Here's how the Fed might adopt Bostick's rate pause in September. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Rafael Bostick has cracked open the door to discussing a September pause in the central bank's aggressive rate hikes, a move that will only be on the table if inflation falls more than expected over the summer. The Federal Open Market Committee is expected to raise interest rates by a half point in June and July, boosting its policy rate to a 1.75% to 2% target range. That would lift it to the lower edge of the Fed's estimate of the neutral rate that neither stimulates nor restricts growth. By September, the Fed will also be shrinking its balance sheet by $95 billion a month, which is a second tool that officials are using to tighten policy. Pausing at the Fed's September 20 to 21 meeting, which Bostick said on Monday might make sense, will probably require two tough conditions to be met, inflation slowing meaningfully and signs that the U.S. economy is cooling enough to reduce future price pressures. Chair Jerome Powell has already set a high bar for policymakers to put their plans on hold, vowing on May 17 that officials will keep raising interest rates until there is clear and convincing evidence that inflation is in retreat. Yet policymakers will also look for a softening job market for signs that price pressures will keep having. The $64,000 question for markets is what market and economic conditions would push the Fed to pause, said UBS strategist Matthew Mish. They need to be able to say confidently that inflation is coming down. Obviously they want to see clear and convincing evidence inflation is falling. But when you look at the historical record, growth matters too. Falling growth will help lower inflationary pressures. The Fed normally doesn't pause until its target interest rate is in excess of annual inflation, UBS strategist led by Mish found after reviewing 11 times the Fed has paused a rate normalization cycle since 1960. With inflation by the Fed's favored measure at 6.6% over the past year, prices would need to fall rapidly to meet that condition. With annual inflation elevated, the FOMC might focus on monthly changes, said Rishi Mishra, an analyst at Futures First. One pause scenario, monthly consumer price figures of 0.3% or less from May to August, down from 1.2% in March, might reassure policymakers they are on the right path, he said. This brings down inflation expectations into a range where the Fed feels comfortable about to anchoring risks, Mishra said. What Bloomberg Economics says I see a pause possibly happening in December, not September. Since the April CPI report, I think the risks have tilted back to the more hawkish path. That's because the service's inflation is just too broad-based and fast. You'll need sizable deflation in the good sectors to offset that and get inflation to where the Fed forecasted in March. Anna Wong, Bloomberg Chief U.S. Economist A decline in the 10-year Treasury yield, which can be seen as a signal for inflation expectations over the next decade, could also contribute to Fed officials getting comfortable with the price outlook, said Stephen Ricciuto, Mizzouho Securities Chief U.S. Economist. The 10-year yield has declined nearly half a percentage point from a peak of 3.20% on May 9 in response to increasing concerns about a recession in the U.S. While the Fed hopes to avoid a downturn, a slowdown will be necessary for a pause, said Ricciuto, adding there are already corporate reports hinting at a slowing job market. Walmart, Inc. and Target Corporation are among companies whose stocks have swooned in response to lower forecasts. They will react to a rising unemployment rate, especially if inflation is starting to come down, Ricciuto said. You will start to see people coming into the labor force having more difficulty finding jobs. That is how it begins. Fed officials, for their part, have said they wouldn't be upset by a small rise in unemployment from 3.6%, near a 50-year low, and Powell has described the job market as tight to an unhealthy level. Investors will get an updated view of how the FOMC saw the interest rate path with the release of minutes of the May meeting at 2 p.m. New York time. They are likely to show widespread support for continued rate hikes in coming meetings to get policy to a neutral rate. Because monetary policy works with the lag, the Fed might choose to pause with an incomplete picture of the outlook. The Fed is not exactly sure of where neutral is nor how much reductions in the Fed's balance sheet may amplify rate hikes," said Diane Swank, chief economist at Grant Thornton LLP. Add in the uncertainty about the world in which we live, and a pause at some point to reassess seems prudent. Policy works with the lag. The Fed wants to catch up but not outrun the market in its effort to tighten credit market conditions. Wall Street analysts started to lay out the conditions for a pause following Bostick's comments to reporters Monday that I have got a baseline view where for me I think a pause in September might make sense. Most economists and investors disagreed with that forecast, and some took issue at the remarks with inflation still near at 40-year high. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman tweeted that inflation is out of control, this is no time for a pause and the Fed has already lost credibility. Sent via Twitter for iPhone. View original tweet. The pause talk comes after financial conditions tightened with a sharp sell-off in stocks, giving some the impression it's tied to markets. Changing tack on monetary policy because of financial asset volatility while inflation is still well above target would be a major, major threat to their credibility, said Jeffery's economist Thomas Simons. If the labor market starts to really crack, then we might have a different story. But that hasn't happened. Bostick, a policy centrist who doesn't vote on rates this year, said his forecast is conditional on his outlook for slowing growth with inflation slowing by the fall. If that doesn't happen, he says he might embrace continued aggressive hikes, or even larger increases. Large


So, first of all, a very good afternoon to Mr. Brown and ladies and gentlemen, everybody who is here in this room. First of all, of course, I'd like to express my gratitude to the Institute for creating this opportunity for me to address you. Although five years ago, when Hungary was running the presidency of the council, I was a Foreign Ministry official, previously a political director in the Foreign Ministry dealing with security policy, foreign policy, CFSPC, SDP. I was dealing with the Arab world, Asia as well, bilaterally, and now I'm doing EU. When I was transferred to this portfolio, I told my wife that now peace will come to our family. Two years ago, I never thought that this would be one of the most terrible and hectic areas of international politics, at least here in Europe. But certainly 2011 was a difficult year and the subsequent years have not been less difficult. But things started not only in 2011 but around 2008, 2009 when the financial and economic crisis started to hit Europe and resulted in a series of political, economic, social impacts and developments. But I came to Ireland for many reasons. I could have come for many reasons. Ireland is a wonderful country, a very attractive country with a very attractive and nice people. Long time friend with Hungary that dates back not only decades but I would say centuries as well. And certainly we all live in a magic of numbers, anniversaries, which is rightly so. And I could say that it was 40 years ago in 1976 when Hungary and Ireland established diplomatic relationships. And it was 25 years ago that Hungary opened a permanent mission, an embassy here in Dublin and 20 years ago that Ireland opened one in Budapest in our capital. And it's 100 years that you are celebrating a major event in your history and it's 60 years that we are commemorating an event which was similarly very impactful on Hungarian and I believe European history and integration. But I also came to Dublin to meet my colleagues, officials from the Irish government and try to exchange views on how we see most recent developments in Europe. And also try to explain the essence and the motivation behind Hungarian positions on different European Union dossiers. The Prime Minister of Hungary a couple of days ago issued an article in one of the German newspapers, Frankfurt, the Argument Zeitung, the FATZ, and if I may also use quotations from that. Because I think this is the most legitimate source of Hungarian position that was expressed by the leader of the country. So in my speech I will reflect on that as well. But back to Hungarian-Irish relationship, as I told you, dates back to centuries, 12th century or even earlier. And very iconic figures of our history, of our nations, clearly expressed the closeness and the similarities of Irish life-thinking and Hungarian thinking, William Butler Yeats once said about his own nation that the Irish are the Hungarians of the West. Because there are these two long-suffering yet surviving nations have more in common than anybody would think. And the greatness of our nations have always been reflected in the national resistance against foreign conquerors and the fight for our homelands over the centuries. Freedom and independence stand very close in the minds of our peoples and are interpreted in a very similar manner. Orthogryphus, the first president of the Irish Free State, also drew the attention to these similarities in a 1904 political pamphlet entitled The Resurrection of Hungary, A Parallel for Ireland. Now the question is that do these similarities still exist in our 21st century international and global environment? If you don't mind, I will read out my presentation and afterwards I will have to talk without paper anyway. So I believe that our common virtues and similarities are still valid today as our continent is going through fundamental changes that urge us to become swift and smart again. We can rely on our own skills, the good recognition of capabilities and the proper evaluation of circumstances coming from our inventiveness. And we can always rely on the sympathy between the Irish and the Hungarian peoples. Starting off from the stems of great empires, both countries joined the European Union with great expectations and confidence. However the EU of today, we believe, is no longer what it used to be. So the question arises, why is the EU now in such an unstable, insecure condition? For decades peace has reigned and prosperity, even though not uniform, has made Europe the most desirable part of the world. Why do people feel such great doubt though in many member states today? First of all I am convinced that we have to come to a common understanding that there are problems and we have to come to an agreement that we have to debate it. Because debate we believe is not negative, on the contrary debate is also a European value. Starting from a former communist country, let me share you with an anecdote in the former German Democratic Republic or East Germany, when if someone even discreetly tried to talk about obvious problems, the doubter was confronted with a single stupid but apparently conclusive argument.  We still remember that period in Hungary. So a crisis prone EU cannot shut down debate on some fundamental issues by saying that people who doubt the great project should visit Europe's military cemeteries. The recognition of historical truths will not be enough to assure the survival of the European Union, we believe. For many years Europe's construction project was making headway, it was not always smooth but overall there was a degree of consistency. The waves of closer integration and enlargement interlocked like the teeth of a zip fastener. The most uplifting moments in this process was the German unification in 1990 and European unification in 2004. By the way the time when Hungary also joined was during an Irish presidency of the Council. And then in 2005 something went wrong. The citizens of the two founding states, France and the Netherlands, rejected the treaty establishing a constitution for Europe. And in contrast to Danish and Irish referenda on European matters, there was no question of holding a second vote after minor adjustments. The momentum towards European integration came to a halt. By the time changes were made with the Treaty of Lisbon's entry into force, global crisis was upon us. We managed to conceal the recession for a year or two. But in 2008 the European elite which had drawn its legitimacy from economic achievements suffered a defeat. The aftermath of the economic and financial crisis spelled the end of an illusion that the EU could guarantee continuing prosperity, let alone increasing prosperity for all of its citizens. In a number of member states the crisis of the elite has escalated into a crisis of democracy. This came to a head in the geopolitical crisis in Ukraine in 2014 and the migration crisis barely a year later. Fears and concerns have multiplied while the number of solutions and effective answers has reduced. This is how we arrived at the British referendum. This is a turning point because for the first time since its foundation of the EU it is losing a member state which is a substantive move towards disintegration. In the early hours of the 24th of June when the last results came in from the British voting areas it became clear that this great project had lost the support of the majority of citizens in a large member state. On the 24th of June the sun rose as always but one chapter in the history of European integration had come to an end and a new one had begun. Do we have sufficient courage and honesty to understand this situation and give the soonest possible responses based on respect for great predecessors and in the interest of our citizens, our nations, our community? We obviously have to respect the decision of the British citizens and adapt to the new situation now. During the process of withdrawing from the EU under article 50 of the Treaty of the European Union reaching a fair and appropriate agreement with the United Kingdom is more important for us than its timing. We Hungarian think that the events of the past weeks confirm that Brussels must listen to member states. The lesson to be learned from Brexit is that people perceive the proposals of European institutions as being far away from their everyday expectations. More than 17 million citizens voting against the EU shall not be disregarded and this is the main message from which consequences must be drawn. Brexit puts Hungary and Ireland into a difficult position because we both have lost an important partner. The UK is the eighth most important commercial partner for Hungary and the first one for Ireland. Most people today believe that the United Kingdom will suffer as it withdraws from the EU. This is assured as every rebirth involves suffering. Nevertheless, we are not worried for the British people. As we are talking about Europe's oldest democracy, a nuclear military power of inescapable importance, a member of the United Nations Security Council and the world's fifth largest economy, they will find their new place in the world faster than we might think. Instead, we should worry about ourselves. First of all, we should make clear to ourselves and our citizens that there are still 27 member states and a community with a population of 444 million people. This continues to be an entity of enormous power and potential. But can only be successful if we take the people with us into the struggle that seeks to address our challenges and crisis. We need every individual, every nation, every member state. Institutions cannot act in their stead. The institutions are there to assist and coordinate the member states, but not to marginalize them. The institutions are there for the member states, not the other way around. We need a rational and decisive shift. We must put an end to the move away from the nations of Europe and the process of turning the European project into an ideology. And we must discard the false perception that we have of ourselves. The European Union as a whole and its individual member states no longer have the power and the influence they had once, years or decades ago. We have a big heart, but our opportunities are limited. This is why we must use them very well. We must recognize that the experiments which sought to create direct democratic legitimacy for the institutions of the European Union by circumventing the member states have in fact produced an opposite result. For example, the President of the Commission used to be selected through consensus between the member states. But now we have been split into a majority and a minority. And we believe that this led to a conspicuous disregard for the British people, which itself also contributed to the majority of the people in the UK becoming fed up with the European Union. The essence of Hungarian thinking is simple. The European Union is rich, but weak and vulnerable. This is the worst possible combination of qualities. At the same time, we must avoid unproductive ideological debates on whether we need more Europe or less Europe. Where we need more, there should be more. Where we need less, there should be less. Recent events have shown that an increasing number of people are beginning to have doubts about the European project and are turning against it. We must also acknowledge that there are diverging views about the challenges and proposed solutions, not only among politicians and political parties, but also among the people themselves. There are likewise diverging views regarding the options for further action. There are some people who prefer a Europe of nations, while others would even ban national flags from sports stadiums. There are some who would systematically import labour to Europe from afar, while others would like to provide jobs for the large number of young unemployed people. There are some who would take in millions of people in order to address their demographic problems, while others say that people's sense of security must be restored as soon as possible. There are some who would integrate the Western Balkan countries, while others recoillet the very mention of further enlargement. There are some who would plan the future at the expense of others, while there are many who reject excessive debt at the expense of other member states' taxpayers, and particularly at the expense of future generations. And there are European citizens behind each and every one of these views and opinions. Where and how can we restore order in this European chaos? Because even in democracy, there must be order. The answer is not too complicated if we commit ourselves to the principle of unity in diversity. We must observe the rules that we ourselves have created. We must return to the consistent application of European law. This also means that we must use the same standards for all of us. And it also means that we must not make yellow card procedures meaningless. We must respect the role of national parliaments, and we must not attempt to exclude them from the ratification of important international agreements of utmost significance as it has been the case with CETA or TTIP. The main reason for the crisis and uncertainty is that by disregarding the rules, we put at risk two principal achievements, the common currency and the single internal market protected by its external borders. In other words, our way of life and our economic model. The long-term systematic violation of the stability and growth pact, the Schengen agreement and the Dublin regulations has become standard practice furthermore with the tacit approval of the anointed protectors of the treaties. The concept of a political commission is in itself difficult to countenance as a treaty clearly lays down the responsibilities and powers of this body. Our community is both one of values and of shared responsibilities. Good examples of these are our budgetary framework and the system for the protection of our external borders. In neither case does the responsibility begin in Brussels but in the member states. And if a given member state finds itself under great pressure through no fault of its own, the community, the other member states come to its aid. It was in this spirit that Hungary protected its external Schengen borders. 97% of the funding for which has been provided by the country itself. There is no doubt that in addition to observing the correct rules, there is a need or demand to create new ones. But this need or demand should not be approached on an ideological basis. The protection of the external borders, digitalisation or industrial policy are all areas where common sense dictates the strengthening of European cooperation. These areas include common foreign and security policy and defence and development policy. But where there is a dispute on how to proceed, there is a single European instrument for the settlement of disputes. This is once again the treaty itself. The euro and Schengen prove that flexible integration is a reality. Moving forward within more limited boundaries is not a new invention either and the rules for strength and cooperation have been sufficiently developed. It is unnecessary indeed it's dangerous to envision an EU which gradually decays by stepping outside the framework of its regulations and by calling its boundaries into question. We must not be naive of course, there have been and continue be disciples of covered treaty changed by stealth. Examples of these are the Spitz and candidates method of nominating the president of the commission or the commission's proposers of the permanent and mandatory redistribution of refugees. But I would also cite the European Parliament's latest decision to triggering article 50. The other fundamental task is the restoration of people's sense of security. The uncontrolled influx of hundreds of thousands of people and the collapse of systems which people had believed were functioning, particularly those for protection of Europe external borders cannot be separated from the failure of integration. The recent horrendous series of attacks leaves no room for any further uncertainty or inaction. The same is true of the European economy and labour market. Yes, we are passive witnesses of globalization but if we believe, if we feel strong enough we shall not resign ourselves to the situation but we shall join the competition. The external borders which were once believed to be indefensible are gradually becoming protected. The Spanish model and the Spanish method which proves the defensibility of the blue border and the Hungarian method which proves the defensibility of the green border show that we can protect our citizens and our great European achievements. In addition to mass population movement, other phenomena of globalization, particularly the everyday social and economic effects of digitalization and pre-demonstrate where the risks and the opportunities lie. Today more than ever we need member states, small and large, old and new, eurozone and non-eurozone, eastern and western, southern and northern to combine their efforts. In 1989 we wrote European history together. In 2015 we found ourselves at the centre of a European debate together once again. Only we can explain this to ourselves and our European partners and yet again together. Hungary is not a large member state. But God has put us in a place on the map where history sometimes arrives in transit. In the summer of 2015, with complete disregard for European rules, more than 10,000 migrants a day were arriving at the Hungarian-Serbian border. These people have already been in the territory of another member state, in the territory of both the EU and the Schengen area. As it is the responsibility of a country of the Schengen area's external border to ensure that the crossing of that external border is controlled, Hungary had no choice but to erect a physical barrier. In 1989 we dismantled the fence which divided the peoples of Europe. In the early autumn of 2015 we erected a fence on the external green border of the European Union and the Schengen area. This was to protect the European Union's greatest achievement, free movement within the common area of the internal market. This free movement is protected by the Schengen agreement. In accordance with jointly agreed European regulations ratified many years ago. As a result we have been protecting the European people's way of life and economic model, at least on the section of Europe's external border for which we are responsible. And no less crucially we have been protecting their security. We did this as good, low abiding Europeans. The protection of the external border is not a thing of beauty. It is not a matter of aesthetics either and it cannot be done with flowers and cuddly toys. The external borders of central member states are in fact many hundreds of kilometers from their territories. These countries have placed their face and confidence in the member states on the external borders, trusting they will perform their duty. And Hungary has done this. Hungary has protected and continues to protect the Germans, the Swedes, the Dutch and all other European partners. When some people hear comments such as these, they automatically react with the accusation of populism. As Shakespeare would put it, however, populists are people who call a spade a spade. We Hungarians call things by their names. This is part of our nature. We do not want to distribute the migration burdens falling on Europe, but we want to eliminate them to put an end to them. We have now reached a stage at which the protection of the external borders enjoys a broad consensus. And our views have also converged on a number of other matters. These include the need for action against the causes of migration, as part of which Hungarian soldiers are serving together with others in operations in several critical regions. We have agreed that those in need should be given help and support as near to their homes as possible. Cooperation with partner countries, be those countries of origin or of transit, is becoming ever more important. We have increased humanitarian and financial aid as far as our capacity and means permit. Hungary has not let anyone down. Our European partners, least of all. In addition to defence, there is another word which should be discussed. That word is voluntary. The Brussels institutions believed and continue to believe that there is a single means with which to manage and resolve the entire migration crisis. This is the mandatory relocation quota. Hungary was the first to firmly express its opposition to this idea. We clearly rejected its impolitical debate. We shall go to the European courts in Luxembourg and we shall also consult the Hungarian people in the referendum in October. So why this firm tough opposition? On the one hand, until we regain the ability to control the situation on our external borders, and until we decide who may enter our territory, any kind of distribution scheme is just an invitation. On the other hand, mandatory distributions is not possible if the smuggler or the migrant in question is the one who decides on their ultimate destination. Thirdly, this is the message which has encouraged and still encourages millions of economic migrants to set out. A better life cannot be seen as a fundamental right. Much though, we would like to be able to grant it. And last but not least, in European law, there is no consistent rule for mass immigration. So this is what we return to. If there is no jointly agreed rule about something, we can only provide for it on a voluntary basis, at least until the adoption of a new rule. True refugees and genuine refugees must be helped in the most effective way possible. There are general rules for legal migration, but the numbers themselves fall within national competence. And this is how it should be. As the institutions or the situations of the member states certainly vary greatly. In Hungary, we must integrate hundreds of thousands of our Roma compatriots into the labor market. While elsewhere, young unemployed graduates number in hundreds of thousands. And as regards demography, the EU has no competence of any kind. We also have a demographic problem. And while there is no guarantee that our response, the strengthening of family policy, will be successful, we wish to decide ourselves within national competence how we envisage our own society, how we wish to live and who with. In Hungary, for centuries, we have lived together with compatriots originating from every corner of Europe. In the Hungarian parliament, there are representatives from 13 national minorities. In Budapest, the Catholic basilica is only a short fork from the city's astonishing synagogue. Generations have grown up in this cultural environment. Their social wisdom and vision of a shared future together has been based on their decisions, not the instructions of a remote faceless institution. We can no longer delay debate at the highest level on strategic partners as well. We should not shrink from the allowing the heads of state and government rather than EU officials to debate on international relationship, whether between the EU and Russia, or between the EU and the United States. If we lose political control, important projects, such as TTIP, may end up in a blind alley. And last but not least, we must also mention the EU's competitiveness as boosts a problem and an opportunity. The economy is the most important indicator of the EU's decline. The population is shrinking, and the economic output is declining. And this contrasts with disproportionately high social expenditure. And while we have been under the pressure of the migration waves, we have lost valuable months. And digitalization has kicked the door in on us. Not only may certain sectors or businesses now find themselves in trouble, but we will be forced to fundamentally change the life of society and the economy, the community and the individual, as we know it today, or perhaps they will change of their own accord. Millions are worried about their jobs. Digitalization, industrial policy, related innovation, training and infrastructure, development are good examples of the issues ordering us to cast aside the ideological precepts of more Europe or less Europe and using real life as a starting point. We must pragmatically identify the areas in which we can and must develop the process of European integration. We need a positive agenda. We need security and growth. Hungary does not use the euro yet as its currency. But the extent to which we succeed in placing the eurozone on a stable path of growth is key for the Hungarian economy. In a new European growth program, Hungary will be a reliable partner, together with the whole of central Europe. This is also true for security in a broader sense. The EU has been getting from crisis to crisis and only reacted to the events instead of avoiding them. The so-called extremist parties have become more powerful due to the mismanagement of the crisis, which is one of the greatest challenges today. We would be mistaken to think that the mere slogan of more Europe is sufficient and appropriate to address the current situation. We believe that Europe needs fundamental reforms and has to face new realities focusing on the will of the people, whereas combating its legitimacy crisis. Whichever direction the European integration may take, the unity of the single market, maintaining the four freedoms, the common policies, and the common budget, as well as strengthening the role of national parliaments must be key elements of future cooperation. We believe that in order to restore trust, the genuine concerns of our citizens need to be better reflected. And the union should make the best use of its key instruments, cohesion, boosting investments, supporting innovation, completing the digital and energy single market, promoting free trade and free movement, and strengthening a resilient labor market, bringing sustainable jobs. The rebirth of the European ideal is possible. Hungary, together with its partners in central Europe and beyond, with our longstanding partners such as Ireland, feels determined, strong, and committed enough to play a proportionate role in this new future. So let me close with the question I already put again. Do the similarities between Ireland and Hungary proceed 100 years ago? Still exists in our 21st century international global environment? I strongly hope, and believe in it, as I keep in believing the words of William Butler Yeats, who said that we too have seen our bravest and our best to prison's goal and mostly ruin rest, where homes once flattened, veil and mountain crest, therefore all nation of the bleeding breast libations of the Hungary of the West. Thank you very much for listening to me.


Welcome, everyone, to the next episode of the Search Off the Record podcast. Our plan is to talk a bit about what's happening at Google Search, how things work behind the scenes, and who knows, maybe have some fun along the way. My name is John Mueller. I am a search advocate on the Search Relations team here at Google in Switzerland. And I'm joined here by Martin and Gary, who are also on the Search Relations team. But that's not all. We have Lizzie joining us here today. Wee, Lizzie. Do you want to introduce yourself briefly? Sure. My name's Lizzie, and I'm also on the team. And I work with John, Gary, and Martin. I'm a technical writer, which means that I help people write stuff down. And I work on the search documentation. So what does a workday look like when you're not writing technical documentation? Writing a lot of emails and responding to emails and meetings. Meetings. Like a normal person. Like a normal person. Well, I try to avoid meetings as much as I can. But I think I also saw you at events, right? We were at the PE Summit together a couple of years back, for instance, and you were at the Webmaster conference in Zurich last year. So that's happening as well, right? Yeah. Sometimes I go to those. And not just go to them, because I remember that you also led a session at the Virtual Webmaster Unconference. Yes. Well, I was there. Lead the session.  Yes. I was there, and I facilitated the session. Yeah, that's true. That's cool. Will you make an appearance in our Virtual Webmaster conference that's coming up? Maybe. When will that happen? What's that? Well, OK. So here comes the confession. I know that I said it's going to happen in December, but it's not happening in December anymore. We are probably doing it in January or February next year. So yeah, that's the thing. But you would love it. Really? Yeah, I know it takes longer. But it takes longer because we want to run it across multiple time zones, and we want to have community speakers as well. So it'll be a little larger, but really, really cool. And I might need your help. What are you going to do at the conference, Martin? Is it like the same thing as the unconference again? Or tell me more. OK, so it's not the same as the unconference. The unconference is a different format, which was pretty cool. And Lizzie can probably testify to it being very different from normal events, right? It felt different. Yeah, it was different. But it was nice. It was a nice change, because we haven't been to an event or I haven't been to an event since this whole thing started, I guess, since January. Or when was our last event in person? Yeah, I think it was just January, the last one. I think I was at a conference in February. Yeah, I was nervous about it. I didn't think I wasn't sure how a virtual event would go, but it ended up being completely different from what I thought and a lot less stressful because it wasn't like a presentation you had to prep. Which is a big reason why I don't like leading a session. But you did, and I hear that the session was great. And did you get the feedback that you needed? Yeah, I thought it was pretty helpful and I wish that it was longer and more. OK, so the good news is that we will do virtual unconference events next year as well. But this one is not an unconference. This one is actually one where you have sessions where people are preparing presentations and giving presentations. But we also want to have live Q&A and we want to encourage people to have also some sort of interactive session. We'll have to see how these interactive sessions would look like. But it's basically like a larger event. I want to get Googlers from multiple time zones in as well. It's probably stretching across two or three days. And yeah, it's open for everyone. The virtual Webmaster Unconference was limited in the number of people who could attend because we needed to make sure that the discussions didn't go too big and were unproductive. But this time, everyone can join. And it's a virtual event. And if I can, I would like to see a session from maybe John. Or if you want to MC, that's also an option, just saying. And maybe Lizzie has something that she wants to contribute. And I know that I want Gary to do his life of a query, if possible. No. Is this like the public pressuring place? It's like, OK. I'm trying to basically get a public commitment from y'all. But Gary put a stop to it. Hey, this is off the record, right?  Damn it, you got me there. Oh. Oh, god. This was great. That was well done. Well done. We should promote Lizzie. Definitely. This was fantastic. Public relations work A plus. You got him. Next level stuff. Oh, this was amazing. So Gary, why can't I have a life of a query session from you? Man, I really wish I could do it, but I really don't want to. Wait, that's all you have to say. You can just say, I really don't want to, and we'll leave you be. Don't teach her that. Why are you teaching her that? No. No, Lizzie.  OK, I love this episode already. Because it appears that I can team up with Lizzie against you, and this is just amazing.  What is happening? Finally, I'm not alone. We are two against the one unicorn. And this is amazing. Help. So Gary, why don't you tell us a bit about life of a query before the conference? Yeah, basically do it now, and then you don't have to record it again. Come on, do it. That's because the life of a query class, that's two hours long, and we don't have two hours. Then, OK, so we had a bit of crawling. What's next? What's up next in the queue, basically? Right, so we were talking about indexing, actually, not crawling. Somehow. Right, true. No, we had crawling and indexing. We had both, right? I think we silently skipped over crawling, which is really weird. But we can cover that at one point where perhaps there's something to announce around Googlebot, or something interesting happens with Googlebot, and then we can cover how Googlebot actually works. So I don't think that we lost all that much. But we were talking about indexing and rendering, and we covered quite a bit about indexing. Namely, we talked about content conversion. We talked about collapsing, basically error page detection. You talked about rendering a little bit. We collected signals, and now we ended up with the next step, which is actually canonicalization and duped detection. Wow, that's a big word. Isn't that the same duped detection and canonicalization kind of? Well, it's not, right? Because first, you have to detect the dupes, basically cluster them together, saying that all of these pages are dupes of each other, and then you have to basically find a leader page for all of them. Right. And that is canonicalization. So you have deduplication, which is the whole term. But within that, you have cluster building, like dup cluster building, and canonicalization. Right. Got it. So for duped detection, what we do is, well, we try to detect dupes. And how we do that is perhaps how most people at other search engines do it, which is basically reducing the content into a hash or checksum and then comparing the checksums. And that's because it's much easier to do that than comparing perhaps 3,000 words, which is the minimum to rank well in any search engine. Wait, wait. 3,000? What? Oh, I said that. Gary. We have some documentation in our developers. This documentation, that's not 3,000 words. Should we add some fluff? Is it ranking well? No. See? It's always ranking well. Come on. I think it's doing OK. Yeah, I'm basically trolling. So Lizzie, do you want to reconsider which site you're on? Yeah, he's throwing a documentation under the bus. What the heck, Gary? I thought we were on the same team. We are. Nope. We totally are. Gary is on his own team. Yeah, that's true. OK, so 3,000 words. Is that like a real thing, or did you just make that? No, I just made it up. That's bullcrap. And so we are reducing the content into a checksum. And we do that because we don't want to scan the whole text because it just doesn't make sense, essentially. It takes more resources, and the result would be pretty much the same. So we calculate multiple kinds of checksums about the textual content of the page, and then we compare the checksums. Does that catch near duplicates or only duplicates, exact duplicates? Good question. It can catch both. It can also catch near duplicates. We have several algorithms that, for example, try to detect and then remove the boilerplate from the pages. So for example, we exclude the navigation from the checksum calculation. We remove the footer as well, and then we are left with what we call the centerpiece, which is the central content of the page. Kind of like the meat of the page. That's where it's at. Considering you are vegetarian, yes. That's the meaty part of the page, yes. These meat jokes again. I feel like that has been like the theme of the week from John. It is. Yeah, Sundar sent a memo about this on Monday. About meat jokes. Yes, it's the meat jokes week. And now Lizzie doesn't know if I'm serious or not. We're all out of cheese, I guess. Yeah, because I'm not checking those emails. I guess I should go check. But he's the boss. Well, I mean, what could you say, Gary? You filtered all of those emails, right? I do. I don't even see his emails because I filter them. And for context, for those listening and being very confused about the meat jokes, like this week, we had several meetings with the team or members of the team. And somehow we always end up with joking about meat, even though we have several vegetarians on the team. But going back to kind of our dupe detection. When we calculated the checksums and we compared the checksums to each other, then those that are fairly similar, or at least a little bit similar, we will put them together in a dupe cluster. I have kind of a dumb question. What is a checksum? And why do you keep mentioning it? So a checksum is basically a hash of the content, basically. A fingerprint. A fingerprint, yes. That's a better word. Basically, it's a fingerprint of something. In this case, it's the content of the file. In case of, for example, zip files like packages, it could be, again, the content reduced into a checksum so you can easily compare two different packages to each other, essentially. So from a practical point of view, it's basically you take all of the letters in the document and you add them all together and you come up with this really long number, and then you just compare the numbers instead of comparing the text. So it's kind of a simple way to have a fingerprint for the whole document. Then you just compare the numbers. You don't have to look at the text anymore. What if the document changes? Does it get a new number? Then the number changes. Yeah, and then basically, if the number changes, then the Duke cluster would be, again, different because the contents of the Duke cluster would be different because you have a new number in the cluster. So that would just go into another cluster, essentially. One that's relevant to that number. And then once we calculated these checksums and we have the Duke cluster, then we have to select one document that we want to show in the search results. Why do we do that? We do that because typically users don't like it when the same content is repeated across many search results. And we do that also because our storage space in the index is not infinite. Basically, why would we want to store duplicates in our index when users don't like it anyway? So we can basically just reduce the index size. But calculating which one to be the canonical, which page to lead to the cluster is actually not that easy because there are scenarios where even for humans, it would be quite hard to tell which page should be the one that is in the search results. So we employ, I think over 20 signals, we use over 20 signals to decide which page to pick as canonical from a Duke cluster. And most of you can probably guess like what these signals would be. Like one is obviously the content, but it could be also stuff like page rank, for example, like which page has higher page rank because we still use page rank after all these years. It could be, especially on same site, which page is on an HTTPS URL, which page is included in a sitemap, or if one page is redirecting to the other page, then that's a very clear signal that the other page should become canonical, the rel canonical attributes. That's also, is it an attribute tag? It's not a tag. It's a tag, yeah. No, it's not. It's a link, the link tag. It's a link tag with a relation attribute, canonical. Right, I'm confused, but anyway. So the link rel canonical tag is quite a strong signal again because people or someone specified that that other page should be the canonical. And then once we compared all these signals for all page pairs, then we end up with actual canonical, right? And then each of these signals that we use have their own weight. And we use some machine learning, who do to calculate the weights for these signals. But for example, to give you an idea, like 301 redirect or any sort of redirect actually should be much higher weight when it comes to canonicalization than whether the page is on an HTTP URL or HTTPS. Why? Well, because eventually the user would see the redirect target. So it doesn't make sense to include the redirect source in the search results. So do we get that wrong sometimes? Or like, why do we need machine learning? Like we clearly just write down these weights once and then it's perfect, right? So that's a very good question. And a few years ago, I worked on canonicalization because I was trying to introduce a Jeff Lang into the calculation as a signal. And it was a nightmare to fine tune the weights manually because even if you change the weight by 0.1 number, I don't think that it has a measure, then it can throw off some other number and then suddenly pages that, for example, whose URL is shorter might show up or more likely to show up in the search results, which is kind of silly because like why would you look at that? Like who cares about the URL length? So it was an absolute nightmare to find the right weight when you were introducing, for example, a new signal. And then you can also see bugs. I know that, for example, John escalates quite a bit to index dupes basically based on what he picks up on Twitter or the forums or whatever. And then sometimes he escalates an actual bug where the dupes team says that, why are you laughing, John? You shouldn't laugh. This is about you. I'm putting you on the spot. You should appreciate this. But anyway, so then he escalates a potential bug and it's confirmed that it's a bug and it's related to a weight. Let's say that we use, I don't know, the sitemap signal in a two or the weight of the sitemap signal is too high. And then let's say that the dupes team says that, okay, let's reduce that signal a tiny bit. But then when they reduce that signal a tiny bit, then some other signal becomes more powerful. But you can't actually control which signal because there are like 20 of them. And then you tweak that other signal that suddenly became more powerful or heavier. And then that throws up yet another signal. And then you tweak that one and basically it's a never ending game essentially. So it's a whack-a-mole. So if you feed all these signals to a machine learning algorithm plus all the desired outcomes, then you can train it to set these weights for you and then use those weights that were calculated or suggested by a machine learning algorithm. Are those weights also like a ranking factor? Like you mentioned, like, is it in a sitemap file? Would we say, well, if it's in a sitemap file, it'll rank better? Or is canonicalization kind of independent of ranking? So canonicalization is completely independent of ranking but the page that we choose as canonical that will end up in the search result pages and that will be ranked but not based on these signals. Right. I mean, that was a lot of stuff and I wonder if we should just like write this up somewhere. That's probably not a bad idea. So if we wanted to write that up, what would we need to do? It sounds like Gary has all of the inside information and he's willing to share it off the record. What would it take to get it on the record? Well, since it's Gary, I think he could write it down himself, maybe. First draft, yeah, yeah. No. Because I've seen him write some stuff and I think it, you know, first draft pretty good. But to be fair, I find it super hard to write the first draft. How do you get a draft started? Because basically I stare at an empty Google Doc and it stares back into my soul. Yeah, you and I have had conversations about this. I know. The blank page is just like the death of all writing. And one thing that can really help is talking about it with someone else and then kind of roughly banging out like a skeleton of what you want to say. So maybe start with headings. Like I want to talk about this, then this, then this, and then maybe some notes under each one. And I guess like before even that, maybe deciding what the point of the doc would be. So for Gary, like for this one that he was just talking about, would it be something that people will read to then do something else about it? Is there any action needed that they need to do? Or is it explaining a concept so that they can understand how something works? So first kind of deciding what's the main point and then that will determine the structure. Okay, so basically Gary would come up with this idea that we should document this and then create a rough draft and send it to you. And then you just copy and paste it into the documentation and hit publish. No, I think there's a little bit more back and forth. Probably we would talk about it first. And then I would say, Gary, can you please write something down? And then he would write it down. And then I would look at it and make comments, probably in a Google doc. And then we would queue it up to go into another review process for Dev site because we have to check it in to our content management system. And then we would do a final review, stage it, make sure it looks nice. And then we would publish it. And depending on what it is, like we might want to promote it a little bit as well. Maybe on Twitter or like blog posts, depending on if it's related to a feature or if it's just explaining a search concept. Okay, cool. So basically you'd work on the docs draft with Gary first and then I guess he would turn it into an HTML page or how does that work with the developer documentation? Yeah, either me or Gary. But since Gary knows what to do, I think he would do it. Okay. But yes, he would write in HTML because that's how our content management system works. Okay, cool. And then he would basically check it in like any source code file or... Yes. Okay, cool. Exciting stuff. And then the publishing part I guess is like just clicking a button or is there something fancy? Yes. Just clicking a button. No, it's not fancy. You just click a button. So it used to be a little bit more complicated where there was two steps where you had to manually publish but the team that maintains the site that we publish on fixed that. So it was automatic. So all you do is submit to the code base and then it pushes it like within a second. So you just click a button, submit and then it's live. So cool. So basically you would just publish anything that we would bring you and nobody would check it. No. No. No. That's not true. That's a little... I would not just publish anything. Could we do like a guest blog and the developer documentation and guest blog post? Well, I don't know how interesting that would be to people. But maybe if people want to know about it, then maybe. I think that that's also like a good point is like, that's something that I often push back on. People who want to just write something, like what is the point and why? And will this help anyone? Or are you just putting this out there just to put out there? Because if there's a pile of information and some of it is not useful, like that's not helping anyone. Oh, okay. So well, I mean, obviously it should be useful. That kind of makes sense. Yes. Step one, make sure it's useful or interesting. Okay. Do you do anything afterwards? Like once it's live, is it basically just live forever? Or do you go back and review that from time to time? Do you ever get feedback on these things? How does that tend to work? Yeah. So we have a feedback mechanism, well, multiple feedback places where you can report things. So sometimes it's on Twitter, which we don't like because it's hard to track what's going on. There's a button in the documentation where you can click send feedback and then write to us about what is wrong or what you found confusing. Mostly it's like negative stuff, but you could write in some positive stuff if you wanted to, if it helped you. Like we like to know that, but mostly it's like typo or like, I don't like this. And it goes into this queue for us to look at and then we will revisit and fix it. Oh, cool. It's really helpful if it is specific. So there's an option where you can like select to, like this part of the page is confusing. So when people give us more context then it's easier for us to know, like how can we improve this? Okay, so it's not like this just giant black box where people go and they complain and nobody actually reads it. It's actually, it goes to people and they try to read it and figure out what to do. Yeah, and the people are me and Gary. We are looking at everything. A lot of it is like weird stuff or like not very helpful. Oh yeah. I had an idea that maybe we could have a video where we just like read the bad feedback, like the Twitter bad tweets mean celebrity tweets because some of it is so aggressive or just like, this is bad, I don't like it. And when you get feedback like that, it's like, well, what should I do differently if it's just bad? Like, what about it? I need specifics to improve it. Okay. So I was thinking about that video and I'm in actually. Awesome. I kind of think as the lead of the team we should be careful if I would do something like that. Too much public shaming. Come on. I mean, we shouldn't be encouraging people to leave even worse feedback. I think getting more actionable feedback is always useful but it sometimes feels like, especially with a big company like Google, if there's a feedback link then it's easy to assume, oh, nobody actually reads it. But it sounds like the feedback that comes in for the documentation that's actual people behind it. So it's, if you want something changed or if you're frustrated because I don't know you're trying to implement something and it's just not working then it sounds like people should just leave more clear feedback. Yeah. I completely understand why people don't. I mean, it's worked to write in a long story about like why you had trouble with something. And it's much easier just to say like bad one star. Like, we don't like it. And if I did get a big pile of that for like one document then I would look into it more. I would probably have to speak to some people like run a survey or something for that doc to find out. Okay, well, more specifically like I'm seeing a lot of one star reviews for this doc. Why is it doing so poorly? What can we do to fix it? And then more specifics can kind of help that along. That sounds pretty cool. Yeah. Okay. And then also the forum. Sometimes like things, sorry, I meant to mention that one. So there's Twitter and the feedback funnel into the docs and then the forum. And so sometimes people will write in there and we'll get bugs surfaced from that. If something's wrong, like maybe incorrect or out of date or something like that, and then we'll fix it. Cool. What about like non-English content? Is that something where you also process that? Or does that just go to like translators directly? We also process that. The feedback tool that we have, it will translate what they're saying. A lot of the feedback there is like, oh, you use this word when you should have used this other word in this language. And it will translate that into English, which doesn't really make any sense because sometimes that auto-translate thing just makes it sound like the same word. But that's a signal for us to look into it deeper to report back like, hey, are we sure that this is the right word? And then talk to our localization experts about what we should do about that. So cool. Okay. So I guess if you want to complain about the documentation on Twitter, you should go to Gary and he will accept your feedback, but better than that is just to give actionable feedback in the documentation directly so that... Wait, what? No. I don't know how I feel about this. No. Okay, fine, fine. Then maybe don't complain about it on Twitter to Gary. Yeah, complain to John. Why me? To me, yeah. I'm too nice, I'm too nice. Nobody complains to me. Right, yeah. Sure. Okay, sometimes, sometimes, sometimes. Okay, we should move on. Cool, okay. I think that helps a lot with the documentation. So that's something where it sometimes comes across as like it just magically appears and nobody really knows where it's coming from. And for the documentation, do you do all of the search documentation or is it just a part? Just a part, yeah. So that like when you say search documentation, there's a couple of different angles there. So there's the one that's just for everybody who's trying to use search. So like web search kind of thing, like how do I search for a job or like a business near me? That's a different team. There's also the search console documentation which there's a tech writer, Josh, who's on the search console team who documents stuff about how to use search console. And then I work on the developers.google.com search documentation, which is a little bit more technical, I guess. Okay, cool. We should talk a bit about how the process works with getting kind of new features documented and all of that, but maybe we can do that in one of the next episodes. I don't know if we didn't scare you too much with this podcast. Cool, okay. I think maybe we should take a break here. It has been fun doing this episode, having more people join in and kind of more viewpoints and yeah, I hope you as a listener, you found this useful and entertaining and a bit insightful. And if you like these, then of course let us know on Twitter or wherever you can give feedback for podcasts in general. And hopefully we'll see you again or wait, wait, I always messed this part up. We'll hear you. No, you will hear us again in one of the future episodes. And of course, to hear us again on a future episode, don't forget to subscribe. See you then. Bye everyone. Bye. Goodbye. Oszi Buna.


Okay, good morning everybody. Welcome to BC 314, Media and Technology and Ministry. We are making progress, learning how to use the tools that are available there for us in the area of media and technology and of course use it to serve God and serve people. Let's pray. Then we're going to get started. I just request somebody to please unmute your mic if you can and just pray with the class and we get started. Friends, why don't you thank your mics fine. Thank you. Thank you Lord. Thank you this time Lord. And this morning we submit in your hand Lord as we are going to learn and this subject Lord help us to learn that we can apply in this many in our ministry that this is a very technology, but how we use in our ministry help us to learn and Holy Spirit get us and guide us also submit a posture for all the students in your hand. Thank you. Alright, so today and tomorrow so basically both the classes this week. I want to talk to us a little bit on some guidelines. You know, we would say best practices are some standards that we should keep in mind as we use graphics and videos. As part of our media ministry. Now, of course, you know, the graphics and the videos will most likely be designed and created by the people who know how to do it. And so you will have somebody doing this. They're helping you. They may be volunteers, they may be staff. When we started APC, I'm going back in the early days. We just had volunteers, you know, somebody would do some graphics for us. And then we had a paid consultant that means this person was not working full time. They were just, you know, charges for the pieces of work they did, you know. So we went, that's how we started in a very small way. We just had, you know, initially it was volunteers. In fact, our church logo was designed by a volunteer. He is, we didn't pay him for it. We're still using that same logo that he did for us. Of course, he's now gone overseas. But, you know, those early days, it was just volunteers who were helping us for various things. And then slowly, you know, we were able to pay for somebody to do the work for us. And then later on, we were able to have full time staff because the amount of work also increased. So, you know, so you will have people helping you. But what at least I've seen in my own experience is that these people are good in their work. They know how to design graphics. They know how to do videos. They know how to do it. But they may not always think from the church perspective. They may not see things from, you know, the way you as a Christian leader or you as a pastor would see. They may not know what's important necessarily. They may not know the guidelines within which to do their work because, you know, really when you're creating a graphic or you're creating a video. When it goes out, it's not only communicating a message. It's also representing your church, your organization. And so that has to be kept in mind. So they may not always think like that. And so over the years, you know, we had to, there's a lot of learning, you know, both from my side or as a pastor, as a leader and then from their side as technical people who do the work. You know, so we had to learn a lot. Okay. But thank God over the years, you know, and also out there on online, there are a lot of churches, a lot of Christian ministries who are sharing their knowledge. They're learning over the years in using media, meaning using graphics and videos. They're sharing it and so we can learn from them as well. You know, what is the right way to do graphics for Christian church, Christian ministry, what are some things to keep in mind when you're doing videos. And so I'm just, you know, going to share those guidelines today and then some other things tomorrow when you are creating graphics and video. These are things that you need to communicate to the people doing the work and then you're to hold them accountable to this, you know, to do these things.  These are things you must keep in your mind because you know, one is you need to check these things. And obviously, you know, I don't always check every graphic or video. I've communicated the standards to communicate the guidance in the early days, you know, I used to check because before the videos or the graphics go out, I used to check myself. But then after that it became too much and I stopped doing that. But through that, I learned, okay, these are the things that, you know, I need to tell the people, look out for, don't do this, do this, do it like this. And so we documented a lot of these guidelines and, you know, put it in writing. So now I don't check, I just let them do the work. Certain things I might check they still would ask me some questions, but these guidelines have been documented. So the team knows the teams, the people know and they try to just follow it. So I want to share this with you so that you can also think like this. And even though you're not doing the work, the graphics or the video, you can share it with the people are doing the work. And also keep these thoughts in mind so that the media work that is put out. Must, you know, follow certain standards and guidelines to represent the church or the ministry correctly. So let's look at that. Look at some of these things and I've shared the PDF in the classwork section. So you have this available. And so we'll cover some today and we'll pick up tomorrow. So guidelines for graphics and videos. So part of our media technology, you're going to be using graphics and videos. And what are some of the guidelines? So there are some useful websites you can go to. I've just given two links, but there are really a lot more. What I mean is churches and Christian organizations who are sharing their learning. You know, they have already done a lot of work in graphics and videos and media. And they're sharing that learning with the rest of us. So it's good to go and learn from them. See what they're doing. So some general thoughts is it's good to stay current. That's what's happening in media and design globally. You know, so you may, if you are interested, you may do this. But surely encourage your team members, you know, the media people, the IT people to stay current. You know, one simple way is you just see what others are doing. You know, what are other churches doing globally? Like I said, many of them are actually sharing their experiences. They're sharing their learning so we can learn from them. You know, what are the right or wrong way to use media, graphics, videos. But of course, you know, we need to stay rooted in the Word of God. That means while our work is contemporary, we are not compromising as far as the Word of God is concerned. Then understand that graphics and video is actually a communication process. That means you are actually communicating something to people. You know, so don't just think, oh, I have to do a graphic to make, you know, because I have to put something on the website or social media. No, there's actually a message going out in every graphic in every video. I'm sure we know this, but that means you should be very clear. What is your message? That's what are you trying to say to the people and who is your audience?   That must be very clear. What are you trying to say? And who are you speaking to? Otherwise, the graphic would be just a jumble of things or the video maybe you're putting things together. The message may be very confusing or may not be clear. Some of the simple things that keep in mind is the fonts that you're using in your graphics and video must be simple and readable. Go for simplicity. And otherwise, the graphics people may, they may want to go with something fancy and you can't even read it. Sometimes, you know, I, in the early days, I should tell, I should, this was such a simple thing to me, but I should just send things back to the teams. Hey, change it. You can't even read the font. It's so difficult, you know, so you're always thinking from the end viewer perspective. That means the person who's going to see the audience, they were going to read the graphic or watch the video. The font has to be readable. It's got to be clear. It's got to be the right size. It's got to be simple. Right. Similarly, the color choices, you know, if you just leave it to the media person, they may just choose all kinds of colors. They may not be thinking in terms of being relevant. And sometimes certain colors have certain meanings and connotations. So you've got to be also sensitive to that. You know, so, so in the use of certain, and this is depending on which part of the world you are, of course, you know, so be sensitive in the use of those colors and how it's being used. For instance, in India, the saffron color is very sensitive. Right. So, you know, if you're using that, you have to be careful because it has certain sensitivity attached to that color. And so those kinds of things. Be careful. You know, the graphic person may not think of thinking those terms, but you, as a pastor, you know, you got to make sure they watch out for these things. And also don't overcrowd, make sure that the graphics, the video is not overcrowded, you know, leave a lot of space around it. You know, otherwise, sometimes they want to put everywhere something and the graphic gets very crowded. This simple thought. And then, you know, use what is referred to as visual hierarchy.  So, you know, the most important thing should have the largest font, you know, and things that are of lesser importance can have smaller font size and be positioned, you know, in other places. So think about what you want the viewer to see first and how we want the eye to move. So the eye is going to move from the biggest to the smallest, from the heaviest to the lightest. So visually think about these things. So the graphic person may not know what is the most important thing you are trying, you want to stand out. For example, the conference team may be the one that you really want to stand out, you know, that maybe the conference team is on power evangelism. So you want that to stand out. The graphic person may not know. For him, power evangelism is just two words that have to be on the graphic. But for you, that's the main thing you want to get across.  You know, and then, so these are things that as a leader, you have to make it very clear to the graphic person because they may not know these, they may not be thinking along these lines.  So, okay, so once the graphic is done, you need to look at the graphic as a viewer. You know, is the message coming across? What I want to say as a past as a leader, is that message coming across to my audience? Or does this graphic appeal to the people I want to read?  You know, hopefully they won't do it, but I'm just saying, then you immediately know that images that are used on the graphic doesn't connect with the audience. You're doing a youth conference, he's used images of older people, or maybe even professionals. You know, or he's having people in suits, but in a tie-in suit, but you are reaching out to, you know, youth, maybe teenagers and young adults. They're not interested in tie-in suit, and so there's a disconnect between what is used in the graphic and the audience you're trying to reach. So these are things you need to, you can pull up, you know, and say, hey, the graphic is not communicating my message or the message I want to the audience that I'm trying to go to. You know, so these are things you have to look up for. Okay. Just at a high level, keep these things in mind. Are you all with me so far? Yeah. Let me just check. Everyone's with me so far. You're getting what I'm saying. It's really for your response on the chat. Okay. All right. Okay. Let's go forward. Now, in terms of graphic design and software packages, of course, there are commercially available. This is Adobe Creative Cloud Suite is what is probably everyone's using, not everyone, but many people are using it for a shopping design illustrator and everything else that comes with that. That's something professionally you can use. And as a church, you would get nonprofit discount, which we also get. So it makes it very affordable for nonprofits. But if, you know, you don't want to pay for it, then there are free applications that you have applications that you can use for graphic design can genuinely and spark. So you could use these and they're free. So, you know, you could have people use them use these software packages just for you to know and just know that there are free web applications you can use.  If they don't have their own software, you can guide them to do using any of these. Okay. Now, now we're getting getting a little bit more detailed some of the some other things that I want you to think about in terms of just the graphic design and then we talk about the video design. And tomorrow, I'll be talking about search engine optimization. That means when you are creating these graphics in the videos. They also contribute towards the visibility of your website and so on. So what are some of the things to make sure that, you know, when the graphics created or the videos are created and are put out there that they are picked up by search engines. So I will share that with you tomorrow. These are thoughts to keep in mind. They may be a little technical, but from my experience. Usually, these are things that the, like I said earlier, the media people, media people may not be thinking about from a church perspective, right. They may be very good professionally in their work. But they're not seeing necessarily from a church or ministry perspective and therefore you need to emphasize or you need to hold them up for these things. Right. So, from a style style perspective for graphic design, see what's happening. You know, there were a lot of new ways of communicating through graphics is happening around the world. So, you know, look at some contemporary churches, see what they're doing. Very important, you know, the images that are being used in the graphic here to be very careful. That's nothing suggestive questionable, inappropriate, violent, indecent, promocative. Right. So, you know, this again, you have to emphasize and re-emphasize to the media people.  Right. So, you need to be careful about the images you use. Yeah. Simple things like, you know, when you if you have the image of a man or a woman. And on which finger the ring is placed is actually sending a message. Now, we may not even think about it or the graphics. But in fact, just recently, maybe one thought, one thought to go. I had to correct one of them. I mean, I'd send one of the graphics back simply because it had the image of a person and the ring was on a question and on a finger that that actually was sending a different message. So, you know, when you have a ring on the ring on the ring finger, okay, this is saying I'm married. But if the ring is the color of the ring is different. And it's on a different finger. It's sending a different message. You know, so even that simple thing. The person doing the image doesn't is not thinking about it. They just, okay, I need somebody and they're not looking at that. But you will have to pick it up. And now if that goes on a church website or that goes on, you know, something you're doing in the minister and somebody who understands that will question. Hey, why is the church putting out the picture of somebody with a ring on this color ring. It was a black ring on one of the fingers and if you look if you actually Google it, you'll find out that a black ring on this finger actually is means this. And, and somebody who understands it will get a wrong message. Right. It's a very simple thing, but it's communication. You're sending a message to somebody. And so you have to be very careful of those, you know, these, these kinds of things. So what images are being used, you know, on on in the graphics, they have to be very careful.  Another thing in graphics is being very uniform in the sense that you want creativity, but there's also got to be some sense of cohesion in the work you're doing, you know, yeah, graphics that are coming out of this church, this, this one, this organization, there's consistency. So if there's a video and a graphic, you know, the fonts announcing the same event, this should be uniformity. Otherwise there'd be a clash. So for an event, all the, all the graphics, all the videos look if that event is being promoted or presented with cohesion with uniformity. Right. The other thing is when they're using people's faces, you know, you've been showing people use people that are relevant to the audience, you know, so for example, and that's something I had to correct recently. We've been announcing job opportunities at APC, right, to work in our Bangalore office. And our media team is using all, you know, Western faces. Now it has no connection. That's not the kind of people we're planning to hire to work in Bangalore office. It's, you know, we don't get visas in there. So I had to correct them, say, guys, they're announcing job opportunities for people to work in APC Bangalore office. But we are putting all the faces of people, you know, Western faces. And yet this announcement is going to people sitting in Bangalore.  So it's a simple thought, but it's sending a message, you know, and somebody sitting in the audience watching this, what are they going to think, you know, hey, they're announcing a job for people to work in Bangalore office and showing all Western faces. There's a mismatch as a disconnect. Now, of course, if we are announcing our Bible college, yeah, I, you know, intensely tell them use faces with people from all over the world, because we, the Bible colleges, we want people from all over the world to come and study with us online, because it's an online thing, and it's happening on the e-learning platform. So you could just be free to do an intensely show a global setting, use pictures of faces of people from different parts of the world because we want that. And that's our audience, people from anywhere, everywhere in the world. So that video or that those graphics have people all over the world, but this video, this graphic context, who are we addressing, you know. So these are things that at least, and all this happened recent times, even though, you know, people have been working our media team, people have been some of them have been working seven years ages, you know, with us for a long time. Sometimes they forget, or they may not always think in those things. And so you need to watch out and tell them, hey, there's a mismatch. I hope I'm making sense. Okay. And, you know, these things will have to come from you as a ministry leader as a pastor, because sometimes the media team would miss it. Now very similar to graphics, very similar to graphics. We need to have some guidelines for video. There's a lot of overlap, similarity in this, right? Same thing in the videos, images and songs. You don't want anything inappropriate. And if anybody requests for anything that's inappropriate, you know, there should be a way to put some checks in place. And if we are using footage, video footage of our pictures or video footage of people from within the church, you know, show them well and don't show them in things that, you know, makes them feel uncomfortable. So that's very important, you know, because you are selecting photos or videos of people in the congregation, which you may have caught during events and then reusing it in video promotions. Always, you know, be sensitive to their feelings, use them, show them in good light, simple things like don't show anything that's, that miscommunicates things.  So these kind of things, you know, being very sensitive in, you know, what are the background images, graphics videos are being used, you have to be careful. Some other things, you know, I'm just going in through some of the details here. Keep in mind on the platform on which this is being used. So Facebook, Instagram, or even on YouTube Shorts, you know, you have those very short short videos. So here people are not looking, you know, the short of the video, the more impactful it is. Right. So the videos must be kept very short. So that's why, you know, we do different length videos we have, you know, for example, even for us sermons, we have, there is the full sermon video, which may be about 45 minutes long. Then we do a five minute key points. Then we do 60, 60 seconds or sometimes it's just 30 second sermon highlight. You know, so there are those who may want to watch the full sermon, there are those who want just a sermon highlight in five minutes. And then there's, there's some who just, okay, what was the main thing, the sermon highlight, which is in 60 seconds or less. So you're, you know, you're keeping in mind that there are different audiences, different platforms where you need different duration videos. Okay. So in, in videos, turn on subtitles, so that if there's no audio mode, at least they can get the text of what is being said. And you can also generate transcripts automatically on YouTube. So if somebody wants to just quickly glance through the transcript, they can do it. And the voices that you're using for videos use clear, exciting voices and relevant voices, you know. So just depending on what you're announcing, use voices that are appropriate and relevant to that announcement.  And along with the audio, that is the voice, wherever possible, also have text. So it's a double impact. They're not only listening, but they're also seeing and they're seeing if they see the text, that is also making an impact. So wherever possible, use both audio and visual to impact or get the message across. So like we said earlier, there should be consistency in the font usage across the same event, whether it's on graphics and videos, there should be consistency, you can watch out for that. And then, you know, other detailed standards. So these are standards we have given to our team, that means the way you display the date, time and year. So if it's things that you're putting out, you know, for, which is going to be seen by a global audience, remember the date formats are different, you know, in different parts of the world. So some people, you know, North America, they would use month, day and year. In other parts we use day, month and year. So it can be very confusing for certain people. So we have, you know, intensely used date, month, as in the three-letter word for the month, three-letter for the month, and then the full form for the year. So we follow that standard. So regardless of which part of the world, people who see that graphic or the video will understand, you know, what date it is. So these are simple things but are very important because, you know, when you're putting things out for a global audience, you need to keep this in mind. So we've given standards like, okay, for the day of the week, you know, use clear abbreviations, when you're displaying time, make it easy for them to know, right, it's 2 p.m. Others you say 14 hours, then they have to convert it mentally, or 14 is actually 2 p.m. And sometimes they may convert that incorrectly and end up at the wrong time. So it's always, you know, for everybody's convenience, it's good to state something explicitly and then we generate user-friendly URLs for people to go online, so on. So these are simple things you can think through on what would be relevant in your area and use that. Yeah, so this again, the casting, the use of people's faces, be very sensitive, similar to the graphics in the videos, be sensitive when they're showing the videos of people. Make sure it's relatable to your audience. If you're using people from the church, show them in good light. Be sensitive when you're using pictures of children or teenagers, get consent from the parents so that parents are aware that, you know, the pictures of their children or teenagers being used in certain footage or graphics, do it with permission, and so on. Okay, so there's a quick run-through on things for you to think about. You may not be using it, you know, you may or may not use all of this right away, but over the years we've, you know, tried to recognize the importance of having guidelines for your media team so that the communication, the message that comes out, you know, is correct and it meets certain standards. Everyone with me, Kiran, I see you sweating over there, what's happening?  Alright, so I know I've covered just a little ground, you know, to help us think on these things. Any questions on this? Maybe you have, maybe you have had some experience, maybe you run into some problems with people who are doing graphics and media in your area. We could talk about it. Tomorrow I will continue on the same thing, but I want to just look at it from a search engine perspective, you know, on how we optimize these graphics and videos for search engines and also some things to keep in mind when you are uploading these things to social media platforms. You know, the quality of the things may change by the time you, from what is done and what is uploaded. So that's another thing to keep in mind. So we cover that tomorrow and then we will get into, next week we'll get into equipment. That means, you know, I just want to share as we go forward, what are the equipments we'll be using just to give you an idea that this is what goes into, you know, photography. Video, live streaming, audio, sorry, to audio, video, live streaming, also in-house public address system. So these are things that you go because a lot of these decisions people come to you as a pastor, leaders, what should we buy? And they may make recommendations, but and finally the money is you approve it. So you have to keep a few thoughts in mind. But any questions here from your experience with media people who are doing media for your church or ministry, any thoughts, any questions? Okay. All right, so we'll pick this up tomorrow and take this forward. Keep these things in mind so that, you know, at some point you can use them when you have media work being done for your church, for your ministry. Okay. Let's close for today. I'm going to just request somebody to pray with us and dismiss us. We'll continue this tomorrow. Conan, if your mic is okay. Can you pray? Or maybe... Can I pray? Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead, please. Father Lord, thank you for this wonderful time. Lord, I pray for each and every one of us. Lord, thank you for the good connectivity. Lord, thank you for the subject and understanding. Lord, give us a good knowledge about from this subject, Lord. Help us to learn more from this subject, Lord, in our coming days, Lord. Lord, thank you for Pastor Rajesh, Lord, and also those who people are at the cross, Lord. Lord, protect us in our ways, Lord, the rest of the day, Lord. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. Thank you everyone. So I'll see you all tomorrow. We have three hours tomorrow morning. We do Revelation Daniel and then we continue with media technology. God bless. Enjoy the rest of your day. Bye now.


The next one from Tony is, well, it's, he was testing to make sure our new site was searchable via Google, because many of you have wanted the ability to search just Mac Geek gaps for say, you know, Wi-Fi or anything else, right? And so the way, you can do it on the Mac Geek app site because WordPress has its own search, but he went and did it with Google. And so maybe there's two quick tips here. Google has site-specific search and the way you do it and this works with other search engines too. And we'll put an example in the show notes, but it's use site colon and then for us, it would be macgeekab.com space and whatever you wanna search for. And that will narrow the search down to the site that you've put there. And that way, you know, you're not searching the web for Wi-Fi, you're searching macgeekab.com for Wi-Fi. So handy little quick tips, I like it. It's fun. It's good.


Accessing clients information on internet is something very sensitive and it's very easy these days that just by clicking few tabs you are easily available to see information which is being provided about the client on internet. Now how we can see such kind of information on internet is very easy to understand. These days the most important social media is available to us in form of Facebook, in form of Twitter handle, in form of Instagram or you just type an individual's name and you can search the basics of their information. Or what we can get out of it, what information generally tells us, basically that information is providing us that what kind of a person that is, what kind of the pictures is being displayed on the social media, what kind of introduction he is providing about himself or herself. So basically none of the ethics code for health or mental health professionals specifically address the behavior of mental health professionals as clinicians, as trainers, as teachers or as employers when they wish to obtain information via internet. Basically this is not a code that anyone can stop or access via using internet. So if a mental health professional is curious that he can know about his client and he can better understand his issues by knowing him in a better way, he can easily google his accounts and he can retrieve the information. Searches using public records are lawful and not ethically prescribed. There is no such law on this that you cannot search anyone, you cannot find anyone on the internet and you cannot know about them. However, therapists must be prepared to deal with the consequences of information they discover when not provided to them by the clients. Like if you accidentally search for information about a client, which the client did not directly give to the mental health professional, but the information has been retrieved and shared with him or it has been related to treatment or assessment, then there may be quite serious consequences. Because it is not legal to use this type of information. Although it is not illegal to take information, it is unlawful to refer the information which the client did not directly give to the client for some reason or to retrieve it. Therapists routinely gather information on clients as part of assessment or intake procedures and over the course of their work with them. Their history taking, their diagnosis, their mental status examination, their behavior, recording all of their things are part of a routine to sub-mental health professionals. Traditionally, clients have controlled disclosure of such information except for stories that might attract attention through mainstream media but times are changing now. First people wanted to hide such information from clients but nowadays a lot of people talk about their problems, issues or even their mental health problems on social media. In fact, if there are cases of such incidents, there is a hashtag trend on which people continuously debate over the period of many days and it emerges like a national debate or an international debate. So these days things are changing and we just can't say that a client will keep a secret from any problem at times and put it on social media. For example, in the following case, one therapist has argued that googling has taught him valuable things about the client. The therapist said that he googles about clients and he gets a lot of good information from social media so he doesn't get a routine history taking. And because of that, his usual patient or therapist relationship doesn't get to know about it other than googling. In which he retrieves a lot of information from his office account, workplace, house or social account. He expressed that belief that knowing more about his client helped him to build empathy. The therapist thought that the more you know about your client's personal problems, personal life and his dealings with other people, the better you can build empathy for him. There is a certain behavior that he did and what is the reason for that. The key ethical challenge involves how a therapist handled the client's data and that he or she has been discovering from the internet. The biggest issue here is that when you have a lot of information with you, when you have a lot of access to information, so how you are going to justify how you will use this information in therapy? How will you use this information as proof for the symptoms of that information? Because you have been abused by this person. So that's why you are reacting in this manner. So you should not be meeting with that person or you should be refraining to have a debate with that person on social media. I mean, how do you sum up all that information? How do you pick up the points and bring them to your treatment table plan? That becomes a real challenge to the therapist. If a therapist seeks information of the client rather than taking from the client through other sources. Justifying that can also be an ethical concern and a challenge.


Scott Manton, Chicho, how should I go about speaking to friends and family about world politics when their viewpoint is taking straight from mainstream media? I usually don't bring up any topics as it usually leads to an argument. Scott, man, I would say pick on, just pick a topic that you're well versed in that you can defend, that you have world knowledge of, and start talking about that. And if anything comes up that you don't really have too much information on, just tell them. I don't know much about that. I can look into it if you really want to talk about it, or check my sources if you really want to talk about it. And just bring up censorship. People cannot be informed if they are being censored, if information is being censored. So anybody that really doesn't understand the concept of censorship, that's tyranny. That's fascism. So that should be sort of the central focal point, because a lot of people that are defending the corporate mainstream propaganda only consume what corporate mainstream propaganda states.   You're uninformed. You can't talk about this topic, go away. You want information, get off Facebook, get your information somewhere else, and we can talk about it. And that's after I've talked to them a little bit. There was some people that were doing Russiagate. I was like, man, you guys are dum-dums, right? You guys are dum-dums. Forget about it. So that's the way I treat it, but I'm a little harsh. So be more gentle, please. But I would hit up the topic of censorship and where the information is coming from, right?