Hi, this is your host up in Bhartya and welcome to another episode of T3M or topic of this month a topic of this month is Observability and today we have with us once again. Justine Hartung Managing partner at Carrick. Justine is great to have you on the show. Thank you So I'm the that's great to be here. How you have seen the the evolution of observatory over the years and when it's like I say evolution we can also talk about What role of the replay why we need observatory and how it has evolved because the whole landscape has changed Use cases of change technologies of change I'll start with a brief how I how I think of observability because it might be different than how some other people think and When I think of their origins of observability, it was really about understanding what went wrong for incident management Think of those logs and metrics so that people could could really dive in and figure out Okay, where did something go wrong and fix it? But then companies like Google and Netflix they started to build on these micro services and they couldn't just rely on simple logs It was hard to look at all the components so they also started to build Distributed tracing which allowed every component to send telemetry back to a central system and then understand how are all those systems working together and Then Google also through their SRE practices start to go from a reactionary such as an instant happen to where the proactive measurements the SLIs or indicators to understand is something about to to go south and then intervene before it does and These practices and these research papers that were published really led to some crafty vendors to re-brand the whole monitoring into Observability and they really took that from scientific definitions of understanding the state of a system based on its outputs or the data that it generates So now I think that this has really evolved beyond simply just looking at the technical systems because the same data is Incredibly useful for other people in organization Let's think about a product manager trying to figure out Are we shipping the right features and is does the changes that we make impact the user behavior and the outcomes? And so like a back to an example again at Google is they wanted to find out how does latency of a search query respond to the user behavior and they found that that's you know that as the Search query end-to-end response time went from half a second to a quarter second the growth of people's search started to grow Exponentially and with that meant is that people started to think of Google search as another way of thinking and just start to use it Seamlessly, but as soon as it got above 250 milliseconds then it started drop-off quite a bit So this is a very interesting insight and without having all that data and understanding of what does it take for the user? Responses and how they change and in some cases even artificially injected latency just to see how it affected behavior So that's kind of more broadly On observability and I think where we're starting to go if you could think of That same concept of latency now companies are running thousands of experiments at one and these observability suites are really using a lot of Intelligence to really highlight like well What are the things that are productive and what are the things that aren't productive in a way that is Consumable consumable by the the mere mortal engineer excellent And you also kind of lightly touched upon the next question that I'm going to ask which is about How has the scope of authority grown beyond the original idea as you said, you know that you can you know Other teams can also leverage it. Absolutely, and I think that this is just the Evolution that we're seeing that's going to continue to to grow So if I think of the monitoring and alerting and tracing are just signals that are being used by Teams well, there's other signals that are starting to be used if you think of the practice of Phenops of Understanding well, what are the cost basis of all the things you're running? Well now engineers and product managers could start to also take in the cost So not only you're looking at optimizing the outcomes for the user But what if that outcome gives you five more dollars of profit but costs you ten more dollars in cost Well, maybe that's a bad decision without the Phenops data You would only look at the revenue drivers and so you really really understand the full picture So I think we're going to continue to see this observability trend where there's more and more signals that are coming in and I mean Call it enterprise observability or something else But like what is the business starting to do to really understand how they're they're functioning as a business and then? Optimize that and I think that will expand way beyond just the technical components But think about the flow of the developer like how many times do developers get interrupted? And so that really drives to your cost of creating software So that's I think where observability is going to continue to evolve and how much Adoption are you seeing off ability there where you're like, yeah, everybody knows that everybody is embracing it Are you also feel that when you talk to your own customers and clients that you have to still go and educate? Hey, you don't have any absolute practices in place. You need to have them So you use the key term there observability practices and so too often companies think I've gotten observability tool check the box I'm done, but that really doesn't solve anything and at worst it gives you this huge bill that doesn't give you any value It's much more of a cultural impact and a cultural changes and the companies like Netflix this is just built in their DNA So of course they're they're way ahead of everyone else But a lot of other enterprises that we work with which is the core of our customers helping them Really sit with their teams and helping them develop these cloud native practices such as using data to drive decisions I think that's core to that and that's core to observability And now contrary to what all the popular observability vendors would like you to believe you don't actually need observability software to start Developing this practice of observability So I think I think what I'm seeing is that there's this mixed bag of a lot of teams that have an IT teams in particular that have the software But there's a lot of application developers and product managers that I run into that aren't yet using this data to make Intelligent decisions or not even intelligent, but just to help them inform their decisions I'm so happy that you talked about the cultural aspect because Technology part is easy culture power part is the tricky part and we have been seeing a lot of culture shift The biggest one off good DevOps is there we talk about DevSec off. We talk about the whole shift left movement We talk about SREs, you know all those things from the observability perspective When our nation do want to embrace this culture the practices What are some of the major challenges because tools are there but tools themselves are not sufficient I think there's two aspects and I'll touch first in that cultural I think it has to be set from leadership So a good example is if leaders shoot the messengers when they show bad news based on the data Then people you know kind of implicitly get this negative feedback loop of oh, we don't want to we don't want to understand if something bad It's happening Conversely if leaders kind of embrace like hey, that's an incredible insight. Let's let's fix it and improve it Then that starts to create this culture of let's let's learn more And so that's that's part of I think that the core is start with that leadership of Really embracing data and using to make decisions now too often I've seen leadership use that I'll call it lip service and say we need data we need data But they don't really have the the same kind of data-driven decisions themselves when they for example when they want to learn something about a System they ask everyone for a bunch of custom reports that they go scramble and build Custom reports just for that one off inquiry as opposed to using the systems and you start to dive in now I don't expect executives like a CEO to dive into an observability tool But it's more about how does he and nurture people at different levels to create those dashboards and use the systems for the data That they have in the data that they generate so that's a cultural aspect the Is one of the the key elements that you need to start to foster The next is you touched on the shift left movement And I think this is a lot of confusion because enterprises that I run into what they've done is they've they've said hey We're gonna we're gonna take the developers and now we're gonna make them the operators And we're gonna make them the you know the the UX and UI and they start adding and piling on all these Job descriptions and requirements, but they don't do anything to take anything off their plate And so I think that that's a recipe for disaster I There's a term that that people are starting to use of platform engineering And it's really how do you take it and shift it from a checkbox implemented tool to help implement in a way They can remove cognitive overload from the developers So a good example is that if you give them the right visibility into their system the developers Then it's easy for them to start to operate this system But if you don't have that in in concert then it really starts to deteriorate the ability for those developers to work And now they're spending less and less percent their time on feature development Which is what all the split between Dev and ops start in the beginning So you really have to look at those tools and how you you you build platforms that allow people to consume the data in a Meaningful way while you're doing that cultural change of embracing data Can you also talk about the business value of having observatory practices because it's more than just you know a lot of plumbing in the back And it may have direct impact almost again businesses as well And I'll use an analogy that is related but completely different that hopefully some business folks if they're watching will get Now before Google and online advertising, you know the joke was that 50% of your advertising is effective You just don't know which 50% and like of course companies would spend lots of money on radio TV and newspaper And of course they saw sales go up But how would you optimize that well? They didn't really have a system that gave them observability of understanding the behavior of people and how it was driven based on the different things They tried now look at online advertising which I granted is different than brand and marketing But just look at product advertising companies can know exactly how much a Customer is going to spend and how much profit they'll make if they click on an ad So of course they're willing to spend and bid Interactively on individual users because they have all the information about that user and about the products and the historical behavior of what they've They've done you could also understand this person's probably gonna come back regardless I don't bid anything for that ad because it would be a waste of money So this is a much more sophisticated way of a business to operate now at the macro Level companies that didn't embrace this kind of data in advertising They kind of became outmaneuvered by competitors that were and so you have a lot of these these companies in fact most of the companies on the fortune excuse me for the Stock indexes are relatively young and new because they leverage this this I'll call it broader observability trend now Granted they didn't call observability at the time But that's just an aspect of understanding how a system performs based on the metadata generated by the system I think the same things happening in companies today Those companies and enterprises in particular that aren't embracing the data that is generated by the systems to help them make data-driven Decisions are gonna be outmaneuvered by companies that are and it's not a fact Are they a startup or it's just really simply are they given the permission to do that from that culture as well as Provided the tools that are continually evolving and so that's the important aspect the companies need to start somewhere and just continue It's not gonna be perfect, but continually to improve both the cultural and the technological aspect What I also want to talk about is that we all talk about generative AI these days Do you see how do you see? observability Will benefit from These technologies you really called it out is that there's nothing new about AI it's been using a lot of tools, but I have to admit Chat GPT and the whole generative AI movement has really taken me by surprise ask me a year ago And I would have said all that science fiction and now today it's reality And I can't believe how impactful it is when used in the right case something as simple as you write a you know You write something you say hey make it better for me or research like these are incredible Capabilities that are being developed rapidly So I do think that companies in the observability space and we're already seeing this are Leveraging the same techniques to highlight that needle in the haystack like well What are the insights and the meaningful things that you need now? That's slightly different than the large language model. That's that is trying to generate new or like Information out of this vast piece of information more textual based or image based This is much more of a search problem of understanding correlation and core on causation So it's a slightly different type of AI that's being used But it's really being leveraged quite a bit and I think will only propel people to understand better about the systems And have those insights So that's only going to increase quite a bit now the flip side of companies starting to use generative AI I think this is a very dangerous and slip slippery slope And this is another area where you need observability is if you just let everyone start using AI They're going to start going to these these non sanctioned Systems and before you know it they start copying and pasting Lark likely intellectual property into these destination systems and then information starts leaking the problem The companies have today is they don't have any observability on who's using what and so that's leading to this problem of an unknown Attack vector will you of eroding information security and intellectual property now before we write this up? I would love to know how is carry helping, you know customers users in this space with As we're discussing observative practices now I mentioned the observability is yes The tools are great, but it's much more that data-driven decision-making process at Carrick We call ourselves characters. We're quite obsessed with data. It's one of our characteristics You know that age-old saying if you can't measure it you can't improve it and so every engagement we come into we're always asking What are we trying to accomplish and how will we know for successful? And if we can't answer those through data Then we haven't yet asked the right question or the right metrics or we just need to build something to build metrics And what we do is we then sit with and that's what we really like to say We kind of sit with our customers rather than do something for them because it's really about helping companies and Individuals at those companies understand what questions should they be asking what data should they be gathering and then how they use that to make a decision and Just doing that once is nice But it's that practice of understanding that hey You can ask questions and you can be wrong and you can add more data and you couldn't prove over time That's the the really the essence of what we we instill in teams we work with so that their capabilities Continue to evolve and grow beyond our engagements and that's core to who we are as Carrick So I can give you an example is a company a telecom company that we worked with you know They said oh we've got these pipelines on on the DevOps of like who's doing what and the information when it's being pushed and how Systems working and when we assume that so we didn't include it in our statement of work but it was pretty clear that they actually didn't have a system that was usable and So we just took it on as part of like additional scope that that we just built it because how would we know for improving and Maybe self-serving of saying hey, here's the impact we had But but the reality is it's actually pretty easy to build some of these systems So you could start using data-driven decisions that particular system was just some web hooks they call out to event streaming systems into BigQuery on Google Cloud and Within a month of when we pushed that and it only took about two weeks to build it within a month of pushing that We were collecting about seven terabytes per month And that was allowing us to understand well What is the fleet of engineers how they're functioning where they're pushing their codes? How many of those things were being successful versus rolling back really? How much time do you spend on rework and now this isn't a traditional case of observability where you're looking at the microservices But this is an aspect where you can combine it So for example do different engineers start to push code that causes spikes and increase in latency now You don't want to use that data to punish those engineers But you want to use that data to help engineers know who to work with to figure out how to solve these problems and really Create a culture of asking the right questions and what I have since two things I thought were interesting one is The system that was gathering those seven terabytes into dashboards that even executives could look at was costing I think at when I last asked them five hundred dollars a month So if you think about how much it cost to in the old days of buildings monitoring systems versus being able to just pump Data and analyze it. It's so much cheaper. And so that's why it's part of everything we do The second thing is that this company came back and said they they found a breach that they would have never known about if it wasn't for that telemetry pipeline and so that was a huge also benefit of they were able to uncover well What happened in when I like to think that if we were also engaged in security, maybe that breach wouldn't have happened But who knows but the thing that I do take a lot of pride in is when we started working there Executives would have fired somebody if that kind of breach had happened But what happened instead is executives like they started to understand what happened in when and they started inspecting Like oh, how can we learn and improve from this and it was quite comical I shouldn't say comical because it was a very serious incident But the shift was hey, you know what assume your source code now is going to be out in the public domain So are you are you proud of your source code or do you want to make it better? And that was a completely different approach than I think what an enterprise would have taken 15 or 20 years ago And I think that's the also the area and evolution that's happening the competitive advantage isn't just simply the source code You have but it's the combination of the systems you build how they work together your customer experience And the products that you assemble from those components So that's kind of what we do at Carrick is we sit with engineers in teams to help learn how to use data But then we also work with the executives to understand how to set goals and how to reward people based on the data Rather than penalize people for having something that looks bad. It's much more about that improvement rather than the absolutes I'll give you one other story that might not be that you could choose to use or not But observability when you when you create a data-driven culture that people just assume like sure Let's gather data. You can really enable different Completely different use cases. You didn't think we're possible. And so I'll take an example for my days at google When they started using solid state hard drives They didn't know when they were going to fail And so the concern that some engineers had is that if we put these drives and all of our index servers They're going to fail all at the same time because they have a very similar right and usage pattern And so some engineers thought wouldn't it be great if we track every single bit that we turn on and off on every single disc on And and and and our entire fleet in real time and then move discs around the data center based on those usage patterns So if you just think about that tracking every single bit on every single disc that flips You end up having exponentially larger data of logs than you do of the data that's being stored But you know what took a couple engineers and they built this and they streamed all the data in so they could understand and move Discs around and what's fascinating about that is that they they realized that solid state hard drives Were much more robust than anyone thought And then they started selling the data back and working with all the vendors to understand how to improve their disc drives Because no one had this kind of real-world data So just think about when you have a culture that says yes, we can with data What else could you be doing as a company? Justin? Thank you so much for taking time out today and talk about those Absolutely. Thank you so much for all those stories Great insights there and as I said, I would love to have you back on the show. Thank you My pleasure. Have a wonderful day


Low-level light therapy, LLT, has been used for over 40 years to reduce pain, inflammation, and edema, promote healing of wounds, deeper tissues, and nerves, and prevent cell death and tissue damage. Despite positive findings from experiments in vitro, animal models, and randomized controlled clinical trials, LLT remains controversial in mainstream medicine due to the complexity of rationally choosing amongst a large number of illumination parameters and the publication of both positive and negative studies. A biphasic DOS response has been observed where low levels of light have a better effect on stimulating and repairing tissues than higher levels of light, which is described by the Arnt-Schultz curve. This review will cover the molecular and cellular mechanisms in LLT and describe recent results that provide scientific explanations for the biphasic DOS response. This article was authored by Yingying Huang, Aaron Chien, James D. Carroll, and others.


This year, the IMF governance was supposed to be more reflective of the shifts in global power that have taken place in the last decade, certainly over the last 40 or 50 years, when emerging markets have become very central actors. The IMF governance structure was not created in that context. So what was supposed to happen at this meeting was a shift in quota. Quota is how the IMF is voted, how members vote, it's basically your equity or your shareholding in the IMF, and in the seats on the board, those 24 board members that represent basically every country in the world. It was supposed to be a shift of two seats away from Europe, which has a dominant role, to the dynamic emerging markets, and it was supposed to reflect a 6% shift in quota from advanced economies to emerging economies. It's not going to happen. Now it's not going to happen because the United States has failed to ratify what needs to be ratified to actually get those changes over the hump. That's ironic. It's ironic because the U.S. was the principal driver to try and get countries, particularly Europe, to give up some of its voting share and its board seats, but the U.S., for a variety of reasons, has chosen not to seek congressional approval to ratify what needs to be ratified, which means you will see potentially a theme of Europeans and emerging markets pointing a finger at the United States for its failure to implement what it promised to implement. It won't result in gridlock. It will result in subtle but very important policy shifts as the U.S. dominant role becomes a little less dominant. When it comes to specific loan programs, Egypt, Spain, others, it's unlikely that you'll see any outcome in these meetings that will have a direct impact on those countries and those loans. There will be conversations. There will be political interaction. But the purpose of the annual meetings is more broadly the policy issues of the institution and of the global economy broadly as opposed to country-specific. Having said that, it is inevitable that the bilateral and multilateral communications between global leaders on those very sensitive issues, countries like Greece, countries like Spain, countries like Egypt, will come up. And you will see some, it's not horse trading, at least some political deals being struck, which you'll never be able to point a finger, you'll never be able to see fingerprints, but you will see subtle shifts that will result in IMF board decisions over time that will result perhaps in Egypt getting a loan or not, in Greece being given some forgiveness or not, in the IMF playing an actual financing role on Spain or not. You can look for those to manifest themselves over the coming weeks, but you won't see a direct link.


The new Taliban mayor of Afghanistan's capital Kabul has told female municipal employees to stay home unless their jobs cannot be filled by men. Hamdullah Nomey says the Taliban has found it necessary to stop women from working for a while. It's the latest restriction imposed on Afghanistan's women by the country's hardline Islamist government. During their previous rule in the 1990s, women were barred from education and the workplace.


To be or not to be. To be or not to be. To be or not to be. To be or not to be. That is the question. Welcome dear reader to the tragedy of Hamlet written by me, William Shakespeare.


This is the greater Lagos vision and army of hosts love Ikuku, Oye Doku. Governor Babaji Desu Owenlu is confident that 2022 and 2023 will be a harvest period for Lagos State, particularly in the area of infrastructural projects. He says the state government has fast tracked the completion and delivery of key infrastructure, which includes a motorized smill 27 km blue line and 32 km red line rail projects. The governor was speaking at the opening session of the 17th Executive and Legislative Parli organized for all elected public office holders in Lagos State. This is the greater Lagos vision. Welcome once again, army of hosts love Ikuku, Oye Doku. This episode features Okada Ban, Lagos government crushes over 2,000 seized motorcycles. Collapse Ikuyu building, Lagos government commences demolition, defies shortly. Lagos State governor Babaji Desu Owenlu says the ultimate goal of his administration remains that Lagos State becomes one of the top places in the African continent to leave, work and invest. So, Oye Doku was speaking at the official commissioning and handing over of the reconstructed state security service building in a limosha local government area of the states. The impact that is going to have in this area is to give more security to the people of the limosha local government. The Lagos local government in the federation, they have more population than any local government in the federation. And we secure the approval of the governor for the construction of this so that they can provide more security, network, architecture in this local government. And I want to advise the youth to become, to not do anything that will harm the security agents to go after them. The sort of passion the governor of Lagos State attach to security, promise the award of this particular project without security will not be anywhere. It is when there is security we have to provide, it is when there is peace of mind to think about what and what right to for the benefit. I want to appreciate our work now for doing that. The Lagos State government has commenced the demolition of adjoining structures within the complex of the collapsed 21-story building at Gerard Road in Ikoi. Commissioner for Information and Strategy Benga Omotoshio stated this at a press briefing. The briefing commenced with a minute of silence observed in honour of those who lost their lives in the unfortunate incident. Tap on the agenda was the construction of the two remaining buildings still standing at the premises of the collapsed 21-story building. Commissioner for Information Benga Omotoshio accompanied by his counterparts in the ministries of social duties and intergovernmental relations, Tyre Bangboshi, Martins and their physical planning and over development, Idris Salako told journalists that the construction will commence on the buildings having failed integrity tests. We are here because of the November 1 incident Lagos does not pray to ever have that kind of incident again. We are here to fulfilment of what the panel that was set up after the collapse of that building, what it recommended that the government of Lagos should do, that those other buildings that are still standing on that site should be brought down because according to experts they have failed what they call the integrity test. Omotoshio announced that a stakeholder's meeting had previously been held in this regard and all formalities have been completed to hand the complex over to the contractor for the reconstruction. The commissioner for physical planning explained that the land will be taken over by government in line with the state physical planning law. Section 74 to be precise, any property that collapsed in Lagos state is automatically forfeited to the Lagos state government. So the property as it is is forfeited. The contractor handed the construction feel-feelers level and laid fees about safety of workers saying control methods haven't worked out. We will tie up the slabs first. What does that mean? If we want to cut a section of a slab, maybe one meter by one meter, we will put steel chains through that slab in about four to six points such that it is hooked up. It holds the slab. It sort of suspends the slab even though we haven't cut it. We will then begin to cut so that by the time you are cutting, those steel chains have already held up the piece you are cutting so and it doesn't drop. He said the reconstruction is expected to take 90 days but could be extended due to bad weather. About 2000 motorcycles have been crushed in the first quarter of the year 2022. So says the commissioner for information and strategy BINGA or Motor Show. At the crushing site in Alausa he said the crushing of the bikes showed how serious the government is in enforcing commercial motorcycle ban in some areas of the states. 2000 motorcycles also known as Okada has been crushed by the LEGO state government. It goes to show the seriousness that the state government attaches to ensuring that the state is rid of Okadas and its menace. Commissioner for information BINGA or Motor Show and transport commissioner Dr. Fredrik Oladende walked journalists through the crushing site to witness the destruction of the motorbikes. People have been wondering what we have been doing with the Okadas that have been taken out of a town. So for you to see what we have been doing with them, this is why we invited you here today. I am happy you have seen the way they have been crushed. Mr. Omotoshi says that the government had to take the enforcement seriously due to the excesses of the riders and the alarming rate of road accidents recorded this year alone. In the first four months of this year, we had 1,712 Okada accidents. Of these, of road accidents of the 1,712, 767 were due to Okada. Omotoshi or however called on riders securing to the state or through modern transport schemes to get actively engaged. Commissioner for transportation Fredrik Oladende urged residents to remain calm and obey traffic laws as alternative means of transportation have been provided. We are putting more high capacity buses on the road. The government is walking around the clock to make sure that our rail system is working. We have increased the number of boats on our waterways and they should just be calm and then move about the daily business. Chairman of Lagos State Tax Force says there is no going back on the enforcement. We don't see Okadas on the road, on the express any longer. The number has drastically reduced but I know for sure and I am passing this information to them because they are watching us. They might be of the belief that the first one week of the enforcement will be thorough. After one week we are going to relax. Anyway, we will watch and see. But I am passing this message to them that from next week we will do more intense enforcement. With the recent pronouncement and a continued enforcement on the ban, Lagosians hope he is not short-lived so that the sanity is sustained. Lagos State Gov. Babaji Desawulu has declared that his government's commitment to providing quality and affordable education of the state is second to none. Saawulu was speaking during the launch of the collaboration between Lagos State University and Cornell University, New York, United States for post-graduate professional certificate programs. The governor said his administration would do everything possible to uphold the outstanding reputation of the state, owns Lagos State University Lassu and make it one of the best and best universities in the world. Joining me shortly on this episode of the Greater Lagos Vision is the commission of our education for Lacha Adé Fisayo. She will be giving us more insight into how the present administration is changing the narratives in the educational sector. But that's going to be after this break. Please stay with us. We are getting up just in a matter of months from now. That is something that we are all aware of. But Ma, would like to know from you, would you say that his promise of ensuring quality and affordable education that is second to none to Lagosians, would you say he has fulfilled it or he has lived up to that promise? You remember when Mr Babajithe Wushalassan Wulu came in, he espoused his themes agenda. The first E there was education and technology. And he promised that year in, year out he would increase the education budget which he has done without fail. Every year the budget grows larger. And every year he has concentrated on improving the quality of education in the state. He promised that he would attend to all abandoned structures, so there would be no more abandoned structures in the schools, that he would furnish the schools with adequate furniture and lots of other promises. And he would integrate technology into teaching and learning. All these promises have been met to a large degree. And I think I would like to let you know that especially in terms of improving education, making classrooms conducive for learning. And when they are conducive for learning, you can then now start working on the other soft skills you need to work on. So I would say that we really have gone far. When Mr Governor first came in, we concentrated our attention on completion of abandoned projects and we've done a lot of that across the states, right from, in fact across the six districts in the state. Then we concentrated on improving model school infrastructure by building state-of-the-art boarding houses, complete with the laundry room, reading room and so on for students in our boarding schools. After that, we now decided that it's time for us to now build specific iconic structures that will be for, I mean for A, when people are passing by, they say this one was built by Mr Governor. So there are about three that I would like to mention. The first one is the Elemoro school, which is in Ibejuleki. Ibejuleki is an area where we have very few schools. So when we sat down with the oba and we saw that about 12 schools didn't really have a good basic school, you know it's a new area of Lagos. So we started this brand new school and in this school, the Elemoro school, we built track and field, we built a stadium and sitting for spectators. So it's a very, very exciting structure. We are very pleased with it. All the issues we had with existing buildings, we tried to correct there. Like now there's, when you entered the school before, there was no reception. Now there's a reception so that we are able to attend to parents. You just don't enter school. And a lot of things like that, we included labs, we included all the structures that they would need to be able to operate effectively. That was at Ibejuleki. Now we are coming up with another building which is yet to be commissioned. The Ibejuleki school was commissioned in December, but we now have another one at Agege called the Vetland school built of containers and that's an excellent one. You see this is a green school where we are not on the grid. We are using solar throughout. Every classroom has a smart white board and tablets for the students in the class. I think there is a ratio of 1 to 2 in each classroom. And there too we are building a track and field, we are building a basketball court because after Elemoro we knew that we couldn't go back and just build a school and just open it. But we had to ensure that the school had all the structures that it needs for it to operate effectively. Another school that we are building in collaboration this time with the wives of some of our associations and support groups is a school in Ogonbo where we have actually deliberately built a ramp from the ground floor to the top. So that it will be an inclusive school where children, even those with physical challenges can get to the top on their wheelchair and we deliberately built toilets and so on so that they will be able to effectively use these toilets. So again we keep on thinking and improving on the existing models, not that we just built and I think that is part of the beauty of what this administration has been trying to do. We take a lot of data in Lagos if we work with data so that we just don't make decisions based on sentiments. So in collecting data about our students right from entry to exit, we found that there is a significant drop around GS3 to SS1 and SS2 to SS3. And this is because many of them have a need to work to earn a living. They start earning a living or they start learning a craft with a master as they call it. So we said look let's do something, let them understand this need is very important. How do we address this need? So we set up what we call comprehensive schools and the governor approved a pilot of 12 schools. So in 12 of our schools we set up these schools and these schools are running vocational programs within schools so that rather than leave school and start wandering the streets or looking for many jobs here and there, I mean we will train you and give you really first class training and that is what we have been doing. And so those teachers, if you look at the board, I don't know if it's possible for you to look at the screen, but you see the screen in front of you. This is why it is on all the time because it's the framework for the comprehensive schools program. So apart from the fact that we will teach them vocational skills like in Greek, ICT, fashion, building and construction and so on. We are also teaching them soft skills and we know the teaching of soft skills like financial literacy, entrepreneurship and so on. It's not something that is easy for teachers taught in a very formal setting. So we too entered into a relationship with a city called Tampere in Finland. I know that Finland is well known for the quality of its schools. What we don't understand is that their vocational schools are also excellent, but their methodologies of teaching, the pedagogy of the classroom is really exciting and the students learn and you see the joy of teaching and learning. So we sent our teachers there to learn from them, to study them in the classroom, to absorb the atmosphere and learn the skills, but we teach these children all these soft subjects. They are not teaching physics, chemistry and so on. It's a totally different ball game, so you have to give them the skills and that is why we sent them to Finland. And they came back really enthusiastic and they've hit the road run. If you go to any of those classrooms, they are teaching collaboratively, they are using technology to teach, they are creative, they are innovative, they are solving problems, they are planning and so on. And so from there, they will be able to do things like set up their own businesses very quickly in addition to learning the skill that they want to learn. Every child has a chance to have a marketable skill when they leave us. Like for instance, let me pick one of them, like I said it's on the board, the framework is on this screen in front of me. So let's say I pick something like a child does fishery, he's not going to do it at a very basic level, he'll do it at the best possible level, taught by the teachers who went to Finland. So he'll do fishery and we are doing this in collaboration with technical partners. In this case, it's IITA who we are working with as well as our own and Greek teachers. So we do fisheries and apart from fisheries, the students will do financial literacy, understand how to plan for themselves financially. They'll do entrepreneurship and employability, they'll be able to set up the business, write a proposal, write a letter to the bank, ask for money from the bank. We teach them personal leadership skills, we'll work on their communication presentation skills, public speaking.  And each one of them has a tablet on which we've loaded these soft skills. These soft skills are not skills you teach in the class per se like lessons. They are going to self-pace themselves and we are working with a Finnish company called Fonsai and they are following up to ensure that the students are learning all along. So by the time they are done, someone says I came out of Lagos State and I'm an expert in photography and videography. You will know that this is an excellent person. What we've asked them and some of them have given us, they've shared their curriculum with us. We've trained our teachers on how to teach these subjects. Some have provided internship opportunities, even work opportunities at the end. The internship opportunities for some it includes a small stipend and so we're working with professional bodies, with NGOs, international organizations. I think it's a great way of, it's a great, what can I call it, case study for government collaborating openly, transparently with the private sector and allowing the private sector to drive certain things, like the entrepreneurship and employability is by an NGO called Junior Achievement and they are going to set up companies and they started doing that. What they are doing that designing their Lagos, naming their company. So let's say all of us are learning make-over, bar-bring, hairdressing make-up, then we set up our company and we start working. Because like I said, we want them to earn an income early. So it's a practical hands-on way of learning that will give them a lifelong skill. We have to do a lot of stakeholder management because we have to let them know that it doesn't mean the child is not intelligent. Intelligence is something that is multifaceted. Some people are good at English and so on. Some people are good at drawing, that's their intelligence. There's this Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences and that's what we base this on, that look, people have multiple intelligences. What if my intelligence is with my hands? What if I'm a great fashion designer? I don't have to know physics to be a great fashion designer. So we talked a lot and the interesting thing about those schools, because we are only doing it in 12 schools now, though Mr. Governor has challenged us to go for 50 by September. You see in those 12 schools, whenever you go around and talk to the head of schools, they say school is very quiet. Because those children who were bored, who did not enjoy normal class, they are having a great time. And don't forget that the methodology of teaching is so interesting and engaging that they are learning a lot. I think it's a great one. I would allow my child to learn this. And so something like this comprehensive school system is to ensure that they have the skills that private sector needs. I assure you that all of the skills that we are teaching them, we are not doing it in the normal didactic theoretical manner. No. And we came up with a curriculum together with private associations. Like Plumber has told us, this is what we want a Plumber to know. So all these things are taught practically. And so this is our own first step towards ensuring that people who live in this system do have the essential skills of success in the world they are going to live in. The meaning of a co-excel is excellence in children's education. And this program was introduced in order to improve teaching and learning in primary schools. What we have done is that working with technical parties, we have done a lot of things in primary schools. We reviewed our schemes of work. It's our own scheme of work, not anybody else's. And we put it on tablets for our teachers. So really our teachers don't have to do much work with writing lesson notes. But if they read it up, they study it well, week in, week out. The way they'll teach was seriously improved because we included exercises, team work, collaborative. All those things we talk about has been 21st century skills. So that's what we've been doing with the co-excel. It's going on in all our classrooms. All the teachers have tablets with which we support their teaching in the classroom. It's not meant to be read from directly. It's meant to support and improve their engagement of the learners in the classroom. It's meant to give them examples of exercises that you can do and so on and so forth. So it's really in place and we've done a monitoring and evaluation of it and found that the literacy levels are very high. The children are actually reading from primary one, which was the objective. I mean children can read across all levels. They should read in primary one. Why is it appropriate?  But primary one, they should be able to read well. So that by six, they are fluent readers. And that was the main objective. And of course that they are good in numeracy as well. Thank you so much Honorable Commissioner for Education for your time with us today on The Great Alligors' Vision. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. That's all we have for you in this episode of The Great Alligors' Vision on Plus TV Africa. I'm Lovie Kuku Oyeduku. Bye for now.


Thanks very much. We're gonna stay with technology as promised to Greycroft partners Alan Patrick off back with me Along with the founder of one of the startups that he funded it is called when I work It's a mobile focused software company scheduling interaction between employees and employer made easier Chad Halverson right here beside Alan and myself said Chad welcome. Thank you Why do you have a pencil? I just have to ask very old-school, but do you write a lot? It's like the antithesis of what we do in deck and it just kind of stuck I always am like scratching things down. Okay, kind of this thing that so Communication in its first stages and now it's all scheduling was done before years ago We do it now. So what you're doing now is essentially Saving employers and employees time and as we've known for a long time time actually does equal money Yeah So small businesses and businesses that are all employees they spend an insane amount of time Scheduling and communicating with employees and it's one of the most daunting tasks that they have to deal with and we've We've kind of cracked the code in terms of software and communication to make it really really easy For these business owners and these managers of small businesses to communicate So if I work in a small business and my manager has your software I call in sick it doesn't take that person, you know two hours to solve that problem It takes them three minutes ten seconds So they pull up their phone they'll see who's available who's not working find a replacement It shoots out text message to everybody email social cues things like that Alan you get more than 50 pitches a week I'm sure maybe even higher than that number. What made you invest in Chad's company. Well in Chad's case It really was an easy one. I mean they're growing 20 to 30 percent a month they have a Business that the most impressive thing was they don't do any outbound selling they have no salesman on the road They don't have anyone calling.  I mean I know you have something like 5,000 businesses signed up How because your staff so right now? It's about 30 people seven months ago. It was about seven people So okay, well that tells its own tale But are you in this position where if you start growing faster? You either have to hurry up and hire more people or turn business away I hope it'll never turn. I know I'm sorry. Please don't start but optimizing all the different areas You know the customer success the marketing and the products that we can bring people on in larger quantities faster Alan, how does this have fit in we mentioned media internet? I mean this is obviously heavy internet heavy tech But how does this fit in to what you're doing right now at Greycroft? Well, it's a mobile company mobile-based company It's a monthly recurring revenues And you know, it's a soft software based I mean it's it fits perfectly and while it's not a news company or a company that in art in our mind We think of as media. It's internet based and it's mobile based and it's fit some of your clients I mean you have Atlanta Braves you have Uber you have the Columbus zoom And you have a pretty wide swath of industries that you're working with right? Yeah, so it's it's businesses that have hourly employees that are that are finding value in it and it doesn't whether it's restaurants retail entertainment If there's employees being scheduled, it's a big problem. And as we know we've talked about this Alan big picture I mean Larry Summers even wrote about this yesterday in the journal about this work problem Essentially that that the US has but more and more workers seem to be going to temporary work or freelance work or part-time work So you're answering in that case that macro trends anyone who has seasonal workers or as part-time workers Ali workers needs when I work software. It's so easy to operate I was when the first time I saw it He said go and do it and I I don't have part-time workers But I registered everybody and everybody was notified and it was done in a matter of seconds Plus it gives you an excuse to go to Minnesota. You said Minneapolis, St. Paul is now your favorite city Is that because of Chad? It was 24 below zero when I went there during the winter. That is Conviction all-in-capital letters. Thank you both for joining us. So happy you're here China Halberstin He is the founder of when I work Alan Patrick off of course the founder of Greycroft partners we


Είμαι εδώ για να παίρνω έναν σπίτιτο κέντρο της Ευρώπης, το μεγαλύτερο κέντρο της Ελλάδας, έχω δημιουργήσει με εξαλήματα και εξαλήματα από όλες τις προηγιόνες πρόεδρος της εξαλήτητας και θα δούμε στην προηγιόνη, πώς έδωσαμε με τα ίδια πρόεδρα και τι ήταν η δημιουργία μας. Ο πρόεδρος της εξαλήτητας είναι το κέντρο της μεγαλύτερης Ευρώπης και πώς εξαλήτητητας των εξαλήτων να αφήρουν στην κοινωνική και να εξαλήθηκαν την εξαλήτητα των κέντρων της Ελλάδας. Αφήρξω από την εξαλήτητα, πρώτα, πρώτα, αν πήρνεις για τη Ευρώπη, εξαλήτητας τις εξαλήτων που δομιουργήσαμε, ειδικά όχι μέχρι την πανταμή, τις εξαλήτων που δομιουργήσαμε, το ακόμα της εξαλήτητας και τι θέλουμε να κάνουμε στο πρόεδρο. Η Ευρώπη, όπως είπα, είναι πολύ μεγάλη, αλλά δεν είναι ένα γεωγραφικό σημαντικό. Υπάρχουν πολλές άνθρωποι, 50,000 άνθρωποι, 1500, πιο πιο πιο πιο 2000 άνθρωποι, υπάρχουν κοινωνικές άνθρωποι και άλλες δημιουργές και όλα αυτά τα εξαλήτητα είναι παιδιά στο εξαλήτητας της εξαλήτητας. Έτσι, είναι ένα πολύ μεγάλο Ευρώπη και δεν είναι ένα μόνο εξαλήτητας της Ευρώπης. Είναι πιο πιο μόνο εξαλήτητα που μπορείς να βρεις στην Ευρώπη και αυτό είναι πολύ μεγάλο. Στην τρόπο που χρειαζόμαστε την Ευρώπη, γιατί έχουμε ένα μόνο Ευρώπη για την αυτη την Ευρώπη, σαν οι άνθρωποι που έχουμε δικαίσματα. Είναι η στιγμή της εξαλήτητας και βλέπεις ότι έχουμε 43 εξαλήτητα, 143 πρωστά εξαλήτητα και κάποιες δοκτώρας που πιστεύουν δεν είναι πολύ εξαλήτητας στην Ευρώπη. Τι είναι οι πιο μεγαλύτεροι εξαλήτητας στην εξαλήτητα της εξαλήτητας. Είναι η μεγαλύτερη εξαλήτητα της εξαλήτητας και της εξαλήτητας της εξαλήτητας. Είναι also the diversity of the fields of study, because they have different learning needs and they use different teaching tools. Also there is a wide variance in digital skills levels. And then there was the pandemic. So everybody had to get on board and get on board immediately. There was a wide, some schools were not really represented in the LMS. Others just had the courses open, but mainly only to distribute PDFs, but suddenly they had to not only give lectures, but also exams via the LMS. So the shift was abrupt to exclusive online classes and online exams, not currently so, but at the first year of the pandemic it was so. The new challenges were many. There was the challenge of availability because the system had to be up and running and have a good performance 24-7. There were security and privacy issues. There were also procedural issues and governance issues. There were legal issues involved in the exam process especially, and there were also usability issues. So what we did was change the structure, the hardware structure, the server structure of the LMS, and move to a clustered approach because the monolithic approach was just not working with the number of users we had. And we did several other things on which I will focus in today's presentation. I'm not here to present our hardware configuration. So what we did was integrate Zoom better with Moodle, perform some content upgrades like math type to assist technological schools, use several plugins like the safe exam browser plugin and plugins to block concurrent sessions. I already mentioned server clustering and also we made enhancement to the people, to the user support team, the first level support team especially because they had to handle all the load of instructors not being able to actually build their courses and contact their students, et cetera. And also we had to make sure that we were in line with legal restraints and we had to approve several terms and conditions in online exams. Okay, regarding the Zoom integration, which is one of the key aspects of this presentation, we used Zoom meetings dashboard configured as an external tool via LTI. The university uses single sign on, I didn't mention this before, VISA SMAML for authentication. So we used these institutional accounts also for Zoom meetings, but we had to, we required a Zoom update to LTI Pro to ensure data privacy because institutional emails are not meant to be displayed or propagated outside the actual institution. So Zoom complied with that and made an upgrade. The emails are cloaked currently. And Zoom was by far the most popular video conferencing tools. You can see, I hope, although not from far the numbers for all the video conference tools. We used other tools as well, but Zoom was by far the most popular. The immediate outcome of the pandemic was that the community and the IT center rose to the challenge and that was impressive. The pandemic was essentially an accelerator for digital skills improvement, but the interesting thing is what remains after that and I will refer to that. The new server infrastructure greatly improved availability and user experience and we got positive user feedback and trust in digital tools really increased. I have a graph here of the statistics of assignments and quizzes, activities in our Moodle installation, starting from 2019 way down there and ending, this is the peak in September, the peak was June 2021 in September because fewer people participate in exams in September, that's why the drop, the marginal drop is. Currently, when we have returned to in-person teaching and exams, there is a drop, but it's not in the old levels, it's around the 2020 levels. What other integrations do we have in our systems? The campus management system or CMS is another very important integration for Moodle because it contains all the information about the students, that's where they register and declare which courses they're going to attend and that's where they get their credit units and ultimately get their degree. We use a software developed in-house, an open-source solution actually, it's called Universis, the initials being standing for student information systems, which has web interfaces for everyone involved, school registration offices, faculty, students. So students go there and determine which courses they're going to attend each semester and the LMS has to learn from that which students to enroll in which course. That integration is currently on the way. The current level is that students are enrolled automatically. I should say without manual involvement, I'm a developer so I cannot say something that is not 100% true. It is automatic but it's not an actual integration yet. So instructors in each course determine which class they want to connect to the LMS and there is a synchronization script, as the previous speaker said. And we are currently, the development team of Universis is currently working on compliance with one roster so we have an actual integration. Regarding international synergies, we have a project called Epicur Campus which is an inter-university digital ecosystems where students from other European universities attend courses online in other universities and the key in foreign country universities and the key is that they use their original institutional accounts. They don't obtain another account from the other university. So we have two main modules in this project. The virtual campus learning platform and the virtual university registral system. You understand that we need a common registral system for all these universities because the students actually obtain credits for the courses they attend towards their degree. So the first piece of software plays the role of a decentralized learning management system essentially and the apologies if any developers are here. Essentially it's a course catalogue, dynamic course catalogue. It's based on Ilias LMS and the other part is the centralised campus management system which is developed in our university. So specific courses designated to be available to international students become available using their home country institutional accounts in the foreign country LMS so in our module. So we have such students and we can enroll them using the campus connect plugin, a custom configuration of the campus connect plugin. Now, the pandemic, I'm not sure I can say it's over but certainly we're at the next phase and we have to see the future. What we got from the pandemic era? We have a major positive shift in attitudes towards online learning. You have to have observed this everywhere. There's a legacy in digital content in teaching material and exams content that are amazing question banks in our new module currently. And the legal issues related to online learning now we're talking about a non online, non virtual university, a traditional if you will university. They no longer seem that insurmountable as they did prior to the pandemic. We saw that many departments opted to although not legally compliant they opted to go around with workarounds to get over this obstacle of legal, the law says that the student has to be there for an exam and the professors wanted to do the exam via model. So what did they do? They got the students in computer labs and they held the exams in computer labs so no more correcting grades, nothing. Or they bought tablets and they distributed tablets to the student again in a university area. What are our future goals in terms of integration? We want to use LTI for all in-house developed codes so we can distribute it and get outside opinions on our code and improvements of course. We want to go towards a two-way integration with CMS at a lower level. Now there are not only enrollments that are of interest in CMS we can also automate course creation. Currently at the beginning of each academic year course creation is not automated. We envision a future where the courses as they have been declared in the CMS and their properties and the teachers and the assistants everything is transferred to the LMS automatically. Now there are several challenges involved as you may imagine. We want to improve the current solution we have for student enrollments and we want in the other direction to get information from the LMS to the SIS to the student information systems and update their grades. I personally worked on a piece of code for that. We have not yet launched it in production. What are our other goals for LMS? We want to streamline our updates so that's your topic. We want to upgrade to model 4 hopefully quite soon. And we want to better accommodate the needs of a part of the university that is not that much discussed in the rest of the presentation. The university has lifelong learning programs so they have a different life cycle. They are not students who come to the university at 18 and graduate at a certain age. There are people who enroll in any time in their lives to obtain a qualification for some subject matter. The attendees don't have institutional accounts. They have different access rights. They have different timetables so it's a challenging project to make sure that they are also properly served by our LMS. Thank you very much for your attention and I have not written if you would like to ask any questions but I would be very happy to answer if you have any. Sorry, I was worried I'd run out of time so I finished ahead of time. Thank you very much for your presentation regarding data privacy regulations here. Regarding data privacy regulations and the ModZoom plug-in and other external tools have you got a process to streamline overcoming these challenges? And we have made the experience that even at the beginning of COVID we had some challenges to overcome, some people to convince and ModZoom is a perfect example for us. We try to implement it. We got Zoom at our university. We got Moodle but it's taken until now and we haven't even yet done the integration. So some more insights into the data privacy regulations would be very... Okay, they made an upgrade to LTI Pro component to make sure that institutional accounts are not displayed in Zoom. I should have put in a screenshot and I should have talked slower. That's a different discussion but I should have put in a screenshot on a Zoom meeting using the institutional account. The email is hidden. There are like stars. Only the beginning, AUTH, is the name of the university, GR. And then there are stars in the account. It's hidden, it's not propagated to Zoom. Okay, so we are GDPR compliant on that. We couldn't be. We couldn't not be. Okay, we had to be in order to employ this solution. So this has been resolved in our case and if you'd like, we can discuss the integration because I think it's a very important integration Zoom and Moodle. It was life saving in the pandemic because it took in all the load and there were the classes. We also, I didn't also mention, initially my presentation was supposed to be shorter in the schedule but I didn't mention that we have in place statistics and monitoring platforms. Both for us, I am the administrator and for the server management people in order to pinpoint the load when we know we have an activity that will attract many students. We make sure that they are also watching and we see the load and if we need to make changes in the infrastructure currently it's holding up very well, we will. So we are on top of these things and thank you very much for your question. I will be glad to discuss it further.


From VOA Learning English, this is the Economics Report. American wine producers are hoping to increase their sales in China, where the country's growing middle class is drinking wine. The United States exported just $74 million in wine to China last year. But exports are growing at a rate of nearly 20 percent a year. Two years ago, former basketball star Yao Ming launched a wine company called Yao Family Wines. It is based in California's Napa Valley, one of the top wine producing areas in the world. Tom Hind is with Yao Family Wines. He says the vineyard grows only Cabernet Sauvignon grapes because many people in China like red wine. The small winery makes a costly product. Its top Cabernet sells for $625 a bottle. Napa Valley's black stallion winery also looks to China as a promising market. Holly Evans works for the company. She says the company has two wines that are sold throughout the United States and also in China. Many moderately priced wines are exported to China. They include some from the San Antonio winery in Los Angeles. 15 percent of its production goes to China. The Wine Institute represents more than 1,000 wineries and allied businesses through California. Spokesperson Lindsey Gallagher says her group is always receiving requests from China. But she says the country is a problem for marketing. She says that in China, it is not known that California is the fourth largest wine producing area in the world, producing many kinds of wine. Winemakers hope to expand the market for fine dry wines, including white wines, which are now a small part of the Chinese market. For VOA Learning English, I'm Alex Villareal.


The ideal prime rib is not undercooked, it's not overcooked, it's that perfect medium-rare from edge to edge. And the secret to that is like Jose's enameled cast-iron roaster. We're just looking to get a nice sear, it's gonna take about 10 minutes. The roast is going into the oven at a surprisingly low temperature of 200 degrees. It's gonna cook for two and a half to three hours. When your roast is between 100 and 110 degrees, it's time to turn off the oven, and here's the cool part. The heat retention of this cast-iron roaster gives you that gentle glide to medium-rare perfection. From edge to edge, top to bottom. And with a feast like this, it's time to celebrate.


Because complexity economics is based upon non-linear systems theory and standard economics is based upon linear systems theory They are, from a theoretical point of view, essentially the mirror-inverse of each other They're both looking at the same economy, but looking at it through a different paradigm whereas standard economics models the economy in terms of a closed system with homogeneous isolated agents making rational choices that lead to equilibrium static macro-level outcomes Nonlinear models are going to give us a very different picture It is a model of the economy as an open system composed of heterogeneous agents with bounded rationality making choices within a particular context which gives rise to networks of interaction what we call Institutions and a macro-level non-equilibrium to the economy that is constantly changing driven by internal dynamics So that's a lot of very dense information But it's the bigger picture of what we'll be exploring in this module and we'll go over each part in detail As we've previously discussed Standard economics is based upon this concept of equilibrium which is derived from modeling the economy as a closed system Complexity economics will flip this on its head Describing the economy as an open system that is never in equilibrium And this is a paradigm shift a very different way of looking at things from which a whole different theoretical framework is going to emerge Complexity theory studies open systems That is to say systems that are so embedded within their environment Interconnected and interdependent with other systems that we can no longer define them by their boundary condition and their static internal components With linear systems theory we use the process of reasoning called analysis that starts by isolating the system from its environment So as to hold inputs and outputs to the system constant This is what we do when we take something from its environment and put it into a lab It's only by doing this that we can describe the system in terms of the additive properties of its internal constituent elements Creating equations based on invariant transformations between the properties of its constituent elements Complexity theory does not use this method of analysis because this method of analysis is very fundamental to modern science Complexity theory is going to give us a very different way of looking at things Because it does not use analysis it will allow us to study a system as being open That is in terms of its function and relations within its environment This is a process of reasoning called synthesis and it is the opposite from analytical reasoning Within economics, this will mean that unlike with standard economics where the economy is modeled as a closed system Complexity theory will give us a model of the economy as fundamentally an open system Standard economic models will not describe how the system interacts with other systems external to it such as the social or ecological domains It exists in isolation if anything is going to be incorporated into the model It has to be presented as being inside of the economy with complexity economics because we're using open systems models We can represent the economy as one component interacting with other components within its environment from this perspective We'll be able to identify the economy as taking in resources from other components as in social capital or ecological capital Processing these in order to generate outputs that represent both resources of a higher value and also resources of a lower value what we might call entropy Because we're modeling the economy as an open system There will typically be no single closed-form solution Isolated systems tend towards a single equilibrium Open systems in contrast because there is a constant input and output of energy and matter They do not tend towards a single equilibrium. They may have multiple equilibria, which is characteristic of nonlinear systems This does not mean that they are random. They're certainly not They're just governed by different dynamics What this means is that the end result of our model would typically not be a closed-form solution That is to say an equation Even if we do create an equation these equations typically have multiple solutions and they may exhibit chaos In general because we're dealing with open systems that are really defined not by any Equilibrium or equation but instead by their inputs and outputs these inputs and outputs are going to be defined by the system's Relations with its environment and its functioning These functions are most appropriately modeled as algorithms That is to say a set of instructions that define how the components or system maps an input to an output So when using this framework what we're going to spend most of our time doing is trying to understand And capture the algorithm that the components are operating under by the components I mean agents or institutions if we then want to go on and create a high-fidelity model We'll put the algorithm into code although there is definitely a skill involved in doing that Theoretically, it's quite straightforward We will then run this computer model in order to get a simulation of the system's behavior over time If we do all that we will have all the information we might want to know about the system Without ever needing an equation The power behind this technique is one of the basic premise within complexity theory That is the idea that simple rules can create complex phenomena We're defining simple rules and then using the computer to iterate on these simple rules to give us nonlinear Interactions and feedback that will generate a model with a structure that is both complex and intricate a high-fidelity Representation of a real-world economic phenomena But as mentioned, we're not just interested in these algorithms We're very much interested in the interaction between components Unlike standard economics where these interactions have to be additive in order to get general equilibrium Which basically means the relations add or subtract no value to the system and thus can be largely ignored But remember in complexity economics, we're not trying to get an equilibrium outcome These relations don't have to be additive because this is a non linear framework They can be non zero sum which means they may add or subtract value to the system And these non additive relations will be important to the overall makeup of the system and thus of great interest to us Because these interactions are non additive They're going to give rise to non-equilibrium Macroscale patterns of organization that will have their own internal dynamics and structure and what we call a Emergent properties. This is going to give us a heterogeneous Macroscale topology to the system put very succinctly Institutions are going to matter and this is in contrast to standard economics where they are basically seen as markets or clearing houses They don't really have any internal dynamic. They're just an equilibrium point When we stop focusing on general equilibrium and the idea of individual atomized agents and start to focus more on these Interactions, what we're going to see is that these institutions are in fact networks and the structure to these networks is very important Because it's going to define how things flow through the network and remember because we're dealing with open systems This is about inputs and outputs where a component is in a network the network structure And what is flowing through that network is going to be decisive in defining the inputs and outputs to any of its components or subsystems These internal emergent structures or institutions will add or subtract value to the whole system Creating a macro level disequilibrium because the system is open and resources are coming in and out of it from a larger Environment that is a part of the flow of resources in and out of the system may change over time This will add to this state of non-equilibrium When we allow for non-equilibrium on the macro scale We can start to think about how the whole system changes over time and complexity economics Uses the model of evolution in order to describe this macro process of change So what we've presented here is basically a very high level view of the whole approach that complexity economics is going to use I'll flesh this out further in the rest of this video To give us a quick overview to what answers this approach is going to give us to the basic questions That we're trying to model and describe within the domain of economics That is a model to the behavior of agents how these agents interact what economic Institutional structures will get from this and how the whole thing changes But the thing for us to take away from this first section is this the fact that we define the economy as an open system Allows us to talk about non-equilibrium and this non-equilibrium is our first basic principle And it's going to structure and define our whole approach from here on in the same way the general equilibrium Defines the overall workings to standard economics Non-equilibrium and non linearity are going to be defining factors in the whole approach taken by complexity economics As with linear systems theory This approach will enable us to capture and model some things and constrain us from modeling and describing others Because we have a model that is actually embedded within some real environment We can begin to recognize the complexity of the real world as the economist Alex Leonhoft remarked Neoclassical models give us a view of quote smart people in incredibly simple situations While the real world involves simple people coping with incredibly complex situations The implicit expectations of standard economic models is that agents are seen as almost Supercomputers that are able to run an optimization algorithm over thousands or even millions of different choices Within a fraction of a second complexity economics based on this idea of simple rules Instead describes individuals as endowed with only a very finite amount of computing power What is called bounded rationality the idea that when individuals make choices their Rationality is limited by the information that they have the cognitive limitations of their mind and the time available to make the decision Bounded rationality tries to capture the fact that economic phenomena Actually at the end of the day play out in the real world and this has real implications and limitations Again, this goes back to the fact that we use your model that allows us to see the system within its environment Linear systems theory because it's an analytical framework won't allow us to do this Modeling things as closed systems is sometimes a big advantage and sometimes not but in this case it is creating a very large disparity between what empirical data tells us and what the standard models tell us and Central to trying to resolve this is the new area of behavioral economics behavioral economics gives us a much expanded and more complex conception of motives that are driving the individuals as it studies the effects of psychological social Cognitive and emotional factors on the economic decisions of individuals Agents are still seen to be efficiently pursuing their valued ends as part of our definition of economics But these valued ends can represent a much wider spectrum not just purely industrial capital Because we're not constraining our model of the individual towards achieving equilibrium We can begin to think about the individual agent as being in a real environment Embedded within a multiplicity of different networks each exerting its own force over the agent's behavior and thus linear Causality where a causes B begins to break down the net results of bounded rationality and a complex set of motives Means that agents may come to hugely suboptimal economic solutions Of course, we can only come to this conclusion because we're allowing for non-equilibrium outcomes And this leads to a discussion of what theory of value can this nonlinear modeling framework offer? Because we're looking at the economy within the context of its connections with other systems within its environment We can begin to recognize the value of those other things that are not necessarily inside of the economy Using analytical methods We can only ascribe value to anything that is inside the economy Ecological capital is defined within the standard model as mining or agricultural industries It can't have value outside or independent from the economic system But when we flip this model around and see these other domains outside of the system and their relation to it Then we can begin to reason about their independent value How this might translate into primary economic value as long as we're using Analytical methods focused on looking inside the system We will only be able to ascribe value to anything that is inside the model When we use synthetic reasoning to create models for the whole environment We can then ascribe some form of value to all the different domains and begin to reason about how to create metrics for translating between different domains Thus incorporating both extrinsic primary economic value and Intrinsic secondary value and this will be congruent with our model of agents as being under the influence of many different Motives and value systems as they respond to social capital cultural capital Environmental capital and so on it is a much more complex model where we're trying to take account of value in all its different forms Value is not homogeneous a single price determined by a market equilibrium It is instead heterogeneous a Network of different interacting variables and as we saw in the previous module with information technology This is increasingly a practical reality Next we'll talk about the interactions between economic agents This is the domain of game theory game theory models both zero-sum games and non-zero-sum games Zero-sum games give linear solutions and other central to standard economics non-zero-sum games results in non-linear outcomes and thus the nonlinear study of economics is mainly concerned with these non-zero-sum Dynamics it allows us to incorporate relations of Co-operational interference into our models both will give us non-equilibrium results Interference between components means some form of conflict between the agents that makes the combined system Less than the sum of its parts as an example of this we might think about price wars between different businesses inversely Cooperation is a form of synergistic interaction between agents Synergies involve the components both differentiating their functions and combining them towards common ends Through synergies value is added to the composite organization through these relations We get an organization that is greater than the sum of its parts Synergies form the basis for the process of emergence that gives rise to different levels in the economy with diverse institutions serving diverse functions on different levels in the complexity paradigm Macroeconomic patterns are emergent properties of micro level interactions and behavior But because of the non-linear interactions between components that we previously mentioned We cannot analytically derive the properties of the macro system from those of its constituent parts Although we can apply computational techniques to model the behavior of the emergent properties That is to say agent-based models can simulate these emergent phenomena in high fidelity Agents within the complexity economy are embedded within many overlapping networks Social cultural technological financial, etc How an organization or individual succeeds or fails within this economy is a product of these different many Interacting variables across different networks and the makeup of those networks From this perspective, there is no such thing really as an efficient market that allocates resources in an optimal fashion This whole idea is only really relevant when we're thinking about agents in isolation Agents as price takers in pure markets where they face an impersonal price structure And they're computing their rational choices in isolation from the complexity perspective people are interconnected They're embedded within networks of production and consumption Resources flow through these networks and how these resources get distributed out Depends on the structure of the network and where you lie in that network There doesn't have to be any equilibrium here The distribution of resources across the network can be hugely heterogeneous and may remain in a non-equilibrium state indefinitely Complexity economics sees the economy as a complex adaptive system that evolves over time In standard economic theory There is no mechanism for creating novelty or qualitative change within the economy in the complex economy The evolutionary process of diversification Selection and amplification provides a system with novelty and is responsible for the growth in order and complexity over time Eric Beinhacher in his book The Origins of Wealth Describes this process as such Quote an evolutionary search mechanism markets provide incentives for the deductive tinkering process of differentiation They then critically provide a fitness function and selection process that represents the broad needs of the population Finally, they provide a means of shifting resources towards fit models and away from unfit ones Thus amplifying the fit modules influence Complexity economics focuses on the non-equilibrium processes that transform the economy from within Such as technological innovation and new business models created by entrepreneurs that leads to a process of creative destruction Within an economy that is constantly changing as it grows in a somewhat organic fashion Changes in one part lead to new opportunities and niches within another As the whole thing evolves with different industries and sectors becoming interdependent and self-organizing And out of this process of evolution, we get what we might call economic growth Not so much in our traditional sense of an increase in gross throughput to the system But more in terms of its qualitative structural transformation In becoming both more differentiated and integrated to exhibit greater levels of complexity In this module, we've been taking a brief overview to the area of complexity economics Highlighting some of its main characteristics. We started off by talking about how it models the economy as an open system Meaning that it does not need to be an equilibrium Relaxing this constraint allows us to create a whole new paradigm built on non-linear systems theory Within this paradigm, we get a much more complex picture to individual agents the motives they're acting under What they value and how that value may not be a homogeneous thing But instead a heterogeneous composite of different forms of capital We talked about how a non-linear framework will allow us to focus more on non-zero sum interactions Where value is added or subtracted to the organization through the different types of relations between components How synergistic interactions can give rise to emergent macro patterns of organization Next, we looked at how complexity economics understands these institutions as complex networks Where the structure and makeup of those networks defined macro level resource allocation Lastly, we talked about economic development as a process of evolution And how this will allow us to better reason about structural qualitative transformations within the whole economic system As deriving from internal drivers