Yeah, no. And we learn Parks from the demography. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, thanks a lot for having me here. Thanks to Matteo and thanks to Maria for inviting me. It's very nice. I'm very surprised by the diversity. I mean, not surprised, but the diversity of topics that we are taking, like just the last two talks, like and mine as well, extremely, extremely different. But I guess it will be the role of this workshop that we talk to one another. So it's very nice. So I was tasked with, first of all, I'm Gujon. I work at the International Institute for Ply System Analysis in Austria, where I lead the program on population and just societies. And I was tasked with giving you a few relevant aspects and facts about demographic trends. In the program, it states that I'm going to present about the key issues. But in fact, I downscaled it to like some key issues because in fact, there's more to what I will present here in this one. So I will have like three major parts. I will talk about some of mega trends. And I'm not sure I will say anything that you don't know, but at least maybe it's good to recap on some of these things. And then I will have like two focus, one on the local context, which I think is important. And we've heard it in several of the talks. And the other one is about human capital and the importance of education, for instance, in influencing some of the trends that we see and that are relevant also for many of the talks that we had. So in terms of mega trends, mostly we have nowadays demographic imbalances in terms of growing global population and even population structures as changing size and composition of labor forces. And in the global north, especially we have these increasing implications on society due to aging. Like one week or two weeks ago, the United Nations released their new population projections where they are showing what the world in until 2100 would look like. So we have a peak around the... No, we don't have a peak, but until 2050, it would be about like 9.7 billion. And by the end of the century, it would reach something like 10.4 billion. And you see that the uncertainties surrounding these projections increases with time, which is approximately, which is normal with the interval being like around between 9 billion and 12.5 billion approximately by the end of the century. What we do, what we think about and the main theory that is driving demography is demographic transition theory, which I'm sure you're all familiar with, which is like in primitive societies, in earlier societies, death rates and birth rates were cancelling one another so that we had like a very slow population growth or no population growth. And then with the industrial revolution, with the arrival of education, with progress in health, in medicine, there was a decrease in death rates, which is not instantly followed by a decrease in birth rate and this creates this natural increase that we see. And then the theory goes that like birth rates will decline the same and that by the end of this demographic transition, I mean, not the end, but what would be the next step would be a natural decrease instead of a natural increase.  What I'm showing here on the right hand side is the reality. So how it looks like again, taking this population projection by the United Nation and we see that the reality is not very far from the theory. So the theory seems to be actually modeling the theory quite well, where at the moment we are in a stage of high population growth, but we envisioning the natural decrease by the end of the century. Of course, there are different stages of the demographic transitions. So what you have here on this side is for more developed regions, where we are now about here in 2020, where then you have this period of natural increase is over and we are going to start the period of natural decrease. And the thing that you see here is the blip of the COVID-19 experience in 2020. And then that would lead to a population decline and population decline has started in many of our societies. In less developed region, what is here shown on the right hand side, we are a different stage and birth rates are declining, death rates are declining. You again see the little blip of COVID-19, but a natural decrease is not yet there. It's apparently according to the central scenario of a United Nation, it's coming soon by the end of the century. Sorry, so why is death rate increasing? Sorry again. Is death rate increasing? I mean, are these climate change or? No, the death rate is increasing as a result of, so like there is more people who are getting to the age. So like increase in life expectancy is leading to having more people of age where they would die and then therefore the death rate would be increasing. So at different geographic scales, then you have of course different trends in the population. So what we see here, for instance, on this graph is the population, the increase in population between 2022 so nowadays to 2050 and we see that the world would increase by 1.8 approximately billion people and most of the increase will happen in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1 billion, a little bit in North Africa and Western Asia and again a little bit in Central and Southern Asia. The rest of the regions that are represented here would have more or less no increase or very little increase and some of them are already declining like we can see of East and Southeast Asia. Between 2022-2100 the increase of the world population will be by 2.4 billion and major increase will be in Sub-Saharan Africa where we would have like 2.3 billion increase a few in these other regions, North Africa, Western Asia, Central and Southern Asia but you see that in all of the regions there would be either decline or like stable. So one of the interesting questions that I find is that if fertility decline continues everywhere and all countries eventually achieve fertility levels below replacement level, the world population will be shrinking and if this continues into a distant future it would lead to extinction of human species which we don't usually envisage because no species is looking for extinction as such but could be imagined. Or can we envisage that countries or regions would start striving to achieve an optimum population level and what could that be? And this is a question that we as demographers don't really tackle very much. I mean we tend to stay in this area but it would be very interesting to think of the world that will come into the future. In terms of megatrends these changes of course create an even population structures and here I have an example of three countries Italy, France and Niger where you can see that in Italy about almost 50% of the population is above the age of 50 in 2022 and like the very narrow and narrowing base whereas in France we have also like 40 more around 40% above the age of 50 but like the base is much bigger because France has had a higher fertility in the last few decades and then for Niger we have this very thin pyramid H pyramid with quite a large base and why it is thin because I took this directly from the website of the United Nations and what they scale the pyramids to what would be the population in 2100 and for Niger there is a huge growth that is going to happen. Niger is actually the country where I mean as far as we know demographic transition has not started yet so they still have like four decades now in the past decades women have been having like seven children in general so this is like with huge uncertainty has how this will change into a future this has implication in terms of the composition of labour forces so like we know in the EU so in the global north there would be the number of working age population will decrease by for instance in the EU it would be by like 47 million by between 2022 and 1100 and this is the same in many other societies in Russia, in Japan, in China of course the numbers are much bigger with like some 285 million declined by the end of the century different in the United States the population active would expect it to increase mostly because of migration expectations and also of fertility which is remaining quite high on the opposite in South Africa the working age population is projected to double to more than double between 2022 and 2050 and to increase by around to 1 billion by the end of the century so there are huge implication about that especially if we consider what is the situation in South Africa now that there will be a need first of all to educate this population and to find employment for them in terms of labour force participation rates we know that since the 1990s the labour force participation has been declining globally which is due to rising educational school and normal rates increasing opportunities to retire with a pension system being implemented in many countries where it didn't exist before and also higher life expectancy what you see on this graph is actually the difference especially how you see first of all that labour force participation rates are very different across the world so it was like something from 40% in some countries to almost 100% to 90% but you also see that in all world in all countries the female, the participation rate of women is much lower and that of men so this is also something levers that we that can be activated in order to increase whatever you want you have a question is there any pattern any commonality in the countries where the female participation is very low I mean most of them are in the global south that's one thing it has to do with the autonomy of women it's also I must say not a very good indicator because in many countries what you count as labour force it's not like women are at home it's nothing, mostly they are in the fields they are cultivating and so on or they are going to the market selling the products so it's an improper indicator that doesn't reflect exactly but it's like mostly global I would say global south and there are increasing implications of society due to aging like the aging puts pressure on the public expenditure puts pressure on health care system and one of our world in data a great picture is that where you see like we increase in life expectancy you have a huge increase in health expenditure which you can expect to happen more and more with more aging and it has also implications on voting results which is a bit more later because like with aging usually people become more conservative and and therefore when times comes when change is needed where you would expect to pass on law about climate change about environmental change then this may have implications on what decisions are being made and also about all age poverty so we see and I'm not going to talk too much about this because I know that my colleague Sergei Sherboff will talk about this and he's going to be very mad when I talk about dependency ratio but like we can see that there was a change of the ratio of workers to pensioners like for instance in Japan in 1990 there was 5.8 workers for one elderly person whereas in 2025 so now basically there are 2.1 workers for one elderly person and in that graph I didn't do that infographics but they highlighted the 0.1 are the feet of a person and in the case of Japan I mean I would think it's the more the head that is in that case very important so now let me move to like 2 parts the 2 parts that I highlighted one is the local context because I mean like to frame it the theme of the conference is that like adaptation it's highly context specific very hard to quantify so we need actually this territorial analysis that tell a lot about what is needed in a village, in a town or in a region and as well what we see about this aging the effect of a demographic transition needs to be tackled mostly at the local level so this aging we know has impact on accessibility to services and amenities GDP per capita attitudes and political behavior and I'm going to all for this so we have if we look at the municipality level across the EU so now I'm I'm spoping on the European Union we can see that there are very diverse populations that are expected so this is between 2020 2015 and 2030 and you see from the color and from the growth of the population about 65 years of age it's changing very quite a lot and it's also changing depending on the place of residence so if you notice between like capital cities like Madrid and so on so there are different patterns that are here in the same place what we show with the research and this is research actually that I did at the joint research center previously where I was in ISPRA that aging is more linked at the territorial level is more linked to the population than at the place of residence so it's not only a rural phenomenon so you have also urban that are depopulating and this is an important aspect so it's more the attractiveness of a place that determines whether a place is depopulating or attracting more people there are also other phenomenon which is due to the life course of individuals so people where do people live depends on what age they are and at what stage they are so whether they are a young couple whether they are students whether they have already children at what age and over there where elderly and if you look at this graph which is showing the population density and two age group elderly 65 plus and children 014 plus you can see that it changes quite importantly with less elderly at a higher density of population and also the spatial sorting is manifested itself with age segregation and this is particularly the case in the young and elderly I'm not going to go into this graph what we also looked at is and that it's also something that you hear often that like what is the role of migration in that case is net migration in balancing this working age population that is diminishing and depending on the definition of what is working age population then this we can go into but what we see is like and this is shown here on this graph going the net migration and the cohort meaning how cohorts are being able to replace young cohorts entering the labour force and all cohorts exiting the labour force and we can see first of all that the working age population is not decreasing in total region so this is like the colours so red for decreasing, blue for increasing actually most regions benefit from positive net migration and this is especially the case in urban areas but however like in only 28% of these regions net migration is enough to counterbalance the negative impact of cohort turnover also this net migration is very different inside across regions within a country and we have a case of Italy which I guess is well known if we look at the net migration of the different region of Italy you can see that in the south there's negative net migration whereas there's positive net migration in the north so like it seems to be a migration from the south to the north and in Germany we have different cases it's more like from the east to the west and to the south but with more patchwork of patterns what are the impacts the impacts are important of this age distribution are very important in terms of macroeconomic outputs what we see is that with a high share of middle age population we have regional economic performance peaks so this is short by GDP per capita there is a non-linear effect of age structure in the populating world and with negative net migration regions and also in these regions actually having a high share of young population doesn't help to bring up so it's not only also the age that is important which brings to the fact that it seems to indicate that economic performance rather drives demography rather than the opposite that demography would drive demographic performance so it's a bit sad for us demographers that doesn't work this way it has issues with accessibility to services and urban amenities of course where people are distributed so we are going to that and it has also importance what I was saying about political attitudes and behaviour where age and territory matters and there is an interaction actually between age and place of residence and you can see it here which is the proportion of respondents with trust into the European Union so into the European Union institution and you can see that at younger ages there is a large gap so people tend to like young people living in large towns tend to have more trust in the EU institution compared to both living in rural areas this is this gap is still present at the middle age let's say or for or for the trust becomes lower for both groups and then at higher ages then you seem to have a concordance of opinions and lower opinions trust towards the EU so this was the part that I had on the local context which I think is important and I think we could have done this on many different settings now we would like to finish my presentation we would like focusing on a human capital and here I mean I mean I know that I rather mean on education on human capital so I'm going to forget the health component of human capital which is also important so human capital, education has an impact of demography it decreases fertility, supports healthy lifestyle and reduces mortality it has also an important impact on the adaptive capacity of societies and of course an impact on the behaviour of individual and societies and this is something that we have shown that education has a role beyond demography and here it has also to do with what we were discussing about these limits to growth that were put forward and were in fact also or the early population bump thing and I think what was missing was taking into consideration the ability of the population of people to change and to adapt to a society they live in and I think it's also something that we don't always consider very much in when we look into the future so I think and one area where we can change is that with education educating people so with enhancing of cognitive skill we change the risky behaviour it extends personal planning horizon so that you think more about the future you learn also from past damages so if you've been aware of the damage and this has been shown in the case of different disasters you learn and then you adapt for the possibility of the next damage you have better access to relevant information improvement of health, physical well-being and higher income level which I already said are extremely important for tackling the challenges that we face today in terms of global climate change and so on and as it happens the 20th century was actually the century of an education revolution so if we look here for instance an enrollment in primary education taking from the earlier 19th century to 2010 we see that there have been these huge increases in education everywhere in the world and we really moved since 1950 from a low educated to a middle educated world so that basically in 1950 about three quarters of the population had the primary education or less and like 50% had less than the no education at all in 2020 we have a bit of reverse where about more than three quarters of the population had a primary education and more and more than almost half of this population have lower secondary or upper secondary or more so like huge changes into the education level of the population so it's of course this is increasing but we see also this is increasing very slowly and that is a bit the problem of the education is that you educate mostly in school and once you have acquired a level then you carry it through all your life until you die so it's something that is very slow to change and if we look at the minors of schooling of a population 15 plus in some of these regions you can see that it's moving very slowly the path of this selected region doesn't cross to exceptions like Latin America and the Caribbean women still have lower minors of schooling than compared to men as mentioned why is it important for demography it's important because there's a huge link between education and fertility we can see here the total fertility rate by education and it's comparing two large groups with no education or primary education and secondary or higher education and you can see that and you can see that these differences are quite large for instance in Niger which is the first country these two groups have a difference of three children and if you would take other education categories like no education and secondary education then the gas would be even higher of course the fertility decline the education differentials become smaller what you can see here with the total fertility rate on the x axis and the difference in TFR between the women with secondary education and both with primary education so after a certain education level and once the countries have attained a different fertility rate then the importance of education for influencing the fertility rate is not so important but this having education these could be could make the difference in the future of the world in terms of total population and this is what we show at YASA where we developed these education population projections scenarios that include education in the projections where we go from 1950 to 2100 and we follow we have these three scenarios which are the population model for actually entering the IPCC with the shared socioeconomic pathways and the shared socioeconomic pathway one is that of sustainability this is the SSP2 is the middle of the road and the SSP3 is one of fragmented world I think the scenario is called and you can see that with different education levels that would entail different fertility levels that would entail also different mortality level then you would have different population and I guess what we see in this room would be more valuable would be a shared socioeconomic pathways one so a sustainability world where the population would peak in the middle of a second half of a century and then would go start declining quite rapidly to reach 8. less than 8 billion by 2100 whereas if we go to the other extreme of SSP3 we have population increasing very fast to reach almost 14 billion so like different education would have an influence on the future population so like another area where we are discussing and maybe it's not something that is less important for you here especially like ecologists and so on so this idea that we may as society moves to lower fertility levels it's something that is very difficult to change so once you enter a low fertility like we are having some East Asian society where fertility is actually below one child per woman then it's very difficult to go up again and maybe it's not wanted to have fertility going increasing again I don't know but so this is something where demographers and governments are talking a lot so when you go so we have people like many scientists or like South Korean going to France to see how do they manage to have so high fertility like what are the policies that are behind because once and like not being very effective in rising fertility levels because there is exactly this fertility trap and we can talk about what makes it a trap so when you adapt to new societal patterns of fertility and actually if you look at the right hand side graph you see that actually the UN for instance is forecasting more and more countries to be below replacement levels which is what is bringing to this low fertility to this natural decrease that I show at the very beginning and I think this is the last slide that I have and I don't have a conclusion really so I think I think what we talked about like this ideological change that came also a lot so is very important and I think that's where education can be an important element and like what I was showing is only about the quantity of education so how much people get quantity but I think the curriculum of education that we give the children is something that we need to be improved so we tend to reproduce and have the same education component over and over into the future and this needs to be changed and that's where the ideological change can bring and I think I will stop here because I really need a drink thank you very much thank you thank you very much this is very nice of the exposition I've sort of opened up given the fact that we are at ICTP and it's a and just like the your own institution it's multi-disciplinary I was wondering how to bring some ecology into democracy that's really rather important in your first half when you were talking about the global picture let me put it this way too suppose you were a scholar at 1939 during the war years and you were asked what's the next 70 years likely to be until say 2020 my guess is that the prediction would have been completely wildly off from what we have experienced it's been a phenomenal period 1950 onwards to today but not in terms of demography I'm talking about the life in general so likewise the next 70 years it might be a good idea to think about alternative scenarios in the following sense bringing in ecology which is what we were discussing earlier in the morning so in these projections there's a presumption that in some sense we can extrapolate from these last 70 years into the next 70 years and I think that's very dangerous it's dangerous because of all the reasons that in the previous lecture and the other lectures were which is that we are really facing a serious ecological crisis here so that's in some sense that might want that perhaps we ought to allow that to influence our thoughts about what lies ahead and therefore what we should do and I want to connect it up with the final point which is again regarding education I felt that it's not surprising that educational institutions and research institutions and international organizations would put their money on education because that's our business as a professor of course that's the one thing I would like to say yes go for it but I wonder how important that is for demography in the following sense the demographic transitions have taken place in the past this is not the first time it came down from about 8 down to about 4 in northern Europe I mean I'm sorry France and Germany and that had very little to do with education people are pretty illiterate it had to do with the land you know inheritance laws leading to changes in marriage patterns age of birth getting married and therefore things followed so ecology has not been brought in and I wonder whether we shouldn't I mean this is more like a reflection I'm not really commenting your talk was excellent it's the reflection that demography without ecology and society in some sense analysis of society as opposed to describing it I think there is we lose something big on it so I wouldn't put money on education in the way you're doing not because I don't think what you said is not right of course what you said is fine exactly right any monocosal explanation really worries me in the social sciences I wouldn't put my money on education that much education is extremely costly terrifically costly because data on literacy rates are extremely questionable believe me I have spoken a lot to people at the bank for example in the World Bank it's more the motivations people can be very intelligent know what's in their interest without being able to write they can all count by the way numeracy is universal pretty much everywhere because otherwise you can't do exchange but literacy has to me it has played a significant in my understanding of human history at least in the post-modern world early modern world onwards 1500 onwards so just to me that I think we may overestimate the importance of education there are many other factors going on I don't know if this makes sense but I thought in ICT we ought to no thanks ecology as well I think what I said but these share socioeconomies pathways that are being revised at the moment and a lot there was I don't know if you heard but there was a scenario forum at the ASA one month ago more or less and a lot of the talk was about building these feedback effects so that also we are not only population there and that has been the problem so it's both the fault of the demographers and the fault of the people using the population projections so like not talking to one another but like we need to build these feedbacks this loop into the so that's like one affect one another and I think this is I agree with you it's totally key I also agree with I mean I not fully agree with what you said about education yeah it's costly and at least I mean what we see as well is that at the moment a lot of funding is going into education but not quality education and this is another SDG that is very important is that to have quality education and we see it sometimes like the increase in levels of education has been done at the expense of quality education so like functional literacy or like literacy which is not only reading a simple sentence but also being able to function in a society is not increasing as much as enrollment is increasing in many societies and we have an article that came out this year last year in PNAS that is showing that like how this has changed so there's also a lot of things about this and about what you said about the demographic transition yeah of course it was modernization so it included education what we show in the demographic transition it also included that but not only that and I'm sure I probably forgot some of the points you made but we can discuss later sorry I was just saying I love demography so thank you for the talk so could you help us make sense on this note with a bit more focus can you help us make sense of what just happened through COVID a lot of people were particularly worried about birth rates so there was a certain expectation which we may or may not believe that there would be a baby boom but that was in most cases a baby bust but I wonder if you could help us also see where the countries that dealt with the crisis with less uncertainty and so on led to different effects or not and it seems like it created some paradoxes at least relative to what some people expected so at the moment we don't I mean we see rather what we saw is rather a baby bust and a baby boom so having people stuck together couple stuck together I didn't think about making babies I don't know why and we also show because it's sometimes like crisis a different effect depending on the region so like an economic crisis in the global north usually it's like a baby bust whereas sometimes you have a country in the global south and the few evidence that we have for instance in Africa it's not like we have a lot of evidence but like four African countries that we looked at apparently there was no impact on fertility increasing or decreasing so it was just like a bit the same and relatively and what we see is it's a relatively short short term impact so it's like it's a bleep it's not something that is going as far as we can see maybe maybe I'm wrong but also in terms of life expectancy and I think maybe Sergei will talk about this also showing like how it has not I mean it's not going in the future affect the curve because it's just a temporal event so yeah I think it's not like it's not going to change fertility for future I mean I hope I'm right okay thank you so I think there are no other questions so we have more time to discuss and so I think we close here the session and at half past six downstairs the terrace of Adriatico guest house we have a reception so I mean it's something that economists think it's not possible it's a free lunch actually a free dinner so you are all welcome to join okay thank you


You know, I'll mention to you, you may be interested in this. The FCC has now opened up the 5.9 GHz, 45 MHz, and then the 5.9 GHz band, and that'll be available for point-to-point outdoor use through an application process at the – initially for an application process at the FCC. But hopefully once the transition on that band is complete, it'll just be available as unlicensed for outdoor use like any other unlicensed band. This is a – you may have heard about this. Back 20-something years ago, they authorized 75 MHz 5 – at the 5.9 band for the auto industry, which has not used it and continues to promise that some – they're really, really going to roll out the intelligent vehicle transportation and all of these things. And the FCC took a look at it and said, well, you know, the rest of the world manages to do this with just a 30 MHz allocation. So how about we take 45 MHz of that back and you guys join the 21st century. So that's kind of a – just to let you know, that'll probably be out there probably around the end of this year. There may be some new equipment for you guys to take a look at.


So as we all know Finland as every other country in the world needs more coders And I'm sure all of us here at slush Can certainly feel the pain. So I won't spend much time talking about this particular challenge But maybe just to throw one example out there It's been estimated that all of us together here Could hire anywhere between 7000 to 9000 new coders right now and This figure is growing by thousands every single year So it's a big problem But I do not think it's the biggest problem. I Don't think we should only be talking about the quantity of the coders We should have also a discussion about like who is coding for I Think the bigger challenge actually is that we have this very simplistic view About who is coding for? We think that it's for these geeks with math geniuses who are often boys and Unfortunately because of the simplistic view Many many people who would be amazing coders Never even give it a try To illustrate the size of the problem Try to imagine a world Where all the books would be written by males and Not just by males, but a certain type of males. I Mean how many great books would not have ever been written in that type of a world? And that's the world that we're living in if you think about the software industry So if I think about the coders at Supercell I Think about coding very differently For us coding is about creativity, it's about problem-solving It's about teamwork. I mean no one no single individual can bring develop these products anymore It's about working in team What really is makes a great product is a great team So it's pretty clear to me that what we need is that we need more people from all walks of life To get into the coding. There's a massive massive opportunity and potential here and By way if we are able to do that that would also help us solve the numbers challenge So last year I heard about this crazy idea On how to solve a challenge So this photo is is from a school in Paris. It's a coding school. It's called 42 It's been founded by a legendary local entrepreneur and a philanthropist Xavier Neil and What's amazing about this school is that they have no classes They have no books and Most interestingly they do not have any teachers instead People and the students they learn coding by doing these very practical coding assignments together They instead of learning from teachers. They learn from each other Also, what's very cool about this cool is that it's for everybody Anyone can get in you don't need to have a degree What they have is this online test That measures your problem-solving skills your logic skills and your Creativity and if you do well on the online test and anyone is free to try then you get invited to the first phase of the school So this school has been around for a for a few years and the metrics are unbelievable As a starting point half of the people who get in they have no background What so ever in coding they can't code Despite that in a few years 100% of these students get jobs from tech get coding jobs and Probably like what's even more interesting for this audience here at slush is that 30% of these people become entrepreneurs Oftentimes With the people that they met at the school and they work together on these assignments It's really hard to describe the school if you haven't visited it But my is when I walked in my sort of own personal first impression was that I like wow I've never Felt energy and passion like this At least not in a school for sure and it actually Reminded me a lot about Some events that we have here it reminded me of slush It reminded me of junction and maybe assembly that we have here in Helsinki and And certainly didn't feel like a school and my immediate thought back then was that a Man we just have to bring this concept to Helsinki and then I start to talk about a talk to Xavier about this idea and and he was so supportive and And so helpful and he actually like offered all of this all the software or software Assignments the curriculum that's behind the school. He offered all of those for us and actually for free So I'm so excited to announce today that we are bringing this coding school to Helsinki and it will be called hive Helsinki If you love finding patterns If you want to fix what's broken If you're ready to rewrite the world Then let's set you on the right path If you don't know code yet you want a school that's like no other if you want a future-proof career if you can dream it Then you can code it hive Helsinki Thinking right now like why did why on earth did we decide to call it hive? Well to us hive is this place where young people from all walks of life Can get together they have a common goal They were work divorce it and they learn together like they together they form a movement and It's just a bigger thing than just a school. It's a movement. So how are we gonna do this in practice? first of all We will form a foundation a non-profit foundation Supercell will be funding that for at least for the first five years. We've estimated that it's gonna be an Investment of roughly 8 million to 10 million euros for us and then later on we hope that Our companies and also the public sector perhaps after that five years also joins us in funding the school The online test will go live in January next year and then the school will open in August And as a first phase we are gonna take in hundred students and others with the scope the goal is to scale it very further As we go along the one thing that I really want to emphasize here Is that I would hope that people wouldn't see this as a supercell initiative? I mean we did not form this school to be able to hire new game coders for ourselves like For us this is a kind of philanthropic effort And how we would like to see this at this school belongs to everybody it really belongs to the whole community for all of us here and That's why we also wanted to set up the independent foundation and Obviously the foundation has also an independent board and just so happy to introduce you to the board And it's amazing the type of people that they got in Starting from a chair woman Linda Lucas who I don't believe needs any type introduction for this crowd We have Yaku Lehtinen many of you guys would know him from Alta University from MIT from Nvidia We have the Rozilla who's a supercell representative bringing in the industry perspective and especially the creative industry Prospective a long-term gain deal of a veteran who's done an amazing amazing job in leading this initiative at Supercell And then finally we have better a component a serial entrepreneur an investor from lifeline ventures again A very familiar face and name for many of us here as I said the school belongs to all of us and And I'm just so I've been so thankful about the number of people who've been helping us to get the school started And I just to give you an idea here are the companies who've already signed up as Partners and what they will do is that they will offer internships for the students And we've also been very very happy about the support and the cooperation with city of Helsinki And just being just so so humbling to see the kind of amount of support from all around to from all the people We've talked about this initiative And to give you an idea about the people who've been like helping us and and who've been around this Let's look at this quick video There is a high demand for skilled coders and this demand is increasing all the time That's why we must invest in technology and coding education in Finland Well, first of all Hive is a proven concept from Paris and the Silicon Valley and other locations already But why I think it's a particularly good fit for Finland is that we have a Grassroots hacking culture that's old and thriving already Hive is a completely new way of rethinking how education should be done for For the coders for the creatives And I find it really gratifying to see that it's finally landing in Finland We need diversity in coding because coding is a tool to create things and to solve problems And every individual is unique and comes with a unique background So we need more different kinds of people trying to solve different kinds of problems I wish Hive will show how computer science can be a magical way of exploring and understanding the world I think the biggest misconception we have about computer science is that it's about studying the computer Whereas in reality computer science can be used to solve the big problems in the world those of energy or education or nutrition or health Well, there are a lot of things that I expect Hive to bring to Finland but maybe One thing to point out here is that I wanted to rattle the way We traditionally think about teaching and education Hopefully Hive will make people think and figure out new ways of Complementing the old methods So having a background as a hobbyist and self-taught Coder, I think the way Hive operates It really really resonates with me. I've I've had the privilege of working with incredibly driven People with who don't necessarily have the necessary skills from the start But who have the drive and willingness to to do what it takes and work together with others to to make big stuff happen and This is exactly the way Hive operates and it really really It really feels good. I think this is exactly how things should be done So I've said this before but I honestly believe that our community Is the strongest when we can set a common goal and then the all of us work to go towards That common goal and slush for example would be a great example of that So it doesn't belong to any individual person. It doesn't belong to any individual company It belongs to everybody and I really hope that Hive could become like one such thing like that our community Owns and I just wanna like express like huge huge Thank you to all the countless number of people and the companies who have been so helpful in getting this started And I'd like to propose a big round of applause for all of these people So as you know startups are all about people It's all about teams and I actually believe that the same is true about schools And at this point I'd like to invite to the stage to keep people behind the school Linda Lucas the chairwoman and Minna Kiwi helmet was a school director. Let's welcome them on the board So Minna, let's start from you. So you've had this amazing long career in the field of traditional Education and your previous job was running the computer science department in in Haga Helia.  Well, I have had two things in my life a working career that I'm very passionate about and those things are education and coding So when I first heard about this initiative, it was just before summer and I had a chance to go go into that curriculum and All the stuff that there is in the 42 in France and the more I read and the more I read I got more excited about the idea and actually I kind of didn't have any other choice then to take this leap of faith and Joined this great initiative But I seriously mean like the school has no teacher So I need to ask you this like what is it that you do? Well as a school director I think that there is plenty of stuff that I need to do But the most important thing is for me to be able to create an environment for the students To learn from each other to support each other and coach each other It is actually a typical example of a classical peer-to-peer learning concept So Linda as I just said you don't really need an introduction for this crowd But you've known for these books that teach kids Coding and get them to computers and and you've been very vocal and active in getting girls in general to coding So is highway girls school? No, it's it's a school for literally everyone all of the outliers All of the misfits all of the people who don't see themselves as computer scientists And I think the question that kind of got me excited about hi was the idea that what if Meena Kanth was a programmer what if army ratia was a programmer what if Tom of Finland was a programmer So I think hi is all about finding those people who have a curiosity and creativity to change the world with code So what do you think about the fact that? In high people will work on these assignments together. How important is that for you? Well, I think it can't be a very good programmer unless you can work with other people and we have these Misconceptions about computer scientists only working with computers But there is this really famous saying by a researcher called Edgar Dijkstra who says that Computer science has as much to do with computers as astronomy has to do with telescopes And I think that's what we're trying to show with hi that it's about learning to learn and not about learning one specific programming Language but learning like to think yeah, that's a great point if I think about the best game teams that we have at Supercell and they're all filled with like this proactive doers who I mean of course very great coders like many of them are But then also it's about those like team working skills and you know just getting stuff done as a group So I'm curious Linda like you visited the school in Paris What did you think of it? So I walk into the school and I feel it's Hogwarts meets the matrix and it's full of these like brimming excited young people from all walks of life and There's energy everywhere and there's people working together and not alone on their computers But actually in teams and the pedagogy is actually you'll talk more about that, but it's really hardcore computer science It's not about like easy-peasy things So they were really concentrating well and I got a chance to also meet some of the alumni of the school So Paula who was showing me around she was talking about like her peers in the group and how and what kind of things They went ended up doing and as you mentioned there were a lot of entrepreneurs A lot of people who work at big companies and most importantly people who came from all around France from different social economic And social demographic situations. They came from all over Europe also, and that's what we also wish to see in hive So you've also been an active Participant and member of our local sort of tech community and the startup community here How do you see something like hive like feeding into our ecosystem? I think it takes a village to start a school and Finland has as you mentioned being so good at starting these ecosystem projects And and yeah, I think hive will be really beneficial for us to work together But then also the rest of the world is really anxious and curious to hear about the Finnish tech innovations Within the gaming scene, but then also like other things we can offer for instance in the field of security So building the curriculum together What was your reaction when you can so we become a number of companies and name number of people who can want it to like chip in and help Here, I feel like you have a lot of work to do for the next five years at least probably yeah So Mina, let's talk about from practical point of view. So how does one get into the school? Can you talk a bit about the the process? So if you are between 18 to 30 you can apply and first you have to pass our online test Which is not easy. I tried it myself and luckily I caught in But nevertheless, it is not something that you do just like that and after you got This online test passed then we will invite you to the peace in and now I know that you are wondering what does that peace in means Well, it's French and it means swimming pool And the next question probably is for you guys. What does swimming pool had to do with the coding? Well, it is actually an entrance course. It takes four weeks and during that we can see all those students that are Motivated enough capable enough and willing enough to get into the school without no teachers Can you also talk a bit about curriculum? I believe we actually have a photo of it here here So to me I remember like when I first time I saw this this curriculum like it reminds me of an MMO game or RPG game and the game map, but you know, can you talk a bit about this? Yeah, it does look a bit like a board game to me as well And it is actually like that you start from the same position All all the students start from the same spot and then they continue With the same projects at first because those projects are mandatory, but when you go on then those options sort of spread to you and you can choose the ways that you want to do your coding studies and one really cool thing is that the Curriculum we can actually improve it ourselves from Finland the the France They are very excited to get Finland on board because we have so cool companies here like Supercell and we could You know create more projects about the gaming gaming area and we have for example f secure Which is very very known company in the security area and so on Yeah, actually I should add like, you know, there's lots of countries lots of cities like competing to get this cool And one of the reasons why Helsinki got it was it's the strength of the ecosystem So again, it's not about any one company But it's the fact that we have these nvds and fc cures and and other companies here connect who can actually Contribute to that curriculum so meaning that they can create more assignments for the students and that and of course We'll then give all of those assignments for all the other schools around the world as well Which are based on the same concept So it sort of benefits the whole network and I think that was one of the biggest reasons why we They're able to like sort of come jump the queue and and you know get in the pole position here Another example of how important the strong community is Me no one more question to you So the other crazy thing apart the school not having teachers is that you don't also get a degree What are your thoughts on that? Yes, actually the degree isn't the thing that makes you a good coder your knowledge and skill is what it what makes you a good coder But of course we do give you a diploma if you want that and We give you a study transcript of the projects that you have accomplished So in a way it is about the diploma and study transcript with you can prove your Your capabilities and skills to your employer future employer by that and one more thing That is probably out of interest for you guys is that if those students that want to continue to a traditional system later on It is possible that it's possible for them to to sort of a Get those degrees faster it is because of of the System that the traditional Education's have and it's Recognition of pre-learning I know that because of my background in haga helia and haga helia is very good in that That perspective like other other skills as well So it's about showing the skills you have learned and you get credit points out of that if you want to go to a traditional system so Everybody wins, but the one thing we need is trust from the parents I think the young people in the room are really energetic and excited about jumping the chance to apply to the schools But the parents in the rule need to trust that this system works and that your kids whether they want to be Ballerinas or biologists when they grow up they will find these skills useful and Employee be employed easily and so forth and this is a whole new way of teaching these skills So spread the world So unfortunately it looks like we are running out of time So maybe the last question to both of you So like if you would need to sum it up in just one sentence like what does make high so groundbreaking? It answers a question. We've been all asking for years and it do does it in a very pedagogically fun and exciting a new way and For me it is learning how to learn that is the most important thing we can teach to our youth All right, I want to close by asking everyone's help here. So I Said the online test Will go live in January the website is open right now and If you're under 30 you can apply and If you're over 30 The thing that you can do is that you can spread the word. I mean let's work together To solve this problem. Let's get more people into coding. Thank you very much


What if we were to tell you that 4,000 years ago, carvings were taking place in stone to forever remember a location that has since been forgotten about, described by researchers as the oldest 3D map still in existence in Europe, forgotten about were the ones who treasured it and mysteriously vanishing in 1900 shortly after it was discovered, taken away from prying eyes to seek out the location that it highlights and researchers in France studying the slab believe they have identified the area that it maps out. The piece of rock, known as the St Bilex slab, is believed to date from the early Bronze Age around 2000 BC making it almost 4,000 years old. It was first unearthed in 1900 during the digs in a prehistoric burial ground on Western Brittany by local archaeologist Paul de Châtelier, apparently forgotten about for over a century, stored for decades under a moat at Châtelier's home and rediscovered in the cellar there in 2014. The researchers say the indentations are a 3D representation of the river Odette Valley while several lines appear to depict the area's river network. Geolocation data revealed the territory represented on the slab bears an 80% accuracy to an area around 18 miles along the stretch of river. Dr Clement Nicholas from Bournemouth University and researcher for the project said that this is probably the oldest map of a territory that has been identified. There are several similar maps carved in stone all over the world. Generally, they are just interpretations, but this is the first time a map has depicted an area on a specific scale. We tend to underestimate the geographical knowledge of past societies. This slab is important as it highlights this cartographical knowledge, it highlights a concrete effort to remember a specific area, it highlights prehistoric importance to remember key aspects of terrain, an effort to never forget.


This aquatic field site is located in the Rio Coupeas in southwest Puerto Rico in the Maracau State Forest. The area is made up of old and second-growth tropical moist and wet forest. And the Rio Coupeas represents an increasingly rare, intact Puerto Rican stream ecosystem. Automated stream sensors and groundwater wells collect data year-round, and neon field scientists collect field observations of aquatic plants, animals, biogeochemistry, and more.