World Expos for almost two centuries have provided a platform to showcase the greatest innovations that have shaped the world we live in today. Expo 2020 will continue that tradition with the latest technology the world over. St. Lucia's participation at Expo 2020 Dubai is poised to showcase the island's accommodating landscape for tourism, investment and trade to the millions of visitors expected to attend the event which will be held from the 1st of October 2021 to the 31st of March 2022. Hamadi Mark reports. Expo 2020 Dubai provides the ultimate platform for networking and international exposure for over 190 participating countries. Participants have the unique opportunity to display the best their country has to offer. The showcases are being held under three districts, sustainability, mobility and opportunity. St. Lucia's participation will be under the Opportunity District. Expo's St. Lucia in collaboration with Invest St. Lucia, the Citizenship by Investment Programme and the St. Lucia Tourism Authority have been working tirelessly to fully capitalise on the opportunity. Sunita Daniel is Expo's St. Lucia's Chief Executive Officer. I think St. Lucia has a great product and not only what our manufacturers do but also the product that is St. Lucia. In terms of CIP, we have one of the stronger CIP programmes in the Caribbean. In terms of our beauty and our tourism products, we have an excellent tourism product and we're hoping that that product we will be able to expose all visitors who pass through our pavilion. They will be exposed to our tourism product, the self-esprings, the beach, the forest. We have a huge diversity of events that they can come to. And in terms of investment, just one investment alone covers the cost of the entire participation in Dubai. St. Lucia's theme for Expo 2020 Dubai is creating new opportunities to inspire the world. Let her inspire you. Minister for Tourism, Investment, Creative Industries, Culture and Information. Honourable Dr. Ernest Hillers says St. Lucia's participation in the Expo is the perfect opportunity to attract new tourism markets. We don't have many visitors from Mina, Middle East and North Africa. So it is an opportunity for us for six months to promote St. Lucia to a new market and to be able to attract and become to St. Lucia for weddings, for conferences and other incentives that incentive groups will participate in for diving. So really it is a tremendous opportunity. We've never had an opportunity like this to actually go into a new source market which is a prolonged period of time and to be able to get new business. So for us it's fantastic and we're excited about it. In addition to tourism and investment opportunities for the island, the Expo also provides local manufacturers an opportunity to attain international recognition. Minister for Commerce, Manufacturing, Business Development, Cooperatives and Consumer Affairs Honourable Emma Hippolett says The Ministry of Commerce is working to ensure that interest obtained from the Expo is translated into sustainable business. What is important is that we are ready that after we get the interest and we conclude orders that we have the ability to keep these orders, to supply these orders and to do it to the right standard. And that is why it is important to inform solutions that the Minister of Commerce, we have the Bureau of Standards and that is the role to work with your manufacturer, large and small, to ensure that we keep international standards. Expo 2020 Dubai is scheduled from October 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022 under the theme Connecting Minds, Creating the Future. From the Government Information Service, Hermione Mark reporting.


Hello, Columbia, and welcome to City View, where we bring you an inside view of the city of Columbia. I'm your host, Lisha Yutzi. In our top story, recently, the Main Street District was lit up with a new canopy of lights in the 1600 block of Main Street. Ooh, it's another great day in Columbia, South Carolina. So excited for the holiday season, and, you know, tonight's gonna be special as we light up Main Street. Let me tell you, next year at this time, we're not only gonna be celebrating a lot of new businesses and a lot of great things that are coming forward 2023, but we're also gonna celebrate. We're gonna have things like a Christmas market. We're gonna decorate this town. We're gonna do things to get everybody in the holiday spirit next year. We've seen a lot of ideas and a lot of ideas coming in from our public to talk about how we could make Columbia more of a capital city Christmas, and I'm so excited that this is the beginning of our new business. Five, four, three, two, one. And now we go from Main Street to other hospitality districts in our city. There have been various business openings, ribbon cuttings, et cetera, throughout the city of Columbia. As we close out the year, we wanna share just a few of them with you that have occurred within the last month. What I learned about the story of the Abney family is this is more than just a fish market. It's passing down stories, traditions. It's passing generational wealth to the sun to start anew and create something in his own home, and that's exactly the type of stories that I wanna bring about and bring to light in this amazing city. It's really that there's opportunities here for everybody. We're so excited for this, for Bob's black-owned product. Because it's important that people understand that when a store invests and grows in a community, they're part of that community. We have to support them, and they're supporting us. They're gonna continue to grow and they're gonna bring a center of cultural awareness, art, history, and teaching our youth not to forget about our past, but don't spend your whole time looking in the rear view mirror, look at the windshield how we move forward together. Congratulations on the reopening. I like to call it a grand opening because it's about four times the size of your old store. And this is a blessing. Thank you very much to both of you for what you're doing in our community and your reinvestment here in North Carolina. We're excited to be here as we're celebrating the grand first anniversary opening. We didn't have an opportunity to celebrate the investment that the Hurlong family made here with their Midas location here on Duvay Street. As you can tell, they took some abandoned buildings and turned it into something really special here on Duvay Street, but also as they continue to do constantly as a family and as a business to get back to the community and they tied in this anniversary grand opening really into a way to get back with the blood drive. Congratulations to all the new business owners and entrepreneurs. And speaking of business, the Office of Business Opportunity has an exciting opportunity for all entrepreneurs and business owners in the new year. Two workshops are being offered starting in January. Next level and fast track. The City of Columbia Office of Business Opportunities is accepting applications for our 2023 next level and fast track entrepreneurial courses. These courses meet once a week for 10 weeks beginning the week of January 23rd. The courses are designed to assist new and existing businesses with key topics such as marketing analysis, business planning, operational strategies, and exploring financial options. The course also facilitates networking between entrepreneurs and experienced professionals. You can call us at<PHONE_NUMBER> for additional information or visit our website at obo.columbiasc.gov. Also during the month of January, the Community Development Department will be offering workshops for contractors. A series of workshops will be offered for local contractors during the month of January. These workshops are being offered by the Community Development Department. Workshops will be held in both January and February 2023. Registration is now open. Please visit our website at columbiasc.gov for additional details or you may call the Office for Community Development at 545-3373. It is now time to celebrate once again Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy. The City of Columbia and the MLK Memorial Foundation Committee will be hosting the Dr. Martin Luther King Day celebration on January 16th, 2023. The ceremony will be held at King Park and will begin at 4 p.m. For additional details regarding the ceremony, please visit our website at columbiasc.gov. You may also call the Parks and Recreation Department at 545-3100 or the Public Relations, Media and Marketing Department at 545-3020. Our Animal Services Division has announced the January Pet Adoption Special for January 2023. It's a new year, so why not adopt a new best friend from Columbia Animal Services? Pet adoptions for $23 only will begin on January 3rd and end on January 14th, 2023. You may contact Animal Services by visiting their location at 127 Humane Lane or by calling them at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Also, you can follow them on Facebook and Instagram. Again, why not adopt a new best friend for the new year? As we close our program, we want to bring to you a heartwarming story from our Columbia Rich in the Fire Department. Chief Aubrey Jenkins and local firefighters recently held a food drive during the month of December to help those in need. It's firefighters feeding families. This is our third time during this year and I would say just last year we fed like 200 families. This year we're gonna be well-hitting about up to 300 bags that we've already packed. We still got some food left over that we're gonna be packing. But not only what we're gonna do with the families out there, but also because we do have an abundance left over. You know, I know we got firefighters that are working that day, so we're gonna try to get something for them as well for on Christmas Day. There's about everything there, like cereal, grits, you know, canned goods, dry goods, stuff of that nature. But we're also gonna be giving each person a whole chicken that goes along with it. So that is, you know, that's just something that we wanna do to make sure that everybody have a, at least have a good meal. There's enough in it for at least two meals plus a breakfast. So that's kind of what we wanna do this year. Just try to make everybody holiday just a little bit brighter. And some, yes, why we do this, cause we just wanna give back to the community. And this is just, in my opinion, just a very small way to give back to the community. Thank you to Chief Aubrey Jenkins and all of our local firefighters for hosting this food drive during the holiday season for local citizens. Thank you for watching City View. And as we close our program, please remember that any information regarding any of these stories can be found on our website, ecolumnsc.gov, or you may call the Public Relations Media and Marketing Department at<PHONE_NUMBER>. You may also email us at PIO at columnsc.gov. Also connect with us on our streaming services on Roku and Amazon Fire TV, as well as our social media platforms on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as YouTube. We thank you for watching. And as always remember, we are Columbia.


The next conversation is wonderfully counterintuitive it's can't we leave it to the AT&T's and Googles of this world and I think it's wonderful that Jonathan Cappell is the moderator of this because he's wonderfully counterintuitive he lives in Arizona and I discovered last night that he hates palm trees and he's gonna cut one down at his first opportunity in his own yard and I'm gonna help him if I can but anyway Jonathan is Dean of the College of Public Programs and Director of the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. His research concerns the design and administration of complex organizations especially those at the intersection of politics and markets and he has examined global governance organizations that promulgate international rules dealing with everything from whales to bicycles to derivatives. Jonathan. Great thank you Joel and so it's it's my it's my pleasure in this session to facilitate a conversation with our guest Jim Sikoni who's a senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs at AT&T responsible for AT&T's public policy. I think a name that most people in this room are familiar with has been involved in information policy for as long as I've been following the subject previously served in the White House under George H.W. Bush as deputy chief of staff and under President Reagan as well. I should also mention chair of the AT&T Foundation. So what I was thinking as the conversation was going on about the stakes for changes in internet governance. There was a lot of discussion of how this affects governments. There was a lot of discussion of how this might affect individual users and their freedom and so on all of which are important matters but it struck me that there was very little discussion in that conversation. It's what's at stake for businesses. American businesses businesses and other parts of the world. So when AT&T looks at this question of what the future internet governance looks like what's it worried about? Well many of the same things that the earlier panel talked about. I had to kind of contain myself when Andrew was speaking. I wanted to get up and cheer. He said a lot of things. I was thinking that I thought would be in politics to say but I think companies are in different places depending on where they are in their own transitions especially in the communications industry. I think in this country we have a remarkable alignment of positions between the industry frankly between the advocacy groups with the administration. I think everybody is pretty much in the same place and it's a place I think that was outlined earlier. I think it's been summarized by Ambassador Conard who's former FCC chairman who's now our ambassador to the EU and he basically said if it ain't broke don't fix it and Deely Crows representing the EU itself echoed pretty much the same stance on the part of the EU. What's interesting to me is of course you don't have a similar alignment between the communications industry in Europe and the governments in Europe which is fascinating actually and I think the explanation for it is really that I think we're farther along in the broadband IP revolution in this country. It's a big transition. It's well underway and we've been turning the corner on this and we've had a lot of these wrenching debates and I think in fact I think the net neutrality debate was really an outgrowth of this transition but five or six years ago seven years ago our company's primary business was selling minutes which is what we've done for a hundred years and increasingly that is simply going away and I think we had to confront the fact that on a going forward basis our business was going to be selling bits not minutes and that leads to a host of change but if you think about that it's a remarkable and radical thing that companies as big as this that were once monopolies in fact could totally transform the core product they sell but we've turned that corner we've done it and frankly it caused us to have to assess issues like net neutrality and policies of openness which we've embraced throughout our network because at the core of it if you're selling bits you're pretty agnostic as to whether it's a voice bit or a video bit or a Skype bit or something of this nature and in fact your interest economically is in carrying the most traffic and because it's pretty simple that in a high fixed cost business like operating a network the more traffic you carry the more money you make and so so our interests in have ended up very much aligned I think at this point with the high tech community and and with companies like like Google who Andrew used to work for and and and we find ourselves actually partnering in this ecosystem now I don't think the European companies have turned that corner yet and I think the etno proposal is really almost a plea to move backwards into this more comfortable zone of of of a PSTN and PSTN regulation and PSTN means of compensation public switch telephone network and I thought I'd get away with it because Andrew used it and got away with it but but but and and so it's very difficult to move from from from one you know sort of ecosystem with with all the dependencies of that ecosystem including including the regulators who are dependent on it and institutions like the ITU that subsist based on that and and and and I think in this country we've recognized the importance of replacing this this this this old legacy telephone network and telephone regulatory network with with something more modern more modern networks IP broadband networks and and frankly a more modern regulatory structure designed for those and I I think that I think the FCC is has begun to confront these things I give I give Chairman Genekowski a lot of credit for that you know we had the debate about whether we're going to have a subsidy system you know for university this is a universal service fund and if we are going forward as opposed to looking backwards what is it subsidized and and he's he's drawn the right and logical conclusion which is we shouldn't keep subsidizing ad infinitum a copper line voice only network that's increasingly antiquated it's going away people are leaving it okay and instead that subsidy system is gonna is gonna be geared toward the provision of broadband and and everything is really moving that way I don't think in Europe it's it's quite there yet and I think that the communications companies there have put forward proposals which I think would be destructive of an IP broadband world and in ecosystem and we've opposed those but the European governments themselves have opposed them the European Parliament the other day put out a resolution opposing it so and and I think if you if you consider that it's not hard then to understand how in some of these developing countries where the government itself owns that legacy network and operates it why they would be attracted to some of the ideas for for you know increasing regulation of the internet so let me push on that point a little bit because I think it's interesting I one thing that I find is that the conversation about what countries are looking for in an ideal takeover of the internet it's almost cartoonish in the sense it's like oh it's just authoritarian regimes that want to repress their citizenry when it it falling from your observation a lot of it has to do with the underlying business model of the telecom providers in those countries and the connection between the regulator the regulator which is the state and the telecom provider which is in many cases also the state so how is how is the business model if you will in these countries and the regulatory power countries threatened by the status quo and what is the protection they're seeking right from a business point of view I I think it was stated earlier I can't remember who said it but I I you do have bad actors here okay you do have authoritarian countries who simply who simply want to want control in this space for purposes of repression and and then you have a group of other countries that that that may want control maybe not for that purpose but just have trouble abandoning the old model I I I think and I think it was said earlier and I agree with it that that the danger is not that the ITU takes over the internet and and you know that's not what AT&T is worried about but but we are worried that it does provide a legal underpinning for nation states being much more repressive much more controlling about the internet and and and and even authoritarian governments I think look for international legitimacy for their repressive actions okay it's it's why in the old days you know communist states named themselves democratic republics okay because as if the word itself would would would make it so but they they looked for international legitimacy for their for their policies and I think it would be a shame and an embarrassment if the ITU provided that to them I I think for for for the great middle as was was mentioned earlier that of other countries who are there there I think in many cases having trouble getting their minds around this transition much like it knows having trouble getting its mind around it it's it's happening so fast I think the over the last decade internet penetration of usage in Africa is like double what it is in Asia it's the fastest in the world and and and if you if if if you're a nation state in Africa and you you you control what was you know previously only only a short years ago the the only monopoly communication system in the nation and you find all of a sudden that now the increasingly the population is connected globally you know you know it it could worry you for any number of reasons and and not the least of which is that how do you how do you continue supporting the the legacy system if the if the money is all draining away in the other direction you know it's it's it's I think a global example of what we are dealing with at AT&T right now which is you know in in the in the in the 22 states where we have our wire line footprint only 30% of homes are connected with it with with a with a copper wired telephone and that and that numbers continuing to decline of course the costs of maintaining that network are continuing to increase and and so we're dealing with and that's one of the reasons we we announced you know a faster program of investment upgrade just two weeks ago we're put $14 billion over three years and in modernizing and upgrading to IP as much of that base is as possible I mean we're going to lose the customers otherwise but you know but but in doing that we have to as we build a new network be able to shut down the old network currently under FCC rules were barred from turning off the old network and so if you think about that sort of dilemma which we're working through with the FCC here you multiply that across all these countries globally you know you could I think understand why some of them may be looking to the ITU to kind of slow things down I want to immediately I want to open things up right away and get people into the conversation so I know Jim is interested to hear what people what people want him to talk about so one so one thing that that I've studied a bunch of these different global organizations including the ITU and what always struck me as being the reality on the ground not with standing what's written on paper right so they these formal rules that say one country one vote and then there's how things really work which bear a resemblance to the formal agreements but they're certainly not accurately represented by them I wonder forget about this internet stuff just in the status quo there's lots of other stuff that AT&T is affected by that goes on in the ITU would when AT&T as a corporation or the leadership of AT&T fear that this is an organization that actually might produce and finalize something that you felt was fundamentally destructive that is to say that something could actually go through the process and be approved and be adopted that you would think of as being anathema well I hope not I think one has to approach these things at least you know with care because I think the stakes the stakes are high and and I think some of the proposals that are on the table from other countries including including Russia are things that would be anathema and and I don't think you can take for granted in a in a process where it's where it's one state one vote that those don't get adopted and so you know I think it I think it's very important for us to be participating they're taking it seriously the government is the administration's been all over it and and I'm very hopeful coming out of this that we'll be able to persuade enough enough other countries to reject these these more radical notions which I think would be very destructive there's a couple of David Johnson New York law school the discussion is conflated regulation of the infrastructure with regulation of actions people take on infrastructure and on the latter point I guess my question is should we be afraid of the Democratic Republic of AT&T insofar as ISPs have the power to ultimately disable access by people who do things that violate whatever rules they establish and are not subject to the same kind of political feedback loops that governments are what assurance can you give us that if we get a cross ISP agreement on you know six strikes or that kind of policy decision being made at the level of the infrastructure that that will remain a kind of governance that is self-governance well I I think you have you have protections at several levels number one our economic self-interest is you know would would be damaged by doing that number two you know you're right we could do it we haven't and we have a history of not ever you know doing things of that nature I think number three in the example that you gave on on copyright we've been pretty vocal and public in saying we're you know we're not going to be you know the content owners enforcement agent we're not you know we we have no desire no interest in trying in exercising some police power on behalf of of other claimants I mean if if they go and get a court order will comply with the court order but we're not gonna we're not gonna cut people off I mean it's it's forwarding notices from the content owners and you know who alleged copyright violations is a bit different but but we've we've been pretty clear that that we're not going to cut people off from the internet without a court order so I you know and I you know and I think if we started acting in any other way I think I think we'd certainly be hearing from the Congress and the regulators pretty quickly but but it's not in our self interest to do that and we've not done it so what so as it as a political actor who knows the landscape I'm curious to project out this idea that Andrew laid out that what if what if the administration comes back with a treaty that does that does allow for this little nose under the tent of the of the to the ITU gets an internet regulation does that have does that have salience in Congress do you think that that's something that people would be that people in Congress would say no that's a lot that's actually a bad enough thing for us to reject an international agreement that does that well I think people were shocked by the response on the net neutrality well well I mean you're you're talking to the guy that worked out the compromise on the rule and testified in support of the Congress but you know I you know I think you know net neutrality just to take that part of it I think was was a symbol of this larger transition and I think that it you know I was I was there at the unfortunate takeoff of on that issue and I think it was frankly a natural result of of two industries being thrown together very quickly that had always been separate being thrown together by technology technological change and and they're being a lot of distrust between them I think there was a there was a there was a fear in the part of the high-tech community and this one that long ago is about like 2005 or so there's a there if you're on the part of the high-tech community that ISPs would would be an act like gatekeepers and that would get into the the content or website business and would favor their own stuff over others or would or would charge and and provide favorable treatment you know in return for payment and I and I honestly think that it at our end of it we were ill-equipped to to deal with that at the time because we really we hadn't fully absorbed what this meant for our business yet again we're still we're still you know get most of our money from selling voice minutes not not the internet and we found ourselves hands having to answer business model questions for future years that we really hadn't confronted yet I think I think the good thing that came out of the net neutrality debate and I don't think there were many good things but and I think both both all sides of it would probably agree that they'd rather not repeat it but but one of the good things that came out is it forced these decisions within these companies I think it forced them earlier than than they would have occurred otherwise and I think it and I think I think by and large they've all come out in a good place you don't you don't find accusations of ISPs acting as gatekeepers shutting cutting people off cutting off websites things of this nature we we're not in the content business we don't have content that that we own that that to favor over somebody else's you know we you know we've we've we've assimilated the notion that the again the more bits we carry the more money we make and and we're pretty agnostic as to what bits they are we weren't there you know you know five or six years ago that's what's going on I think with with some telecommunications carriers today and probably with some of the nationally owned carriers that are really worried and petitioning the ITU so you know with that you know that your question about the the nose under the tent I do worry about an outcome at the ITU that that that sets up an ongoing process that becomes inexorable that you know that UN processes don't tend to tend to toward a radical kind of you know you know step from one paradigm to another they tend to be more incremental but but also inexorable and yes you have what was described earlier is this is this vested interest you know the soft the I'm not even sure I want to use the term but but the the people involved in the ITU certainly become invested in the process at a very personal level and and and their institutions do as well and and and and so there's always one more meeting and one more step and and and you find yourself in that bad place just you know it takes a little longer to get there and that so there is a danger of that yes sure Alex Howard from Raleigh Media I happened to be an AT&T customer had been here since I think 2008 when I switched over to an iPhone and 3G and FaceTime came up as an issue you said that you don't produce content but clearly as a one of the biggest providers now of internet mobile broadband you're moving a lot of bits so the the question for mobile carriers and this is true across the world is which bits you might favor or not which services you might favor or not now you changed the policy around FaceTime do you anticipate that as being a principle that you would support around the United States anywhere else here networks operate in terms of allowing services that might potentially compete with things that you offer going forward well I mean first we don't have a FaceTime like application to favor secondly FaceTime has been enabled on our phones in terms of on our Wi-Fi for a long time so if we were worried about it from a competitive standpoint we'd never have done that you know it's enabled you know on our on our mobile share you know which is which is the main plan we're marketing and we recently opened it up to to you know our our tiered data customers who have an LTE device it's been a gradual implementation and it's based on on network management concerns I know some others just did it like that but but but the short explanation of what happened is is this we've got you know probably twice as many iPhones as everybody else put together on our network you know a lot of that of course is the result of of having the exclusivity with the iPhone for a couple years and you know but but we continue frankly to sell more than anybody else and when Apple implemented its new iOS they put the default to on and so all of a sudden we got facetime on an installed base of tens of millions of phones and and no engineer knows how to model the network usage is something like that and since we have simultaneous voice and data our concern was you know haven't spent all this money to to pretty much you know try to eliminate as much as we could drop calls all of a sudden we were worried about a big spike on that so we've we've done more of a gradual implementation on it so that we could assess the impact on the network but but our commitment and as we've said publicly is to is to fully implement it you know we're just we're you know we're being a little cautious about how we do in it so we're going to be doing it over a period of months you know as we feel pretty confident about that it does it does bring up one other point though and that is that the concern about gatekeepers really we're sitting there hostage to what to what the you know the the dominant OS providers decide and they can cause us you know millions or billions even in cost simply by what they decide to deploy without even talking to us you know through these automatic updates on the phone if they had if they had implemented FaceTime with the default to off and the person had to go activate it we'd have had no concern with the default to on you know the engineers again have no way to model it when you got you know 30 plus million you know potential simultaneous users you know so so that's that's what went on there you know thank you for your question so I want to bring a question this will be the last question because try and keep us on schedule there was a point raised by one of the questioners earlier about how much governance we really even need regardless of who's doing it and I wonder from from your perspective is there anything above and beyond what's being done today in terms of this you know the making the domain name system work and and the and the and the and that and so on that really ought to be regulated forget about who should be regulating but that there's a that there's a chaos or that there's a lack of rules that is standing in the way of the development of the internet the development of your business what what's not being governed that should be governed honestly I think that the current system works pretty darn well and it's bringing enormous benefits to to billions of people across the globe not just in this country and I you know I I think that anybody who argues to change it or that we need more governance or regulation whether it's at the ITU or some nation-state level you know in the current situation I think bears a heavy burden of demonstrating why now we're gonna we're gonna confront a lot of these questions here in the in this country you know as we make our own broadband transition we have to modernize our own regulations everybody understands this because the the regulations we have in place today are still designed for a monopoly voice-only phone system that doesn't exist anymore okay they're not designed for an IP broadband world and I think I think just as we're resisting the etno proposals you know we need to we need to resist similar notions here of just reflexively taking those old style rules designed for 1934 and applying them to a 21st century technology and I'm not saying that this has to be a regulation-free zone or something but I am saying that that we ought to design the regulations for the technology we have today and for the problems that we face today not simply assume you know that things are going to be like they were 70 years ago and apply the same model it's the president talks about smart regulation I think this is the epitome of it and you know it's silly as heck that when you build a modern IP network you can't turn off the old network okay the regulations bar you from doing that whether you've got any users on it or not it makes no sense and and of course it it it it costs you money forever not being able to do that so so we need to modernize this and and I think it can be done in a in a tempered way and in a careful way but but but it needs to be done and and we need to resist this notion I think that's being pushed by by other carriers and other countries that we should somehow just treat the internet like it's one big telephone system it's not great thank you very much


ing marriage, dogs, businesses, liquor are gonna have to, will not be available and there won't be any help for record searches, for land searches, the information, the vault will be available but there will be folks there to support it and that's gonna be tomorrow and the next day and then the first four days of the week of the 21st, which is the week after next. And after that, there's no, I mean, I got nothing on my calendar until Christmas so there shouldn't be an issue, but that's it. So thank you for all for the kind words about the tours. I agree, I learned something from time and they really, the staff really appreciates the interest from people. And speaking of tours, we do need, our next meeting will feature the fire department and we originally thought was to hold that tour immediately preceding this meeting but council member Bate with her eagle eyes remembered that we had set the Scribner Street inspection at that time so I don't know if there's another time that people want to try to find for that or have us, this is not bothered now, we'll put Jamie on it. We'll take care of that. Jamie does so good. And speaking of which, we did do the wastewater, the Water Resource Recovery Facility, we had the update tonight. Three of you were able to attend that. Would you like to do another one when we get closer to vote time or are we good? I would. If you have it, I'll certainly go, I've been there before but it's always good. So we'll aim for that at some point whenever it's coming back on its next agenda. With regard to strategic planning, you should have received an email from Julia Novak who's our consultant and she's gonna be scheduled anytime to talk with you so I hope you can do that. And I just wanna add to some of the comments, this is, first of all, I really appreciate that we're doing that this year and that we've got someone who's really skilled in local government leading it. But this really could be two of the most important nights that we have, not just for interaction with each other but really laying out our agenda and the beginnings of the plans for everything for the next couple of years. So I hope people will come and we're ready to work and looking forward to that, I'm excited about it. That's all I have until the next thing. Great, so I... Oh, I do have one more thing to add about last weekend. We would note that the Montpelier High School team won the Capital City Classic Ultimate Tournament. Yes, they did. Wouldn't want to say anything about the coach. That is very exciting. Yes, yes. So we're up to the executive session, so yes, Jack. Pursuant to one PSA, section 313A2. I move we go into executive session. I'll second it. And we're gonna invite Kevin Casey in with us and we will not be taking any action afterwards. So we won't be coming back to announce anything or vote anything. So there was a second. I second it. You second it, okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, great. Thank you. Thanks, Roy. I'm sure not, I find it Montpelier. Okay. Hey, this side of the council. I have chocolate, would you like chocolate? I was wondering what happened. I was looking at you. I was like trying to make eye contact and nobody was looking at me. Connor, do you want some chocolate? And it's gonna be true. And it's unorthodoxy, the leader. No, I'm sorry, that was so awkward. Like, how about everyone on top of them all at the same time? Is that noisy, noisy class? I know. Now I know. Don't get the noisy candy. Would you want one, John? Sure. Yeah. You can make me have chucks. Anybody want more? I have lots. I might as well give away now. Well, I think we can make him not disruptive. Great, thank you very much. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Everybody else, even I'm just used to standing on the chair. Geez.


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Hi guys, welcome back to the independent investor channel. My name is Ryan. This is going to be a portfolio review of the Vanguard Sector Specialty ETF portfolio. This was kind of a kind of a strategic initiative of mine to explore a strategy that I thought would work really well coupled with the power of M1 Finance. So I'll be providing this link to the portfolio for you guys. You can click over there. Please keep in mind that the independent investor channel is affiliated with M1 Finance. If you click on any of the links on any of my social media content, the channel will receive a small compensation for my referral of a product. It's a product that I use and I really, really like. And as you can see, there's a reason to like it. I'm making money. And again, this was one of those portfolios that I kind of wanted to generate to prove to people that it's not so daunting and not so unachievable to make that first $10,000 milestone. I did it in this portfolio in 15 months. Now we're moving on and we're going for that $25,000 and we're over halfway there. And this is becoming real. In this, I want you to really focus on some of the areas and emphasis in the portfolio that don't get a lot of attention normally and pay particular attention to how those are performing. So for all those investors out there that are really just trying to stockpick the market and try to pick those hot spots, I think this proves that it's a very futile effort in that while you're doing that and you're paying attention to the hot stuff, the stuff that nobody's paying attention to is going to render some profits. And if you really hear my message and see what's validated through the course of this review, you're going to understand exactly what I'm talking about guys. So with that, we'll kick you into the portfolio review and we'll show you what we're working with. All right guys, so this is one of the most enjoyable portfolio reviews that I do on the channel. This represents a lot more than just the dollars in the account. It represents a portfolio that I built to provide really some motivation for people, some encouragement that they can get to their first $10,000 invested and they can do so passively. And this account has done that and this is a very, very interesting way. It's a hybrid strategy that I deploy for the sheer sake of dollar cost averaging it over time and keeping it 100% passive. What that means is I set this and I forget it. I don't do anything to it other than add more money to it every two weeks. I do a funding schedule on this account of $50 every two weeks is where we are on this account. This does render some dividends as you can see here. I think I'm due to be paid those dividends here coming up. That's a nice little payout as these accounts or these funds actually grow and they get bigger.  Now this has been a conducive market. I do acknowledge that. However, I'm not going to apologize for this either because I think there's way too many people out there that can come and they can look at this strategy here and say that's for me. If you want to pursue the fly by the night, get rich overnight type of avenue, maybe you will, maybe you won't. I don't know. I'll let astute investors and people who are looking for reality make that call on their own especially when they make their way to a social media opportunity and there's all kinds of different strategies being sold. Make no mistake on the independent investor channel. I'm not looking to sell you on anything. This is what I do. This is what makes sense to me and this works. You want to deploy a strategy you can do so by catching a testimony on my video do so. I wish you all the best in the world but the proof is in the numbers and being up $3,700 on a fairly light portfolio you know that this is getting sizable but the inflows to this account at just over $10,000 by doing absolutely nothing. I'm not trying to beat the market. I'm not trying to find the next best thing. I'm not trying to find that next moonshot stock. I invest in this and I forget it and it's worth repeating because again I think there's a lot of people out there that are drawn to the stock market for all the wrong reasons. If you're catching this video and you're seeing these returns this should motivate you for all the right reasons. It really should. Owning the 11 sectors, very simple passive investing since March 5th of 2019 we've done nothing but win in this portfolio. So we'll go over the holdings as I cruise down here. You can see here slightly leaning and increasing to the right. That's what we want on the stock charts going forward. This is great. You know if the market does turn on us and start to retrace the portfolio will suffer a little bit. That's totally fine. I'm ready waiting for that to happen and when it does I'll basically buy the market. I'm providing no additional capital to this outside of what I dollar cost average on this and if the market doesn't cooperate then I'll manufacture capital within this. It's winning in either market. You're winning in an up market and you're winning in a down market. It just makes sense to me and hopefully it makes sense to you guys. So the way I've structured this portfolio is very simple. I will premise this. This is a not a common way of entering into the stock market. It was a way of grabbing all of the sector specialty ETFs and doing so in a manner that made sure that I had access to all of them. I didn't want to omit anything in this. I wanted to have access to all of them. There was a reason for that. If technology took took off and materials took off but I tried to pick healthcare and financials well then I would miss out. Sector rotations happen all the time where the runaway sectors which at the moment right now are in technology. Those will cool off eventually. No sector stays on fire for forever. They'll cool off. There will be profit taking. There will be sector rotations especially with some of the big institutions that have big swaths of stock in each of these respective sectors and they'll be looking to always take advantage of those sectors that are out of favor as well. Case and point is energy which has caught fire here as of late and then you start to look at some of these under loved sectors are definitely underweight in accordance with the S&P 500 weighting. There's some good companies in materials and so I wanted to have exposure to all of them and this allows me to grab some exposure but control that exposure with the level of allocation that I build here in the M1 finance portfolio. This portfolio I do share openly through the channel. You can see here we're 11 for 11 all the sectors are up. I don't know if that's attractive to some people or not. I don't know if this isn't good enough for you. Certainly I wish you all the best of luck trying to stock pick the stock market. Traditionally those types of efforts have proved to be futile but if you think you're going to be the one knock your socks off. This has done nothing but make money and I won't apologize for that. This is a great way of seeking exposure to the market and I do so coupled with the power of M1 finance to fund this up and have the dollars distribute over the portfolio the way that I've allocated or asked it to be distributed. These are serious dollars here 761 on the top end for technology 412 in health care 449.  Industrial is here at a $350 bill. Holy moly. That's some big returns right there guys 568 for a $1,200 bill and consumer discretionary. I'll take it. Not too shabby. 168 here on the returns. 140 on the returns real estate and staples and then down to utilities 89.95. Look at these two. These are the bottom end the two seven and six and six and materials but I just want to bring your attention to this allocation and it is funny. Well so many people are looking at just the few stocks of the stock market that get all the headlines. Look at how well these have done on a relatively low amount of money. Energy is up $250. That's a 25% return since starting. Look at telecommunications up $289.02 on an $850 investment and finally the smallest amount of capital invested here with a 242 return or $242 return on this is insane guys and these are the pockets of the market that often get forgotten and this is why I allocated to this why it's structural investing. It's structural in that I knew by nature of the plan that I put in place I would make money. It had nothing to do with me going after materials or trying to time communication services or trying to catch a bottom in energy. It had nothing to do with any of that. This really speaks to the philosophy and belief and what I have on how important it is to acknowledge the plan and this does nothing but prove to investors both experienced investors and beginning investors the passive investing does indeed work. What I'll always say is that the bottom line about investing is money and if this isn't good enough for you again if $3,700 return off of a $10,000 portfolio that's less than or going on two years old is not good enough for you I wish you all the best but for those investors out there that are looking for a program guys this can apply to the masses anybody can do this there's nothing special about this you can deploy put money to work in this with as little as $500 starting tomorrow piece of cake anybody can win with this strategy and quite frankly that is a strategy that I resonate with and put through the independent investor channel because most people can succeed with it with that guys will kick you back and we'll conclude the video all right guys so we've come out of the portfolio review I really hope you enjoyed this it's it's awesome the portfolio is just killing it it's doing really well I think the real takeaways for these is to understand those pockets of the market that get all too often overlooked and and I think that's unfortunate number two I really think you need to understand that I've done nothing once this portfolio was established all I've done was funded that's it I look for my strategic spots if the market's down I buy if not I let it work very very simple this is a philosophy that anybody can resonate with anybody can participate in if you like the way that I've allocated great if not it can be adjusted to your liking and anybody can start in this portfolio with as little as $500 very very simple I think you could probably do $100 but you start to get a little watered down when you start to get too cute with it and anybody who's serious about investing should be able to get up to a $500 marker and start on their investment journey otherwise you need to do more research and validate why it is you wealth build I can talk to on blue in the face but I've already made those validations for myself many many moons ago as if you appreciate the message man you want to make sure and subscribe to the channel leave your comments at the bottom of the video and share the video with anybody out there that we can you know we can help bring them on to the message we'll help them out get them excited about the prospects of investing because they are indeed very very exciting guys thank you so much again for tuning into the message and good luck in your investment future


A level 3 sex offender is moving back into the Wadena community. According to the Wadena Police Department, 25-year-old Adam Levi Schultz is being released from prison on November 1st.  The Wadena County Sheriff's Department will be holding a community notification meeting, but they've yet to schedule a time and date for that. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Absolutely tasteless and awful. We have zero respect to the Japanese culture, do you? What's wrong with you? Kimono?  Oh no. Uh, what did Kim do this time? Well, on Tuesday, June 25th, Kim released a new line of shapewear, which is basically form-fitting underwear. And the name of the company... It's kind of a play on words because her name is Kim. Makes sense, I guess. Basically, it's a line of shapewear for women of all different kinds of sizes, shapes, and skin colors. It comes in different sizes from double XS to quadruple XL, and it comes in nine different shades, citing her own struggle to find appropriate shapewear. That seems like a pretty noble cause. I mean, what's the big problem? There's nothing wrong when making shapewear. The problem stems from the name of the brand, Kimono. And as you probably know, Kimono is a traditional Japanese garment, a robe with wide sleeves and a sash around the waist. And as you know, this looks nothing. Like this. And now, the internet is absolutely furious. Add that to the fact that Kim Kardashian reportedly filed a trademark for the word Kimono. And if the reports are true, it essentially gives her rights and ownership over that word, Kimono. Which is confusing because the word existed before she did. I'm proud of that. Many people on Twitter didn't hold back, giving their thoughts about the situation. Kimonos in general carry a lot of symbolism and cultural significance from the material used to the patterns displayed to the shape and length of the sleeves. Different kimonos of different material and fabric were also worn during various seasons in the year. For example, something you wear in summer is different than what you would wear during winter. The kimono you wear were sometimes an indication of your social class or your position in society and government. Warriors in samurai would wear colors and patterns that represented their army. Sometimes kimonos would bear that person's family crest and essentially became a symbol of that person's family. On formal occasions, single women would wear highly decorative kimonos with wide, long flowing sleeves. While married women wear more conservative kimonos with narrow sleeves. Nowadays, kimonos are rarely seen in everyday life and are mostly reserved for special events such as weddings, funerals, tea ceremonies, and festivals. Because such a garment is significant to Japanese culture, people are calling this a blatant act of cultural appropriation. Many women responded by posting pictures of their own kimonos as a shot to Kim telling her what real kimonos are supposed to be. So what exactly is cultural appropriation? It's defined as the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of customs, practices, ideas, etc of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society. And this isn't the first time Kim has gotten into trouble in this issue. There was that one time she wore that Indian headpiece. Oh and there was that one time she wore the fulani braids. If you remember back in 2017, a teen wore a traditional Chinese dress to prom. Similar to Kim, she received a fair amount of backlash stating that the dress was insulting to Chinese culture and that such a cultural garment should not be worn as a prom dress. Unlike Kim, the responses were half and half. A lot of Chinese people actually defended her saying it's ridiculous to criticize this as cultural appropriation. From the perspective of a Chinese person, if a foreign woman wears a cheap bow and thinks she looks pretty, then why shouldn't she wear it? So it was interesting to see that most of the people bashing the teen were white Americans while the general Chinese public didn't really have an opinion about it. So it got me curious. Do Japanese people think that Kim Kardashian is appropriating their culture? Or is this once again just ravings from the internet? It's beautiful and it just is so culture-rich to us that I don't understand why anybody Kim Kardashian would name an undergarment line after the same thing. It's just, it's inappropriate. I think people take it too seriously. It's okay if she uses the word kimono. That's her choice. I've always been in the school of thought that culture is meant to be shared and enjoyed by everyone. They're not meant to be hoarded and only used by people of that culture. However, as society sees it, there is a very thin line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation. So what do you guys think? Is this blatant Japanese cultural appropriation? Or is Kim innocent? Let me know down below in the comments. Hey, if you liked my video, hit like and hit subscribe. And remember that Kim Kardashian's failed wedding would have paid for your tuition for 2,793 years.


So I'm Daniel Whiteneck, and I work at a company called Packarderm, so you'll hear a little bit more about Packarderm here in a second, so I'll leave that off for now. Also I just wanted to let you know since all of you being machine learning people and also at KubeCon, I imagine that practicality is something that you value, and I'm just launching this practical AI podcast with Chris Benson, who's a chief scientist at Honeywell. It's being produced by the changelog, so keep an eye on that. We're going to have an episode all about Kubeflow soon, so keep an eye on that. So the ML use case that I really work on with Packarderm is creating platforms for large companies or small companies that allow them to do scalable language agnostic version data pipelining and data management, so let's kind of unpack each of those things. So scalable I think makes sense to you, language agnostic makes sense to you, we're at KubeCon, everything's containers, that's good. Version, I'm going to talk a lot about that in my talk on Thursday, but basically what I'm talking about there is creating data pipelines that are sustainable over time, such that the data and the code and the processing that you do is all versioned and tracked so that you can tie any particular result back to all the processing and data that actually led to that particular result. And by data pipelining, I'm meaning that we're working on these workflows that are inherently multi-stage as Clive was talking about. And we also treat this data management piece. So there's a lot of frameworks out there for processing and running machine learning algorithms. But the one that we work on at Packarderm, which is called Packarderm, is kind of a unified view of both data processing and data management. As I mentioned, we have a bunch of production deploys of Packarderm. So Packarderm itself is an open source project. And there's a company around it. But the core is open source and we're working with a bunch of different companies. But we have pipelines in production running TensorFlow and PyTorch and a bunch of other weird stuff, including bioinformatics things and all stuff I don't know about. But we have clusters. We work with people up to 1500 node clusters doing a bunch of image processing and other stuff like that. Okay, so just a quick talk advertisement. So I'm gonna be talking about compliant data management and machine learning on Kubernetes on Thursday. So make a note about that. I know most of that title is really exciting for everybody. And then when I add the word compliant in, then everybody no longer attends my talk or gets sad or gets scared or something. But I think we're gonna have a lot of fun with it. There's gonna be a live demo. And again, we're gonna be talking about actually putting pipelines into production that can be sustained over time in the face of increasing regulation, especially in the EU. So just to give you kind of a little taste of that, which Clive set up great for me, we're gonna have this full data pipelines being driven by Packarderm. Pre-processing of data training and model export, I'm gonna show kind of and motivate how both Kubeflow and Packarderm can work together where Kubeflow provides a lot of the distributed elements that are needed in machine learning. Packarderm can do that orchestration and data management piece and then we can hand off kind of that trained model at the end and that artifact to something like Selden for serving all while keeping all of that extremely rigorously tracked and versioned all along the way from code to data to Docker images to actually artifacts that are deployed for serving. So that's me.


Before I take a deep dive into COVID-19, I wanted to touch on some of the new coronaviruses emerging in livestock. As we've seen, COVID-19 is only one of many coronavirus diseases to jump from bats in the 21st century to cause deadly outbreaks. There were SARS in 2002, MERS in 2012, and then SADs in 2016. A new disease killing up to 90% of young piglets, SADs, Swine Acute Diarrhea Syndrome, devastated industrial pig farms in the same region in China where SARS had broken out. SADs was traced to a coronavirus discovered in a bat cave in the vicinity, so one could say coronaviruses can infect pigs right off the bat. The combination of deforestation and intensive pork production, with millions of pigs encroaching on bat habitat, may have facilitated the coronavirus spillover from bats to pigs. And there's porcine epidemic, diarrhea, another presumed bat-to-pig coronavirus. In 2010, a highly virulent strain emerged in China that caused massive outbreaks when it hit the United States and spread coast to coast a few years later, killing millions of pigs, approximately 10% of the entire US herd. Then there's porcine delta coronavirus, the third new pig coronavirus to emerge from China in the last decade, rapidly spreading once it reached US shores in 2014. This pattern of emergence and outbreaks of new coronaviruses in livestock appears to be accelerating, facilitated by intensive confinement practices, resulting in thousands of animals being housed together in a closed environment. The pattern of new human coronavirus outbreaks also appears to be accelerating, but currently none of these emerging pig coronaviruses appears able to infect humans. Nevertheless, continued monitoring of these pig coronaviruses is necessary for not just pig, but public health, because coronaviruses are known for their high rates of mutation and their recombination, the process by which viruses swap parts of their genetic code to better adapt to their hosts or find new ones. The fact that many livestock coronaviruses cause persistent epidemic infections increases the likelihood that a coronavirus mutant could arise with what's called an extended host range, meaning the potential to invite humanity to the party. To trigger a pandemic, the virus would first have to spread to the lungs. Most coronaviruses in bats and livestock to date have been intestinal infections. The exception is infectious bronchitis virus in chickens, which was actually the first coronavirus ever discovered back in 1931, and was to become the major cause of respiratory infections in the 9 billion chickens raised from meat in the United States every year, but is prevalent in all countries with industrial polter production, with infection rates often approaching 100%. Currently, the only way IBV has been shown to cause disease in mammals, though, is by being directly injected into the brain. But with so many different coronaviruses circulating among so many different species, it's considered likely not a matter of if, but when the next recombinant coronavirus will emerge and explode into the human population. Already, the spikes of the newly discovered porcine delta coronavirus and pigs that has posed such a serious threat to the pork industry can attach to receptors not only in pig intestines, but also in the respiratory tract of humans. This broad receptor engagement of an emerging global coronavirus may potentiate its diverse cross-species transmissibility. We already know porcine delta coronaviruses can infect both human and chicken cells in a petri dish, and we know it can infect chickens themselves, just like there's a bovine coronavirus in calves that can infect turkeys. These coronaviruses jump around, and once they do, which is even more concerning, like porcine delta coronavirus, once it jumps to chickens, can then spread rapidly from chicken to chicken. In fact, this new paper, published February 2020 in the CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal, just concluded that given the susceptibility of human cells to infection, porcine delta coronavirus should be investigated for its pandemic health risk to humans. The SADS coronavirus can also infect human cells in a petri dish and infect mice in a laboratory. In fact, a team of researchers concluded that an upcoming December 2022 issue of the Journal of Virology that given the ability of SADS coronavirus to grow efficiently in human cell lines, we should not underestimate the risk that this bat origin coronavirus may jump from pigs to humans. Bottom line, pigs, not just pangolins, may act as the mixing vessels for the generation of new coronaviruses with pandemic potential. Coronaviruses are increasingly emerging and circulating among livestock populations around the world. The more new coronaviruses we have mixing and more and more animals, the greater the likelihood that strains with pandemic potential may emerge. While global pangolin populations are in drastic decline, we produce and slaughter more than a billion pigs a year. About half in China alone raising the specter that the next pandemic may arise from domestic, rather than wild animals, an event that may actually have already happened. The last coronavirus pandemic may have been caused by livestock. Wait, the last coronavirus pandemic? Hear me out. Coronaviruses are the second most common cause of the common cold. So far we've discovered four human cold coronaviruses, so that makes seven coronaviruses in all that can cause human disease, the six listed here plus COVID-19. We suspect we got SARS from civets, MERS from camels, and the COVID-19 virus perhaps from pangolins. Where did we get the four common cold coronaviruses? The origin of two of the four mild coronaviruses remain a mystery, but one called human coronavirus 229E has been traced back to camels, and the other called OC43 to cattle or pigs. Well, if the jump by the common cold from camels to humans foreshadowed the deadly MERS species jump that went on to kill one in three people, might the coronavirus jump from livestock to humans portend a deadly human outbreak as well? It may already have. So-called molecular clock analyses dating the emergence of human coronavirus OC43 suggest that the bovine coronavirus, now causing so-called shipping fever in cattle, jumped to humans around the year 1890, cows to humans in 1890. That's interesting timing. There was a pandemic in 1890. While the 1890 pandemic was presumed to be influenza, the timing of the emergence of human coronavirus OC43 has led some to conjecture that it instead may have been a SARS-like or COVID-19-like interspecies transmission of a coronavirus. Maybe it's just a coincidence, though? Well, it's not just the timing. There seem to be a lot of neurological symptoms during that pandemic. That's relatively unusual for influenza, more characteristic of a coronavirus. But the most compelling data to me is the fact that there was this highly infectious respiratory disease raging in cattle. And in the years leading up to the pandemic, 1870 to 1890, there were massive culling operations to eradicate the disease-devastating cattle herds the world over, ample opportunity for lots of respiratory secretion exposure. Now, we may never know what caused the 1890 pandemic, but we can take steps to prevent the next one. And that's a subject I dive deep into in my new book. Yes, I go into how to best protect yourself and your family, your community from COVID-19, but I also address pandemic prevention. The best way to survive a pandemic is not to have one in the first place.


Were you laughing because we left the tower at like half a health? Yeah! It's like an HP. Yo, she kinda fucks me up this Sarath, hold on! Be gone, pal, demon! Who's next? There's more! Dodge! Yo, this is kinda saucy, hold on! Oh my god, I'm surviving on 10 HP! With no life steal and only Muriel shields! What do you mean, only Muriel shields?  Get in there, I- just what are you talking about? I'll make sure. I just thanked you, hello? I'm going in. I'll be right out! Oh!


So moving on to our next topic well This is some good news For once Nintendo switch is doing very very well So well in fact that Nintendo themselves their stock valuation has Surpassed the peak it hit with Pokemon goal last year and to put that in perspective When Nintendo had this massive spike last year all the investors were under the impression that Nintendo makes most of the money from Pokemon That's not the case. I ante makes the most. Yeah, then the Pokemon company then game freak and then Nintendo Like there's a lot of IP stuff going around there. So Nintendo actually makes the smallest cut, but Nintendo does make some and The peak they are at now with their valuation, which is like 31,880 yen Per share is all barely higher than at the peak last year of 31,770 but it is higher and There wasn't anything that necessarily happened to make a spike like there wasn't some You know, Mario Kart 8 deluxe didn't light the world on fire Nintendo switch we're we're we're on you know two months out three months off from that releasing So there's nothing that really happened with that to make it suddenly spike I mean you can see a spiking at launch, but we're past that so The the theory is is that if you look at the scale and I'll put up put some images up in the video version It's consistently on the rise for like the past few months and what that means is investors have confidence in Nintendo Because the switch is continuing to sell out the games that they release in the platform are continuing to sell well the They are mobile games fire on them heroes Super Mario run even though Super Mario run is not performing as well as investors wanted to It's still making money So Super Mario run fire on them heroes Pokemon Go They have animal crossing coming out that they have other mobile games on the way this when they dedicated them releasing three per year They're all making money. So Nintendo is making extra revenue They're committed to mobile and now they have a platform that everyone's excited about an MLB teams are playing out in the clubhouse Oh, yeah, like I think investors are seeing that Nintendo is a very very healthy place to be right now In fact so healthy that at the time of that report They were the 19th most valuable company in Japan now I don't know what companies are ahead of them. I didn't look at the list So know how impressive that is but to be still the top 20 the top 20 in a country full of tech companies Is awesome. Oh, yeah for sure On top of that, it's not that Nintendo is just doing well for itself apparently Best Buy and Target are Doing awesome because of Nintendo they specifically came out and noted that Nintendo is a reason for a turnaround with their company at Best Buy they were projected to lose some more market share in the consumer electronic space and to have you know break-even profits or whatever and Ever since the switch came out there was a store to something value or whatever went up 1.6% when it was supposed to go down 5% So they actually increased their value and their net profits were higher than they've ever been Primarily because of Nintendo switch and when I say higher never been like highest in nine months. Yeah And then target which is really interesting Month to month and quarter to quarter they have consistently seen their electronics Area decrease in the money it makes and decrease, you know and and how much profits it makes not saying that it makes losses But it's been decreasing in value for the company usually when that happens and it's been happening for two years You start thinking maybe we should start coming back on electronics Not not maybe you can get rid of the electronic section of you know, that's what happens You know if Walmart wasn't making money in the electronic section. They will get rid of it Yeah, you don't keep around things that lose money but For the first time in two years they saw growth Yeah, that's crazy So Nintendo switch comes out Boop April hits Target targets electronic section starts to soar and what was target doing in that time? Oh nothing other than massive advertising for Mario Kart 8 part. Oh, yeah Yeah, for sure. So that definitely paid off for them. So it's like Nintendo switches, you know, there's this theory out there A prevailing theory because people still believe that this is what Nintendo did with the we and the DS More so with the we and that's what they believe they do with amiibo too And with amiibo, there might be a bigger that might be a bigger conversation than what I'm going to talk about here But there's this theory with fans that Nintendo purposely does not make enough systems to create artificial demand right and that the system isn't like Really if they met demand and released enough systems for it the sales Wouldn't be that much better than they already are Okay, so basically they could have 8 million switches on the world right now But it wouldn't sell out of those 8 million like the sell out the sellouts are just are just a fake hype driven thing There isn't actually that many people that want the system basically Or you'd have a massive spike and then a huge drop off. Yeah, I mean that's other the other way So basically Nintendo's under producing what they can produce is essentially the theory So they can maintain that oh we keep selling out mantra when they're really only shipping out three consoles per batch And you know, of course, you're selling out because you're only you're not selling out 20 per batch like you should right I mean you gotta give it to him that that's not In a way, it's not a terrible business decision If that's what's happening, right, right, but I feel like it's also making people mad that they can't get all the one Any yes classic anyone right However, I feel like this impact on Best Buy and Target in April Almost proves the exact opposite Now with the we it was easy to argue that Nintendo had a problem with production Because think about it the Gamecube sold 22 million You think they were honestly prepared for 100 million unit seller at launch There's no way in hell they were prepared by the time they caught up was 2008 a year and a half later And what happened in 2008 they sold more we units than they've ever sold It was the peak year of the we because they finally caught up to consumer demand and it kept selling at insane levels It took nintendo that long to catch up at manufacturing and it's easy to believe because they have never not even the NES was that popular Right, they have never seen the system Go that high the almost popular handheld. I think at that time was Gameboy They only sold 80 millions like they had never seen anything like this right and at the same time the DS was blowing up So like they literally it's very understandable that those shortages were not like artificial They no way in hell could anticipate that kind of popularity um and With the switch I know it's easy to say because they went through this before that they anticipated it and that nintendo You know, they mentioned that you know, they're gonna, they had the ability to ramp up production if they needed to just in case um The thing is I think they did ramp up production I just didn't keep selling out because why how could best buy and target entire electronics business Improve that drastically in a single month if they weren't getting units to sell Yeah, there's that That's the thing if there isn't nintendo switches to sell it can't impact the store. Well, either that or They were really doing bad Well, if that's why I was doing that bad, they wouldn't even get around. Yeah, that's for sure That turn around a two-year trend, right? Right? Oh my god. If they only got 10 switch units at every store That's not turning around. No, definitely It's not like that. That's $3,000 from the switch for a store. Yeah, that's the other option Is that they were really doing bad? So this to me Tells you tells at least me that no nintendo's sending out a ton of units They're just selling out and I have one caveat to prove this They I was just curious. So it was I think it was two fridays ago Best buy my local best buy sent on an email saying hey, we're gonna have new nintendo switch units in on friday When I went out there at opening just to see there were some people waiting in live for it I'm like, I'm not here to buy it. I'm just curious like I just went on the units I got yeah, because I try to ask them on the phone and they said we can't tell you I'm like, okay I don't know why you can't tell me right? I just want to know if I was a potential customer I wanted to say worth me standing in line for when you only have three systems or do you have 50 and you know There's only 10 people standing in line. Yeah, but yes well When I went in they had a pallet at the front of the store because I this I think they just expected to run out of it right away And there was 35 I counted 35 switch units on it nice And by the time I left the store because you know, I want the best buy I'm gonna walk around Oh, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna play on that ps4 pro that got back there. You know just set up I'm gonna sit and listen to some music. I'm gonna browse and see how much they're overcharging for computers So I came back and when I left the pallet was empty How long I was in there for an hour and a half That's impressive So now that's just my local that doesn't mean that happened at everyone But what I'm saying is it's very clear to me now that we have these these these factual numbers come out that Nintendo's giving tons of switches and they're just not like They can't anticipate that it was going to be this big this this quickly Uh, especially since you know, what's the two primary reasons to own it? Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 to Wii U games. You think they really thought Right a couple ports. We're we're gonna blow up the system like that I don't think that any idea that was gonna happen definitely outside of the launch month Since that was the first time Breath of the Wild came out now I I just think any argument The thing is we don't know we will find out at the end of june That's when they have their next financial meeting and they'll update the sales figures for a switch And I think we might see switches over 5 million It was at 2.74 Just in march just for launch So if it was at 2.74 there, how much would it have to sell to be over five? Just you know 2.5 million units since then over the course of what? April may and parts of june The 2.3 Yeah, just to be above five. I'm pretty sure That when we hear that number like I'm saying above five. I wouldn't be shocked if they're like, dude We sold 7 million. Yeah, it wouldn't even surprise me And then it's like, okay, how much at what point at what point were the people that say that Realize that's a ton of freaking units and a span of four months Yeah, I was gonna say Like not even playstation 4 was selling at that pace and that was the fastest selling console of all time for the first year Well, I mean Just think about this if that keeps the pace Let's just say at that june. You're at 7 million That keeps the pace. That's 21 million Units in a year and they're only projecting to sell like 10 in this fiscal year. Yeah so Now and here's the thing if it's at that this is all just you know, we don't know Even if it's at five It's still one of those things like it's at five, but it's selling out, right if they can maintain that momentum That's all they have to do that They just need to maintain the momentum till the holidays and I might say oh my god momentum should die that No, because you know mario's coming You know you have that next breath of the wild massive hit on your hands. Hopefully potentially we assume it's good Right So they know they have like that ace in the whole game that they just need to keep people buying out the system until then When the next massive massive game hits And then it's going to be a best seller for the holiday period.  We're getting the holiday season and we're not gonna have more than 10 units on the shelf on black friday Let me tell you They thought they ramped up production. They might buy more factories. Oh, yeah Because they're gonna be like no we need, you know, we're gonna need five six million out in the wild for just the holiday period Right. Um, so it's one of those things that I think nintendo nintendo is obviously doing well Here's two retailers that are doing well because of nintendo And I think Right now at least until we get concrete figures. I think it's easy to argue in the moment That nintendo is not purposely shorting nintendo switches We'll find out for sure. That's handed you. Yeah Um, what number would do you want to hear that would make you feel like they're not shorting? Okay, how much would it have to sell? Yeah, I honestly don't even know. I well, so 2.74, you know in a month So so how much would it have to sell for you to feel like? You know what we have to remember is that 2.74 included the fact that nintendo flew units over So they're not doing that anymore. It's all all boats because that's really expensive to do right They just wanted to make sure they had enough units for lunch. So Uh, I would say somewhere between the five and seven million what we've been talking about Because I think the only way I'd be disappointing and the way I would agree with fans is if they come out and they're like Look, we only sold we sold 3.5 to 4 and I'm like how we've already seen some sales totals for April and you're telling me a tank that bad in me.  Um, anyways, just a little fun bet nintendo's just making more money now or per share Their shares are worth more money now than they were when pokemon go released. So that's just kind of a cool thing


First year at the PREDIC conference, I'm really enjoying it. I was lucky enough to be able to moderate a session outside around innovation in data science. I sat through a number of very, very interesting presentations at the plenary session earlier on. I think what the conference has done very well, it's got a very wide range of speakers. The sessions aren't too long. The content, I think, is hit at the right mark. It's practical, consumable. It's not too overly technical, albeit there's a very broad audience here in terms of ability, right through from very technically skilled people, right up to business decision makers. And I think the organization, CREM and the conference have got that really right.