Hello everyone. Thank you for coming out this evening for our first art talk event. It's pretty great. So a few people who will be joining us soon. Thank you for everyone who's shown up early and on time. That's great. Got a really wonderful evening with some amazing artists talking about their work tonight. So I guess just to get started, I think it's incredibly important that we recognize and appreciate that the lands on which we gather for cultural activities are on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Coastal-ish peoples of the Squamish, Slewa-tooth, and Muscovine peoples. And we are ever so thankful and thrilled to be there to be here enjoying this wonderful place where we live even though we're not able to experience it fully right now or at least not with all of the people we wish. We're really happy to be here. I guess we'll just do a few quick intros maybe. I'll be your host this evening.  I am the Gallery and Communications Coordinator for the West Vancouver Community Arts Council. And a little bit about the Arts Council. We're not for profit organization based in West Vancouver that is dedicated to fostering and promoting arts and culture. For our community and the entire North Shore. And I'll pass over to, and my name says Jennifer Lord, but that's not my name. My name is Stephen. That's just my boss. That's our Executive Director and she signed up for the account. So that's the name that pops up when we use it. Technology, everyone. So I'll pass it over to our co-host for this evening, Taryn. Hi everyone. This is my first webinar, so this is very exciting for me. I am the Arts and Special Events Programmer here at the, which way am I? The West Bank. Oh, I'm so backward. The West Vancouver Memorial Library where we're all very much missing in our familiar patrons. I hope before we closed our doors, some of you were able to see our exhibit that we had up on the walls. We called it Reflect, Reposition, and Re-Imagine. It was using upcycled and upcycled and reusable artifacts to create new works of art. Lori is one of the artists that was part of that. I'm probably getting a bit ahead of myself, but I just wanted to say welcome everyone and I'm looking forward to this. Yeah, it should be a very interesting and fun, hopefully informative and inspiring night for all of you watching. Yes, I guess we should talk about that. So as you're probably all aware, you can see and hear us, but we will not be able to see or hear you just to kind of keep everything nice and clean. If you do wish to communicate, there is at the very bottom of your screen, you'll see there is a Q&A icon. We will be having a question-to-answer period after. So if you have any questions for the artists, that's where you can type them. And we might not be able to get through all of them, but hopefully we'll be able to get through quite a few. So if you have questions throughout the panel, feel free to type it in there. And you'll also see there's a chat icon down there at the bottom as well, and that will appear on the right-hand side of your screen. So with that, you can just leave general comments for everyone to see. Or if you have something specific you want to say to a friend you know who's watching as well, you can chat in there about what you're watching. So we hope that you can have some great interactions with not only us, but the rest of the community. Everyone else is participating right now. Awesome. So I think, yeah, I think we've got quite a few people who want to go ahead and start. Yeah, let's go ahead and start. So we've introduced our hosts. So we'll introduce our panelists now. Taryn, do you want to introduce Laurie? Yes, I'm going to, I have a few people are just still coming online. Everyone, I will be, I'm kind of the back-end person today during all this, and I'm just going to submit a few more people, so I will get you to carry on. Totally. Yeah. Awesome. So we've got Laurie Goldberg, a very talented and wonderful and very experienced artist who's exhibiting, as Taryn said, in the library's exhibit, which is a beautiful exhibit and beautiful work that Laurie has. See, Laurie is, oh, you can all see their names. That's right. I don't have to describe them. You can see who they are. Still getting used to this. This is also my first webinar that I posted. There you go, there's Laurie. Next up, we've got Shang Sue. You can wave if you like. She's a really talented painter. She's got work in, that's up on the digital exhibition. The Arts Council has posts on our website. It's called Distant Together. We normally operate the West Wing Silk Purse Arts Center is where our home base is, where we usually would have a physical exhibition, but now we've done this distance together online with beautiful artwork from Sue. And also it features our work by Eric Bartonot, who's our other panelist tonight. He's got some great mixed media work as well that we'll all get a chance to see a little bit later. So speaking of the spaces, which wanted to give you a little bit of an update that while the Silk Purse Gallery and the West End Memorial Library, like the rest of the district continues to take advice from provincial and coastal health authorities, we're closed. But in the meantime, it's wonderful that our artists are willing to share their work through virtual exhibitions and online discussions. So any questions about when our facilities and stuff will reopen? That's not this panel. This panel's about the art. But to let you know that we are really thankful to have people like these wonderful artists participating in our online programming to be able to share with the rest of you. And I guess we can give a little bit of an introduction about what art talk is this panel this evening. It is kicking off our first Thursday's art walk, which this year is virtually. So last year was the very first first Thursday's art walk. It was initiated by the West Van Arts Council and we had some wonderful partners, including the library. And it was an actual physical art walk where all of the galleries and community spaces that were showing arts were open extended hours the first Thursday of the month from May through August. And we created a map where people could just walk to all the different galleries and they could see all the public art that was on display and they could really discover West Van through the art and the art institutions that were there on the Ambleside and Dundaree of neighborhoods. It was a really wonderful experience. There was lots of extra programming in a lot of those galleries and community spaces like artist demos and collaborative art projects and art tours. But now, since we're closed, our extra enhanced programming is this wonderful panel we have right here, art talk. So the actual art walk is now all online. Our participating galleries include the Silk Purse, the West Van Library, the Fairy Building Gallery, the West Van Art Museum, and Buckland Southurst Gallery. And so if you go to the West Van Arts Council's website, you can go to the first Thursday's page and you'll be able to have links to all of the exhibitions that they're putting on as part of the art walk. There's really wonderful artwork to see in your community that you can experience from the comfort room home. I know the library has a bunch of other links to some other great exhibitions across the North Shore, not just in West Vancouver. So to get on with tonight, why you're all here, is to hear from these wonderful artists. So first up, we'll just ask each artist to talk a little bit about their work that's on display in these virtual exhibitions and also kind of their work in general. We'll have some slides you will see of their artwork and just let us know what their inspirations are, why they've made this kind of work, and how they became to be associated with our respective galleries. So we're going to start off first with Lori. Yeah, lucky me. So I'm just going to pull up an example of your artwork, Lori. All right. Well, Taryn actually approached me. She saw my work at the Dear Lake Gallery in an exhibition called Revision. It was founded by Ron Simmer, a fellow artist. And, where are you? Lost you. And, oh, great. Okay. And, sorry, one second. And I just lost you again. Okay. And she approached me to ask me if I'd like to participate in the group show at the the library in West Vancouver. And I really love that idea because the type of work that I've been exploring in the last five years, it's really important for the audience who not normally goes to a gallery to be able to see the work. It was the work that's really meant for everyone to enjoy and to experience and to connect to and respond to. And so a public space like that library made a lot of sense, especially when I found out that it was the busiest library in all of Canada. So that inspires me. And so my work is quite eclectic. It's moved in quite a few directions. And in a way, it serves me because it has served me because I've actually intersected them and combined them to create more tension and interest to describe more about what I'm trying to say. Environment has really been an interest of mine from a very young age. Even grade 11, I did a video about pollution. It was based on a Tom Lear song about use your latest toothpaste and wash your mouth with industrial waste. It was on a Super 8. I watched it so many times that I destroyed it. I was so proud of myself. And then over the years, I've been exploring different things about the urban environment and then nature and also just the beauty of a mundane object and mundane views of nature. And I've found that I've been bringing them together and making commentary about our environment. So the two pieces that you see here are kind of two directions that I've been exploring the last few years. One other aspect that has kind of moved in my direction of my work is also the socially engaged side. I like as I said about the library, but I also engage people to make things out of recycled materials and to kind of bring more awareness about the garbage or the waste that they have in their own homes. So the first one on the left, which is called Take Out the Trash, is based on visiting waste management sites and interviewing some of the caretakers and finding out more about how garbage is dealt with in our communities. And then I would document it with my camera, the piles of what I saw around me. I feel there's a bit of a poetic aspect to it, which kind of brings back to the mundane object because I find that what some of the things I've explored about the mundane object is that some people may have this object that two athletes mundane, but for them it has been invested in some sort of meaning or beauty for them. And when I think of these piles and piles of garbage, what are they? They have tossed out objects that at one point had some meaning to the owners. And what are they made out of? They're made out of elements from our own planet that have been through ingenuity transformed into some other objects. But when they go back into these garb, into get discarded, what happens to them? A lot of them don't go back to the original forum. They sit there for hundreds and hundreds of years. And so I became kind of curious about that. So, and then just as an artist and someone who's visually just, I'm just so moved by the objects and what I saw on them, which is all about anything, everything I love about painting, which is lines and shapes and textures and forms.  It's just like going to a candy store. So that inspired me because this brought my painting side of me out and then kind of juxtaposing it with buildings that you see in the background. The other one, so I've been continuing on with these trash piles, but the other side of it is the other part of my exploration is actually using the objects in my work. So plasticized wildlife is that is an example. I've used a single use plastic that has come from my own garbage or packaging instead of that could be garbage. And I've used them onto the canvas. And then I juxtaposed animals that are affected by the plastic that gets thrown out either in landfill or in what we find in our waterways or on our land.  And then I think about, you know, the fish that we and how we consume that and what are we consuming but plastic too because they sound plastic in the animals and the fish. So anyway, so this is being a kind of an exploration of bringing these two together. And I just recently in March of one of the fortunate artists that I went to a residency where I worked with 150 children in small town in Mexico and we created an installation using single use plastic out of garbage. Well, I'm here. That's wonderful. Thank you so much, Laurie. You're welcome. All right. Now I guess we will, we'll move on to, there we go. Just find the fun panels and everything. We're going to move on to Shang Tzu if you want to please talk about some of your wonderful artwork that we're going to see in a minute. Sure. Actually, I had a group exhibition in Kimiq Gallery. Then we had a great opening but we had to lock down because the coronavirus is only halfway. So, but then we have to stay home. So I start to try to think something new and I want to think about what's happening in the world and how I can react to what's happening right now as an artist and how I can speak through my artwork to make a communication with the world. So I create the new paintings. Actually, it's very different from the ones I displayed in the Kimiq. And it's, there's a great opportunity that West Bend Art Council organized a digital exhibit online. So I had another chance to display my artwork, my new artwork. So the online is called Distant Together. Actually, this works, I first painted the middle one, the like the so-called like, and then the flag mask one, then last one the first one. So I found that right now, because of coronavirus, it's like an enemy, like, you know, natural disasters, attacks innocent people. We don't know when we will get it and we don't know who will have it because there's no symptom sometime for some people. And we even don't know where to get it. So it's, we got kind of scared and we, we feel kind of what we, what we cannot do anything to seem to. And then, but we never lost help when I read the news every day through internet. And so many touch stories there. And the people encouraged each other. And I saw new some like young students, they help elder people to buy glossary, lots of famous musician and singers and artists to perform their works for the world, to bring people positive way to look at their life right now. And there is another very touch story about nine, nine years old war hero raised a million for the coronavirus health workers, step by step. So I think with our humility, we are, we are supporting each other and we are very powerful with this kind of support love. And we will go through this successful successfully later. I mean, I'm so happy to show my work through the digital exhibit. And thanks for the galleries and all the creators and the workers, their effort to make this happening, to use art to reconnect our together again and bring some joy for time for us. Thank you. Totally. Awesome. Great. Thank you, Sue. Awesome. And so next, next we'll hear a little bit from, from Eric. Awesome. So yeah, so please, Eric, let's, let's hear about your. Thanks, Stephen. And also, I'd like, first off, I'd like to start with thanking both you and Taren and the West Bank Community Arts Council, West Bank Library for giving us the opportunity to be here and for creating the virtual exhibits. It's quite, it's a great opportunity in, in these times when things are a little bit difficult in a number of ways. These are the four pieces that I put in here, the two on the top are quite large and two on the bottom are quite small. The one on the upper left is the one that is in the Distance Together exhibit. This was not done for that exhibit. It's the second painting of five currently in an exhibit that I called the Aspera. This one was called, the painting is called His Continuity. The Aspera, for people who might be unfamiliar with the term, the way I'm using it really just refers to the migration of the people from their native land and their original, original land. And historically, this has happened over and over and over again, and it's not going to stop. So there's these migrations of the results of wars and famines, you know, economic circumstances and you name it, and environmental change. And I think those things aren't really going to stop. So we're going to continue seeing this sort of thing. So there's a lot of relevance I think in the concept and also in basically a lot of relevance in the past and the future. The painting itself is specifically inspired by my parents' journey and experience in the late stages of the Second World War, when they had the Estonia, when the Soviet Union was coming into occupy the country. This was a pretty good decision on their part. The Estonians didn't lead for 50 years. So it worked out to be the right decision. It wouldn't have ended well at this stage there. In any rate, I've used here, there's quite a bit of symbolism in this painting, but I've used the flag color for some Estonian flag, which is the blue, black, and white. And there's, and also in here, there's the Canadian flag color. So back then, I'm sure Stephen and Karen aren't familiar with this, but we had the Red Ensign, that's our flag, not the Maple Leaf. And basically, the name of this is discontinuity. It's trying to show a sudden change and not particularly pleasant change in some things in the middle. I think it's kind of a dark painting in a lot of ways, but most of my work is quite optimistic, although maybe not what's shown here. And that's mitigated a little bit by the fact that the surface that this is painted on is really scoured with molding pastes. It really reflects light in a lot of really interesting ways. It makes it a bit more visually appealing. The colors themselves are appealing. So the bottom line is, while this is a terrible story for anyone that has to go through it, it's not necessarily the worst thing. There are some upsides to this sort of thing, as well. So next painting over to the right, another urban environment scene, I looked at Lori's painting when I first saw it. I said, yeah, those are the same buildings? This is a very stylized view from the sixth floor of Georgia Street. I painted this in February not because of COVID-19, but in fact, basically as an examination of some urban issues. I was trying to lay out the issues that exist and successes that we've had in our current environment and what's going on. It wasn't trying to be particularly judgmental, but there's a lot of things that we've been kind of struggling to work out over a number of years in the lower mainland. And there's a number of things in the words here that are probably quite difficult to read that have been real big successes. So it makes Vancouver and North Shore really livable places and wonderful, but man, we've still got a lot going on. I love the composition I ended up with, however, especially in the world of COVID. It seemed to be a little more relevant, and there's even a greater, another narrative here in that I left the streets free of people and street feet trees. I agonized for a while when I was doing this, whether to put them in, but I decided that would take away from what, you know, really what the issues I'm trying to, you know, bring to the surface a little bit without actually making any judgments about. So I thought that it's a really, it's a cool-looking painting in the current environment and seems to have some resonance with what we've been going through for the last while. And the two on the bottom, these are from a series that I've been working on for a number of years, so I do two or three of these a year. And this is called Windows Into, is the name of the series. And they're really about things that appeal to people, is really what this is all about. And it may not be that easy to see that in here, but what we've got here is the, you know, the colors, and this is silver leaf on the side. They're really, when you see them live and framed up, they're really radiant and they really attract your attention. You know, they, you know, they give people a lot of, there's a lot of enjoyment associated with this, which is something that people feel that people, there's also structure in these things quite a bit, and people need that. It's a good thing. The palette knife work is really free, which is something that, you know, I think is very appealing. And then there's this window in all of them, which the series is named after. What I'm really trying to do here is create a little bit of movement around the picture plane and through the picture plane and back to just create a little bit of mystery, just get people thinking a little bit. And some of them, you know, really do invites and introspection more than others. But that's really what this is all about. Just I'm having, I'm not always feeling really negative is what I'm saying. These are supposed to be fun and enjoyable and just make you think a little bit smile as well. That's, that's it. That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. I'll just give everyone watching a little reminder that if you want to ask any questions of any of our artists, you can type that in at the bottom of your screen. There's a little Q&A icon. That's where you can type in questions for our wonderful artists and hopefully we'll be able to get to some of them. Okay. All right. So we heard a little bit about this, but why don't we hear from each of the artists how, how sheltering in place right now has affected your artistic practice, your career and maybe what are some of the positives that you didn't, didn't anticipate coming out of it? Yeah. Let's start with Laurie. Okay. Oh, well, you know, I returned from Mexico. I think I'd kept cool for a couple of days. I didn't know it was going to be for a couple of months, but I've adjusted on some levels very easily because I am kind of, I isolate myself anyways as a, as a studio artist. So I'm used to that. Here's your question again. Oh, yeah. How is it? I forget the question. You gave three parts of that question. Yeah.  It came down for me. My brain can only handle one at a time. Yeah. So how has, how is the current situation of having to shelter in place? How has that affected your artistic career, your artistic practice, and, and what were some of the positives? All right. Stop right there. All right. So I was coming home to expect that I had four, five, well, one exhibition happened, but four other exhibitions that would be, I'd be traveling to LA, New York, and an exhibition at the Queen Elizabeth Theater here with three, three floors of art and an exhibition up in, in Northern DC. And it all went, it just all stopped. It all, everything was either canceled or postponed. So I was just kind of like running. And then, well, in my mind, I hadn't started running, but I was in that mode. And so everything just kind of had a stop. I was in shock for a bit. But then I, like human beings, we adjust.  I didn't, wasn't missing out on anything either. So what has happened to me is that I've kind of slowed down. And kind of more like simmering and just enjoying my mornings more than I've ever had before. I don't feel like I have to strive for anything. I have, I've, I live alone. So I try to go to bed early because that's probably the toughest time of the day because that's when I need my social physical connection with people. But I get up early and then I enjoy my garden. I've been working in my garden more. And my work has changed in different ways. I've, I'm not, first of all, I had to come up with some ideas of how to bring in an income. And so I have a newsletter and I sent one out and I, I put in a couple of ideas. One of them was an idea because I have a studio full of art that's not going anywhere. And as I said earlier, my work needs to get out there. Part of my process is, is I want people to see my work and to respond to it. So I thought, why don't I create a kind of an idea around that? So I had this idea and I called it oral today for a brighter tomorrow. So what I did is I invited people to come and borrow my work and they could be caretakers. And what I asked in return was be some sort of, it could give me some donation of some sort. So, so far I have 13 pieces out there and they even got testimonials that, you know, to add to more inspiring other people to, to borrow my work. And I'm happy to have them up on their walls.  And so if they need new work, then they could not necessarily maybe afford work in the past. And now they can have beautiful work of mine. And, you know, so that used to be, were prepared for galleries and now they can have them on their walls. So that makes me happy. It makes them happy. The other I decided because I'm an educator that I start teaching online. So that was a huge learning curve. I had to learn Zoom and I had to learn how to set up my studio, but, and I put the word out and in the first week, which was last week, 22 people signed up. And so, yeah. And I'm actually having a hoot because, well, I don't have to clean up my studio or, you know, go somewhere. I could just stay at home and then, and people invite me into their homes and they have everything set up and I can pin them and I can see their work and, and I'm actually connecting to people from all over the world, someone from North Carolina, from Toronto. I just see the potential. I've been enjoying it and I could see I could take that anywhere in the world. So I'm sorry to kind of have a presence online. And I'm getting into video a little bit of things like me video me gardening and taking my camera on my nightly walks and taking photographs. And I think that, oh, and I also got involved in a virtual exhibition. Actually, it wasn't virtual. It's in South, it's in Korea. It's called a virus 20. And it's in South Korea. And what they did is they invited people through Instagram to commit their work. And then they printed it out and put it up on walls in the gallery. And then photographed, videotaped it and put it back on Instagram. So I'm part of a show in South Korea and I have to say I would never have been in that show if it wasn't for. That's great. That's pretty amazing. So I thought I wasn't very busy, but I think I am. Totally. Yeah, let's turn the same question over to you, Su. You mentioned this a little bit when you're talking about your artwork. Yeah, but how's the current situation influenced how you make art, what you make, and what are maybe some positives that have come out of it? It is actually quite disturbing when all the galleries are closed down. So you cannot join the opening, then meet one for people, one for artists. And you couldn't directly communicate with the other artist. That's really disturbing. At the beginning, it's feel uncomfortable. It feels like everything stopped. Then you stay at home and be quiet. And I actually found out a lot that I have time to think about my new works. And some are already planning to do but haven't started. Because I'm a mom too, so before I have to drive my son to after school class. So now I do not have to. He stayed at home too, doing his homework. So I was doing my painting. I have spent a lot of time to create my new works and to think the connection and how I react to this kind of very special problem right now. I hope I can use my artwork to connect and react to what's happening now. And so I created my, I think, very new style of the work. It's very different from the before. So that's really excited. And also I started to react to my group chat. That there are my students and my friends and some people, they are really interested in art. So I started to use online to communicate with them and share my works and other artists' works and introduce some amazing artwork activity with them. So it's great. I didn't feel I lost the contact. Actually there's make more. And I hope my sharing can bring their happiness. And it's really different. But it's, I think it's really interesting after this kind of special, very special period of time. So I think it's good. Yeah. Awesome. Wonderful. Glad you're able to find some inspiration. Yeah. And on to you, Eric, what do you have to say about this? There's been some negatives associated with this for sure. And that I'm not as established as Sue and Laurie. So this was a year where I had, but I really dedicated to, you know, building a network, getting to know people, getting to meet a lot more people in galleries and going through openings and that sort of thing and really making myself a little bit better known than I am. So it was, obviously, that's been a bit of a downer. You know, a lot of the exhibition's been canceled or deferred or gone online and several of the ones that I intended to hope to show in, at least where I was answering calls, simply didn't, haven't happened or won't happen. So that's definitely a bit of a downer. But there's certainly beating upsides. I think artists possibly are a little bit introverted and love spending time in their studios. So it's been, it's been great. I've been able to paint much more than I normally would, like gets pretty busy. So it's been been great. I've done some things that I'm really, really happy with. So that's been good. Also, you know, I've that's been more time with my life, more time in my garden. It's, it hasn't, it's been far from entirely negative. So, you know, that's basically it. I, there's some opportunities lost, but really, in any situation, there are, there's some things that you can make happen, you know, that improve your world. So that's basically it. And I've been, I confess, I haven't been entirely morose the whole time as the others have said. Well, thank you. That's, that's great to hear that in these trying times that you all have been able to find, you know, positives and be able to find inspiration and ways of connecting with people and new ways of doing business and new ways of thinking about your artwork and what it means to you and what it means to your potential audience. I think that's, I think that's really important for people to hear that kind of thing right now and not be so bogged down, you know, with, you know, the doom and gloom and to hear that there's positive things happening. So our last question kind of dovetailed into our first question from the audience, kind of similar. So why don't we just go right to that. So this is your, your Q&A opportunity every once if you have something you want to ask these artists to jump in right now. So I'm just going to paraphrase this question a little bit. It was from, hopefully I don't, trying to say I'm too wrong, but from TU. So basically they were asking, how do you see the current state of isolation affecting these issues and our perspectives on them after everything starts running again? So how do you see arts, what aren't, what role does art play once we reopen? And that's up for anyone. Jump in, anyone. Go ahead. I can start. I was thinking about this a little bit and I was really happy to see the announcement yesterday that says galleries and the library can open as part of the first wave. So definitely looking forward to that.   And, you know, they can be great for community building when it comes right down to it. These are, you know, art galleries, libraries are community hubs. And I think if, you know, if the art community can continue doing things like these online exhibitions and that, you know, opening and getting, meeting the galleries, you know, open as soon as they can. But staying in touch and letting people know you're out there and that the art is out there, I think it can do a world of good. I would like to say add to that. You know, I think art, you know, artists are the soul of our society and that they've really shown up for the, you know, the heart of, for the people and specifically the musicians that it seems like that this online thing has been really leans well for their art expression and has really opened up and kind of lifted a lot of our spirits. I think that artists are inventors, makers, creative, there are the leaders at this time. I think that it's because of, we ask a lot of questions and we're problem solvers. And we think out of the box and I think we're the leaders at this time to find our way out of this. And I do believe that artists will find, not necessarily me, but some brilliant artists will figure out how to create art where physicality is involved. You know, to get off online, but actually have gathering people together in a physical space and to see the art in the physical and the real time and space. I think art is not really necessarily, it's mine, it's not necessarily meant to be on a two-dimensional surface. You don't see, you know, if you experience it and I'd hate to see that not continue. It's important for us to engage with our art. As far as the environment and, you know, where is that going to go? I mean, we're using more plastic. I can't even take my recycle bags to get my groceries. Not to use the plastic yet. Plastic is what the COVID likes. It's not like three days or something. So, you know, it's almost like I'm kind of afraid that the big manufacturers are going to just start producing more and more plastic, you know, because of this. And I just really hope that that doesn't happen. I almost have a bit of a romantic feeling of experience about this time. I'm, I'm afraid that I might lose some of it after we go back to what's, I guess, called normal that we'll forget about all the beautiful things that have happened because of COVID now. So, yeah, I feel sorry for our world planet. Maybe, you know, I don't know, I'm optimistic a little bit. I have to be. It's how I survive, but, you know, the silver lining thing. But I do think artists are the ones that basically, that's my point. Yes. Yes. I actually very excited to hear the news. The gallery will open in the middle of the May and also other kind of restaurant. And I think people can be more active and contact physically directly again. And these are very exciting things. Even we have good time stay at home right now. But I don't think it's a good thing for long period. We still need to keep contact with others physically, not just through internet. And also, I was sad because when everything closed down, I also had a solo exhibition in June that I don't know when I will be. So right now, at least I know maybe delay a little bit, but we still are. That's very good news for me. And I think even when the gallery opened again, I still hope that if we can keep the online data show, I found it's a really interesting way for artists to show their work, not just their community. Maybe there's more people have chance to see your works. And because some people like Lauren mentioned that she can display his work in South Korea, you know, if we just display in the local gallery, only local people can see. But if we open the digital exhibition, then more people can see. And we can share our ideas, our loves of our world. And I think it's a great idea. But definitely, I think physical gallery is very important for us to stay open. Because when you walk in the actual space, you enjoy artwork is very different experience. And even also when you listen in the music in the theater, it's very different from what you listen in the internet. I think it's very important to keep us, you know, gathered again. And of course, we have to be safe, healthy. So I really looking forward to the gallery's opening. Yeah, totally. Yes. Stephen, I'm excited to see where this all goes. Because I know there's people working on it. We're all used to seeing art on walls or in galleries. And now we're having to do it virtually and in different formats. And I'm excited to see where that goes. Are we going to start hooking up to audio visual, like augmented reality, or we, I don't know, someone's working on it somewhere.  Creation is beginning. So we'll see where that all goes. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, new experiences, new ways of experiencing the world, which means new ways of experiencing artwork, and new ways of creating artwork. Yeah, so there's a lot to explore in the coming months and years as we get back to get back to, as Laurie said, quote unquote normal. Okay, so I think I've just got, yeah, we've got time. We've got two more questions here in the chat. OZ asks, Eric, what method did you use to get such depth in the green piece you did? It's all so beautiful, they say. Green piece was... Yeah, all that. Okay, yes, I know the piece. I've got it. Oh, that's basically, there's a silver leaf, which obviously helps. But the rest of it is simply palette knife work with maybe, you know, with quite a bit of medium in it, and it's just an attempt to be really free. And I'm choosing and or mixing colors that are designed to be transparent for this. So there's a certain luminosity. And so it's a combination of the color itself, the amount of medium that goes in there, and the way that it's applied. I have a particular tool that I used to put this on with, and it just allows me to be as smooth or not as I want. So I've been playing with this for a while, and it's something I'm really happy with. Excellent. We've got another... Oh, it's more of a common question, but it's great. Sue says, I think we will all appreciate our artists even more as a result of COVID. There has been so much tremendous artwork to see online, and it has helped to keep us engaged and thinking during this time. Thank you. Well, thank you, Sue. Thank you for mentioning that. That's wonderful that that's touched you in that way. I wanted to just add that if anyone's interested, museums like the Museum of Modern Art are offering free courses in art, and I actually signed up to do one too. And it's really fun, and there's so much to learn, and it's all free. So think about that if you want to engage more in the art. Well, this is something that's shown up that I'm finding that some of the galleries are doing, which are engaging the community in art making ideas, and then also art history, and giving it to people for free, which I totally appreciate. Yeah, that's another silver lining that's come out of this, all the free content. I was going to make a list of resources for the library, and it was just too long, and so I just gave up because it's just amazing. And I wanted to thank all the participants, both attendees and panelists for being open to this new forum, because this is all very new to us. And again, it's not some the way that we usually observe art, but thank you. Yeah. One more question. This is a question for you, Sue. Your pieces have small silhouettes of people in two of them. Can you elaborate on why you chose to make them silhouettes and not fully fleshed out characters? I feel right now that it's, you know, the environment is full of the coronavirus. I feel we are living in the shadow. So I just use very simple, like great people. It's more like we like very feel like very upset and very anxious and very scared and very down mood for the people, because we are right now living in the shadow. We try to, you know, try to find a way to out, but at the same time, the hoping is still very colorful. So I think we, you know, in our heart, we still have carried a lot of hope, love to like support each other. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. And there was a question for Lori. Could you comment on the piece of art behind you? And is it one of yours? Well, I like to say that I would like to be a collector of other people's art, but I collect my own. Yes, it is mine. And it is, see the whole thing, but basically it is, actually came from my own personal experience I had of taking, my son had a car, his first car, in the last, I think, three months, and it had to be recycled. And so they have a program in the city where you take it to this recycling plant. So I went out with him. And in the distance, there was, you know, nature and then this pile of metal, but I actually made it into, it's not really metal, it's a collage. So it's a collage painting based on that experience. And again, that neon aura around there is me kind of saying, you know, it's still alive, it's still moving, it still has energy, and it's a bar of waste. And just kind of juxtaposing it with this beautiful nature and making a statement of what we're doing to our environment. It's about a 60 by 30 inch. That's great. Awesome. Thank you. It's great. As you can see, all of our artists have pieces of their work behind them. So it's cool to get a sneak peek into their studio and see more of their work. So I think that's about all the time we have from the Q&A. It's getting close to time to wrap up. So I'd just like to say that, you know, thank you all for showing up again, because it's important that you have come to watch this and to experience this and support the arts because art is really, you know, it's critical to the health and vitality of our community. You know, these three artists and all of the artists around the world are providing, you know, an important service to us by sharing their work. You know, their artwork can stimulate our imaginations, make us ask questions, inspire new ideas, inspire action, offer us hope, reflect what we're feeling, make us look into other people's points of view. So it's, it is, it's really a service. So thank you so much for showing up and experiencing this with us. So as we're kind of wrapping up, I'll kind of remind everyone that once again, check out the rest of the art walk. As it were, the online art walk, you can go to WestVanArtsCouncil.ca and you'll have a list of all of the galleries participating in the art walk. Once again, it's the Arts Council, the West Vancouver Memorial Library, the West Vancouver Art Museum, the Fairy Building Gallery, and Bucklin Southerst Gallery. And also go to the library's website to see even more examples of, they've got another list of other exhibitions happening in the North Shore. And I'll just, I'll remind everyone, anyone who registered, I'll be sending out a resource list of all these links, everyone's websites, Instagrams, whatever we talked about tonight, you'll, you'll get a link to it. Yeah, totally. So you can enjoy this again and again. And yeah, we'll have this, we've been recording this evening. So this whole panel will be available in the next few days. So you can watch it again and again and share it with people who maybe weren't able to register for tonight. They can hear these wonderful conversations and see these amazing works of art. And stay tuned, we may have more programming coming up. Yes, the art walk, we're planning something in for June. So we'll see what that will be. Yeah. So please stay tuned to the Arts Council and the library and see what we have coming up. Now, for our wonderful artists, where can people find you if they want to look for more of your artwork? Any websites or social media you'd like them to follow? They could buy me on www.lorygoberg.ca. I'm on Instagram and Facebook. And here. Thank you so much for everything, by the way. I really appreciate that you invited me. And then I got to be part of this lovely panel discussion. And I'm at www.erickbarton.ca. And I'm also on Instagram as Eric Barton. Yeah, I use Instagram and Facebook. My Instagram name is xianxu.com. One more comment here in our questions. And it says, hooray for librarians too. I would also like to thank the support of the District of West Vancouver and the West Vancouver Community Foundation with this art walk project and art walk talk. Both big, big supporters, lots of resources. And they've been doing a lot of really great work in our community always, and especially right now. And it's supporting not only the arts, but plenty of other wonderful organizations as well. I'd also like to thank all the participants. It's because of you that this floods, I think, a success. So thank you very much. And especially once again, Karen and Stephen for all the work you put in. And once again, thank you to everyone watching right now. We wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for you if we didn't think there was a need for you to experience this. So thank you and hopefully we'll all talk again soon. So take care and yeah, look out for that resource page that the library will be sending out.  Thanks so much and enjoy your night. Thank you for spending the first part of it with us.


Vint Cerf, first of all, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us. Let me ask you, in terms of ICANN's historical relationship with the U.S. government, what are some of the key points that stand out in your mind? Well, setting aside the long history of the Internet's relationship or the government's relationship to the development of the Internet, when we get to ICANN, there were preceding activities starting around 1996 that led to government interest in the ICANN idea. That was a consequence of John Postel's effort to manage the domain name system, IP address allocation, and editing the RFCs, the request for comments, which document the standards for the Internet protocols, and also managing the various tables of parameters that were needed to exercise those protocols. So John did all of that. He had some help at USC Information Sciences Institute. But as the domain name system became more and more commercial, which is post-1992, there were increasing amounts of potential risk, at least as seen by USC and their lawyers, that somehow this commercialized activity and disputes over domain names would somehow draw the university into all kinds of commercial. So risk litigation wise you mean? Risk of litigation. So I think they put some pressure on John to look for a way to institutionalize the activity outside of USC. On top of that, I think John recognized, he'd been doing this for 25 or more years, that someday he wouldn't be able to do it, and that he ought to have an institutional setting for this to continue, because if it was going to do any good, it had to go on for an unknown amount of time. And the irony, of course, of all this is that starting in 1996, John begins this exploration of how to institutionalize it and then passes away in 1998. So part of the institutionalization exploration involves something called the Internet AdHoc group or committee, I guess, IAHC. IAHC, yeah. And that, you could see watching the various interactions that there were dollar signs in people's eyes, and it was clear that there was a certain amount of greed driving the debate back and forth. Ultimately, two things happened. One of them is that John attempted, I think, in response to the IAHC to consider creating an institution in Geneva. After all, that's the home of many international organizations, and this surely, even then, was recognized as an international phenomenon. And the second thing is that John was, this is at least my interpretation, John wanted to test the root zone management system to make sure that if the A route wasn't the one that was feeding all the rest, but if it was B or C or something else, that it would still work. Now, that's one explanation. Some other people asserted that John asked to change the feeding primary root zone just to exercise his power. I don't believe that because that's not John's style. He was worried about making sure that systems would be resilient. But as soon as he made the change to have the root servers fed from a different server than the A route, all hell broke loose, and the government stepped in. There was also already some stirring in the Congress about the possibility of the control of the Internet escaping out of the country to Switzerland. Let me interrupt you for one second. That incident that you just related to me when John had done this and the consternation it caused in the U.S. government, I had heard, and tell me whether or not this was true, that magazineer had actually threatened John and said, if you don't switch this back, U.S. Marshals are going to be at your door. Is that true or is that a fiction? Well, I don't have primary knowledge of that. Have you heard of it? That story has been around. And I think at least the part about Ira Magazineer contacting John is almost certainly true. You may have a chance to ask Ira about that in the course of these interviews. And I think that would be an interesting question to ask. I'm pretty sure that that sounds real. Whether he threatened U.S. Marshals or something else, I don't know. But it is often thought that that action triggered Clinton's request of Magazineer to go figure out how to deal with this problem. Who is going to manage the domain name system and the address allocation? Who is going to perform the IANA functions if it's not under contract to the U.S. government? Did the government, the way you're talking, the government immediately understood the value of the DNS? It sounds like there was no education necessary. They got it. I think in the Clinton administration, very senior people got it, including Al Gore. And certainly, I think Ira was tasked with figuring out what to do. And there was also a belief that responsibility for Internet should migrate towards the private sector. And this had been going on for some years well ahead of this particular period of time, way before the IANA system. What was the genesis of that belief? I mean, was it there automatically? Did you guys help push that? Did John push that? Or was it just there? Did everyone accept it? John was not particularly interested in commercializing the Internet. But as far back as 1988, I was. At that point, I had been away from the government for about six years because I left DARPA late 1982. But by 1988, you could see the significant beginnings of commercialization. By this time, Cisco Systems existed, maybe Juniper by that time, certainly Proteon, people making equipment that would let you build pieces of Internet. There was a show called Interop that was founded by Dan Lynch, who had been the guy running the computer centers at USC, ISI, and before that, SRI International. Interop was an exhibition that allowed companies to show off their hardware and show that it inter-worked on the show net, the Ethernet. And also just teach people about how to write TCPIP and other protocols. So it was actually a very successful enterprise. At some point, he filled the Moscone Center with 50,000 people. So by 1988, this is an ongoing and thriving concern. And I remember walking in to Interop Show in 88 with Eric Benamu, who at the time was the CEO of 3Com, a company founded by Bob Medcamp. And I saw this giant Cisco display. And I turned to Eric and I said, how much do those cost? And he said, a quarter of a million dollars. And he said, that's not counting the people that you have to pay to man the booth for a week. And I just stood there with my jaw dropping, thinking, my God, some people think this is going to make money. And then I thought, how the hell are we going to get internet into the hands of the general public?  But general public didn't have access. So at that point, I started pushing for steps that would allow the internet to become a self-supporting commercial enterprise in the expectation that the only way the general public would get access to it would be if it had an economic engine driving it. And by good fortune, by 1989, we managed to break the appropriate use policy limitations. It said no commercial traffic on the government backbones. NSF actually allowed me to connect MCI mail up to the internet while I was working with Bob Conn at CNRI. So and as soon as we did that, we announced that all the other email carriers said, well, you want to be connected. And then three commercial internet services popped up, UUNET, PSINET, and Surfnet on San Diego. So by 1989, we're starting to see commercialization. By 1992, we're starting to see commercialization of the domain name system because Network Solutions asked for permission to charge for domain name registration and the National Science Foundation under which contract the Network Solutions guys were operating recognized that they were spending research dollars on what really looked like a commercial enterprise supporting the private sector. And so they said, OK, you should charge for that. Nobody knew quite how much to charge for it, so they said $50 a year for two years. And if there was any excess money, it would go into a fund that would be used to support further research on internet. Well, the Republican part of the Congress didn't like that because they claimed it was an illegal tax. The then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Sensenbrenner, argued that it was an illegal tax and the National Science Foundation didn't have the authority to do that. So there was a lot of hoo-ha going on in the policy regarding internet well in advance of the IAHC question. So there was visibility about internet and its commercialization and oversight well ahead of this. Then the IAHC, two years' worth of turmoil and proposals to go to Geneva happened. And John does this swap and it triggers what in effect is an avalanche and what comes out is a green paper from Ira Magaziner's office followed by a white paper. Explain the green paper for those who are not familiar with it. Ira consulted with a lot of people, including me, and then produced an outline of what the transfer of authority to the private sector could look like. And so the green paper was a proposal for what that would look like and there was lots of comments which led to the white paper and the white paper was the basis upon which the ICANN organization was proposed. And so Ira is sort of being the midwife, if you like, for the birth of this organization. Now there were competitors, if I remember correctly, here, I don't have a clear recollection of who else was competing, but ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Ames and Numbers, was one of the competitors and was selected to perform this function under contract to now the National Telecommunications and Information Agency. So we're seeing a transfer of responsibility for this from the National Science Foundation and the research community to part of the Department of Commerce. And this is in keeping with the recognition that this is becoming a highly commercial activity. But there was, it sounds like the way you're talking, what I'm hearing is there was a general consensus of this needs to happen. It was form and function that was being debated and a variance? Well, yes, let me say that the parties who were engaged in the ad hoc group had one model of this, which was complete commercialization and independence. The government had a slightly different view, which was the government hangs on to control of this with contracts, with verisign, with contracts, which had acquired network solutions, and contracts with the new organization, ICANN. And in fact, it was a cooperative agreement with verisign and a memorandum of understanding, plus a contract with ICANN. And all of that comes to fruition in 1998. And by September of 1998 or October, ICANN is formally created. How specific was, was the White Paper problematic event, I mean, how specific was it in helping you guys maneuver to this new territory? Well, it was very specific with regard to the way in which the organization would be run. It said nothing about funding, which I found to be problematic. And it had dictated a certain amount of structure to the organization. So there would be, it was supposed to be multi-stakeholder, but the stakeholder groups were defined in the White Paper. The process by which board members were elected was also defined in the paper, including that half of the board should be elected by some kind of a global election.  How do you qualify the electorate? How do you reach them? You can't rely on the postal service. You can't rely on the internet. And that sort of detail was not there, it was not in the document? The detail of implementing it wasn't, but the assertion that, you know, in order to assure that the constituencies, the so-called special, you know, the interest groups would not dominate the board.  Let's back up over one thing. You touched what I think and kind of skimmed over. It seems like a major point. There wasn't a provision for a funding model. There was no funding model, none. So I ended up, I was not involved in the formation of ICANN. I was present at the first board meeting during the period when they were trying to find a CEO. And I was there to, in fact, endorse Mike Roberts as the first CEO of ICANN. So I sat in on that part of the meeting. There was no funding model, and I remember undertaking to try to get funding. I donated money from MCI where I was senior VP. I think IBM and at least one other maybe was digital. I actually don't remember who all the three parties were, but I think they put money into this organization. Because it was a tin cup model at the beginning. And then there was this struggle, which Mike Roberts and Louis Tutan, the general counsel and others, had to go through in order to figure out what business model would make sense. Where would the money come from? Would it come from the registries? Would it come from the registrars? Would it come from the IP address allocation community, Aaron and Ripe NCC, for example? And so eventually, with a great deal of effort, a funding model was developed. But at the beginning, the government offered no resources for this organization at all. It was a zero cost procurement contract from NTIA to ICANN to run the IANA function, the thing which John Postela had been doing. And everything else was left to the organization to figure out. So the white paper's done. What is magazineer's role after the white paper's done? Did he step out? Is he still? My understanding is that Ira stepped away. At that point, the NTIA was the responsible government agency. So he had handed this off from the White House. This is sort of Bill Clinton says, get this off my plate. Ira does the green paper, the white paper, and finally hands this thing off to NTIA inside of the Department of Commerce. So the undersecretary or the assistant secretary of NTIA becomes the responsible government authority. Prior to that handoff to DOC, and I assume you're talking figuratively, but how high up? I mean, we all know about the famous phrase of Gore saying, I invented the internet. How high up in the Clinton administration was this situation being monitored? Was there concern? Or do you know? I would have to, well, speculate, but I also need to correct the assertion that you just made. Al Gore never said, I built the internet. He was misrepresented in that campaign, and I will withhold the rent that I normally go through on this point. He actually helped a lot. When he was vice, when he was senator, he helped the past legislation that funded the National Research and Education Network, which turned into the NSF man. This is something which connected 3,000 universities in the United States and paid for international connections to other similar research and education networks elsewhere in the world. So he should get big credit for his actions as a senator. When he was vice president, he helped to pass legislation which allowed the flow of commercial traffic on government-sponsored backbones. The thing that I had gotten permission to do in 1988, but only as a sort of one-year experiment. And so Al gets credit as vice president for helping to give birth to what is today the internet. Remember that he answered that question in the year 2000. This was during the Dot Boom period from 1995 when Netscape Communications had its spectacular IPO to the Dot Bust in April of 2000. He was asked during his campaign for the presidency what he had done as senator. And he said, I took the initiative in creating the internet. And he's referring to the internet of the present, which is a consequence of his actions, both to fund the NSF Net backbone and also to allow this commercial activity. It sounds like from the get-go, the concept of the privatization, allowing the private sector to have a leadership role in the management of the DNS. It sounds like everybody bought into that. What I'm hearing you say is there wasn't a lot of opposition. Well, actually, so now let's go back in time. It's 1988. I'm arguing that we should turn this into an economic engine that's self-supporting so everybody can get access to it. And my colleagues in the research community are mostly saying, are you crazy? Why would you let the refract onto our thing? And my reaction was they will benefit from it and they will contribute to it. So we didn't agree on that. On the other hand, certainly at the top of the administration during the Clinton years, there was belief, I think, by Bill and by Al and by Ara and by others. Ara had written a paper on digital commerce or something, or electronic commerce, which in a sense outlined the importance of networking and computer communications to electronic commerce, e-commerce. And so it was, and that was a piece of work commissioned by Bill Clinton. So I would say that at the top of the U.S. government, there was awareness of the potential here. You heard Al talk about the information superhighway. He's remembering what his father had done with the 1954 act that created the Interstate Highway Act, which you may remember was a military act intended to allow us to move missiles around on the road system to keep the Russians from targeting fixed silos. That was never used for that. But it initiated this gigantic economic boom. And I think Al saw at the time the potential for this information superhighway to do the same thing. Interesting. Throughout, from the beginning, when ICANN was formed in 1998 up through present day, what was the most problematic points in your mind in the USG's relationship with ICANN? Oh, so you're asking about the relationship as opposed to problematic things for ICANN in general, which is fine. Let me try to answer that, and then we can go back. So with regard to the relationship, I think that the most troubling thing, in my view, was the nature of the procurement contract under which ICANN functioned. It was as if ICANN were the supplier of pencils. Literally, the contract had this character that was like, for no money, $0, please supply us with IANA functions. Which meant inventing new processes and procedures, growing the staff in order to support this, dealing with the explosion of demand for domain names and internet addresses. And also, by the way, working in a very complex environment with multiple organizations having responsibility for various parts of this system. ICANN allocated, for example, big chunks of the internet address space to the regional internet registries. RIPE NCC in Europe, ARIN in the US, and later three others, LACNIC, NAPRNIC, and APNIC. And so ICANN had to work with these other independent institutions in a cooperative way in order to make sure that the domain names and the internet addresses got uniquely allocated. So this was a hard thing to do. It's global in scope. This is not just a thing in the US. And there was no model to follow at that point, correct? No, they're plowing new ground, as far as I can see, especially the multi-stakeholder model, which has morphed over time as we've learned more about how to make that work. So I think that the view from the Department of Commerce of this as a procurement contract made it much more difficult for ICANN to function. There would be arguments of the forum, well, I'm sorry, we can't change this contract or we'll have to recompete the contract if you want to change it. Re-competition of this complex thing, I think, would potentially be incredibly damaging to the internet's function. So I thought that was a testy kind of interaction. Until Larry Stirkling comes along, who still has his own form of testiness, but he was the most articulate supporter of the multi-stakeholder model and of ICANN, of all of the assistant secretaries. Because he believed in it conceptually? He believed, I think he absolutely believed that this multi-stakeholder model was the right way in which to deal with policy for the internet. And he put his career on the line, in my opinion, during the period that he served as the head of NTIA. And he argued forcefully and loudly in international settings, including the Internet Governance Forum and the W, what's called WICCIT, the World Conference on Information. Yeah, WICCIT, yeah. So he was a huge friend, even though he was a tough friend, but he was a huge sponsor. That was probably the most positive period of relationship that I can remember. When we talked to Larry Stirkling, he said that the WICCIT meeting in 2012 was to him a sort of wake-up call that the IANA stewardship transition had to occur, that it was time. Do you see it that way? Absolutely. What happened there is that there was a constant drumbeat from the non-U.S. participants, both in ICANN and in the ITU, for the U.S. government to relinquish its special responsibility or special authority over the Internet. And it was just, it was a, the ITU had a leader at the time who really wanted to take responsibility for Internet. He was going to deliver that to the ITU. This is Hamadoum Turei. And so there was a persistent theme coming from the ITU to invade the territory of responsibility that was at ICANN. And the usual excuse for this was why should the U.S. government have this special role compared to all other governments? And that was getting in the way of State Department negotiations on other matters. So it had resonance. So absolutely. And so during the Wicked meeting in 2012, it was evident that there were attempts being made by particularly the, you know, the Russians, the Chinese, the South Africans, even the Brazilians and maybe the Saudis to capture more control. And then the end result of that meeting was a disagreement, a split between 89 countries that signed the treaty and 55 that didn't. And there could not be a more visible schism in the international community than that. And I think that the crux of this was the U.S. special relationship with ICANN. And I think putting words in Larry's mouth that that caused him to recognize the need to make this transition. And then the question is how to do it in a way that didn't harm the Internet and didn't harm, you know, U.S. interests. Was the controversy that surrounded dot triple X a sort of test of the USG's relationship with ICANN? It has been argued by some, I'd like your take on this, that the government, some say more harshly, some say very subtly, tried to influence the decision on dot triple X. How do you see that? The government, well let's say NTIA in particular, since they had a very direct relationship with ICANN, during a Republican administration was inundated with objections to the creation of a dot triple X top level domain. And to be fair about it, there are other parts of the world who also didn't think it was a good idea. So it's not like the U.S. or NTIA was unique in that respect. Yeah, there was pressure of varying sorts to try to get that decision not made or to try to prevent the dot triple X from being assigned, including there was a possibility that if dot triple X had been approved that the U.S. government in the form of NTIA would actually force it to be removed from the route. This would have been an absolutely horrible precedent to set. It would be the worst possible precedent that you could ever have happened because as soon as that happened, everyone else who complained that the U.S. government could do that and would do that would say C. That's what we told you. They didn't do that. And I think it was wise not to because it would have given credibility to the argument that the government would, for example, decide, well let's pull RU out. Or, you know, we don't like what Iran has done recently. Let's pull them out of the route zone. And so thank God they didn't do that. But you could see scenarios unfolding which would lead to really serious problems. That whole controversy, this issue dot triple X was fairly well publicized. Yeah. Were there other times when the U.S. government or DOC had a sort of difficult time with ICANN or vice versa that are not so widely known? Actually, I don't think it will. There were stressful moments as we worked our way through the DNS act, the cryptographic signing of the route zone, working through the details of that. The particular mechanism that was finally agreed, in my opinion, was less secure than if ICANN did all of it. But they split the functionality between ICANN and Verisign. And I didn't think that was the best security solution. But I didn't have the vote at the time. So that's one thing. The other thing which was a struggle was the Treasury Department's OFAC. The Office of Foreign, I forget what the AC stands for, but it has to do with any transfer of funds to foreign governments. Any assistance that you might give to a government that was on the bad list, terrorist list, for example. So OFAC had the ability to intervene and inhibit any action by an American corporation that would be seen as aiding terrorism. So as an institution that was supposed to cater to the entire Internet, including the country codes of countries that were labeled terrorist companies, you would run a file of this. An argument would be made. I'm sorry, you can't update the pointer to the Iranian.IR top level domain because that's assisting the foreign government. Our position at ICANN, at least the one I took, was that this is a global system and we owe integrity to all of the participants in the system, regardless of what the U.S. government might have thought. And I remind you that even in the course of the tense relationship between the U.S. and Cuba, the U.S. permitted telephone communications to occur. There was a contract. MCI might have been one of the contractors. But there was always a way to communicate. And in my view, this is a very important diplomatic channel and the Internet is another one. And so to arbitrarily cut that off for some political reason is a big policy mistake, in my view. And did you win that argument? Well, I don't think I was the one making an argument with OFAC. I think in the end, we managed to get through all of the controversies. And as far as I know, nothing got blocked indefinitely. But there were periods of time when things took a lot longer than they should have. Interesting. When Strickling made the announcement in 2014 that the IANA stewardship transition was they wanted the community to come up with a proposal to make that happen, there was a lot of talk about ICANN's maturation. ICANN had matured to the point where this should happen. Is that an oversimplification? In fact, could it have occurred earlier? Or is that an accurate statement? That's a really interesting question. ICANN is a very complicated organization and it got more complicated over time. This is theorem number 206. Everything is more complicated. And ICANN has had the ability to amend its operation to change its organizational structures and its procedures. It creates new entities at need. And so it ends up being kind of a barnacle and crusted ship. And so it's a complicated object to deal with. It has had to change its mechanisms over the course of the 18 years or now 19 that it's existed about 18 and a half. So could it have happened sooner? I think the answer is yes. I think that the transition as we now see it with all of the various elements that went into that, including new functionality and new authorities, probably could have happened sooner. But it would not have happened and could not have happened had Larry Strickling not decided that it should happen. Strickling was instrumental. Absolutely. I mean this would not have happened if he had not asserted that he was prepared to support that if a proposal came back that met the criteria that he had established. That raises an interesting issue. We're talking about the US government's relationship with ICANN. Predominantly we've been talking about NTIA, the executive branch. The Hill, Capitol Hill, has always seemed concerned about letting ICANN go, if you will, to use a vastly oversimplified phrase. Why? So the simple explanation for this is rooted in another example, which I'd like to offer you. When the World Summit on the Information Society was proposed by the ITU, it was convened as an intergovernmental activity in 2003. And the first question that the delegates had was, what's an information society? And somebody said, oh it's kind of like the Internet. The next question was, who's in charge of the Internet? Because they didn't believe anything on that scale even in 2003 could possibly operate without having central control. So we all said, well actually it's distributed, nobody's really in charge. Then they discovered ICANN, which has this responsibility for allocating Internet addresses and domain names in a unique way. To make sure the parameters of the Internet are uniquely allocated. And so they decided ICANN must be in charge of the Internet. Then they said, who's in charge of ICANN? Of course I'm chairman of the board at the time. But they also noticed that there is this contract between ICANN and NTIA. Oh, so it's the US government that's in charge of the Internet. That's the international view coming out of the World Summit on the information society. And to make that particular story a little shorter, after two cycles of this World Summit, they still can't quite figure out what does Internet governance mean. And so they have this working group on Internet governance, which doesn't come to any conclusions after two years. So they create the Internet Governance Forum, but it's created as a multi-stakeholder forum where civil society and the technical community and the academics and governments in the private sector all meet and have essentially equal footing in the debates and discussions that ensue. That was dramatic, because that's gone from the Intergovernmental World Summit to the Internet Governance Forum, which is multi-stakeholder. That was a very important thing, and that's been going on now since 2007. Now to take that point about who's in charge of the Internet. I think that the US Congress had this view that the Internet was created in the United States by the US Defense Department, and therefore somehow the US owns the Internet. Even though when Bob Kahn and I did the original designs, we handed them out freely with no constraints, no patents, no other intellectual property claims for very good reason. We wanted this to be accepted with no barriers to adoption. So the members of Congress, especially the more conservative ones, see the US as the creator and owner of the Internet. We made it, we own it. Yeah, we made it, we own it. Therefore, handing any authority for it out of US government control is somehow an abrogation of our ownership and our control, as if to say that the US controlled the Internet, which clearly does not. In that context, let me ask you this question. Strickling announces 2014. I want to propose that we want to make the IANA stewardship transition happen. It's concluded in 2016. Let me pose the question to you that I posed to Strickling. At any point between that announcement and when it finally happened, did you ever think, this is just not, I know you weren't directly involved, but you were part of the community, you follow it closely, was there ever any point where you thought this is not going to happen? Yeah, pretty much every day. It was very clear that, first of all, it was getting, it was very hard to get the community to come together. It split into three parts. The technical part, the Internet engineering task force was ready instantly. They prepared all their documents to have them ready to go. The registries with a little more work also prepared documents that showed how they would operate in the absence of the NTIA presence. They didn't have any direct interaction with NTIA anyhow. They were dependent on ICANN handing out these big blocks, but that was it. So that wasn't too bad. Five different organizations had to agree. So they got their work done on time as well. The domain name world, however, is rife with all kinds of incentives for various and some of the policies to be adopted. The domainers, the people who own millions of domain names, one of you, the other registries have another and the registrar has yet another. It took months and months way beyond the deadline to get that all sorted out. So while that was in a great state of flux, I would think, you know, this is never going to happen because it was so hard to get that part of the agreement done. And then, of course, right up at the end, we had attempts by attorneys generals and by Senator Cruz and others to try to block the transition from happening. And so those periods were really tough because it wasn't clear whether their actions would have traction or not. And so it was a miracle when it went through. Final question. In summary, how would you characterize the historical relationship between the government, the U.S. government and ICANN? I think that from the period of formation in 1998 to the time of Larry Strickling's ascendance as the assistant secretary for NTIA, that it was either largely neglected because there were other issues that NTIA had to deal with. They have a much broader responsibility than just overseeing ICANN. Serious interference with the ability of the organization to get its work done. And so I always found it to be a problematic relationship and not a very supportive one. And in spite of that, I am proud of the fact that ICANN has managed to survive in spite of all that. And again, it's not a perfect organization by any stretch and there's still a good work to be done that can be done because even under its current structure in the post-transition, there is room for improvement and there are mechanisms for improvement. And it's capable of doing that because I oversaw several major changes to its organizational structure. That's great. Vince, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Pleasure.


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DeFi's goal has been to bank the unbanked. So far it has been mostly used by geeks. What do you think DeFi, when do you think DeFi will penetrate the truly unbanked? I'm not sure the truly unbanked want to be penetrated David, but we'll take that question at face value. All right, so if DeFi's goal is to bank the unbanked, you know, I think that may be the stated goal. More broadly it's about making broader availability of financial services and the way DeFi achieves that is by removing intermediaries and gatekeepers that traditionally have been barriers to economic inclusion. So this is how to think about it conceptually and the same thing applies both to DeFi as well as the broader space of cryptocurrencies, including of course Bitcoin, which is that one of the main reasons people are excluded from having access to financial services is because organizations that have complex relationships of counterparty risk with lots of intermediaries tend to be very risk averse and because a lot of that risk has to do with kind of human decisions about how plugged in you are to the economic system, it's a lot easier to just exclude large numbers of people based on relatively arbitrary criteria. And this is the world we live in where billions of people have very limited access to financial services because it doesn't serve the interests of the banks, the investment banks, the financial services organizations to include these people. And so the whole purpose of cryptocurrency I think is to extend financial services to those who don't have it by removing those who get in the way by demanding identity, credit, documentation and all of these things that can be enormous and insurmountable barriers, not just for people who live deep in the Amazonian basin or in sub-Saharan Africa or places like that, but also even in places like the United States, people who are not part of the mainstream, that includes for example undocumented immigrants, includes the homeless, try opening a bank account when you don't have a permanent address and see how well that goes. All of these are really difficult problems to solve and one of the easiest solutions is to simply not require any proof of identity and to extend financial services. This is aspirational. Now let's talk about the reality. In reality DeFi is not banking the unbanked at the moment, except perhaps in a few very narrow cases with a few of the more simpler aspects of DeFi. For example, stablecoins that are pegged to national currency that is broadly recognized and used as a unit of account like the US dollar, such as DAI from MakerDAO, which is a decentralized stablecoin and one of the foundational blocks of DeFi has some very interesting applications for the unbanked because it allows them to get into cryptocurrencies in a way that doesn't expose them to a wild volatility of markets vis-a-vis their national currency. So from that perspective it may make things a bit easier in the current environment where cryptocurrencies are still quite volatile because of their limited liquidity. So that's an example where it might work, but beyond that let's be honest. At the moment DeFi requires a lot of understanding, the technology is still immature and prone to problems, risks, and bugs, security bugs and potential catastrophic security bugs and the user interfaces for using DeFi are not yet mature and this is something that applies to all of crypto in general. So I think the difference between the vision and the reality may be as much as a decade of polishing and maturing the interfaces, broadening access, increasing liquidity, reducing volatility, maturing the underlying security of the smart contracts and building more and more robust infrastructure so that it can be more broadly applied. That's okay, that doesn't mean the vision is unachievable, it simply means we have to be more patient with what is a very new and very radical departure from business as usual.