary experiences derived from real and inner life. However strange and unusual and remote from ordinary experience they may be. This increased both my patience and my appreciation of fine detailed work no matter how exhausting. So the novelist must sometimes endure moments of difficulty boredom and a lack of direct appreciation because writing does not heal its fruits at exactly the moment of production rather it matures slowly producing a sap that forms in a golden goblet such is the literature that he lifts up and presents to people. Every novel or short story of mine that has been translated has sketched out the new lines in my life and has alerted me to far reaching possibilities that I didn't know I could reach creating new dimensions of vision that I knew nothing about forming new friendships and other dimensions for me. Yes writing is the mosaic of life and the window through which we look out onto the world. When we go to the Palace of Hisham Ibn Abdul Malik the Omaya Khalifa in Jericho we see the largest mosaic floor in the world made up of 38 mosaic carpets interlooking with each other. Its total area is 826 square meters and it is made up of more than 6 million individual tiles used to decorate the floor of the reception hall called the Diwan. The Arabs were taught to benefit from the cultural achievement of all the peoples of the world who had preceded them just as European civilization benefited from their glorious achievement in many fields. This is the foundation of the mutual tolerance established by centuries of civilization in the area that has been considered the center of the ancient work. I imagine the ancient translator preparing the roads for the caravans that carried commercial goods and essential provisions for people in ancient times and I imagine the modern literary translator performing the same task loaded with love and affection and the desire for mutual understanding between people. He holds love and respect for the text in his hand as he persists in his search for the right word to shake the death matter from the meaning and blow the spirit of life into the text in another language to express the intention of the original author. How much agitation and worry he must endure to recreate the text to convey the wishes of the original writer. His skills and professionalism are what defines the depth of the true life that he gives to the text for a second time in another language. How much precision, creativity, stamina and competence are needed to recreate the text in another body in a completely different language while conveying the same meanings and enjoying the same sensibility. How much patience is needed to look into the soul of the writer to know what exactly he wanted to say with a precision free from any betrayal of meaning. It is a different type of creation of another kind. We can thank these linguistic explorers and convey to them our thanks and gratitude for recreating our text and thereby refreshing our lives in another language. This is the dimension that unites the translator with the writer and sets the two parties in a circle of need in an environment we cannot dispense with. I cannot express my thanks enough to the many people that have translated my stories and included them in anthologies in world languages that have allowed so many people to read and study them. In recent times the novel has changed acquiring a different dimension and the new reverberation that no one has experienced before. The cinema has reflected itself in writing so that it is no longer possible for us to resort to generalities and male key details. So my novels have become full of visual images like a camera picturing the gradation of colors and the inner structures of a scene registering the slightest movement of a muscle in the heart or body of the person I am writing about. This may also be connected to the visual film images that convey the stories we wish to tell clearly and plainly. Can we not now feel the heartbeat of early man when we see the hands and palms that he drew on his keyboard? Do we not see gentleness and happiness in his pictures of forces and bulls roaming in front of his cave? The mosaic floors in Hisham's palace show a picture of lions chasing gazelle to kill them as prey reminding us of an eternal truth which we are continually confronted by namely that in our lives today there are wild beasts who never cease to persecute, murder, repress, confiscate other people's land and appropriate what does not belong to them. This fact in itself should restore our faith in the power of the mind the heart and the spirit to resist so that we may bring mankind out of the circle of barbarity. Novels are simply pictures that we draw in order to escape the results of the constant destructive battles that are unjustly waged against humanity and we writers who through our simple or complex words are constantly dreaming of another future for mankind are supported by legends of translators who undertake to convey our texts into other languages or relay other works to us. I remember one evening when I was writing a long essay about peace. I was in the year of my secondary school diploma taking part in a competition arranged by a world association for young people and students about peace in the Middle East. As I was writing I quoted some paragraphs translated from a lecture by Immanuel Kant about a project for an enduring and comprehensive world peace written and published in 1795. My father stayed up with me until dawn so that I could finish it properly and he was typing it on his typewriter. Then I learned that my essay had won first prize and that a celebration was being arranged for the winners. During the days that followed this happy announcement of the winner however the war of aggression broke out and the West Bank was occupied. The result being not just the cancellation of the celebration but also my family having to shuttle between different countries and my becoming a permanent exile. This happened in 1967. Our family was dispersed in exile to various places and my father died in Amman far from his homeland. Some of my sisters were unable to return and remained abroad. I now live far from entering Jerusalem where my extended family lived because a permanent blockade prevents us residents of the West Bank and gets that from traveling with military roadblocks and the racist partition world. Doesn't it deserve a mention that what literature and its translators are trying to achieve is being wiped out and undermined by weapons in order to create arrest, detention, imprisonment and division between people? So far mankind has not devised a more effective weapon to close these ghettos in whose shadows we are made to live but as writers we shall use writing literature novels and short stories to go on with what we were made for because there is an unbreakable spiritual connection between the reader and the writer and a spiritual bond between the writer and the translator for literature will remain a celebration of life and humanity. Writing is the language of the heart when it is distributed to all. Yes, writing is a project for building the world somehow and for repairing it. If it is broken and shattered in my latest novel Land of the Tortoise I recounted a love story of a well-known Palestinian woman poet who tries to recapture the meaning of love in a world which is all walls and barriers in parallel with the writer's return to Palestine after 27 years. What is the past like and what is the present? Is there efficient for the future? This is what the novel attempts to discuss. Writing is a hard instrument but it is a means of raising morale. It is the only thing that can save us from repression. It is a conversation of the self and the other. It is a writer's constant attempt to create a new time in which his translators male or female can share together with lovers of blissful dreams like them. I conclude by thanking Margaret Obank who spent time discussing her ideas on writing with me, the translator Cameron Horsch who had a valuable conversation with me about the mysterious methods of translation and also Paul Starkey who translated this lecture. Sincere thanks also to the noble organization and staff of Bani Bal who worked tirelessly to make Arab literature known in Britain and beyond. Thank you. Liana, thank you very much. That was absolutely fascinating. We are now taking questions from the audience. Please feel free to send us your questions through the question function on Zoom. I actually have a question from Becky Maddox who runs the Bani Bal book club and she says last week we discussed Liana's novel The Eye of the Mirror. We found it a powerful book. Thank you. And she asks you, she wonders if you could say something about the significance of the mirror of the title in the work itself. And who did you imagine would be in the audience when you wrote this work? I think that the mirror is something spiritual because when I was young my mother always told, was told don't look to the mirror because maybe you can be crazy. You can be mad if you look all the time to the mirror. And I think that in our culture it means the dimensions of the soul. That's why people are very afraid to see. And I looked to the history of my people and I found that the massacres which we have between time to time, it was something to make you crazy. Why we should have all these wars, all the occupation, all the suffering, everything bad around us. So I thought that if you look to your soul, if you look to the world, sometimes you can get crazy unless you can try to analyze what is going around. For the audience I think that when I write I don't think what I can do just to write, just to express the character, the situation. So that's why I I can see myself just like a mirror which is reflecting all the emotions, the looks, the feelings, the senses, the smells, the colors. That's it. Okay, thank you. And another question I have here is that you say you were influenced by having your first novel translated and that after that you felt you were writing for a world audience. How did that change the way that you write? Actually, I felt that my first novel was like just to talk with a very close friend. I was trying to build a world of characters, a world of nostalgia. And I felt the deep emotions I couldn't express. So I tried to find these characters to express these deep emotions. And it was something very inside myself. But when my first novel was translated, I felt that I should face the whole world because now I feel this belonging to everybody around me. And suddenly I became very interested to read in English all the world literature. And I felt that it was more sensible to know a lot of things around the world because by the time I feel this belonging to every country, to every writer, to every man and woman, this is the impact of the translation. It changed me from inside. It doesn't relate to a small, you know, these small feelings or or this point or late, it become like an ocean for me, the writing. Okay, and I have another question here for you. Commentators often consider your work in view of the fact that you are both Palestinian and a woman. How do you feel about the importance of these labels in relation to your work? Are these elements of your identity something you're keen to portray? Yes, I feel that there is a big difference in these two points because it's very, very important to write as a woman, breaking the silence which all my ancestors, all my grandmothers have before and they were kept the all the grandmothers, all the old people, women, old generations, they were talking to each other. They didn't talk to the world. It was something limited inside. It was something like you put it in a box, but when you write now, I feel that it explodes these secrets, like I have a shell and I'm breaking it. I look inside. It's just not to keep the things for myself or for my woman society. And on the contrary, I feel I don't feel that this is also easy because sometimes or many times I feel the rejection of the society around me. I feel that people couldn't accept this. Everyone can't accept that somebody is criticizing all the time that I have this look to talk about things. Sometimes it is unspoken. Nobody likes to talk about. So I don't feel safe inside, but I feel that I should have the courage to break the silence all the time. So it's something in contrast with each other. We have a question here from Sohail Tarek Khan. He says, Dear Madam, thank you for the interesting lecture. You mentioned the Jerusalem elite. Is there any so-called cultural elite in Palestine or in the Arab world? Who are they? Where? He wants to know which country or city. Does the hub of Arabian culture lie in the modern Arabic spoken world, according to you? And then he wants to know if he can have a copy of your lecture, which I think the British Library is going to put on its website subsequently. So you would be able to watch it. But over to you, Liana, for your answer. I guess, sure. There is this elite in our country. And we were raised by this elite. And I knew that the generation before us, many generations, they knew many languages. As an example, my grandfather, he went to the university in Asitana, which is Istanbul now. Many of our people around, they have books, they were making lectures, they were translation. They have translated many things. It's very well known that, as I mentioned in the lecture about Khalid al-Sakakini, about Isha'at al-Nashashibi, about Musa al-Ishaq al-Hussaini, about Najat al-Sidqi. We have a lot of people who were very distinguished, like Kilsum Odeh, who was the first translator to Arabic literature in Russia in the 19th century. So it's something for whom he is asking. They should get back to the history and they can. Thank you. And I have another question for you here. How does your work as a writer and your work as a filmmaker feed into and complement one another? Yes, it is like a threat or it's like something related to each other, two parallel roads. But every road has its own language. You can't write like cinema, you can't film a film or make a camera like a book. But anyway, if you have this passion to connect these two parallel roads, you can have the benefits of each. The cinema taught me how to look to small details, how to have a close look for everything around me, beginning from the colors, to the nature, to the emotions, to the people, conflicts, to the changing in the weather and the changing in the body. You know, if you can make them work with each other, they are like a twin and they can make a new concept to each other. Maybe this has to, we have a lot of theories about this, but for myself, I felt that I can try and this I can see everything color, everything in colors, in details, all the small emotions, all the small passion that is and the cinema is a modern, modern art and it is unique in its, because it is consisted of literature, paintings, colors, music. So I tried to reflect this also in my writing, not to be traditional, not to have a straight look on everything, just to try to invent my own style between all these things from here and from the other part. Yeah, having translated the eye of the mirror, I can attest to the fact that your writing is very visual, it has a very visual feel to it and it conjures up images to the reader and obviously the translator as well. If I might allow myself a question here, when you wrote that and your other works, were you ever thinking that perhaps they might be turned into films? Yes, I was thinking that it might be a film because writing is sharing, when you are writing, when you are inside the writing process in the subconscious, you are thinking of other people you like to share you what you are seeing or what you are reflecting and to see your senses, your judgment for things, your passions, your sadness, your happiness. So I tried to share this with the reader by making it through my eyes and through also the cinematic way reflecting, it's like many reflections, many colors at the same time, not just taking this traditional or this old styles just to look in a very straight line. Okay, thank you and I have here a question for Marianne Dagibos, I hope I'm not mispronouncing your name and she says, is there according to you a connection between literature and activism and if there is, how is it expressed in your work? I don't make an effort, a real effort to have this scene or a very clear scene because when I write it means that I am separate from everything, writing itself is a kind of activist act. So when I am writing, I don't think the purpose is or I don't think the reasons or the results of the writing, I just try to feel honest to express things as it is I try not to escape from the, you know, there's always these punishments you feel that if you write this, somebody will be angry, if you write this, nobody will accept you. So I try to be free, to free myself from all these bondages and try just to write. So I don't think about activism or about anything else, just to be honest and to write what I feel. And I have a question here from Iman Binani, she says, hello, many thanks to Liana Badar and the organizers. My question is, in what ways do you think your writing intersects with meets and diverges from writings by Arab women today, whether those who write in Arabic or in translation? Yes, I feel that it's really a very difficult, it's a difficult role to be a woman writer because you should not be accepting what is really, what is really accepted from everybody. You know, I am an Arabic woman, I am living in a very traditional society. So they think that you have borders, you shouldn't go here or talk about this or not talk about the other. So I try to break this line and to go through it to express what is hidden, what is not talking about the unspoken thing. And it costs the writer, it costs you a lot of things. Maybe it's not time to have more details, what is the cost of this, but it is really very difficult and it's not easy to make this rebel action and to talk about what is going on because it is like a game and all the society is accepting this game. So when you come to break it, it's not something easy. Okay, and there's a question here from Paul and he says, what advice would you give to young Arab writers starting out today?  So I think everybody thinks that he is Hemingway or maybe Marcel Bruce or somebody or anybody else.   And this is the problem of the network, the social networks now, which is very widespread everywhere. Right, so just out of interest, would you, for example, be happy to do a blog or yourself write on social media or is that something you don't think that a serious writer should indulge in? You know, social network is very good to make communication between people, sometimes to read a small piece or to discuss ideas or things. But it's not the real field to work. The real field to work. It's like a work. You should have a lot of readings. You should have a lot of hard work. You should do your homework. So not just to show off everywhere or to just to put these phrases for yourself or for your friends or just talking big talk about the culture, about what is going around. This is the problem now within you writers. Not all of them, but mostly. We have a question here from Hanan and she says, what are the Arab novels and authors you would recommend translating urgently, obviously, into English or maybe other languages as well? I don't know. Yes, you know, there is a lot of Arabic writers, Arabic authors who they should be translated to English. In Iraq, there is a lot of writers like Zuhir Jazakiri in Qajaji Ahmed Saadawi. There is a lot of people everywhere. There is also writers in North Africa, in Tunisia, in Alger, in Morocco. Maybe there is a short or long list of people who they should be translated. We can get back to the booker prices or the other prices and see a lot of new names with a lot of new books that should be translated to English. Maybe we should have another talk about this because it's something very rich and multiple effects everywhere. Right and we're drawing to almost to the close now, so I think this is probably going to be our last question and it's from Hassan Abdul Razzaq and he asks, do you read Israeli authors? Who is your favorite? Growing up in Jerusalem, did you have Jewish friends? No, I was, I grew up in Jerusalem before the 67 war and I was exiled after that. I became a refugee by force because it happened that the same day I was in Amman and they didn't allow me the Israeli occupation to get back to my country. It was just 60 kilos between Jericho and Amman and it was the same country at that time Jordan and when the war happened in two or three days they just forbid everybody to get back. They didn't allow us or give us the permission many, many years, more than 26 years, 27 years to get back. So I don't know but I read a lot of Israeli literature because I was trying to see how they can deal with the Palestinian subject and I read mostly to Amos Oz and to A.B. Yehoshuba and Sami who who wrote Victoria by just the other name and I read for for many, many of them and I was amazed because they were writing as if there were no Palestinian at all in the world. I didn't find a Palestinian hero even when there were a Palestinian hero by chance it happened like the book The Lover for A.B. Yehoshuba it comes suddenly and the author get rid of the of this hero who is the lover the small or the little lover in the story. So I don't know why they try to what is the matter how they can feel that they are just living in a bubble but in general the Israelis now live in a bubble because they don't know what is going on behind this separation war and they live in another paradise while the occupied people they are living in in fire or the fire land or the other you know you know in suffering or that or this so I think we seem to have lost Liana Liana are you still with us? Yes yes it happened I don't know something happens with the mobile right okay so did you did you have anything to add to that answer? No I said I tried to read and I read a lot but my wish my inside wish is to find maybe more sensitivity to the Palestinian issue Yeah because we are the original people of the land Yeah right so basically you found no no recognition of the other in any Israeli literature that you read and the other being the Palestinian. Yes right till now at least but it's it's not the same for the other Israeli writers not in the novels in the novel field I like Shlomo Zem as an example I like Ilan Pappin there's a lot of research there is a lot of research book of the political books I like very much but in the novels it was like a bubble everybody is writing about just as if he is living in another world. Yeah yeah so you found that some Israeli analysts and perhaps revisionist historians and so forth were more aware of Palestinians. Yes I think we've probably come to the end of this very interesting evening and Liana thank you very very much for giving us such an interesting lecture and sharing your ideas with us the Bamipal Trust would also like to thank the British Library for hosting this event and Omar Saif Wabash and his family for sponsoring it and last but not least many thanks to our audience for participating we hope you've enjoyed this event and we look forward to your participation in future events thank you thank you very much for everybody thank you


Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. And today we have a review of chapter 965, the Kurozumi Clan Plot. And really this flashback just continues to be amazing in every way. There really wasn't a single part of this week that didn't have me hooked the entire way through even the Archie stuff. And that's usually by far the weakest material of these Wano flashback chapters and actually modern Wano chapters as well. Before we get to that though, I need to begin as I often do right at the end with one of the most glorious two page spreads. I think this series has ever offered us featuring the Roger Pirates in full casual mode after a skirmish. And I love this because we so rarely get to see this crew in their prime. And when we do, they often aren't doing much of consequence, so this is a very nice surprise. Roger in particular looks like an absolute beast. I think that Oda going for an open shirt look really helps in that regard because it immediately gives you that tangible cue that compares him to characters we know like Whitebeard, Kaido or even Luffy. All of whom are also famed shirtless powerhouses. My favorite figure on this page is undoubtedly Shanks though. It's quite adorable the way he's pulling off that double hat look, not only wielding the straw hat, but also looking after Roger's backup hat. He actually kind of reminds me a lot of Usopp in this spread, looking like a kind of goofy but clearly highly trusted companion. And the parallels to the straw hats are even clearer, looking at Ray Lee, who is giving off the stronger Zoro vibe I have ever seen outside of a non-Zoro character. It just makes me want to see so much more of this crew. Like honestly, give me an entire series focusing on the journey of the Roger Pirates in the same way that One Piece does with the straw hats. These characters are captivating enough to helm that sort of thing. And the last few chapters very much prove that. I mean, where at what now? Five chapters since we've seen a single straw hat and this has been some of the greatest stuff that Wano has had to offer. It's so rare that a world behind a series can transcend its main characters and take on a living, breathing form of its own. In fact, as much as I really want things to progress on Wano, at this stage I'm not actually looking forward to going back into the modern timeline because there is so much to enjoy in this period exploring Roger Whitebeard Odin and this older world that feels simultaneously familiar but also like a completely new adventure. But back to the scene at hand, it's just nice to see because Roger has never really been showcased in combat mode. He's always this generally well-dressed maniacal, moustached pirate king. But here he makes me believe that he could successfully throw down against Whitebeard. So I'm very much looking forward to the potential of that conflict in the next chapter. I'm not sure if it will actually happen though because Roger's fighting style has been kept a secret for the entirety of the series really. And I'm not sure if this is the right narrative moment to delve into it in any substance. If something does happen now I suspect it will be another one of those one hit clashes we're also familiar with. Like when Odin quote unquote introduced himself to Whitebeard or just on that perhaps we'll even be treated to a similar situation in which Odin just decides to take on Roger because, which given his brash personality seems highly likely. And given the pace that this flashback is going it looks like Odin will have entirely possibly joined Roger by next chapter which is incredibly exciting. Very keen to see how that goes down. But for now, Odin and the Whitebeard Pirates were another huge highlight of this week. Although I don't know if the word highlight even has meaning anymore.  In any case, there was some heartwarming comedy right off the bat with Odin and Toki having in a little bit of a flirt about the Moby Dick which in a matter of panels rapidly resulted in the birth of Momonosuke who looks simply elated about being brought into existence. Later on we also see baby Hiyori as well. So Odin and Toki were definitely getting quite busy during this time with the Whitebeard Pirates. By far the best part of these scenes to me though was that one panel where young Marco, Jozo and even Vista were blushing whilst watching Toki and Odin. It's just so incredible how Odin can take these established tough guy characters like Marco and especially Jozo actually and then turn them into these wonderful sweet comedic elements. Young Marco is probably my favorite incarnation of Marco actually. He just has such a zest for life and it's really fun to see him messing around in his Phoenix form. Something else I really enjoyed though is that we got to see the inception of Whitebeard's divisions which understandably comes about because their crudges keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And of course that came along with another classic Odin disgust face when he was told to command the second division. These faces will never get old, please keep them coming. But speaking of how the crudges keeps enlarging we have a cameo from a young Marshall D. Teach which even though it was just a single panel shot sent shivers down my spine because this seemingly innocuous event is what will eventually bring down the entirety of the Whitebeard Pirates. And it's just so crazy to see a panel where they're so casually accepting of him hopping aboard. It also makes the betrayal of the future hit that much harder because we knew that Blackbeard had been aboard for an awfully long time but the fact that he joined when he was a desperate child, that kind of hurts. It makes me wonder if Teach was already plotting his future at this early age or if somehow along the way he became disenfranchised with the Whitebeard Pirates and sought an alternative route in life. Although I suppose given the fact that he is a D he was always destined to do whatever it is he goes on to do. But also speaking of disenfranchised little shits I now present Orochi. Probably the thing that I appreciated most about this chapter was that it gave me almost exactly what I was looking for in terms of Orochi which was a slightly more three dimensional motivation to become the evil prick he does. In several recent chapter reviews I think I'd very much resigned myself to the fact that it looks like oh well Orochi is just evil for the sake of evil, I guess. But I really enjoyed what Oda did here by tying his involvement in this flashback thus far together as some sort of retrospective master plan which answered a lot of the questions and criticisms I had regarding Orochi's use thus far. For example, I remember directly questioning how Orochi just suddenly ended up working for Tsukiyaki and I found it incredibly unlikely that someone like Yasu would have recommended him for that role. Which we confirm is definitely not the case this week because Orochi blatantly robbed Yasu and vanished. But with the introduction of the mysterious former user of the money money no me everything falls very neatly into place as Orochi and his compatriot were able to use Odin's likeness as a character reference. And just on that of all of the things I never expected to come out of this flashback heavy or any involvement of Bonklai's devil fruit was certainly amongst them. This is one of those moments where One Piece gets to enjoy and build upon the extensive groundwork it's already laid and introduce an amazing bit of intrigue based solely on a property currently held by a fan favorite character in the modern day. It also does what One Piece does best and brings up so many questions. In fact, weirdly enough, despite this being a chapter that contains extensive content with the white beard pirates and an amazing spread with the Roger pirates the user of the money money no me is what has my mind on fire. With inquiries like who could this be? Will we ever find out what their original form is? Are they affiliated with the beast pirates or maybe the rocks pirates? And is this the first step to Kaido's Wano conquest? Or are they a member of the Kurozumi clan? And possibly most intriguingly how is this individual eventually going to meet their fate? Because here's the thing, we know that whoever consumed this fruit does eventually have to die in order for the money money no me to reincarnate and be consumed by Bonklai which is kind of a shame in one way because I think it would have been really cool to introduce this element and then leave it lingering. Like perhaps in the modern day it gets revealed that one of the red scabbards is this person in disguise and that's why Orochi has been able to predict the movements of the allied forces. Still, it's really interesting that this person was able to transform into Odin and Tsukiyaki meaning that they must have been trusted to a level to get close enough to touch both of their faces. Although I also guess that they could have just impersonated someone close to Odin or Tsukiyaki and then use that to touch their faces. I mean the money money no me is just such a fun fruit like that. And you know what? I suppose this could also be used to great effect to help portray the downfall of the Kozuki clan. Kind of like how Bonklai used his guys of cobra on alabaster. So this mysterious person could wield Odin's image to cause all sorts of horrible incidents. Not only that, but I also think that for the next few weeks we'll be in danger of a whole ton of one piece theories popping up because of this mysterious person.  Thus putting the money money no me back into the world and giving the appearance of Odin's death. I don't subscribe to that idea or anything close to it but it just goes to show how easy it is to come up with clickbait as a result of this chapter. So let the flood of theories begin, I guess. And also just on a weird tangent I was sort of spoiled to the presence of the money money no me in this chapter because all of a sudden out of absolutely nowhere a ton of new comments started appearing in my devil fruit encyclopedia video on the money money no me. So I definitely knew something was up which is a very interesting and unique phenomenon that happens from time to time with a channel that tries to cover everything one piece.  And it's kind of strange because I didn't even register this as a devil fruit at first. It really did take me a second to stop and go, no way that has to be what it is. Because unlike every other devil fruit we've seen in the series thus far this mythical Zoan has no trademark swirls and that seems like far too important to detail to be a simple drawing mistake by Oda. There is almost certainly a reason why this aesthetic decision was made and I don't know maybe that's just how mythical Zoans are. They're so much rarer that they need to be identified by other means. Probably some sort of unique feature for each fruit. I will also say that it's always nice to see new devil fruits in their actual fruit form in the series because it's pretty insane but after more than two decades of publication we've only had a total of 14 fruits visually depicted. And even then four of those 14 came from one piece magazine rather than the manga itself. But back to the point I was making about a billion years ago I am liking that Orochi has some solid motivation behind him. I mean, it's far from identifiable and he's still a prick but this is really all I wanted. A genuine reason for his actions and family revenge works just fine for me. Even if Orochi himself is likely being manipulated to some degree. And at this point I'd also like to bring up the fact that Yasu is being far too calm about this situation. He has every reason in the world to suspect Orochi including the coincidence of the goal disappearing as well as understanding Oden to the point where Yasu knows that he would never consider someone like Orochi as a brother. And then you add in the discovery that he's part of the Kuruzumi clan and we have a recipe for pure alarm. So as much as I love Yasu, he's kind of dropping the ball on this one. But that pretty much does it for chapter 965. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produces in general then please do consider donating to the Grand Line review Patreon because the support of all of your amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible. And if you'd like to see more videos like this but applied to other anime manga series then please do check out my second channel New World Review for all of your wider needs. And if you'd like to join the fun at any time then please do head over to my Discord server where a wide array of shenanigan retakes place on a daily basis. And finally, please do comment with your thoughts on the chapter. This has been the Grand Line review and I'll see you next time.


A lot of people are having great inventions on how to protect the environment. We are here to help bring clean water to everyone. We are involved in quite a few shows on a yearly basis. This is by far the best show we've attended. Well and beyond our expectations because people are here for a reason. They are showing up at the show because they have a need. And we have a solution. Their vision is to make the world cleaner and better place. And to protect people's assets. Whether that would be water or machinery or health. Paul Filtration just turned 70 years old last Friday. It's one of the oldest filtration companies in the world. And we're here to stay. So if you want to do business with a company who is solid, who is here to stay, they should consider Paul as their future supplier on water treatment.


Live from the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2016. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem sponsors. Now here's your host, John Furrier. Hey, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in the hang space at VMworld 2016. I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLES, our flagship program. The CUBE where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. This is our seventh year covering VMworld and every year it gets bigger and better of the CUBE and the guests and the content. And I'm here with the person who's made it happen from day one, Robin Matlock, who's the CMO of VMware. First of all, congratulations on a great event and thank you for supporting theCUBE for seven years. It's been fantastic and it gets better every year. Thanks to you. Well, I'm thrilled to be here and you know I'm a huge fan of theCUBE. You're an integral part of the program. So here we go again, John. We're ingesting all the data, we're analyzing it, we're providing great videos, a lot of volume. But one interesting thing I want to get your take on because you have ridden the VMworld bus for a very many long time. And it's changed and grown. And one of the conversations we've had all week is what I've been calling ecosystem 2.0. What is the ecosystem going to evolve into for VMware and VMworld? And it's been interesting. And so I want to get your take on it. And one of the things that it was striking was what Pat Gelsinger said to me yesterday in the CUBE interview was, VMware is not only not one product company anymore, it has grown to be a multiple set of products and technologies, which has created a diverse and growing community. So can you add some color to that? Because it's always been the community is very strong in VMworld and VMware. But it's evolving. It's not just like shifting and changing it in bad way. It's just growing and morphing. Can you comment on that? Yeah, I think it's a really interesting topic. It's a rich topic because as VMware's business is changing, first of all, our value about the community has never changed. I mean, we really value an ecosystem. Our customers wanted to expect that we work and play really well with the variety of technologies that are in their environments. But of course, as our business and portfolio has grown and expanded, the nature of the types of companies that are engaged in and around us shifts and changes too. And if it doesn't, then we're probably all going to have some issues down the road. I think it's a lot driven from customers. What do they want all of us vendors to do to work together so their life is easier? Yeah, and the other thing, David Floyd was the CTO of Wikibon, who's very technical comment that it's the best VMworld ever from a statement of direction standpoint is very clear that the data center role that VMware has and this inter-clouding, which we call, and Pat calls it cross-cloud, is a real rich area for innovation and growth. Oh, I think we're just on the cusp of the potential of that. So you heard us talk about the cross-cloud architecture and we broke that down into a few things like the VMware cloud foundation. That's essentially the software defined data center stack all with life cycle management that you can consume on-premise and off-premises, the IBM partnership, the opportunity for the VCloud Air network partners. I mean, there's just so many, the CISOs are involved in this. There's just really, it's almost like a whole economy that can integrate into this broader offering. Like I said, with all that in mind, how are you managing the logistics? Because it's pretty obvious that VMworld is back in Vegas, Moscone is pretty much under construction for the next few years. You're going to be here for a couple more years? Yes, we're here for a couple more years. And you're going to manage this growth in this community. What's, how do you do that? What's the key keys to that? You know, I think first of all, it's about really making sure you're connecting with your customers and your partners. And it's about experiences, right? It's making sure that you're getting them the rich content. This is a technical conference. So we're going to be measured by, did we showcase and engage our audience with the right kind of technical information, give them hands-on access to the things that they want to learn and further their careers? And you know, I always use that. It's like we got to stay close to our customers. So any feedback that you've heard, positive areas to work on, what are your thoughts? And as you look back now, it's day three looking out over the past few days and weekend. I'd say one of the things I'm most proud of, and I am seeing it in the Twitter sphere, is the fact that we had a lot of customers do the talking, customers do the showing. There were over 100 customers here this week on panels, in labs, in keynotes, on videos, all talking about their experiences. And this group of people, they want to hear from their colleagues and their peers. So I think customers really helped us this time, tell our story and help people understand what does this mean for their business. So I think that was good. A lot of customers coming on today on theCUBE, so continue to watch if you're out there. I got to ask you the question because one of the things that every CUBE event, I always have my little puzzle pieces I want to try to figure out where the puzzle corners are. And I've been asking all the VMware executives, kind of hidden question, but it's basically this. What does VMware stand for? And I've been getting a couple different answers, so you're obviously seeing most, so you're going to be right on message. I want to get your thoughts on that. But before your answer, the best answer came from a former VMware employee, Steve Herod, who is a CTO now as a venture capitalist, and just off the cuff, he just said, VMware likes to make complexity go away. They want to simplify complexity, create abstraction layers. And that's essentially the theme of the show here. So is that, how do you guys talk about that? Because the customers want to see the direction of VMware. What is the official messaging? What is, is that, is he on target? I mean, he's kind of made it a comment like it's in the DNA of VMware. I would agree that, you know, simplifying complexity is in our DNA. I think it's a little bit hard to say that today's IT world though is simple. I think we all have a long journey to really make IT simple. I think we're about unleashing the innovation from IT. And in order to do that, you have to simplify the complicated so they can focus on the strategic, right? But I would say at our core, what we're really about is how do we unleash that potential and remove obstacles, simplify complexity to ensure they can contribute to their businesses with the most impact at the accelerated pace as possible. And that's why I think paths cross cloud is interesting because that is certainly probably one of the most complex things to do. Absolutely. To the cross cloud. And only getting more complicated. I think that's what we're seeing now. You know, fast forward, the cloud era is maturing. But what we're finding now is businesses have many clouds. They have SaaS applications. They have their private cloud. They have multiple public clouds. They have managed cloud services. And we know we've been down this route before in the old compute server world. Managing these silos can become extremely complicated. So I think right now we're already thinking about how do we drive this and simplify this? So other comment from our analysts kick off this morning and breaking down kind of the VM world ecosystem and VMware. And I'd like to get your thoughts on kind of the internal VMware conversation. Because I know obviously the Dell transaction with EMC is going to be on the seventh. So that's public now. So, but VMware seems as David Floyd has said is unleash and Michael Dell is making a commitment to VMware that's pretty sincere about being independent and partnering. Well, I'm glad. And it kind of seemed like EMC kind of had that invisible hand as I didn't say this, David Floyd said this, but share some of the VMware. Because this is in the DNA is to be independent, right? You're right. It is definitely in our culture. And I think Michael has been extremely consistent. I've been with him in many meetings, both public, private, and he has never wavered from his commitment to support VMware's independence, to support our ecosystem and to really open up opportunities for us to grow at our full potential. And we all have partnered with Dell for a decade, right? This is not new to us and we have a great relationship with him regardless of this acquisition. I think the opportunities in the doors are going to open even further. There's a lot more we can do together, but I really feel we've got a really good balance. He knows that our ecosystem is the core success factor for us. So ecosystem is a big part of the success. So in your definition, what is the ecosystem 2.0? I think the ecosystem involves a variety of things. First of all, there's emerging technologies, there's service providers, there's CISOs, there's the telcos, there's ISVs, there's the SaaS providers, there's the two-tier distribution, the channel partners, the people who touch the customers, there's the consultants. I mean, I think it's just all evolving with us, kind of in one big tornado, you know? I think it's all those things together. It's a lot of growth. It's not a moving parts. No, and how about containers? That's a whole another dimension, right? Stu and I were saying the container buzz was talking to Jerry Chen last night and he said, last year's all about containers. Only one session, the cloud native session yesterday, they did talk about it, but it didn't dominate the show like it did last year. The cross cloud really kind of was great and obviously the end user computing stuff seems really compelling. Yeah, I think things kind of even flow, it depends what's really new and so you know there's kind of different focuses each year. So give us the internal or marketing philosophy now that you have stuff clicking together now with the product side, you see the NSX with vSphere playing nicely. So a lot of stuff, vSan is exploding. The product, the products are clicking. Absolutely. So there's some people where that Pat announced, okay, we'll deal with that later, but how does that get marketed now? Product team's going to do it. Cause it's interesting, they're standalone products, but also work well integrated. Yeah. You know, we're at this very interesting chasm and I would say we're kind of in our teenage years right now in my analogy and that when these products, let's take virtual san or NSX, when they're first coming out the door, they need to be incubated and they need almost like startup attention. And as marketers, we wanted to give them that really dedicated focus, but it's time for us now to grow into our 20s. And what we need to do is to be more solution oriented and we need to be more industry oriented, look at verticals and help our customers associate, what's the impact in my world? Whether it's retail or it's government or it's healthcare. So you'll see marketing at VMware shift to solutions. A more vertical solution. And verticals, yes. And by line of business kind of thing going on. More mature market. Well, across businesses, I think it's really at the end of the day, our customers don't think about our line of businesses. They think about what business problems are they trying to solve. And they, you know, whatever business units we have is irrelevant to them. I was talking to some of the VCs last night at the Lightspeed party and then a lot of Silicon Valley VCs were there.  So, you know, usually you have the Magic Quadrant with you know, the leaderships by categories, but now you have this new kind of disruptive solution set which could be a vSphere here there and kind of stuff kind of cobble together, integrated. There's no Magic Quadrant for that. So it's really hard for customers to find out the playbook. Right, and we have to make that really simple for customers. I also think that's the potential that VMware has, which maybe is unique to a point product startup that they have one product. We can put these things together for even more impact, more value and a more seamless experience. Cause I think that's key. It's got to come together as an experience. Final question, Robin. What are you going to take away from VMworld this year? What are you going to take back to the ranch? What are you going to digest? What are you going to share with your team and your colleagues that you've learned from this show? You know, I think we're really, we're executing. I think we've created a great experience. I think we've attracted the right kinds of attendees. You know, this is just the first of many cause we roll this program into Barcelona in six weeks. Then we roll the following week all over Asia. I'm off to Mumbai, vented Beijing. We're just going to roll through Asia through December. So the key is we're onto this, right? The content is right. The cross-cloud architecture is really resonating. The cloud foundation, it makes sense. Workspace one, we just got to stay the course, help make this stuff really simple and clear for our customers and partners. That's great stuff. It does make a lot of sense. And it's got clarity and you can see the 20 mile stare, the straight and narrow, and congratulations on a great VMworld. Don, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Robin Matlock, CMO here inside theCUBE live at the hang space in the Mandalay Bay Convention for VMworld 2016. You're watching theCUBE.


So I'm not doing the welcoming speech, that is Bård Vegard Soljel from the head of NORA that will do, but since we are well known for breaking records, we also breaking record this year, even though it's a digital, again, digital annual conference, we are doubling the number of participants from last year, so now we're over 1500 that have registered for this conference. So, with not further ado, I would then welcome Bård Vegard Soljel to give the opening speech for this 8th DHS2 annual conference. Over. Dear participants and University of Oslo HISP team, it's a great honor to be with you today and thanks for inviting me to open this annual event. Of course I would have liked to be with you today, but video conferencing has also delivered some real benefits in the past year. And since we are discussing digital goods, isn't it time we get past the phase where we excuse to each other for not being together physically all the time? I think so. You are experts, you are citizens and you are activists in the countries we want to partner with. You're all working together in a worldwide community of action to produce value for all countries. We cannot accomplish the sustainable development goals without the benefits of digital transformation reaching all countries. To ensure that countries and individuals can gain access to the benefits of digital transformation, we believe digital public goods are a key. Therefore Norway is taking a leading role in the digital public goods alliance. There is no doubt that the DHS2 is one of the world's leading examples of digital public goods. And we are proud to have supported HISP and DHS2 since the early 1990s. And I myself, I use it as an example all the time. There is an important success story in the digital transformation that other countries and initiatives can learn important lessons from. For Norway, DHS2 is an increasingly important strategic investment for health, for education and of course for digital transformation. What have we learned from you, Dan? Well, universities can be engines of great development programming. That's one lesson. If playing to the strengths of these universities, we think it's interesting to compare the university-led development programs in Norway with those in the US which follows a very different model. And the second lesson is that you work in partnership with countries and institutions like the US President's Emergency Plan for Aid to Relief, Preqfire, the Population Service International and Doctors Without Borders. Over time, you provide solutions, build support relations and expand in-house capacity. These ingredients are critical for scale. And given DHS2 is used for health management information systems covering over 2 billion people, this really is scale. A third lesson. DHS2 is an open platform. There's a wide range of possibilities for countries to architect the information system they want within it. This freedom allows mistakes to be made but also promotes flexibility and encourages countries to adopt the tool and to come up with innovative solutions to local challenges. This is why countries have so widely opted to adopt DHS2. This open approach has dividends of a more defined product which seeks to push our users into a specific path of behavior and are generally preferred by sectoral experts like health or educational experts. Another important lesson we have learned is that DHS2 has expanded beyond a web-based program, focusing on collection and use of aggregate data to include Android, which is of course phone tablet-based solutions, and to include trackers for patient-linked data. The progressive expansion is clearly of importance to keep DHS2 relevant to countries. This is what countries want. And it also explains, and this is lesson number five, the increasing use of DHS2 across other sectors such as education, nutrition, water sanitation, to name a few. Imagine in the future if countries can use a single system of management of all public services at district level. The economies of scale are obvious. We would need to develop IT teams in country who want solutions, not the hundreds of products used in every country today. And this would allow genuine sustainable development of country capacity, a major hindrance to digital development today. To explore potential synergies between the use of DHS2 in different sectors, NORAD is funding a pilot in five countries to expand the use of the system from health into the education sector, from which promising results are starting to emerge already. The HISP network invests time and resources in capacity building as well as research, constantly updating DHS2 tools according to user requests. As a result, the program has helped build a network of experts passionate about IT and its use in social service protection. Provisions, sorry. This means that a range of people all over the world learns to use, modify and develop solutions through interaction with the platform. When COVID-19 first arrived, it was teams in Sri Lanka that first pioneered a DHS2 tool to track COVID cases. Their prototype configuration and apps were shared across the network and taken back to Oslo where they were developed into more generic solutions. Now, the University of Oslo supports a series of COVID-19 surveillance programs used in 39 countries as well as tools to manage the rollout of COVID vaccine in further 27 countries. What I find fascinating is how digital public goods play a key role in achieving the sustainable development goals. Together, you have managed to achieve scale, domestic ownership and local capacity as well as developing and implementing a powerful toolkit adapted for a wide variety of local uses. There is much to learn from the HISP and DHS2 experience for other digital public good initiatives and for countries looking to further their digital transformation using digital public goods. This is why we are highlighting the educational management information system, piloting as important pathfinding activity on behalf of the Alliance. We need to learn that success is built across long-term action. Gradually, building a worldwide network of talent bound together by an activist mentality to use digital tools to help people and countries. Guided by strong principle of local ownership and agency, open source solutions and user-driven development. Thank you. Thank you so much, Bård Vegard and Norad and we have a lot to thank Norad for actually. They were the first that invested in our HISP network and in our DHS at that time and also our largest investors. And we have to tell and to appreciate that only two weeks into the lockdown of Norway, two weeks after each of March, Norad came up with COVID money that say how much can you consume in order to help the whole global community. So we could really speed up the innovations as he mentioned already, things were already going on, but we targeted COVID money. So thank you Norad so much. So the opening has been done and this is for newcomers. I think the annual DHS2 conference very unhappy that is digital. We know how fun we have in our activist approach as Bård Vegard told us about and also how much we share and learn, but we hope fully through this conference of a week in digital way can also be able to share and learn as we have done the last one and a half year. So this theme of the conference this year is designing for data use. Never have so many decisions been made on health data affecting all our lives. And it's not like it's a global south thing anymore it's a truly global the world is becoming smaller. We are all sharing the same use case. We are all sharing the same worries and all sharing the same demand for having good quality data in order to be able to take better decisions for the for the for the government. So the data use has been a key part of our strategies 22 to 22, but we are now putting a step further to say designing for data is not only having a focus of data out on the analytics and equality and the dissemination at all the levels that decision shall be taken. We need to find out how can we design for it in a participatory way on the ground understanding the situation locally, even leveraging even more on the local innovation for for an global response. So, and how can the SS to support that practices on the ground that will be topics for several hour our sessions also later today. There has been an intense year for the DHS to community, and we can celebrate as what I mentioned, great successes in, in being able to disseminate the digital resources throughout the world. The COVID surveillance, the COVID vaccination, but not to forget that we still need to have a focus on the HIS health information system strengthening routine systems. And now we are going into a period where it's important to routinize all these systems. We need to thank the whole DHS to community for this work, especially I would say a great thank to all the his groups that have worked day and night to support countries to support ministry to support the region to be able to have this global, this global resources across countries like the Sri Lanka helping Palestine with their COVID work and they didn't just send us a best practice use case, and we didn't even know they had implemented the COVID surveillance for Palestine. But COVID is not over. We, we need, we call for stamina, but we also call for sympathy and compassion. Us, some of us that have been vaccinated or will be vaccinated soon, we think maybe it's over, but of course it's not over. We can just look to the rest of the world where vaccine nation process a slower and we see more new outbreaks. So we call for stamina, but also some sympathy that we need to continue the great work. This map, you have seen many times, but we also mentioned this great global scale. This is the fundament for our rapid response on global resources on the pandemic. Not only the software behind all these green spots, which is the scale countries is actually not only software system but also people also a DHS to core group, his group, and so forth. So, COVID gradually becoming part of the routine, as I mentioned, embedded into the routine surveillance system and the vaccination become on the vaccination system. And this is all strengthening the fundament of our work. So this week, we will not only talk about COVID, however, tomorrow it will be a full COVID day, but also focusing on all the other cross sector innovations. So this rapid deployment, Bodvega mentioned this local innovation in Sri Lanka already 27th of January, two days after they were able to make an app, a rapid app on Port of Entry, 29th of January. And that was shared with the whole his community and that laid the ground for this global response based on local innovation. And they had a hackathon, you see the timeline here you saw it last year, but we still think it's, it's valid. The hackathon with support from you, however, doing a lot of innovative apps that cut across all the various use cases within the, and within the pandemic, and the flexibility that them that the global group has shown how to be able to respond to in governmental legislations and so forth that we can celebrate. And it's not history because now we are entering into the maintenance, not more countries maybe but more how to improve the quality of the systems, but then we of course are into vaccinations we're all talking about even more rapid, if possible, again, laid on the groundwork, leveraging the Gavi, WHO and his collaboration over years within the immunization, the vaccination of children, and to transform this into a global COVID vaccination and support for delivery. So building an existing routine system has been, and it still is our, our, our success. I want to mention that all the new countries are coming in Mauritius and Timor-Leste are actually coming in. We're not having them, the groundwork of having scaled the HIS or HIS system in the continent still are able to pick up and doing very, very, very good. And that is very, very interesting to see how this kind of this dissemination and inspiration happens in this digital swear. And also we could mention Guinea, because we haven't talked about the transformation of DSS2 to be a surveillance platform started already in, in 2015 in the West Africa during the Ebola outbreak and later with the CDC supporting that work. Guinea has been able to use to, to flexibly transform the COVID solutions with help of his West Africa, with Central Africa and Sri Lanka in order to respond to the ongoing Ebola outbreak that happens in Guinea. We see the local innovation being so important and during this week, we will share all these stories and all this data use country stories and inspire people to pick up innovations and implemented in their own country or support their own, their own region. And later today, we will hear more about the data use country stories. And of course, just following this session, we will have what's new. We all the most popular normally is actually to see what's new actually what kind of new features of do we have both web, Android, tracker, analytics, aggregate and so on. Tomorrow, as I mentioned, full COVID day with country stories showing this local innovation and global collaboration, which we are very proud of. As we say, the, the vote has in one way become smaller by being able to collaborate digitally across all countries. On Wednesday, we look at the HS2 and the broader information ecosystem. We put health in brackets since we haven't the HS2 for education session two hours actually, and also elements and logistics, but we will have a special focus on interoperability as well. Thursday is the designing for data use. And with an a plenary, we will showcase a lot of PhD students research in the research session, we will have an own data use at local level supporting planning addressing the well known denominator to problem. And Friday, it will be what's next. And of course, competitions and the other fun stuff we're doing. Yes, the importance of the HS2 community. We are sad that we are not together in the end that we're not able to mingle that we're not able to go to the island and play football and and swim and fish. However, we have other, we have a COP we would encourage you, and we have other things that Max will tell you so how we can mingle. And almost all of the sessions are actually global community members we have 163 speakers this year. That's a lot. We will still have the use case bizarre without pizza though, but and that competition. The COP will be the place you you question and where you can continue to communicate with the presenters and with the pairs. And this time, are we really hope that we are able to continue to collaborate within the community practice it's a successful but more, more like user support, but we really like it to be a fundament for for also an alumni for this fantastic conference that we know 300 participants are listening in now. And in addition, the last thing I will mention before I hand over to Max is actually the large variety of daily technical sessions and interactive expert sessions. And today it's after, but tomorrow I think it's before. So then you can actually talk talk to expert interactive, and you can be able to communicate also within technical features. So, Max, this is for you. Yes. So, first we'll talk about the social aspects and how to keep in touch with presenters and other participants after the conference is over as Kristen mentioned we have the community practice, which is a our platform for the community online, and that's available 2470 around, but for the conference we've created a tag DAC 2021, you can use to find topics that are really related to this conference. And I'll show you that in just a second, but that's a way for you also to ask questions to presenters to engage in discussion, including after the conference is over. And as Kristen mentioned, we also have a virtual conference platform this year we're using a technology called gather and that's a place where you can go and mingle network. That's also where expert lounges will be held. So starting today you can go in there and join one of these rooms. And there you have this kind of video game like environment where you navigate around and talk to people. So we hope that works and we're not. And then we just have some technical information about where to find information on the sessions in the conference so you skid as our main scheduling platform, and you all should have this link, and that will allow you to go into different sessions find a description see who's presenting access their PowerPoints where those have been added. After the session is completed will add a recording there as well. We also have a playlist for recordings on the DHS to YouTube channel. There's a link in this PowerPoint which will be uploaded to skids you can access their organs go directly to YouTube and find our playlists there. And all the sessions will be recorded and posted there, ideally within the same day that they're recorded. So with that I'm actually just navigate some of these to show you where you can find them. Yeah, bring this. Okay, so now you should see that I'm at the DHS to community practice site. We've added this helpful banner at the top. It allows you to quickly go from the COP the various sites within the community within the DHS to annual conference. So this will take you to conference website and this will actually give you a list of the. This will take you to schedule and schedule and this will give you a list of the topics on the community practice that are related to the annual conference. So this is the easiest way to find them you can also just navigate to them like you would normally. They're generally in categories that relate to the topic. And so then if you haven't been to community practice before before the way this works is you click on a topic looks interesting to you. Like this one from Bangladesh. You can read the topic. And after you read it if you have a question or comment at the bottom you have options to add your own comment or I don't question so if you click the reply button that will then allow you to comment on this topic yourself. So we really encourage you to do that if you have questions and like I said this these topics will be available for you. And both right now before the presentations happened and after the conference you continue there. So scared as I mentioned is this site which is where you can find the schedule. So here this is also an interactive site and click on a topic like this one. Max, there's something that they cannot see your screen. I can actually. So are there more people that cannot. Okay, so yeah. So people can see the screen. Okay. So, yes, this is scared. So this is an example one session within scared we can find the presenters you can find a summary of the information that's going to be presented. And we will add any PowerPoints through related here so you can then download them later. And like I said we have our YouTube channel. So this is a way to find our videos to play list feature. And right here is the DHS to annual conference 2021. And finally I wanted to show you the gather platform. So this one you can get to actually through scared. And so if you go to the main event schedule. And click on any of the expert lounges or the meeting group session. These all take you to the same place. So we go here to gather. And then you'll be able to enter this platform that you'll be able to design your own avatar. And then join the gathering. And then here we are. So this will take just a second to pop up. And then you can see that I'm in this virtual annual conference space. And so I don't walk around. And if there are other people here, like I see that there's one personality here. So you can go and talk to them. You'll see their video screen pop up if they're on video or audio. So if you're ready to join expert lounge, you go into one of the expert lounge rooms as you can see they're labeled on the outside with what the topic of the day is. And then they're going to join the conversation about that expert lounge. And that's it. That's pretty much how that works. So we hope you enjoyed it. This is the first time we're using it for the annual conference. So we're hoping that everyone likes it. It's kind of fun way to get the networking by back and the sort of casual by back to the conference. And again, I really encourage you haven't used any practice before to go there and add your questions at your comments. And we think about that as a way to keep the discussion on these topics going even after the conference is over. And with that, I think we're going to wrap up this session. So I will pass it over to our setup team for the next one and I'll put up a slide with the title of the next session and we just need to wait few minutes to get ready for that. So thanks for your patience and we'll be back with an accession in just a couple of minutes. And that you can see that we are still innovating even though we are in the digital world we try we would like to do whatever we can do in order to collaborate and also in this gather. That would be cool. So check it out.