Hi everybody. So I'm Matt. So thanks for having me here. I just wanted to come up here because I got a miracle from God. I wanted to share it with everybody. I basically got delivered from 28 years of functional alcoholism. Four months ago. And among other things, there were some porn issues as well. And that's all gone. I haven't even thought about it.  So I grew up with a great set of parents. When I was six years old, I remember my mom prayed with me to accept Jesus in my heart. So I started early. And I just remember the feeling of warmth that came over me when I did that and always remember that. And as I grew older, the drinking was huge in our town. And I started as early as seventh grade. Just going to parties and doing that. And it just started growing. That's the fewer cool you drank in our town. That just grew as I went through high school. And then when I went to college, I joined a fraternity and it got even worse. And by the time I was graduated college and went to the workforce, I was basically drinking every night in the point where I was 6 to 12 drinks. And I'm 48 or 47 now, so do the math. So for a long time. And for the most part, I would say functional, alcoholic, because I was able to hold a successful job. I hit it pretty much from everybody. I was able to keep my family together. But as I started to get older, there were some cracks in the armor, so to speak. A couple of years ago, I just had that internal barometer of don't go over this many drinks by this time. They are whatever that is crazy. It was in total bondage, lying to myself. But I let that governor go a couple of times. And I ended up, a couple of years ago, my wife had had enough and she just said, go to a hotel and that really shocked me. And I remember I came to the Arizona Deliverance Center because I knew it was an addiction. I couldn't stop. I would try to exercise it away. I would drink and then I would go run 10 miles to get normal again. And who does that? Why don't you just run 10 miles and get in better shape? That's just what you're supposed to do. But I was doing it as a way to keep the habit going. I came to see brother Mike a couple of years ago and I went through some deliverance. We felt that was a problem and I did it and I felt better, but I held something back. I went about 90% in. In the back of my mind, I was always like, I'm just going to take a little break and then I'll be able to socially drink again or whatever. A year later, it grew to the point where I was in the same position but worse. That happened. The cycle kept happening and I wasn't able to break it. I kept that door creaked open. This last time, four months ago, was really serious. It was a Thursday night and I had been drinking too much and my wife could tell and she said, you know what? I've got the divorce paper signed.  That shocked me to my core and I went on a binge to the point where I felt I had lost it all and I drank to the point I couldn't stop. My family came home the next day and I just remembered my kids saying, Daddy, just stop drinking wine and everything will be okay. I said, I don't think I can. I said, I'll go to the hospital, take me to the hospital and I'll do what I have to do. I don't want to lose you guys. What I failed to say earlier that day, I had called Brother Mike and I left a message and I said, I can't stop drinking. I'm losing my family. I don't know what to do. I said, this might be it. Talk me out of it. I don't know if you remember. I left that message. Anyway, I went to the hospital and then I went to rehab for a couple of days. When you're in rehab, you don't have your phone. I was worried about stuff getting done at work. Luckily, I had a friend at work that I said, I'm going through some stuff. Just take care of everything for me. Everything was fine from that perspective. I talked to my wife a couple of times when I was in rehab and she was basically, when you get out, you have to find another place to live and I'm like, great, I'm going to go from rehab to a hotel. This is awful. It rocked bottom. It was horrible. I didn't know what to do. When I got out of rehab, I finally got my phone and there was a message from Brother Mike saying, hey, we have an appointment scheduled. I had an Uber coming to pick me up and there was a message from Brother Mike and said, come to the house of healing at three o'clock. I was like, oh, it's two. I can get there. There must be God speaking. I got in the Uber and the Uber driver was a born again Christian. I told him my story and we talked and we got to the Arizona Deliverance Center and the doors were locked. I was like, oh man. And then I realized he had sent me that message like it passed midnight. I was a day off from the appointment so I was like, oh man. Well, I looked over and the Uber driver was talking to some guy on the street. It was Ron. I never met Ron before. But anyway, the guy, he flagged this Ron down and asked if he knew what time the church opened. My friend really needs to get in there. He's like, well, I worked there. I can talk to Matt. And so I spent about two hours with Ron and I did things differently this time rather than holding something back. I gave myself 100% to Jesus, like 100%. I held nothing back. I repented completely. I prayed. I went through about an hour deliverance.  But it was stuff that didn't need to be in me. And I tried to quit drinking so many times because my heart was... I didn't want to... Does anybody want to be an addict up to something? No. You have childhood dreams that become an alcoholic. No, I don't think that's how it works. But when I got done with Brother Ron, and I still had these issues at home, but I felt peace, no more craving, gone. And I knew. I knew. Always in the past, I always had a thing in the back of my mind. Maybe I can take a week off and then drink... I was like, nope, I'm done. It's over. I'm God's now. Devil can't touch me. I was welcomed back into the house. I'm still there. I haven't gotten the divorce papers yet. My relationship with my kids is amazing. They love me. They know what I'm doing tonight. They're 8 and 13. They know I'm coming here to talk about this. I had some other addictions too that overcame. I'm just not comfortable talking because I might want to share this with them. But God healed me of everything. I've come back a couple of times just to make sure I got everything out of me. I was here on Thursday talking to Rick. And we had a great talk. Literally, it's been four months. I don't have any cravings for alcohol. Already there's others. I feel stronger. I'm so appreciative. God is amazing. I think it's important for people to know that don't give up because I tried this a couple of times and it didn't work. And the reason is because I wasn't 100% into it. That's the difference. It's got to be from the gut. Hopefully, somebody can hear that and know that because I've struggled with this for 28 years. Go ahead and pray for any addict. You guys want to pray with me. Pray for anybody that needs it. Lord Jesus' name, I'm so grateful for what you've done in my life and for just rescuing me from the pit. The devil almost got me and you saved me and I'm yours and I thank you for that, Lord. I just pray that for any other person that's struggling with alcohol or any other addictions out there that they can hear this message and be encouraged by it and know that if they really, really want it and they put everything into it and surrender 100% to God, they can get delivered. Amen. Praise God. Give it up for the Lord Jesus and it has nothing to do with any of us. It has to do with somebody who's committed, right? And the relationship with God. Amen. How'd your service go last night? Tell them about what? Tell them about your service. How'd your service go last night? Well, altar call went well. We had a salvation of a teenager last night. Praise God for that. The daughter that you brought. She got saved. Got some demons out of her. That was good. Put me on the spot. Good evening.  All right, the seminar on divine healings coming up. Why do some people get healed and some don't? We'll answer that question for you. There's a website. And remember I'm on the radio every day on 10.10 a.m. Monday through Monday. And I'm also on the radio 24 hours a day on theomnifm.com on the internet. You can catch that on the website. I'm also on this secular station on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. Dark Sky Radio. That's not a Christian's station.  Good search will do the same thing. It won't cost you anything. You use them instead of Google. Tonight's teaching is on YouTube channel number two, House of Healing AZ. There's our miracle list if you want to do deliverance at home.  Or a troubled Christian. Just send me an email and I'll send those to you right away. YouTubers, you know what your job is to open up a terror cell in your church.  Pray for people to get healed and delivered. Do them one at a time. Works real easy. As soon as a couple of people get healed, the word of mouth will spread all over. You'll be so busy you won't believe it. People will just be running to you. All right, thank you for your donations. Those are the boxes on the doors there. Appreciate your help in the ministry. God bless you. You can donate on the website, on the PayPal.  The other one is on Divine Healing. I'll be highlighting that at the seminar on the 30th. I also wrote a book, Exposing Satan. Those are in the bookstore. I'll see you tomorrow on Flagstaff. Anybody know anybody in Flagstaff? You do? Oh, we'll be there at one o'clock. If you give them a call. It's a free seminar. You grew up in Flagstaff? All right, we'll pray for you. We'll talk tomorrow. I'll be in Flagstaff at the Oasis of Hope. You ever heard of that place? No. Okay. We'll be there at one o'clock. The ministry team's coming with me. I'll see you on Skid Row on December 22nd next month for a healing service down there. That's a very interesting experience. Just coming to watch that will blow your mind. All right. If you've got to do anything in life, you've got to have an ID. Except vote.  If you go to the bank, it doesn't matter what it is, you've got to have an ID. I had to have one today. I went down to the DMV. You ever been down there? I always put the fear of God in you. DMV. Wow, that's frightening. But I went to the one in Sun City. So there's nobody. Nobody was there. But I had to show my ID. I had to get another disabled handicap sticker for my daughter, for my truck. And they expired. So I went down there and they said, well, we need to see your driver's license. So they looked me up on the computer. They saw my daughter. They saw me. They gave me a new thing to hang in your, you know, your rear view mirror. You've got to have an ID. Well, in the spirit world, that's 10 times more important. Your spiritual ID is seen by everybody in the spirit world. And virtually nobody in the natural world. Who are you? Never wonder? Let's find out. Hey, what is the reconciliation problem? Well, that was an old problem, wasn't it? If you go to Genesis 3, I didn't even write these scriptures down because they're too depressing. But it's Adam screwing up. That's a sad story.  We didn't even know it, but Adam was our representative in life. He represented humanity.  He was told, hey, everything's yours. You're on cake duty forever. The guy was a perfect physical specimen. I can relate. His wife was monstrously budalicious. I mean perfect. Perfecto. He lived in the Garden of Eden. Didn't have to work. No social security benefits. He had independent children. Nothing. He didn't have any children. That's why he was saying, Adam and Eve roaming around, eating fruit, making love. Party on, dude.  And like any kid, as soon as you tell him not to do something, that's what he went and did. And when he did it, he damned the entire human race. Can you imagine that? That is an incredible story. A sad story. Everybody dies because of our good buddy, Adam the screw up. There he is. He's a super goof. Numero uno. He brought a curse on him. Why? Because he listened to his wife. Jehovah said to him, and I can't relate to this. I've had several marriages myself. And he said, because you chose to listen to your wife and not me, Jehovah said, here's your curses. And there they are. The ground, the planet Earth, was cursed because of him. Can you imagine that? The whole stinking planet. The whole thing was in mint condition. And the guy ruined it. And then thorns and thistles growing. Look at that. Then he had to go work for a living. Can you imagine that? Working for a living. Sweating and working. Then what did he have to do? Die. He was going to die. When he was created, he was an eternal being. He would have never died. That's what we found today. In mint condition. GQ. Similar. And her. Eve made Pamela Anderson and her prime look like a dog.  They all died.  They ruined everything. He ruined everything.  And he did something really horrible. He passed sin onto us. And so that when you're conceived in your mother's womb, something really bad happens in there. Something really bad. That should have never happened there. Had it not been for goofy. You're conceived in iniquity by one man sin in the world. And death. Humans dying were caused by his sin. Death passed upon all men for all have sinned. Romans chapter five. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses. And even those over those who had not sinned. Now how did that happen? Let's take a closer look at it. Adam did that. And he brought sin on the human race. But I didn't eat out of that tree. How the heck did I end up in sin? What happened? Adam turned out to be my father. Adam is my distant father.  Meaning that all of us have a rotten family tree.  Now I got a problem. Thousands of years later. How many thousands? I don't know. I know it was thousands. I was born in sin. God, how in the heck did that happen? How could that be? Romans five. Until the law, sin was in the world. But sin was not imputed. Elegeo put on my account. You ever make a grocery list? I don't. I trust my memory. And then I come home with half the stuff I forgot. And then I hear a voice in my home. It's my wife. I hear the voice. Did you get the... I feel the cringe right there. Nobody here married. You get that wife cringe? But had I wrote it out and made the list, like I should have. When you sin, your sin goes on your account. Who the heck keeps track of that? The Holy Ghost. Why does he do that? Because he's just. If you do something good, it goes on your account. If you do something bad, it goes on your account. Justice requires it. In our society, that's not true. Why? We have what they call lawyers. And they're professional criminals. So they try to get stuff off your account. Even though you legitimately did it. Well, God doesn't do that. He just looks at the absolute truth. If you did it, it was bad. It goes on your account. If you did it, it was good. It goes on your account. And he never misses anything. The voting in Florida. Is that these votes here? Where are they? Well, they kind of disappeared. Your sin never disappears. God kept that one sin. If that's all you did, it was one sin, then dropped over to death. That one sin was put on your account. Imputation. However, check it out. Imputation does not occur until conscience matures. And you, like Adam, know the difference between right and wrong. Look, Adam has become as one of us. He knows the difference between right and wrong, Jehovah said. A child does not know the difference between right and wrong. Babies do not know the difference. Infants in the womb, they do not have sin. If a baby dies, or a baby is aborted, four-year-old gets hit by a car, whatever it is, they do not go to hell, and they do not face judgment. Why? Because no sin was a legal put on their account. Made a click. However, when your conscience matures and you become like Adam, and you know the difference between right and wrong, click at that very moment, and it is different for each person. Each person's conscience matures at a different rate. What? When it matures, and you know the right, and you know the wrong morally, the clock starts ticking on your life.  Thanks, Adam. Screwed everybody over. What is a sin gene? Well, believe it or not, we got it from Adam. Where is that sin gene at? Thank you. It's in the sperm. Where does your sin come from?   It does not come from the mother. It came from Adam, not Eve. Adam willfully sinned. Eve was deceived, Paul said. Galatians. Anybody not following me? Everybody following me?  The sin gene comes down from Adam, correct? It comes down thousands of years through the males. Here, the father of this woman passed the sin gene onto her. She dies. He, the dad, passes the sin gene onto the son. And the daughter, not the mother. She passes death. Once that sin gene is passed into the fetus, they received a death sentence. The child is going to die. Sooner or later, doesn't matter. Adam gave you a death sentence, not Eve. Behold, all the souls are mine, says the Lord. Ezekiel 18. The fathers, sons, they're all mine. And the soul that sins, it shall Adam. Thanks, Adam. Genesis 2. Of the tree of the nons of good and easy, you shall not eat it.  He was told in advance, you can eat all of this. It's all yours. That you don't do. Welcome to American Christianity. You know, people come here, they get these fantastic deliverances. So grateful for them. And then, their conscience is speaking to them. There are certain things I can do. There are certain things I can do. If I want to keep these demons out of my brain and out of my body. Things that make you go, now there are certain things I can do that are going to pick up spirits. There are certain things I can do that are going to build me up spiritually so I can smash Satan and all his evil works based on my choices. I can either eat of these trees or I can go over to eat that one that I was told not to eat.  The gospel is not rocket science. I like to keep it simple. Listen, each of you were born in sin. But sin was not imputed to you until your conscience matured. And you knew the difference between right and wrong. You knew the difference between right and wrong. The children came to Jesus. The angels of Father are always beholding His face, these kids. Always let the kids come to Me. Why? The kids had no imputed sin. That's only for adults. There's a kid there talking. He has no imputed sin. Do you hear that? We've got a major problem here.  You've got humans on this side. You've got God on their side. And there's nothing that can be done for them to get together. Why? This perfect holy God is not going to have anything to do with sinful sin. Sinless people born in sin. People sinning willfully. Hey, there's a break. Let's fix it. They broke up and they can't get back together. There's a great gulf between us. Like Lazarus and the rich man. There was a big gulf there. Some kind of giant chasm. That's what it says in the Greek. There was a chasm. And he couldn't get over there to get a cool drink. And the people that wanted to leave paradise and come over and help their relatives that were burning up, they couldn't get over there to help them. He said, you can't come here. We can't go there. The people over there wanted to go over there somehow and pull their burning relatives out of hell. So since they couldn't go pull them out of hell, the guy says to Abraham, can you send Lazarus back and tell my brothers I got a bunch of brothers living in sin. They ate out of that tree. They didn't want to eat out of that tree. These trees, he went that one.  Could you send him back there? And Abraham said, no, we can't send him back. Remember that story? What is that? Luke 16, isn't it? Yeah. Genesis 3, I will put enmity between you and the woman. And between your seed and her seed, it shall Shuf is the Hebrew word. I don't know anything about Hebrew, but I enjoy pronouncing the word. Shuf is a fun word. Shuf. It makes me seem like I'm a Bible scholar. Shuf, it means to you know, snap. The devil is going to get his head snapped off here pretty soon. In fact, he's going to get a preview of it tonight.  And Jesus had his heel snapped at Calvary. However, an incredible miracle cure Jehovah invented. It was fantastic. I don't exactly know how he did it, but I think I know I'll give you my version of it. It may not be right. I think what he did was, he came here. I can't have anything to do with these humans. They're sinners. But I love them too much to let them go. He's sitting there thinking about Satan and all the angels that stabbed him in the back. He thought about it for a little while and said, nah, nah, nah. I'm not going to go get him. I'm going to let him go permanently. These human beings, now that's a different story. I can't get these humans out of my heart. I got to cry in here. I need to get these humans back. Let me think about what I'm going to do. I think he called Michael in. He seems to be the big angel. Michael, come in here. I want to talk to you from it. Yes, Lord Jehovah. Listen, I came up with an idea. I want you to go to Earth and become a human being. Then I want you to let the Romans and the Jews butcher you.   Yeah. I think Michael reacted to that. I think he had diarrhea. I think I think he one of those things where you're Jehovah looked around heaven and there was nobody to do it. So he said, I'll have to do it myself. I'll do it myself. Nobody else is worthy to do it. Wow. But how am I going to do it? How am I going to do it? How am I going to do it? But how am I going to do it? Because I've got to beat this sin gene thing, and I've got to beat this sin thing. Those are big challenges. Huge challenges. Then I've got to pay for those sins. Because I can't just let something go. See, justice won't let something go. You can't do it if it's justice. If it's American justice, you pay them over here and then you let it go there. Divine justice requires payment for every sin. Nothing gets by. Nothing. There's no, ah, I forget about it. It's all good. It never happens. That's a human thing, not a divine thing. So Jehovah's got some big problems here to overcome. So what does he do? He fixes it. How does he do it? Wow. He fixes it huge. Matthew chapter one. Now the birth of Jesus Christ went like this. His mother was espoused to Joseph and before they came together she was pregnant by the Holy Ghost. Now this is a problem situation potentially in Judaism if you fooled around you got you reaped the benefits for that. Somebody picked up a stone and bashed your face in till you were dead. So here in America, adultery is a high five. You're doing a long great. Everybody loves adultery. Back then no no that's a no, no in America it's just like another thing, nothing to it. Back then wow, that was serious business. She was going to be stoned to death when they found out about it. Mary was espoused to Joseph. It's kind of similar to being engaged but it's not. What happens with Jews is that if I want to marry you I go to your parents and I say I want to marry her and the parents go well let's negotiate a deal. What are you going to give me? What's the dowry? How much is that going to cost the person? So you go to depending on the woman you picked back then some of the babes weren't very hot some of them were smoking right? Just like today got your hot babes and you got your oops, you know, sitting back type babes and Mary I don't know what she was but anyway the dowry varied based on the person, the family, their background how wealthy they were.


Last time we have finished or the whole lecture was devoted essentially to a linear gauge theory. And what we have established that linear gauge theories are not powerful enough, at least for the purposes the gauge theory is sort of valued. So today we want to consider a non-linear setup and I will try to do this a little bit abstract. Abstract, so here are Fred Horn maps. What we have is this, we have two Banach manifolds, say X and Y and the map F between X and Y, a smooth map is called Fred Horn. If you know the derivative at each point is a Fred Horn map between TXX and T. Whenever we have a Fred Horn map, we can associate to this an integer which is called an index. So the index of DXF that is a dimension of the kernel of DXF minus the dimension of the core kernel of DXF. This actually doesn't depend on X, so we never say X is connected and this is called the index of F. The basic theorem is if F is Fred Horn and Y is a regular value for F, then the pre-image of a regular value is a smooth sub-manifold of dimension D. That is the index of F. Right, this is something that you already know very well from the finite dimensional setup and Fred Horn maps are exactly the class of maps for which many facts from basic analysis goes through in almost unchanged form. So this is the place where we need that our manifolds are in fact Banach. So we want to apply here an implicit function theorem and the easiest setup that this actually does work is a setting of Banach spaces, Banach manifolds. So another theorem of great importance is the one called a theorem of Sartre and Smale and the statement is that almost any, well in quotes, almost any value is a regular value for a Fred Horn map. So let me be a little bit more precise. So the set of regular values for the whole map is of the second category. This means this is a countable intersection of open everywhere dense sets. In particular, this is dense. So I won't prove this theorem, but in fact, this is more or less an easy application of a finite dimensional Sartre theorem. Now, one more notion that I need is, I will say that F is proper if a pre-image of a compact set is compact. So now let us do something interesting. So let me assume that we have a regular value. So Y is a regular value. The index of F is zero.  Index is zero, so this is a zero manifold and F is proper means that the pre-image is compact. So we have a finite set of points. So you can count the number of points in the pre-image of Y. And this is a well-defined number. And if I take this mode two, this is called the degree mode two of F. Now an obvious question here is, does this depend on Y? And of course, because the notation already says, this is independent. So more precisely, we have the following theorem. The mode two degree is well-defined. And secondly, if F zero is homotopic to F one, and so homotopic means here inside the space of red hole maps. So the homotopy should be through red hole maps. Then the degree mode two of F zero equals the degree mode two of F one. Again, the proof here doesn't actually differ from the finite dimensional case. So I gave a proof in my notes. If you are interested, you can have a look. But essentially, the infinite dimensions here do not show up. So the proof goes through as you know this from the finite dimension. But in any case, so this has an interesting corollary. If you know that the degree mode two of F is one, then F is subjective. And so this gives you, for instance, a topological condition in which you can ensure that your equation is solvable. Okay, so are there any questions to that? If not, let me complicate things a little bit. So we always want to complicate, play the whole lectures about complications. So here is an alternative approach. So I will assume that, so assume we have, instead of just one map, we have a family of maps. So let me denote this by Kali F from X times W. By the way, so here is one more condition that I should have stated. Is it as well defined provided Y is connected? All right, if Y is disconnected, we essentially, we sort of have just different maps. In any case, so let us assume that we have the whole family of maps. Well, this is again a Banach manifold. I will assume this is connected, Y, and I will assume that the following properties are satisfied. So the best property is that for any W and W, the map FW, so this is now from X to Y, just a restriction of Kali F to X times W, is for the whole of index zero, I will also assume that this is proper. The second hypothesis is that there exists W zero in W such that FW zero is our original map F. So that is we have just a deformation of a given map F. And the second condition is that Y is a regular value for Kali F. Right, this doesn't imply that Y is a regular value for straight F, it may not be the case. Okay, in any case what we have, because Y is a regular value for F, we can take the pre-image of Y, now this is a sub-manifold in X times W. Here I have a natural projection onto W, so this gives me a map Pi to W, and it's easy to show that, so here is, if you wish, the fact, lemma, that Pi is in fact for the whole, the index of Pi equals the index of FW. If you wish, this is just the same as the index of straight F. Say it again, yes. I mean, so this fact is more general. I do assume that this is zero, but even if you don't assume this, it still holds. And so by the Sartz-Mail theorem, we know that there exists W if you wish, close, so arbitrarily close to W zero, such that W is a regular value for Pi, which means that the pre-image of W, and this is just the same as FW, so the pre-image of Y with respect to FW is a sub-manifold of dimension D, so this is again the index of F, and this works again in a greater generality, but we can assume this is zero. And now the proposition is that for any W1, W2 has the pre-image, so this is a finite number of points, so I can consider the number of points in the pre-image, mode two, this is the pre-image, so it's number of points in FW2 minus one of Y, and they are equal. So, this is the pre-image of FW2 minus one of Y, and they are equal. So, maybe the last part of the theorem is a proposition. In fact, this equals degree mode two of straight F. Now here are two proofs of the theorem, one is a little sort of complicated, not quite, one is very easy and one is sort of a little bit more complicated, but since we are doing, so the motto or the slogan of the today's lecture is let's complicate things, so let us do the complicated proof. So, here is a proof. I consider the space of passers connecting W1 and W2, so let it be gamma in CK say one, two, two, W, such that gamma one is W1 and gamma two is W2. Now, this is a non-MG Banach manifold, right, so let's, and so I can pick a point here, gamma, and I can construct a map F hat from X times gamma times the interval into Y, so what I do is say so F hat of X gamma T is just F of X gamma T. And now it's easy to check that actually Y is just Y. There's a regular value for F hat, that is, well, maybe let's do that again, so we take F hat minus one of Y, this is now a sub-manifold in X cross gamma cross the interval. We have here natural projection onto space gamma, and this map is again a friend-hole, so this means that for generic gamma in gamma, we will have, so let it be again pi, pi minus one of gamma, this is simply a non-MG Banach manifold, pi minus one of gamma, this is simply what? This is the space of source XTs, such that F of X gamma T equals zero is a sub-manifold, and this is now a parametrized version of the space that we had so far, and in fact, this is a manifold of dimension one. What we have pictorially is a simple picture, so we have something like this, so this is, so we have a bunch of points, say, like here, some bunch of points in here, and this manifold, let it be M gamma, is just a one manifold which connects the boundary points, it may be something like this, right? It's not just an abstract manifold, so this manifold is boundary, and the boundary of M gamma is just F inverse of Y, W one, if you wish, cross one, and union with FW two, Y cross two. Okay, but now, you know from this picture that any smooth one manifold has at least two ends, either has two ends or no ends at all, which means that if I count points here, mod two, this will be the number of points, mod two on this side of the boundary, right? So this immediately tells us, so this implies the statement. Okay, so now, what is the, let me give you an easy proof of that, so here is proof two, since we know that FW one is homotopic to FW two, W two, because we can connect W one and W two by a pass, this is again homotopic to F, then the degree of FW one, so mod two equals the degree of FW two, mod two, and this is the degree of F mod two. And that's the whole proof, right? So of course, you may ask why did I consider this proof rather than the simpler one? The point is that the construction of the proof here is more general, right? The, what we have done here is that we allowed Y to be a fixed point, so we didn't need to vary Y, and this will be valuable for the covariance setups that I will consider later today. Okay, are there any questions to that? Yes? Okay, I see, I see, I see, you're all right, yes. Any other question? Okay, now, as you already know very well from smooth topology, the degree can be defined as an integer, not just as a number, mod two, at least in the case when we have a map between oriented manifolds, and so we may ask, is it possible to define the degree also as a number, as a Z value degree? And so this requires certain tool which is called the determinant line bundle. Okay, so the setting is this. Assume we have a family of red hole maps, so linear red hole maps, so this is where P is just a parameter, lives in some parameter space, so as I've said, each DP is linear red hole, and P is just in general just a topological space. Now, if you have this, at any point P, I can take the determinant of TP, which means the following, so this is top space, and if P is fixed, I will take that TP to be, there is no enough space, so let me continue here. So this is the top exterior power of the kernel of TP. So we know this is finite dimensional, so we can take this top exterior power, answered with the top exterior power of the core kernel of TP, and let us dualize the second space. In any case, what we have is, at any point P, we have a real line, and the important fact is that this family of lines is in fact, is there any question? Zero is always, yes, why is zero? Okay, what I'm trying to say is that we can take that TP, so that TP, now this is a family of lines parameterized by points of P, and this is in fact a locally trivial real line bundle. The local reality here is not sort of quite obvious, because what can happen is if you vary P, the dimension of kernel and of the core kernel may vary, and it's not quite clear that you can choose a local trivialization, but in fact, this is always the case, and the proof is again, not really hard, but I don't want to talk about the proof of that, so you can look it up, either in the literature or in the notes, but let us just take this as granted, and with this, let me assume that we have, again, a family as before, fx times w to y, and the properties are very similar, so fw is for the whole, for any w, say, index of fw is d, I will assume that y is again a regular value of f, what else? I will assume that fw, so the pre-image of y, is compact, the last assumption is that the determinant line of d, x, fw is trivial, well, let me say trivial over x times w. So this is a little bit more than I really need, but let me say what I'm saying is, whenever you take a point xw in this space, I can take the derivative of this function and I take the determinant, and this is a trivial line bundle, yes, and now, actually even by saying that the bundle is trivial, I actually mean that the bundle is trivialized, so there is a preferred trivialization of this bundle. Now, the theorem is, and you already know the proof, more or less, if a holds, then for a dense subset of w's, mw, so fw is, w inverse image of y as a compact, oriented submanifold of dimension d. And again, for any choices, w1 and w2 as above, mw1 and mw1, w2 oriented, so what I mean is that this manifold is oriented, this manifold is oriented, and there is a d plus one dimensional submanifold whose boundary is mw1 plus mw2. Okay, so here is a proof, actually you could yield a proof on your own, the only thing that we need to discuss is actually the orientation, so the determinant of dxfw, right, by the definition that this lambda top of the kernel, you know, tansored with lambda top of the core kernel and dualized. But now, since we have assumed that y is a regular value, there is no core kernel, this is.


Dwi'n cael ei ddweud o'r ffrust i'r tectech, byddwn i chi arweinio'r sfeikers. On ni'n gwneud ymlaen i altru ddiwedd ynolaeth yw'r seishon o'r tectet cyffredig Cynllewch yn Paris. Rwy'n wedi', Arfranc, mewn gwir i'n drafodd y gwaethech cerddoriaeth gan maen nhw'n gwybod eu cyfghech cyfan. Felly mae'n dyweddo i gynnyddio'r tectet mewn cyfgref ac yn ystod yn ymlaen, yn ymdyn ni, o gweithio, yn ymdyn ni, i'r ffordd ddweud ymdyn ni, i'r ffawr yn cael ei gael ar gyfer y cymdeithasol yn parys, yn Ffranc, yn ymdyn ni. Felly, mae'n ddweud hynny'n dweud ymdyn ni'n ddweud a'i'r cyffredin. Yn ymdyn ni, rydyn ni'n fydig i'r eich bod yn ymdyn ni'n ddweud yn ymdyn ni'n ddweud ymdyn ni, Pauline Virell, y Depeitio Meri o Parys, yna gweithio ar gyfer y cysylltu'r ffarsadau i'r cyfnod i'r cyfnod yng Nghymru. A'r ddweud, Paulor Fartesa, unrhyw ffrasil yng Nghymru, yn ymddangos yn Eitolab, yn y Cyfwyr Cymru, ac yn ymddangos i'r cyfnod i'r cyfnod i'r cyfnod i'r cyfnod i cefnodwch gyda tynnu. A'r tynnu, Tatiana Dafod, yma, sy'n olygu'r ystafell cyfnod i'r cyfnod gweithio Llyfrgell, i Goloch Cymru i gyfnodau i'r cyfnod dda gennyn. Mae'r tynnu hanes, ac mae'r tynnu peth yng Nghymru o'r gwneud i'r cyfnod flwyddyn yn ymddangos i eisiau ei cynnig i mae'r cyfnod i'u gwybodaeth. Felly fe'n gweithio pas i gofynu i'w ddweud. Rwy'n credu that Paulon Rwy'n dplod yn ychydig i'r rhaglen, felly wrth ei fod dansa gylwyr ar fy gwaith yn gwybod i ddim yn ei ddim yn cael ei gweithio ac mae'n dda i'r deal yn hyn yn deimlo ac rydyn ni'n i'r parw, ac mae'n gwybod i Pauline, a'r dda i'n gwybod i Pauline, fe ydi bod nhw. Felly rydyn ni i gydag ar ychydig i east-yniwn imeddiadu. Mae'n fydd i'r gwas be'n dduch cerddau i gydag i ei gydag i lluniaid o ran cyfnoddau cynghreifft i Paris. Please excuse my English that it's not very, very good, but I will try to be clear. So I'm Pauline Verron, Deputy Mayor of Paris, like you just said it, Mayor of Paris San Hidalgo, since March 2014 and I'm in charge of local democracy, citizen participation, NGOs and youth. I'm in charge, so I'm in charge of the participatory budget and I want to introduce PB, a programme that Paris has embraced for five years now and describe it rapidly and after I can answer to your questions. This is a sentence of Hidalgo. I trust the Parisians. This town is no better than anyone. I want them to help us construct it and make it grow. This is when we start the PB in Paris. So this is reflecting how behind I think about this experience. Paris has a strong democratic tradition in late 2014, just a few months after her election. Paris Mayor Hidalgo set out to deliver on her ambition to turn the city into a more collaborative one, where residents play an active role in the ideas and decisions which shape its future. If we want to make citizen participation efficient, we have to rally on all stages of the participation, taking a step towards the citizens, giving the citizens the power to act, build policies, decisions together, acting with citizens and letting citizens act themselves. This is a different step. One of the first steps for us was to introduce a participatory budgeting programme. The budget dedicated each year to PB reached 100 million euros. It means that 5% of the global budget is allocated to the PB. Global budget but only investment budget. This is so a big part but this is a PB for investment. Citizens are involved all along the process and everyone, including children and teenagers and foreigners, can vote without condition. The only condition is to have an address in Paris so you can participate. It was very important for us to make an inclusive PB and to give a possibility of everyone to participate. In this slide, I would like to show you that 100 million euros is decomposed as follows. 55 million for the 20 district PB and 30 million for the Paris PB. This is our administrative organisation with 20 districts. We have a PB for all of Paris for the big projects and we have a PB for each district for more local projects of the citizens. We reserved 10 million for the PB dedicated to schools and high schools. This provision is reserved for spending on use and education projects with schools being encouraged to participate and children's vote determining how that money is spent. This means that children and teenagers can participate to the global PB to propose a project or to vote but they also can participate to a specially PB into the high school for projects for their schools and so they can participate at the boss PB. We want to stimulate the children to participate at the life of their high school and to choose, they can choose some projects like sport, cultural projects, maybe some projects for environment and so computing for other schools more connected. They choose a lot robotic and computer for school. It's not very big surprise. For more inclusive and redistributive PB, 30% of the PB go to the working class neighbourhoods for 16% of Paris residents. 30 million euro per years. The project of a PB is to try to include all the people so we try with this budget that reserved for these neighbourhoods to make sure that people who live in these neighbourhoods have a big part of the project. The city decided to reserve 30 million euros exclusively for the most deprived areas of the city. We also work with local non-profit organisations in order to foster residents of working class neighbourhoods to build collective projects for their neighbourhoods. We know that if we don't have a proactive action, a proactive mean, it's difficult for these people to participate. So we try with Centresocio, a non-profit organisation to go to explain our PB and how to participate. In the next slide, I want to show you the participation of this PB. For the last edition, 211 Parisians voted in order to... In other words, it means that 10% of the global population in Paris vote for the PB. That's in cooperation with other PB a good result. We work to increase every year the precipitation. So participation is constantly increasing since 2014 and PB answers representativeness. 13% of voters live in working class neighbourhoods for 16% of the Parisian population. You can see on the slide increase of participation more and more each year participate. We try to make better communication for better participation. So it's constantly increasing since it has been lodged. We can see that in the neighbourhoods where they are upper class that there is less participation. For the last edition, 2018, 211,000 inhabitants voted compared to 41,000 voters in 2014. It means that for the last edition, 10% of the inhabitants took part in the vote like I said before. I want you to show you the campaign and the vote. Once the 21 projects list are known for PB comes to the campaign. We help people who have a project submit to the vote to make a campaign with some flyer, some posters and to use social networks. We make a campaign kit. They can adapt for their project. So you can see some examples on the slide. Some examples, some make posters, classical posters. Others use a bottle of wine or some dog to communicate. We give some help to these people to make a campaign. So we organise also a big citizens agora in September to the participatory budget. We organise discussions under seven thematic agoras to talk about different projects that submit to the vote. Culture, sports, digital, live together, public space, nature, circular economy. We organise debates and discussions with the municipal team, the services of the city and the associative actors of participation to communicate about the project. So after the vote can begin for the Parisian PB and district PB, voting is both digital and physical. 204 ballot boxes and public servants to help people to vote. We can see that the majority of the votes are in ballot boxes. Support is provided to facilitate the vote of Parisians online, computer terminals and hotlines to help for the vote. You can see on the map of Paris the different places of the ballot boxes in Paris. Some are not always on the same place. We put some ballot boxes in public equipment, library, swimming pool and the marketplace to facilitate the vote. This is public servants that are next to the ballot boxes and we have a sheet of paper to note all the people that vote to make sure of the sincerity of the vote. Each year we improve a number of ballot boxes and public servants to help people to vote because we can see that this is a very, people want to vote in ballot boxes more than on computers. You can see on the photo a ballot box behind a school. Parents and children can vote before to go to school. A very successful vote behind the high school and teenagers want to vote. Sometimes they propose some projects to make sports for example in their neighbourhoods and so after they vote all the teenagers of the high school for the project. Now we make two places for sport in the centre of Paris for teenagers. We tend to cover all the city and focus on the citizens away from participation so you can see more ballot boxes in the north, in the east or the south east than in the west of Paris. So now what kind of projects are chosen by Parisians in this slide. Projects that are mainly proposed and followed by Parisian concern, vegetalisation, solidarity, sport, hygiene and mobility. We can see some examples on these slides, hygiene equipment for homeless people, vehicles for food banks, electric vehicles, sporting equipment on some streets of Paris in the second district for this example. Another example, this mural fresco next to the Institut des cultures d'Islam. We have one fresco by district now. We can see also this garden for children that all these gardens are made by the inhabitants themselves. And another example, vegetalisation and flowers into the schools so after the children can have an activity of vegetalisation. And to finish, some lessons from implementing a PB. Adumting a PB asks a high degree of commitment for politics and also for public administration because it's a lot of work and to make sure that all the projects will be realised. Implementing a PB was a great opportunity to strengthen transparency in informing people about the process of the public decisions. It helps also citizens to understand the functioning of the city to participate in the realisation of the project. All informations are available on the website about the progress of the project, consultation or engineering study or works realisation or complete project you can see on the website all the steps of the realisation. It's really important to go to work people and adapt to the needs of each public of citizens. That's why we choose to combine online and offline participation. It's a tool to ensure the participation to everyone. And to conclude, I'm truly convinced that co-construction of the public decision is a legitimate expectation for citizens. The current context in France provides it's more than ever with a grand debate. And the PB's success has seen the increasing participation. This success encouraged us to improve the programme to make it ever more participative. And I think about the realisation. I would like that people can participate more to the realisation of the project. Now it's majority of the city services that make the project. And we try now to include people to the realisation with the engineers, with the public servants, with the politicians to make together the project and not only to propose it or to have the idea about it but to try to realise it. So thank you for your listening. Thank you, Pauline. So I have two very quick questions. One is how were the projects proposed? Were the citizens given a list of projects to choose from? Or did they propose the projects themselves? And the second question is the outcomes that were chosen, were they very different from what you expected? Or were they broadly in line with what you would have maybe wanted to invest in without a participatory budgeting process? Globally in general, we are not very surprised about the project. It is often project we make or we... But this PB permits to give to some project a very more big impact because Parisian propose some ideas about, for example, digitalisation or for cycles or for solidarity. We have some decisions in this way to make all project for cycles but the people through the PB said to us, go faster, go further, more and more than you have to do. So it's a kind of encouragement to our project. Some projects are very different from our projects but this is a little project or maybe we don't have any project for places. We think this place is good. We don't think about to make it other way. So people want a lot, make different their streets, their place and propose some things different. Of our project, we think about our project. To answer your first question, these are the people that make their project themselves on the digital platform. Some are the result of collective ideas. Concealers of the district propose a lot of ideas about 30%. And some association too but the majority is the individual proposal on the digital platform. Do you have time for one or two questions? We have three questions, four questions. So we'll do one here, one at the back. We have microphones. Hi, I'm Hazel, I'm a journalist from the UK. My question is did you take inspiration from any other cities and tech systems? And another quick one, do you have any research on how it's impacted the way people feel about the government? Second one is if you have any research about how, if it's changed the way people feel about the government. When we build our PB, we think about Porto Alegre, of course, in the idea of to make inclusive PB. But we have an administrative organisation is very complex in Paris because we are a city but also a department. And we have 20 districts with mayors and so we have to build something very special for us. We see what they made in New York and in Lisbon because they have PB before us. And also we think about some experiences we made in the precedent government. And also we begin to make some participative dispositive. So we mixed all these things but we also built it year after year to complete with different aspects we don't think about. And your second question is more difficult because it's a feeling of return of about the people. We made a pool, and what do you think about the politics of the mayor? We know about bigger politics and first was about political, about transport, about mobility because it's very important decisions of the mayor. Other people said about vegetalisation and about housing but the 14, just after it was about PB. And Parisian said we think PB is a good idea, it's a good thing. But we make another pool and Parisian said I don't know any more, I don't know as well as I want about PB, I want to participate but I don't know. So we try to make better communication. So we probably only have time for one question now I think. The gentleman in the back, I'm not sure who you are. Hi, my name is Tom. I design funding programmes for a living so this is very exciting. This is very successful in many ways. What is the least successful thing about it? The least, what works the least. I think it's difficult to explain very well to the Parisian how we made his idea. Someone have an idea, very good, we take it, we propose it to the vote. A majority of Parisians said yes, it's good, I want it. And after we will realise it. But this is an idea to go to a real project, a real realisation. And to explain to people how to pass to idea to project is not exactly what you want because we have technical, lower limits.  It's not easy to explain. So I want to make better this part of the PB to explain very well to people how we made this idea in project and why and how. And to include people more in the process of executing of the idea. I think it's not very easy. Excellent, thank you. I'm sorry, we'll need to move on to the next speaker. So I know there's a couple of other questions but Pauline, thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. So I'll hand over to Paula next. And she's going to talk about digital democracy as a response to the Gillesian. OK, so where to start? When I was in Lisbon last year at TicTec and I was trying to convince Mark to come to Paris, I never thought it would be the perfect time, the perfect moment for the TicTec community to be in France in Paris. We are living a very special moment for participatory democracy nowadays in France. At the end of last year we had this huge crisis, this huge social mobilisation called the Yellow Vests movement that was like protesting against a tax, a carbon tax that was announced by the government and that was perceived as very unfair. And the weeks went by and the rev indications accumulated and changed in their nature and very quickly they started being related to a need of citizen participation and I need to have an impact on political decisions. And the Emmanuel Macron decided to launch this huge debate, this national debate. During two months we have all population in France debating one way or the other. So the two things I think are interesting for you, for this community in particular, are related to the fact that you can take out some lessons from what happened here because it was a real democratic laboratory during two months and I'm going to detail that. And the other thing is that we need you because we're trying now to put in place sustainable participatory mechanisms and I think the French population is mature enough around these topics now to hear what this community has to say and to teach. So I'm going to start with the first one. So what we can learn, what this community that is composed by civic tech and researchers and associations can learn from what happened during these two months. So I was saying this was a really an actual laboratory and I think if we had imagined as researchers a real scale experiment we wouldn't have imagined something better than this. Because we had so many different mechanisms that were put in place that we can compare them and we can take conclusions on them. So we had during these two months an online platform where we had around two million contributions just to compare. We had some consultations before around bills and national wide and we had like 10,000, 20,000 contributions and we were very happy about it. And now we have two million so it's really another scale completely. We also had presidential workshops or meetings where people discussed and face to face were discussing about the main political strategies of the country. We also had stands that were put in the main public public spaces. We had this very French mechanism that's called Caillais de Dolian, that it's kind of a complaints book where people can go to the mayor and just write what they think doesn't go well or could go better in their local places at the local level. We had these conferences that are now ongoing where we chose between 17 and 100 randomly chosen citizens so that they could draw conclusions from these two months of debates. And we even had virtual meetings for people living abroad with different countries at the same time. So we really had a huge deal of different mechanisms so that was kind of what I call the on of the grande bar because it was the official mechanisms that were put in place by the government. But we also had the off grande bar which were more critical maybe initiatives from mayors that didn't follow that are in the opposition and that put in place their own platforms. We had what happened in the media, in the traditional media on TV. We had debates that were organized on the media on TV with actual conclusions that were drawn and proposals with intellectuals, with the gilets jaunes that were very present on the media these last two months. And we had what happened on social media. So on traditional social media, Facebook, Twitter, but also for instance on Twitch this new social media for video players with very young people and ministers that were coming to discuss with young people on this new social media. We had associations like one that's called entendre la France that created a bot for a messenger so on Facebook that was asking the questions of the grande bar and collecting answers and touching a more also young population. So we really had several channels of participation of expression which can make us compare one and the other and draw almost very scientific conclusions. So not only we had that but we also have the data. So I was very keen to have open data on the contributions on the platform so that we could have the analysis made by everyone. And we are organizing this weekend a hackathon at the National Assembly inviting a lot of different initiatives, researchers, associations to analyze this data. What kind of things do we expect coming from this hackathon? We would like to have for instance maps where we can see what kind of revindications or contributions or topics were touched upon in the different territories. We're expecting to be able to trace if there was some action of lobbies on this participation online. We would like to have some kind of sentimental analysis or text analysis on the contributions. There's already some researchers that because we don't have sorry the profile of the participants online. We only have information about the postal code so we can make cards pretty easily but we can't draw conclusions on who were the participants online. So some researchers are starting to do semantic analysis through the vocabulary that was used, understand if people were older or younger, if it was a woman or a man, what is its socio-economic background. So we would like to have all this kind of analysis this weekend so this Saturday if you're still in Paris don't hesitate to come because it's going to be pretty interesting. So all this to tell you that during these two months it was a really laboratory and that it's going to be very interesting for researchers from now on. And we will be able to draw conclusions, pretty interesting conclusions from what happens. So the second thing that the second message that I was wanting to convey was that we also need you to try to inspire us and to give us some feedback about what kind of participatory mechanisms are useful and can be more sustainable. So what happened also during these two months is that everybody was starting to talk about civic technology, about participation. I've been working in these topics for several years and I was never very much heard or followed and we had trouble making it a priority topic for the government. But now we had civic tech being interviewed on the most important national media. We had people talking about referendum, about petitions on TV, on the newspapers. So really the society is asking for this and is mature enough to take a step further. And what I think interesting also is that we're trying to invent something new. We're not trying to put in place the same participatory mechanism that we've known or that are well known. We're trying to develop this idea of a deliberative democracy. So inspired in Jürgen Arbenmas, for instance, and what he could write about how to put in place a dialogue ethics, an ethics of dialogue. Because what we've seen with the Gilesian is that the political debate became very violent, very aggressive, very polarized. And we saw this on social media with hate speech diffusing more and more. What I experienced personally and a lot of my colleagues during these meetings, local meetings, is that at the beginning of the meeting everyone was yelling at each other and saying, we don't trust you, no matter what you say, we won't believe what you say. And at the end of the meeting, after two, three hours of discussion, there was consensus emerging or at least respect. Or at least, okay, we think differently, but I see that your person is the same as me. I see that you have trouble in your daily life. I see that life is not easy for all of us. So there was this kind of mutual understanding of wanting to know each other, this kind of therapy going on. And this kind of, some people were changing their minds from the start of the meeting to the end, realizing that they didn't have the good data, that maybe there were victims of fake news without even knowing it. And so it's very special what happens when you go through this deliberative process. And I think that we also tried to draw conclusions from what happened from the Brexit. And we had these feedbacks from other places where direct referendums were held, for instance, in Taiwan. They put in place a citizen initiative referendum. And their feedback was we didn't have enough time of deliberation before the decision. And so the decision that emerged are very emotional and very drastic. And maybe a couple of weeks after you realize you shouldn't have voted that way. And for instance, in Taiwan, the results of some of the referendum were against LGBT. So we really think that what we've experienced during these two months, we are creating something new. And we want to try to give it like an institutional form. So there's a lot of different mechanisms that have been studied this last month. So what the yellow vests are asking is this citizen initiative referendum. There's a referendum in France that already exists, which is the shared initiative referendum, where we have MPs. We need a number of MP signatures and a number of citizen signatures in order to trigger the referendum. We are thinking about a petition right. There's already a petition right at the National Assembly, but without any mandatory results. So it doesn't give any conclusions. So now we would like to oblige the parliament to have a debate when we reach a certain amount of signatures. We are talking about participatory budgets at the national level because we see it's very successful at the local level. But we also want people to have a say on national taxes and national expenditures. So all this debate is ongoing and I think the TicTec community has a lot to offer. So we would be very glad to have your input on that and to try to imagine these new forms of participation that take into account this need of deliberation. Just to close maybe my intervention, I remember also that last year in Lisbon I was talking about tools, about a project that I contributed to that was called the OGP Toolbox. I was talking about how we used open source tools at the National Assembly and all my speech was turning around technical platforms and functionalities. What I think is that in the civic tech movement we need to take a step further and to stop talking to each other and to we're very self-centered and maybe too techy, too geeky. And we don't realize that even if we have the perfect platform, if we don't intersect these tools with institutional mechanisms, if we don't reach real people, if we don't solve society problems with these tools, we will turn around the issue and we'll still see each other every year. It will be a nice party and we'll be happy to see each other but we won't go further and I think we have the potential to do a lot with what we were discussing in these conferences but we really need to look a bit further. Thank you. Thank you so much Paula. So we'll take one or two very brief questions because I want to make sure Tatiana has enough time to speak as well. So any brief questions just now or we can wait to the end if you prefer. Everyone's happy, content, consensus has been found. So I'll hand straight over to Tatiana and then if we have any more questions we can ask at the end. So Tatiana, over to you. Hello and thank you so much for having me here. It's an honour and a pleasure to be speaking next to Paula and Pauline also. And I'm going to try to talk to you about the state of civic tech and gov tech in France and you might see why I separated the two. What I'm presenting today is based on how do I switch slides? What I'm presenting today is based on two different types of research, one that is my PhD research and the other one that is more professional, more underground research that I'm doing for a think tank called Decider Ensemble. For my PhD I'm focusing on civic tech actors in France as participation professionals because, as I'll tell you a bit later, the specificity of the market in France is that it is a market. So you have a lot of companies that are defining themselves as civic tech and they may not have the same logic as the NGOs that we're used to seeing over the rest of the world. And how they're also organised as moral entrepreneurs, so actors that are building coalitions to have an impact on policy, to have an impact on policy makers both at local and national level. And then the second source that I'm going to be using is research conducted on gov tech initiatives, meaning initiatives using civic tech tools but led by government, either at national or at local level. And this is what I'm doing at the observatory of civic tech and digital democracy as you can see, like a very short title, very easy to remember. And the material that I'm going to be using today is both an exploratory discourse analysis that I conducted on press articles and on blogs that I conducted last year so I don't have the national debate results yet but I'll update it. And field observation of the civic tech ecosystem in France since around 2016. And I also conducted 70 exploratory interviews like 30 minutes to an hour with local either professionals in local governments or startups or experts on local digital democracy. So I can tell you more about all the material later but one of the specific sources I'll be using at the end is a barometer. I'm not sure that's the right term for it but that we did at the city ensemble every year since 2016 where we ask city governments what they think about civic tech, do they know civic tech, have they heard about it, how do they use it, what do they expect from it. And that's about, they answer about 80 questions on both their perceptions and specifically what they have implemented. And we got about 200 respondents in 2016, 100 in 2017 and 80 in 2018 so we think people are getting a bit tired of the issue but over the years it's been, well, we got a lot of information so we're happy. Why the presentation and why conduct research on civic tech in France? The first thing that you notice when you look at civic tech in France is that there's a lack of independent research for the moment and it's very difficult to find information that is not produced by the actors themselves. I mean I know my society does a lot of great research on civic tech itself but we haven't had yet the reports that my society did on who participates and what do they do. But we have a buzzword that captured a lot of attention and that also created a lot of expectations with the discourse that is again mainly produced by the actors themselves. So it's not exactly the same meaning when we talk about civic tech in France than when we talk about civic tech internationally and I hope if it's unclear don't hesitate to tell me. I want to go through a brief history of civic tech. It's very, very brief and I try to fit it all in one slide so I'm sorry if some of the actors are not represented every time I get grief from what I'm presenting but the first thing we can see is that it's been a steady development since the beginning of the decade. And it started with NGOs like Regards citoyens which some of you may know that focused on parliamentary control. What they did is platforms that allow citizens to track the activities of MPs, of senators and also to track how a law is developed. But more and more companies were created and I think the Knight Foundation report played a role because it identified civic tech as a market and it had a lot of repercussion in France, namely in the press. The second thing we can notice in this history is that in parallel with the civil society development we had very fast institutions positioning themselves on civic tech as a part of a political capital. It's a shame that Pauline Veron left but the city of Paris is one good example that very soon Annie Dalgau the mayor used civic tech and digital democracy as a tool and as something that allowed her to distinguish herself from other mayors. So at national level it was also accompanied very soon by institutions to regulate digital democracy dates from 2011 and that mission was first focused on open data and Pauline can tell you more about it and then carried on to take care of open gov issues. So at national and at local level institutions played a role very fast in sort of framing and encouraging civic tech. And then the third thing we can say about the ecosystem in France is that there's a certain degree of conflict. It was very apparent in 2016 when the OJP summit was held in Paris where a group of players, a group of actors both from the civic tech world but also from human and digital rights activists got together and called to boycott the summit saying both that the French state was being hypocritical because they were passing laws that were going against public freedom and then holding like an open government summit. And also stating that the tool that was mainly used for public consultations was not open source so you could not track and be transparent and promote open government while still just using the same tool. And these questions are still active. They're still re-emerging today with the big debate because the tool that was used is not open source. So if we sort of do a first round about the civic tech in France, first of all it's a market. So the term civic tech has been kind of trusted by companies. Maybe we should be talking about something else in France than the civic tech that you guys know from other countries. The second one is that it's very institutional. It's really developed because it's cool and innovative by institutions. And it's very close to the public innovation sphere and that may be a point that is in common with other ecosystems which is that the idea is to modernize institutions and sort of go towards more efficient institutions that will respond to the citizens which is good and at the same time can be seen as a neoliberal project and can have some negative impacts or connotations namely in France. And finally one of the questions we can ask is whether it's all wind. You know in French we say like it's just wind.  A report last year stated that we have about 160 local governments that have used civic tech including citizen reporting and crowdfunding apps. So it's not a lot compared to all the buzz we've been hearing about it. And the numbers that we're reaching before the Grand Débat because of course you know it's going to change everything. We're relatively low. It was so higher than in person but it's still relatively low and the big big question is that we don't have any information on civic tech. We don't know who participates. There's sort of a fear of asking people who they are when they're online and so we don't have any evaluation. And in one way you can wonder if it's not because it's practical for local and national governments to not know because they don't have to ask the question is it representative or not. So through the press analysis it was interesting to see what civic tech representatives talk about when they're talking about themselves and they're describing their work and what they want to achieve. And the first thing you can notice is that they're building a crisis. It may be very evident in other countries but in France it's very specific that the problem that they're identifying is not with the incident. It's not with the institution and it's not with the citizen. It's really with the intermediation like who is between the citizen and the institution. And I'm thinking some of you have also built this problem in your discourse in other countries saying you know that the citizens are good. They're there. They want to participate and the governments are there. They want to listen to the citizen but they're lacking the tools. I don't know if it's right or not but at least it's really interesting to see that the focus is not on criticising the institutions or the citizens. And this may be linked to the fact that they're working with governments and have to sell services and tools to the government so you don't want to be too mean to them. And the other criticism that they have is that everything is old. You all know Pia Mancini's quote where she says you know we're 21st century citizens working with 18th or 16th century institutions. And this quote has been in the media in France in almost every article. There's very little variety in terms of key actors that French actors are citing. So there's really this idea that institutions are old and should be reformed. A second thing is that the good citizen that is built through these discourses is responsible and informed and constructive. And there's a bit of a fear of conflict or at least an idea that there should not be conflict when you're doing democracy when you're doing participation. And you know again not saying it's good or bad but at least that's something to note. A third sort of conclusion from press analysis is that digital tools are associated with different beliefs. The first one is that there are mainly tools for expression and information. We would think that Civic Tech in France, Civic Tech actors would promote deliberation as Paula was saying. But actually in the expressions used in the words used they're mainly focusing on information and on expression of oneself. And it's more of a building an opinion and more of a survey logic than really a deliberation and debate logic. And the second thing that is sort of attributed to digital tools is the ability to modify the nature of contributions. When they're selling a tool or when they're talking about a tool the idea behind it is that this is going to pacify your participation. It's going to shift how citizens express themselves. They're going to really first of all be more constructive and then since it's linked to their everyday life and to a routine sort of way of participation they're going to be nice and they're going to be involved and sort of magically everyone's going to participate. And it's been changing a little bit but most of the discourse still focuses on like a magical power of tools. And finally and well this is no surprise there is a strong lobbying activity of Civic Tech actors in France for new intermediaries. And very interestingly they're positioning themselves as these new intermediaries. You know they should be the ones or you should be the ones because I'm talking to a lot of Civic Tech actors here that are neutral and non political and able to both talk to the government and represent a citizen. So there's this construction of Civic Tech as an alternative and a viable credible alternative. There are very different views in like discourse in the press but this is really the mainstream view and of course some actors are more visible than others but you know I'm going to try to talk about different things so if you have questions tell me after. Based on this analysis and a few more and a few other instances of research what I did is sort of try to map the influences of Civic Tech in France. And some of them are the same as what you have abroad and very traditional or at least it's you would expect it like a citizen participation. You know there are influences with community organizing and consultation and public debate in general. It's also relatively logical that there are shared influences with the contributive web with groups that work on Wikipedia, open street maps, everything that is a bit of construction of Commons especially in knowledge. And finally there are some links that are also relatively logical with the tech for good ecosystem which in France is a bit separated from the Civic Tech which is sort of the collaborative economy and also all these startups and NGOs that believe you can change the world with technology. But there are a very different ecosystem from the Civic Tech one in France. And finally there's two other ecosystems that sort of share influences and it wasn't evident at first. I didn't think I would find that and one of them is the opinion builders. So the petition aspect of it is logical but the more political communication, survey, polling and then gathering a lot of data to analyze what citizens are saying and to really construct the public opinion is something that I wasn't expecting. And also this link to public innovation, to this idea to modernize and to make government more efficient with ideas imported from the startup ecosystem like agile methods and design thinking, all this transformation of public action. So these sort of ecologies circulate through people but also through ideas, the terms that are used and networks that involve different people. Then I tried to, this was a request from actors on the field to have a mapping of Civic Tech in France. And every time I show this to a Civic Tech actor as a producer of a tool he's unhappy because he says either he's classified in the counter power so people that do not sell services to the government. And he says well this makes us look like really dangerous or he's classified in the collaboration and well this may not be the best term in France. But this idea to sell a service to the government and to collaborate with the government is also something that they don't want to be associated with because you need to have a part of an activist. You need to be identified a little bit as an activist to be credible as a Civic Tech. You cannot be just selling a product. So well I'm sorry if people are unhappy but the idea is that if you're a local government and if you're looking for a tool you're often sort of lost with everyone and everything at Civic Tech. And so the idea was to show this is what you can do with the tools. This is the main purpose that is attributed to different tools and some of them you can't work with but you can look at the ones that are counter powers and some of them you can collaborate with and they can probably provide services. And the three sort of categories are very simplified but one of them the first one is that information is the main use of technology and this is the main objective that you have. Whether it is raising awareness or providing more qualitative information to the citizen or whether it is using information to control and to act on the government and to put pressure on the government. The second one mobilization is all about numbers. You can give your technology the main goal to make a lot of people do something or to really gather a community whether it is small or big but the idea is really that this is what technology is useful for. And the third one is co-production. This is where the key market is in France is like really using technology to have people work together and all the sort of gov tech is focused on this. But our sort of surprise was that we don't have anything in co-production that is not for sale. We put open street map over there because that would be sort of the idea that we would see but it's not directly linked to policy making so that's why we didn't really include it yet. And so why look at the local and national governments that are also working on civic tech in France. The thing is that what we notice is a lot of NGOs that were created as NGOs are slowly becoming companies and they're trying to find a business model to survive and to do that they're sort of moving from service NGOs to service startups. And to understand that we need to look at clients you can look at the whole ecosystem around civic tech so you know public actors involved in supporting them as sponsors and philanthropic organizations that are less important in France but still play a role. Networks that are sort of trying to organize the civic tech community incubators and the research organizations that are also being involved but we chose to really look at clients to see what they were asking for it. And so the findings from the barometers and the different interviews that we made in sort of quick manner was first of all that there's a very strong interest and civic tech tools are sort of here to stay or becoming mainstream. There's sort of a must have for the bigger cities in France for instance it's like innovative it's cool to have your platform so you make it whether you know what you're going to do with it is another question. And a lot of local governments still state that they want to develop new tools so it's a trend that's still going on. And an interesting thing is that for the officials that are using them they're looking to citizens more and more like information contributors that are going to bring data to the table which is a bit different than people you want to passify because you know you're using participation to keep people quiet. So they kind of put them to work for projects and ideas. The second one is that although there's still a magical belief in technologies there is a there have been lessons learned regarding face to face and the need for face to face meetings and also this kind of need to have communication do other things for your platform to work. A third thing we can say is that the main objective is still communication and you see that also because the teams that are leading that are developing the tools inside the local governments are usually the communication teams. Another one is that resources are still limited although there are more and more tools as in participation in general it's often to know do it yourself and kind of inventing things. And finally the one we found this year is that transparency is seen as a good thing it wasn't evident in the two previous years so this was sort of a victory for us say OK we want tools to help us be transparent and it's a good thing. However it's not such a good thing when they're used for evaluation of public policies it's not something that we want and it's not something that sort of they can do so let's not. So my question today and my question to you is sort of how transformative can civic tech be when it relies on the needs of the clients and you know could we or should we push for a different model a different business model. What are your experiences that maybe France could build on. Thank you. So I have lots of questions as an organization trying to both do charitable grant funded work and also commercial funded work but I think you've you've you've definitely covered that. So I think we can get a couple of brief questions and then we do need to get to the bus so we've got one here one down the front because you never got your questionnaire. So we'll do those if you get those two first and then I know there's one at the back and one in the middle. Hi I was wondering Paula what is your recommendation to foster adoption of the ideas and standards upheld by the civic tech movement in institutional infrastructure. OK and then maybe if we ask this question as well we'll take two at a time. Thank you. My question is for that. I was wondering if in your research you've also addressed the question with governments local and national on using civic tech companies or working rather with open source tools because yesterday I get the chance to talk to one municipality that made a political choice not to rely on these companies but to use more collaborative tools. Did you get any feeling from what the trend is and why one might be preferred over the other. Thank you. Yes. So I always try to hack from within. I mean there's there's a way of like mobilizing civil society to put pressure on the government and try to open up data. Try to push the government to be more collaborative. But I always thought it was you could have more impact working from within even if sometimes you have to compromise. And so what I tried to do at the National Assembly was trying to show some proof of concepts of what could be done with the civic tech and how you could articulate civic tech with existence. Institutional rules. For instance in the French Assembly we MPs have the possibility to ask questions to the government and the government is forced to respond so you can ask them orally or by written written questions. And what we tried to do was to use an open source tool called my priorities that was developed in Iceland and we used it to crowdsourced these questions and MPs would choose from these questions and ask them to the government. And what is interesting is that the government is obliged to respond. So what we haven't seen yet in this civic tech or these consultations mechanisms is clear rules of engagement since the start. We don't know when we participate at citizens what will be the impact of my contribution, how much or under what circumstances will it impact the decision. How much will it be binding for the decision maker. And even in this grande bar experience we as much as I think it is a good experience and a positive initiative we still don't know. We still don't have the rules of what will come out of it and we are kind of expecting that things will turn out well or kind of depending of what the politicians will decide from what comes from the discussion. So I think that to go one step further we need to articulate civic tech and consultation and participation mechanisms with binding results. And that's something I haven't seen yet in France at least. Tachiana, a brief answer I think and then we will not be very quick on the questions. On open source I think indeed in France it's sort of the exception more than the rule. And as you mentioned I think the local governments that are using it are making it a political decision because usually they go for provider software. I can't explain all of it. I think part of it is that it's been developed more in terms of services and it's been sold a lot. There's a lot of marketing done towards local governments where they go there and pitch their tool and when you're looking for one you go for the one you know especially for communication purposes. And the other thing is that there's been a lot of sort of bashing of open source by saying that the software is bad and doesn't work and fails. And since you know the main actors and media are the ones that have the more market power as well well they have priority software and sort of had a full campaign for one full year it was very interesting to see where they said you know open sources it doesn't work. I mean it's nice it's a good ideology but it doesn't work and this has had a lot of impact on local governments. OK so a good one very quick question in the middle one at the back and then there'll need to be very brief answers or we'll miss the bus to the National Assembly. Thank you so my question is kind of to both of the panel and builds on Paula's point a bit so if you have and what Tatiana said earlier as well about civic tech as an intermediary between citizens and the executive. Traditionally that role was for MPs so if civic tech has binding results would it eventually replace members of the legislature in that respect. So the kind of mechanisms we're thinking about is more mechanisms that make that representatives work together with citizens and not that they're bypassed or that they have a direct link with the president because I think that could be tricky and a bit dangerous. We really want to reconcile politicians and citizens. So for instance that's why I think it's more interesting to have a shared initiative referendum but with thresholds that are lower than nowadays and that allow allow it to be triggered much easier easily. But I think that it's interesting that MPs are forced to work with citizens and citizens forced to work with MPs to put a cause further. The other one that we're thinking about is the petition right where it's a petition right to the National Assembly and it's kind of a way for MPs to feel what comes from the society and to target a little bit more their discussions and their work with what real people want for their work. So I think these are the kinds of mechanisms we need to work on and we need to put civic tech on it and all the platforms that we know and like to build. So we have one very quick question from Tiago and then I'm sorry to wrap up. Yeah, very quick question to Paula. I mean the on the ground about one of the innovations even though it's like 1000 years old it's it's the random selection right. But it's normally very difficult to communicate to people. The notion is counterintuitive why you're just selecting people in lottery. Could you just tell like a brief story and how did you how did the government frame the message so that it became more acceptable. A 10 second brief story. Well personally I'm not very fan of the randomly selected mechanisms because I think you can't force people to participate and that it's better when it comes with a real like impulse and that you really want to be there and you really want to contribute. And there was at first some difficulties for the government to reach their target of participants. They wanted a hundred by regional conference and in some they had like 70 60 70 participants because a lot of them didn't want to be there. But yeah the positive thing is that you have a more representative assembly and that you can believe that the results of this discussion will be more consensual at the national level. The way they did it was by randomly selecting phone numbers because they thought it was more broad than people that were inscribed in the electoral lists. And so they they're ongoing this weekend. So I think next week we will have more results about how they went along. But what I hear is that there's both people that are happy to participate and and people that are very critic of the whole process. So I don't know. I think we will have more results from all this experience next week. Excellent. Thank you so much. Fantastic. I feel this conversation could go on for some time. Fortunately we're now going to the drinks reception where hopefully everyone will be there and we can continue further. Thank you Tatiana, Paula and to Pauline as well and see you all tomorrow. Thank you.